You're getting ahead of yourself, sport. Deign your oh-so intellectual self to read something like The Great Gatsby or 1984, the books high schoolers read. Even if you've read them as a boy, revisit them. Read as many "easy" books as you can until you understand the beauty of literature, rather than using it to show off how super duper smart you are
Philosophical novels are shit. The greatest novel ever written is The Wind in the Willows, and that's about animals hanging out and having picnics together. Anything that tries to be deeper than that is turbo cringe. "We live in a society" is the absolute bottom rung of the ladder in terms of intellectual commentary that you can make.
If you're not genetically stupid, and I don't really get that impression, you should make an effort at some point to develop your tastes a bit. You say you don't like literature, probably fair to say you're not into poetry either, since verse on its way out fifty years ago. Do you have a favorite painting? Sculpture? A favorite movie director who isn't shilling Marvel slop? Maybe you're more of a music guy, like a hipster type digging up new underground artists, eventually broadening out into classical or jazz.
Probably not, though. If you were, you wouldn't be here angrily talking about children's books.
In any case, literature is a little different from the other arts, precisely because it connects to philosophy, politics, the "man of letters" in the general sense. The basic truth is that apart from mundane thoughts about their mundane daily lives, the vast majority of people *will never understand anything*. They'll never have a single opinion on any subject whatsoever that's either original or true, and everything they believe will be a mass-market version of something written in a book they'll never read, given to them not for their benefit but so they can be corralled to the right side in some power struggle between the few who were given to understand. Maybe you're comfortable being in that crowd. There can be a certain dignity in it, for a certain type of person. Though I struggle to see the dignity in whatever it is you're trying to do here.
On the contrary, to get the strong opinions I have, you need to read a shit ton of books, probably far more than you. The more you read, the more you realize how truly vapid and soulless most of the canon classics truly are and rather than your tastes broadening (which is everyone's initial intention for getting into literature in the first place), you find yourself become more conservative and set in your ways, having very definite strict ideas of what a great book should and shouldn't be. And this happens because the more you read, the more you are able to tell the wheat from the chaff, and unfortunately 99% of books are chaff.
Wow man, plausible as hell. You sure have me fooled. I especially like the complete lack of details or references. Can I get like a two sentence take on Don Quixote that mentions at least one other author?
8 months ago
Anonymous
No. Because unlike pseuds like you, I don't put much stock in name dropping academia-approved books to show how "intellectual" I am so some neckbeard on a Vietnamese beanie baby forum can be impressed by me. Your opinion on my level of intellect means nothing to me. And once you have the realization as well that no one, and I mean literally no one, gives a frick that you have read "serious literature" and it's ok to just read what you enjoy, then you have ascended as both an intellectual and a person. Unfortunately though, most people wallow in immaturity where they quote Nietzsche instead of forming philosophy of their own, utterly terrified to say something unique and original.
8 months ago
Anonymous
My opinion of anything you have to say is extremely low, yes But honestly, being this weirdly offended that people are talking about books somewhere is probably more a sign of above average innate ability than low. Probably means you have gifted kid complex and seeing the discussion here threatened your self-image. The sneering in the earlier post is exaggerated of course, and the discussion here is sometimes pretentious, but what I said there is still fundamentally true. There's nothing you can say to defend being an angry philistine, just expand your tastes.
8 months ago
Anonymous
I'm not offended that people are talking about books, I just know for a fact that 99% of the people on this shithole board are reading books for the wrong reasons. And reminding people like you of that can get you on the path to stop caring that people you have never met know that you have read Don Quixote.
Like tell me the end game here. You think people who are going to be impressed? Girls drop to their knees because you read a book about a schizo who runs at windmills and is 900 pages longer than it needs to be?
Be genuinely honest with yourself and evaluate what you read and every time you pick up a new book ask yourself "Would I be reading this book if this was not a classic and make me look smart?" You will find yourself answering "no" more often than not.
8 months ago
Anonymous
they also told me not to do anything, and yet here i am doing stuff
8 months ago
Anonymous
Don Quixote is a really good book. It's funny, totally unique, it does some clever metafictional stuff. There's a really interesting dichotomy between the petty point Cervantes seems to be making about "books of chivalry" and the actual heroism of the main character. Should we really be laughing at him? Aren't we all like him, trying to have faith in a disillusioned age? Not sure what kind of media you like aside from Wind in the Willows, but did you ever watch Haruhi? Some interesting parallels there.
At almost any prior time in history it was far more common for people to have an interest in high art. It's been dying out rapidly within the past few decades, but mostly replaced by rancid shlock. I think we're due for a revival, though, so me and my internet friends are going to bring back art.
