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/lit/ - Literature

Discussion of Literature

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Excelsior!

Sister site: [Fan-fiction]

File: b4a223882031e6f⋯.jpg (18.82 KB,333x500,333:500,41ssOqUkRKL.jpg)

 No.15321

Can't think of many edifying classics I like that are intended for developing young minds in particular. A lot of things I would hope they pick up weren't intended for young people in the first place. Any suggestions?

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 No.15336

>>15321

Get a good translation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. They are full of sincere common sense musings that the author never intended to publish. The fact that he was a Roman Emperor is the least interesting thing about him, and he has much to say about how to live life content - and the importance of being moral, even when everyone else is caught up in the pursuit of wealth, or idle pursuits like sport teams. Some things never change.

Niccolo Machiavelli's the Prince is also a good start for a young mind. It has an unearned reputation as an edgelord's guidebook to betrayal, when it's actually just another book on common sense, this time applied to rulership. What it has to say about picking allies, coming to power and staying in power is universally applicable on all levels of human society.

Xenophon's Anabasis is worthwhile as a more fun, but still productive read. 10,000 Greeks get stuck in the middle of Persia and have to fight their way through 2,300,000 Persians to get home. Xenophon, an awful student of Socrates, ends up having to take the reigns of leadership over the stranded Greeks after their leadership is decapitated. It has a few things to say about the value of free-men worth remembering.

Paul F. Kennedy's 'The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,' and to a lesser extent his works regarding naval power, are fantastic books to get started with geopolitics. They are well-researched, the author focuses on an impartial (completely untainted by identity politics) analysis of the material capabilities of great powers & their dominance or decline, starting from the Hapsburgs and ending with musings on US power in a multipolar world. Most importantly, each chapter offers enough depth for you to springboard into more serious analyses of certain time periods or nations - so you can better understand why Britain dominated the world one day and collapsed in the next, why Nazi Germany opted for war against the USSR instead of keeping a stalemate, why the US continues to intervene in the affairs of foreign nations at great cost to itself.

I can think of more recommendations depending on what your interests primarily are (self-improvement, history, philosophy, literature, economics e.t.c.). Some more general recommendations are: If you can get your hands on some old (1960s and below) encyclopedias & history books, you usually can't go wrong. The newer they are, the more likely they are to be revisionist histories, but again you can't always judge a book by its cover. It's also worthwhile seeing if you can get your hands on a Priest's Companion (Orthodox, Anglican, Roman Catholic e.t.c.), even if you are irreligious, they usually come full of practical and mindful lessons. If you're really at a loss, start going through the ancient epics all the way to the early modern epics - the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Beowulf, Mahabharata, Divine Comedy e.t.c., just be careful with translations. I once read a translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms which craftily left out statements which didn't fit in with modern progressive ideology, like statements regarding the interchangeability of women versus the irreplaceable quality of good brothers. Mistranslations will inevitably pervert the style & substance of a text, just as much as getting a poor translation of Adolf will

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 No.15389

>>15336

Cheers for the recs. Very much my line of thinking – Meditations was a great read and definitely something to share with my kids as they come of age.

The Prince has been on my reading list for too long, ditto so many of the classics, and it’s a good motivation to think of what my kids can learn from them as well as myself if I take my reading list more seriously.

I've been looking for more tips for the best impartial, non-revisionist history. I got ahold of a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas exactly because they’re pre-60s and, apart from there being something lovely about old encyclopedias of themselves, I do enjoy having a reference point for old knowledge that isn’t edited with the influence of modern ideology. I look forward to getting them out when my kids are old enough to ask “What is…?” and hopefully when they’re older they can spot the difference when looking at Wikipedia.

My own introduction to economic history has been an odd course and I could definitely use some suggestions of good books that outline the core concepts without oversimplifying.

I’m interested in all the building blocks of an insightful worldview, so recommendations across all those areas are great. I'm always open to philosophical suggestions, but especially if the writing style isn't overcomplicated — call me a pleb, but I don’t think good philosophical thinking needs to be overly ambiguous or obscure. Save that for the sophists.

The other thing I had in mind was, since this is an exercise for the future, my first child still being in the womb (and like I said, this is a kick in the pants for my reading habits), books that are geared for or at least suitable for younger minds and reading levels. I didn’t read a lot of stuff like Gulliver’s Travels etc. myself and wonder what people who have would suggest.

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 No.15404

>>15336

> Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

>bro like just be chaste and moral and accept living in abject poverty even though i am the literal emperor

get fucked

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 No.15407

>>15336

>Paul F. Kennedy's 'The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,' and to a lesser extent his works regarding naval power, are fantastic books to get started with geopolitics. They are well-researched, the author focuses on an impartial (completely untainted by identity politics) analysis of the material capabilities of great powers & their dominance or decline, starting from the Hapsburgs and ending with musings on US power in a multipolar world. Most importantly, each chapter offers enough depth for you to springboard into more serious analyses of certain time periods or nations - so you can better understand why Britain dominated the world one day and collapsed in the next, why Nazi Germany opted for war against the USSR instead of keeping a stalemate, why the US continues to intervene in the affairs of foreign nations at great cost to itself.

I have to look this one up

>>15389

My own introduction to economic history has been an odd course and I could definitely use some suggestions of good books that outline the core concepts without oversimplifying.

depends on what you're looking for. will check back later….there's many different economic concepts.

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 No.15409

>>15404

It's the quintessential delusion of the modern disaffected white male.

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 No.15425

>>15409

I swear to Christ who do /lit/, /his/, and /philosophy/ keep getting shitposts like these not even fucking /leftypol/ has them. Get the fuck out of 8chan or better yet get the fuck out of the internet in general.

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