Read a lot. A LOT. To start, at least like five poems for every one you read. Obviously this is an arbitrary number, but it is important to read a lot of poetry when you're getting started, because poetry is a very different beast from prose, especially the type of popular fiction that most general readers are familiar with. It requires a lot more attention paid to what's happening even at the word level, as ambiguity and multiple meanings are important to poetry.

 

There are numerous very good resources online and free:
Poetry 180.

Poetry Foundation is a tremendous resource that has tonnnnnns of poems organized by theme, occasion, author etc.

Poets.org is also wonderful.

Poem Hunter is a great resource once you have found poets you think you'd like to read more of—but I have noticed small typographical errors in some of their poems when comparing them to the poems actually in collections, though not that often.


New Pages is a resource that can help you browse publications that are currently publishing, read reviews and interviews. It won't be as important right away, but once you get a decent feel for poetry, and especially once you're writing what you consider polished poems it's a great place to research possible markets for your work (please, please don't just send out to random or big name magazines without researching first. Most magazines have an aesthetic of some sort, so many poems simply don't fit at an individual magazine, and submitting it will only result in clogging the slush pile (unsolicited submissions) and wasting your (and the editor's) time. They can also help you find online magazines where you can read current writing for free. There are hundreds of them, of greatly varying content.

 

Now, by saying read a ton of poems doesn't mean don't write. Do. Especially when you're inspired by something a poem you've read has done. Try it yourself. I highly recommend keeping a writer's notebook (I have actual physical ones, as well as a google drive file for snippets and interesting tidbits I've found that I want to use in a piece sometime).


Time for my little plug here. I run a blog where I post writing exercises/writing prompts every day called Notebooking Daily. The point is to spend some time every day possible actually writing, and by starting with very specific directions it helps jumpstart the creative process even if you don't have anything in particular that you are inspired to write. On my sidebar I have a quote from David Kirby that I love:

>I’d have the young poets maintain a stockpile of linguistic bits: stories, weird words, snatches of conversation they’d overheard, lines from movies they’d seen or books they’d read. Most young poets will say something like, “Well, I have to write a poem now. Let’s see; what can I write about?” And then they end up writing about their own experiences, and, let’s face it, we all have the same experiences. So what all poets need is a savings account they can raid from time to time.

*

If you like the blog please spread the word. There aren't ads or anything on there right now, I'm just doing it as a sort of public service because I think writers can use all the support and opportunity they can get. And I really enjoy writing, haha.

 

/r/writingprompts is another good resource to use. It's quite an active sub and helps you write when not necessarily otherwise inspired. Some of the topics are extremely specific, while others are broad, and open for interpretation.

/r/passtheparagraph is a fun collaborative writing sub where you join other redditors and piece together a story or poem one paragraph or a few lines at a time. This is a great place when you don't want to write a full piece, but feel like writing.

/r/ocpoetry is a good place for beginning poets to publish, but be sure to take a look at the reddit TOS (especially the 'your content' part). But it will likely be some time before your pieces are in any shape that this will be an issue.

 

I hope the links and words are of some service. I can offer some critiques when I have the time, but I have no idea when that is usually, but if you have something specific you need an opinion or advice on you can message me and I'll do my best to get back to you in a timely fashion. Best of luck on your path! And I do highly recommend Poetry 180 to new writers, the poems are all quite accessible but not silly or light verse. Garrison Keillor's Good Poems is also a great resource, and you can buy it used for under $0.40. I found the poem I had read at my wedding in that book—shout out to Steve Scafidi!

I'm not a Faulkner guy, but I love Joyce and posts like yours pop up on Reddit from time to time. First, congrats on making the effort. The world is full of sissies who are too chickenshit to ever make it past the easy stuff. Second, here's my advice on Ulysses. Have a ball!

Everyone should read Ulysses at some point in their life. It's a book unlike any other, a book that knocks you out of your comfort zone. A book that makes your brain strain like you're reaching for something on a high shelf. And it's really, really funny. I've read it a couple of times and here's my advice:

Step 1) RELAX. You're going to miss things. It's okay. Some things are worth missing, some things are boring, some things are references that don't make any sense in today's world, so who cares? Joyce didn't want people to puzzle out his book like the answers to an exam, he wanted to present a slice of life in all its freaky majesty and stupidity. Keep looking up at the stars, not down at your feet.

Step 2) Like a shark, keep moving forward. Reading this book is like trying to drink a waterfall. The point is the overall impression, not so much the individual details. Just keep pushing ahead, don't sit there with a magnifying glass trying to appreciate every single word. Joyce himself said he put in a shit ton of puzzles and tricks and things that don't make sense for literary critics and scholars, just to mess with their heads, so don't get hung up on them.

Step 3) There are no such thing as spoilers. Seriously. Buy yourself the Seidman Annotations. These are your new best friends. The introduction to each chapter will get you oriented, and if you get hung up on a phrase, a detail, a bit of wordplay, they're like the board you stick under the wheels of your jeep when it's stuck in the mud.