8 months ago
Anonymous
I read Don Quixote and the only part I enjoyed was the Arab jailbreak story-within-a-story.
8 months ago
Anonymous
As a midwit:
This kinda sounds like one of these so_y guys who are like "Why work out bro, its wasted time, you just want to impress others, just eat whatever you want and be happy"
But you can work out for other reasons. Like Health reasons or to be able to look proudly at yourself in the mirror.
Similary, your post kinda assumed that most people read to appear smart. This may be true for some, but there are good other reasons to read. Fiction can be good entertainment that doesnt make you stare at a screen. I thoroughly enjoyed Mishima novels. Philosophy can make you understand other worldviews and broaden your understanding of other humans. How else are you gonna communicate between secular and religious world views (big confilct nowadays) but through philosophical conduct? This might even have real world relevance in jobs that deal with many different people.
In a traditionally democratic society, this kind of philosophic conduct is essential to find a societal consensus, which is why philosophical conduct was once such highly regarded in the modern western world. This has quite heavily degraded and coincided with an increasing alienation within society.
But I agree that reading so that it makes you look smart is moronic.
8 months ago
Anonymous
This is the smart anon
And this the dumb
I'm not offended that people are talking about books, I just know for a fact that 99% of the people on this shithole board are reading books for the wrong reasons. And reminding people like you of that can get you on the path to stop caring that people you have never met know that you have read Don Quixote.
Like tell me the end game here. You think people who are going to be impressed? Girls drop to their knees because you read a book about a schizo who runs at windmills and is 900 pages longer than it needs to be?
Be genuinely honest with yourself and evaluate what you read and every time you pick up a new book ask yourself "Would I be reading this book if this was not a classic and make me look smart?" You will find yourself answering "no" more often than not.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Only juvenile midwits put stock in philosophies being "unique and original." That's not how philosophy works.
This is not from Wind in the Willows, but Frog and Toad, despite being a shameless knockoff, is equally based in its purity and simplicity. It doesn't lecture me, it doesn't moralize, it just reminds you that being with friends is the only thing that matters.
So lucky I got to grow up reading Frog and Toad. Fantastic children's books. Probably part of the reason I love reading so much now.
Also, I just went to Wikipedia to look up their release dates, and the article has a paragraph about how the books are secretly a metaphor for homosexuality. HOLY SHIT Wikipedia sucks.
The Wind in the Willows is also a gay metaphor too, according to ~~*Wikipedia*~~. Literally the only evidence is that there are no female animals in the story. Can't a guy just have a picnic with his bros?
Frick it I'm starting reading from today. I'll start with essential lit core books like stoner, American psycho, the stranger(basically all of Camus) and Dostoevsky. I'll only browse IQfy once I finish a book and want to discuss it.
Thank you for proving my point that no one on this board actually reads. But good job. You reading 1 or 2 books will already put you in the top 1% of elite posters.
The best books are often philosophical, but just because a book isn't philosophical doesn't mean it has no merit.
Books can entertain. They can inspire. They can comfort you when nothing else does. Sometimes I read a book just to remember what my life was like all the previous times I read it. All of these things are valuable.
Ultimately whether something is worth doing or not is something we have to decide for ourselves. If you only ever let other people decide for you what's worth doing, you aren't really living your own life.
If you really want to read Harry Potter, go ahead and read it, no matter what anyone else says. Just because I didn't get that much out of it doesn't mean you won't.
Same goes for anything else. Light novels, visual novels, manga, Chinese cultivation stories, fanfiction, whatever. It doesn't matter. Whether something has literary merit for you is something only you can decide. Consensus is just a guideline, you aren't supposed to follow it rigidly.
Intellectual bros, this thread makes me wonder, why are philosophical books worth it? Why is philosophy worth it! Why is anything at all worth it?
If someone answers, don’t overthink it, just do the thing you like, bro. Then on what basis would you judge someone who watches TikTok videos all day? Why are books (philosophical or not) more worthwhile than TikTok if both are doing what “you like”? Clearly, there must be more to it than doing what you like. So, what makes something worth it, and what makes thing x worth more than thing y in the even that they are both worth it? I’d like to hear your opinions if you have ever thought about this.
>Is a novel worth reading if it's not "philosophical?" Or are they just worthless?
Why did you post a picture of yourself?
f*cking REKT
everything is worthless, but reading a novel can be fun.
No? Acquiring knowledge isn't worthless, my indagation is about whether or not "unphilosophical" books can be considered as knowledge.
>Acquiring knowledge isn't worthless
ngmi, pseud
Why would you ask such a moronic question? Read whatever you want, it's up to you to decide what you want to spend your time on
Read philosophy for philosophy. Novels offer non-propositional knowledge, so being 'philosophical' often hampers the things they do well.
