[ SECRET POST #2732 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2732 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #390.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - spam ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Most books are public domain nowadays, you can legally download them . Only contemporary books aren't. You have 3,000 years of literature for free.

[inevitableentresol]

The older books can be a tough starting point for a young reader, though. Even if that included some of the best books in the world (Pride & Prejudice!)

Myself, I have 30+ books downloaded on my Kindle, free and completely legal from here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/

[(Anonymous)]

Older translations, though. :-( Who really wants to read George Webbe Dasent's translation of Njal's Saga or Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad? (Well, maybe the latter if you're a fan of Pope, but that's kind of my point; the translation is decent Pope but horrible Homer.)

And that's assuming that works even have older translations at all. Water Margin, for instance, was written in the 14th century but not translated into English until Pearl S. Buck did so (badly) in the 1930s; that translation is still under copyright.

Of course, if you happen to read Icelandic and Ancient Greek and vernacular Chinese and etc., then, yes, 3000 years' worth of literature are yours for the taking.

[(Anonymous)]

Yaaay 3,000 years of mostly straight white people whining pretentiously. No, thank you.

[nyxelestia]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I'd have thought you were more rational than that.

[nyxelestia]

How so? Most of the stuff on Project Gutenberg is European literature, a significant portion of which is written by or from the perspective of straight white men (and tends to lean towards the philosophical - which does come off as whiny, at least from the modern literature perspective).

[(Anonymous)]

If the "modern literature perspective" means 'unable to see past your own navel', sure.

[nyxelestia]

In this case, it means "I get that the nature of existence is important, but really, you needed to write THAT much on it and yet couldn't be bothered to write a bit more about those guys outside on your proverbial lawns?".

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, there isn't a single worthy book in that entire collection. Of course. Never mind that neither "straight" nor "white" existed as concepts 2000 years ago, let alone 3000; and never mind that something being written by a straight white person isn't necessarily pretentious or bad; and never mind that the collection involves works written by people from all over the world, so many of them aren't even white by today's standards.

Yes, dismiss it all, and pretend that doing so doesn't make you pretentious.

[(Anonymous)]

+1,000. Also they come across as extremely whiny themselves.

[(Anonymous)]

If you don't want to read literature, cool. But if you're going to dismiss ALL of older literature- Gilgamesh, Homer, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, George Elliot, Virgil, Virginia Woolf, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Ramayana, Mahabhartha, Shakespeare, The Divine Comedy, A Thousand And One Nights, volumes fairy tales,the collections of oral folklore, mythology...- all of it, as "white people whining pretentiously," then you are an idiot.

[(Anonymous)]

THANK YOU. At least someone in this thread realizes that 3000 years of literature isn't 100% homogeneous. I might not enjoy every single book in the Gutenberg library, but it's a bit sad to dismiss all of it in a kneejerk reaction when clearly the people doing so don't have any idea of what's actually in it.

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of it is, yes. But dismissing all of it because it's written by white people doesn't make you some sort of enlightened reader (because tumblr lies), it just means you're limiting your reading choices in a slightly different but also ridiculous way as the people who won't read anything by a POC author.