/lit/ General
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There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.
- Simone de Beauvoir.
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The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.
― Robert E. Lee.To the meaningless French idealisms: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, we propose the three German realities: Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery.
― Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin von Bülow. -
I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?
- Søren Kierkegaard
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@Hitler anybody have a recommendation for a high-energy, metabolism-boosting novel? I just finished Inherent Vice (would recommend) and would like a break from Pynchon.
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@aristotle I find Pynchon's writing confusing and weak. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a delight that you migh try.
You can also always read Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer
In which ever way a man may have failed, he cannot have lost much - Schopenhauer.Put yourself on fire for peak energy metabolism.
Ignore, judge, overcommit.
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New Years resolution from the German saint.
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Alexander Dugin - 4th Political Theory
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I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights,” with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to “unsex” themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.
― Queen Victoria. -
@aristotle Pynchon fucks
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@Norwegian-Mugabe I’ve added Ebenezer to my list, thanks for the recommendation
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I urge all white people in this era to look into the mirror and to ask themselves, “What do you know about what you are?” And if you don’t know enough, put your hand on that mirror, and move towards greater knowledge of what you can become.
- Jonathan Bowden.
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Just read the State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin. Great read to understand the concept of the state in communist theory. Goes in on the anarchists and social democrat strains that took hold of Europe. He had to leave the manuscript behind in Switzerland because he was returning to Russia, and it would have been destroyed. Then after leading the February Revolution he got to finish it, and it was published in May of 1918. Lots of interesting insights in his ideas in this book, and it's clearly written for a general audience, as not all his articles are.
I've been reading a lot of Lenin lately. It's incredible how he started writing this book and mentions in the preface "well there was a brief break in writing this since revolutions are a lot more exciting"
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@Norwegian-Mugabe Have you read Genanse og Verdighet? Dag Solstad.
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@Inzil No, I have not read Solstad. I know that he read Proust every summer for 20 years. Fosse and Haugland are almost the only contemporary Norwegian writers that I have read. Out Stealing Horses is a novel I can reccomend.
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@Hitler Is there a particular translation that is recommended? Been meaning to read Dostoevsky for years but get caught up on trying to find a good translation.
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dumb question to ask of people who are probably monolingual (and even have trouble with English)
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@Hitler Is this how Yank brains work? You have a friend that has a friend that once read the back of a book so you recommend it?
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Is the arab Nassim Taleb's reading tips lit?
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The minute I was bored with a book or a subject I moved to another one, instead of giving up on reading altogether.
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The trick is to be bored with a specific book, rather than with the act of reading.
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A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.
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I follow the Lindy effect as a guide in selecting what to read: books that have been around for ten years will be around for ten more; books that have been around for two millennia should be around for quite a bit of time, and so forth.
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The reading of a single text twice is more profitable than reading two different things once.
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A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.
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Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there.
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Drink old wine. Read old books. Keep old friends.
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Read nothing from the past one hundred years.
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Never read a book that can be adequately summarized.
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Never read a book you would not reread.
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No book that can be shortened survives.
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Books that endure don't look like good books; they are almost always very poorly written, but address fundamental topics.
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What matters for a book is depth and relevance, which is extremely rare. Plus internal, not external coherence. Books that have them don't need the cosmetic shit.
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When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice.
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Keep the book. Easier to remember contents just by looking at it. Often not even necessary to consult notes.
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I don't remember what I learned in class. I remember much of what I read on my own.
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To become a scholar, spend decades reading 30-40 h/week.
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You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
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I don’t read newspapers. I don’t watch television. I’m not on Facebook. I don’t care for the social networks. I’m on Twitter, but I use it only as a means to an end. I read books.
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Books are not read by the majority because they read the Internet, which is like junk food for the mind.
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The unread books on your shelf are like a universe of alternate possibilities waiting to be explored.
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I divide my spirits into two categories: those I read for the pleasure of reading and those I read for the pleasure of rereading.
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To see if a book is real, ask 10 people of different backgrounds & professions to summarize it. If the summaries are similar, the book will not survive as it can be shortened to a journal article.
The more the summaries diverge, the higher the dimensionality of the book. -
If you want to study classical values such as courage or learn about stoicism, don’t necessarily look for classicists. One is never a career academic without a reason. Read the texts themselves: Seneca, Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius, when possible. Or read commentators on the classics who were doers themselves, such as Montaigne—people who at some point had some skin in the game, then retired to write books. Avoid the intermediary, when possible.
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Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have been read for more than half a century by millions of people, in spite of, or most likely thanks to, brutally nasty reviews and attempts to discredit her.
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A novel you like resembles a friend. You read it and reread it, getting to know it better. Like a friend, you accept it the way it is; you do not judge it.
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