What is "non-propositional" knowledge?
Midwit.
this is cringe on several levels and i'm already sad
>Is a novel worth reading if it's not "philosophical"?:
"worth reading" is the party. have your cake and eat it.
You sound like a moron and extremely boring. When you’re in public do people avoid you?
You're getting ahead of yourself, sport. Deign your oh-so intellectual self to read something like The Great Gatsby or 1984, the books high schoolers read. Even if you've read them as a boy, revisit them. Read as many "easy" books as you can until you understand the beauty of literature, rather than using it to show off how super duper smart you are
>the beauty of literature
do you know how stupid and pretentious you look right now?
do you also smugly suck farts straight out of your own bunghole?
reading philosophy and le high literature are the biggest indicators of being a self-absorbed infantile frickwit
uuuh what are you doing on the literature board then?
to talk about books I like and how much I hate homosexualy high literature
no it's just how do i approach with two best friends
yeah
Philosophical novels are shit. The greatest novel ever written is The Wind in the Willows, and that's about animals hanging out and having picnics together. Anything that tries to be deeper than that is turbo cringe. "We live in a society" is the absolute bottom rung of the ladder in terms of intellectual commentary that you can make.
If you're not genetically stupid, and I don't really get that impression, you should make an effort at some point to develop your tastes a bit. You say you don't like literature, probably fair to say you're not into poetry either, since verse on its way out fifty years ago. Do you have a favorite painting? Sculpture? A favorite movie director who isn't shilling Marvel slop? Maybe you're more of a music guy, like a hipster type digging up new underground artists, eventually broadening out into classical or jazz.
Probably not, though. If you were, you wouldn't be here angrily talking about children's books.
In any case, literature is a little different from the other arts, precisely because it connects to philosophy, politics, the "man of letters" in the general sense. The basic truth is that apart from mundane thoughts about their mundane daily lives, the vast majority of people *will never understand anything*. They'll never have a single opinion on any subject whatsoever that's either original or true, and everything they believe will be a mass-market version of something written in a book they'll never read, given to them not for their benefit but so they can be corralled to the right side in some power struggle between the few who were given to understand. Maybe you're comfortable being in that crowd. There can be a certain dignity in it, for a certain type of person. Though I struggle to see the dignity in whatever it is you're trying to do here.
On the contrary, to get the strong opinions I have, you need to read a shit ton of books, probably far more than you. The more you read, the more you realize how truly vapid and soulless most of the canon classics truly are and rather than your tastes broadening (which is everyone's initial intention for getting into literature in the first place), you find yourself become more conservative and set in your ways, having very definite strict ideas of what a great book should and shouldn't be. And this happens because the more you read, the more you are able to tell the wheat from the chaff, and unfortunately 99% of books are chaff.
Wow man, plausible as hell. You sure have me fooled. I especially like the complete lack of details or references. Can I get like a two sentence take on Don Quixote that mentions at least one other author?
No. Because unlike pseuds like you, I don't put much stock in name dropping academia-approved books to show how "intellectual" I am so some neckbeard on a Vietnamese beanie baby forum can be impressed by me. Your opinion on my level of intellect means nothing to me. And once you have the realization as well that no one, and I mean literally no one, gives a frick that you have read "serious literature" and it's ok to just read what you enjoy, then you have ascended as both an intellectual and a person. Unfortunately though, most people wallow in immaturity where they quote Nietzsche instead of forming philosophy of their own, utterly terrified to say something unique and original.
My opinion of anything you have to say is extremely low, yes But honestly, being this weirdly offended that people are talking about books somewhere is probably more a sign of above average innate ability than low. Probably means you have gifted kid complex and seeing the discussion here threatened your self-image. The sneering in the earlier post is exaggerated of course, and the discussion here is sometimes pretentious, but what I said there is still fundamentally true. There's nothing you can say to defend being an angry philistine, just expand your tastes.
I'm not offended that people are talking about books, I just know for a fact that 99% of the people on this shithole board are reading books for the wrong reasons. And reminding people like you of that can get you on the path to stop caring that people you have never met know that you have read Don Quixote.
Like tell me the end game here. You think people who are going to be impressed? Girls drop to their knees because you read a book about a schizo who runs at windmills and is 900 pages longer than it needs to be?
Be genuinely honest with yourself and evaluate what you read and every time you pick up a new book ask yourself "Would I be reading this book if this was not a classic and make me look smart?" You will find yourself answering "no" more often than not.
they also told me not to do anything, and yet here i am doing stuff
Don Quixote is a really good book. It's funny, totally unique, it does some clever metafictional stuff. There's a really interesting dichotomy between the petty point Cervantes seems to be making about "books of chivalry" and the actual heroism of the main character. Should we really be laughing at him? Aren't we all like him, trying to have faith in a disillusioned age? Not sure what kind of media you like aside from Wind in the Willows, but did you ever watch Haruhi? Some interesting parallels there.
At almost any prior time in history it was far more common for people to have an interest in high art. It's been dying out rapidly within the past few decades, but mostly replaced by rancid shlock. I think we're due for a revival, though, so me and my internet friends are going to bring back art.
I read Don Quixote and the only part I enjoyed was the Arab jailbreak story-within-a-story.
As a midwit:
This kinda sounds like one of these so_y guys who are like "Why work out bro, its wasted time, you just want to impress others, just eat whatever you want and be happy"
But you can work out for other reasons. Like Health reasons or to be able to look proudly at yourself in the mirror.
Similary, your post kinda assumed that most people read to appear smart. This may be true for some, but there are good other reasons to read. Fiction can be good entertainment that doesnt make you stare at a screen. I thoroughly enjoyed Mishima novels. Philosophy can make you understand other worldviews and broaden your understanding of other humans. How else are you gonna communicate between secular and religious world views (big confilct nowadays) but through philosophical conduct? This might even have real world relevance in jobs that deal with many different people.
In a traditionally democratic society, this kind of philosophic conduct is essential to find a societal consensus, which is why philosophical conduct was once such highly regarded in the modern western world. This has quite heavily degraded and coincided with an increasing alienation within society.
But I agree that reading so that it makes you look smart is moronic.
This is the smart anon
And this the dumb
Only juvenile midwits put stock in philosophies being "unique and original." That's not how philosophy works.
hard to disagree tbh
This is not from Wind in the Willows, but Frog and Toad, despite being a shameless knockoff, is equally based in its purity and simplicity. It doesn't lecture me, it doesn't moralize, it just reminds you that being with friends is the only thing that matters.
It was written by a gay guy. The frogs are self-inserts.
This is peak literature. It reminds me of the purity and simplicity of The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
So lucky I got to grow up reading Frog and Toad. Fantastic children's books. Probably part of the reason I love reading so much now.
Also, I just went to Wikipedia to look up their release dates, and the article has a paragraph about how the books are secretly a metaphor for homosexuality. HOLY SHIT Wikipedia sucks.
The Wind in the Willows is also a gay metaphor too, according to ~~*Wikipedia*~~. Literally the only evidence is that there are no female animals in the story. Can't a guy just have a picnic with his bros?
i am not allowed to see that coin
Is a novel worth reading?
Frick it I'm starting reading from today. I'll start with essential lit core books like stoner, American psycho, the stranger(basically all of Camus) and Dostoevsky. I'll only browse IQfy once I finish a book and want to discuss it.
start with dostoesvky rest is mid
Thank you for proving my point that no one on this board actually reads. But good job. You reading 1 or 2 books will already put you in the top 1% of elite posters.
right now or ever
it is not worth it, you are not allowed to read just for fun
Most novels are inherently philosophical.
Ofc no. If it makes you feel things then it's not worthless. Except boredom kek
no, it's literally just her workers
Some serious projection ITT
>implying philosophy is worth reading and not just to satisfy your ego
The best books are often philosophical, but just because a book isn't philosophical doesn't mean it has no merit.
Books can entertain. They can inspire. They can comfort you when nothing else does. Sometimes I read a book just to remember what my life was like all the previous times I read it. All of these things are valuable.
Ultimately whether something is worth doing or not is something we have to decide for ourselves. If you only ever let other people decide for you what's worth doing, you aren't really living your own life.
If you really want to read Harry Potter, go ahead and read it, no matter what anyone else says. Just because I didn't get that much out of it doesn't mean you won't.
Same goes for anything else. Light novels, visual novels, manga, Chinese cultivation stories, fanfiction, whatever. It doesn't matter. Whether something has literary merit for you is something only you can decide. Consensus is just a guideline, you aren't supposed to follow it rigidly.
Intellectual bros, this thread makes me wonder, why are philosophical books worth it? Why is philosophy worth it! Why is anything at all worth it?
If someone answers, don’t overthink it, just do the thing you like, bro. Then on what basis would you judge someone who watches TikTok videos all day? Why are books (philosophical or not) more worthwhile than TikTok if both are doing what “you like”? Clearly, there must be more to it than doing what you like. So, what makes something worth it, and what makes thing x worth more than thing y in the even that they are both worth it? I’d like to hear your opinions if you have ever thought about this.