Step 4) Remember that Joyce wasn't living in Dublin when he wrote this. He hadn't lived there in a long time. So what Ulysses is to some extent is his attempt to rebuild Dublin in his mind, recreating the sights and smells and mind set and beliefs and feelings and streets and people he remembered, but doing it in an impressionistic way. What the impressionists and modernists did for painting, Joyce is doing for books. That's why it reads like he wrote it on drugs. Keep this in mind, the way you keep the north star in mind when you're navigating a ship (which I'm sure you do a lot, right?). This is why the book is "important," because it's an amazing act of sustained imagination. The same way that Superman has the Kryptonian city of Kandor trapped in a bottle, Joyce has one day in Dublin in 1904 trapped in a book.

Step 5) It's funny. It's really funny. You just have to rewire your brain a little to get the jokes. Joyce always thought of himself as someone who was writing, primarily, a comedy. He's sending up the epic form by using the structure of The Odyssey to talk about people going to the bathroom, and masturbating, and getting drunk and making idiots out of themselves. But by doing this, he's not only elevating everyday life to the level of an epic but he's lowering the epic to the level of everyday life. But also: fart jokes. Everywhere.

Step 6) It's okay to skip. Even the biggest Joyce scholars in the world agree: some chapters in Ulysses suck. Here's my breakdown of the book, chapter by chapter. I'm using the chapter names that Joyce gave the book in another document, not the chapter titles that are in the book:

1- TELEMACHUS - come on, it's the first chapter. You've gotta read it. It's basically two roommates squabbling over money.

2 - NESTOR - a bit of a bore but also relatively short

3 - PROTEUS - this is the first long, boring, skimmable chapter. If you're deep on Joyce it's very "important" but it's also pretty impenetrable.

4 - CALYPSO - now we're in Leopold Bloom's part of the book and this is one of the three most famous chapters in ULYSSES (the other two are "Circe" and "Penelope")

5 - THE LOTUS EATERS - fine chapter, a bit dense, but readable

6 - HADES - one of the best in the book in my opinion, just totally Irish and death obsessed and there's even some plot!

7 - AEOLUS - from this chapter forward to "Cyclops" you're in a dense, unforgiving part of the book. I recommend breezing through these chapters and keep up with what's going on with the annotations.

8 - LAESTRYGONIANS - not so bad, but tough stuff.

9 - SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS - ouch. Even Joyce scholars think this one's like getting hit in the head with a brick. Lots of academic nattering about Shakespeare.

10 - THE WANDERING ROCKS - a neat trick (19 bits, told from around a dozen points of view) but otherwise it's really just a walk around Dublin

11 - THE SIRENS - a sweet, lovely chapter but it's all pretty wordplay

12 - CYCLOPS - alert! alert! The least loved and worst chapter in the book. No one can read and understand this one. Fortunately, it's the end of the worst section of Ulysses.

13 - NAUSICAA - a really perverted, really dense, very funny chapter.

14 - OXEN OF THE SUN - scholars love this chapter and it is fun, but don't take it too seriously. The point is to trace the history of the English language from early speech to 20th Century speech in one chapter. It's very complex and kind of unrewarding, which makes it a bit like "Cyclops" but not nearly so bad.

15 - CIRCE - essential

16, 17, 18 - EUMAEUS, ITHACA, PENELOPE - the last three chapters, and completely lovely, moving and awesome.

So my recommendation is to read about it as you read it so you can know what's going on, and save your strength for the better chapters, while avoiding getting hung up on chapters like AEOLUS (which is a bunch of hot air, like its namesake) PROTEUS and CYCLOPS. Also, this is one of the few novels you can read in almost any order and enjoy. If you just want the highlights, I recommend the following order:

• TELEMACHUS
  
  
• CALYPSO
  
  
• HADES
  
  
• NAUSICAA
  
  
• CIRCE
  
  
• EUMAEUS
  
  
• ITHACA
  
  
• PENELOPE
  
  Then you can go back and read the tougher chapters however you like.

I'm very happy that I was able to help :)

And yes, a lot of people will blame everything around them for the misery of themselves. This seems to be the easy way out, but you must ask yourself what good it does in the end. There are things which are outside of your control. What people might do to you, say to you, and so on. However no matter what harsh things you go through in life it is ultimately you that decide how to respond to them. You decide what to do with it. It is as Epictetus once said:

> "Man is affected not by events, but by the view he takes of them."

Usually I do not actually like to talk openly about the philosophy I follow, for the simple reason that I just try to live by it. Use actions, not words. Also for many people it might seem that you try to push something on to them. However I felt in this case I was justified to give an explanation of what exactly helped me :-)

Anyways, if you are interested in the principles I explained, then what you seek is reading on Stoicism. The book that has especially helped me is this one:
Stoicism and the art of happiness

It has eye-opening/life-changing wisdoms and perspectives on everything that has to do with you. How to deal with emotions, what they are, and what is essential to life a good life. Another interesting fact is that many of the mental exercises and perspectives the stoics used is now today amongst some of the most scientifically well-documented practices used by cognitive behavioural therapy (also with a quick google search, you will find that even the founder of CBT was inspired by the stoic teachings), which deals with practically all kinds of mental sufferings you can imagine.

It's a practical book on the life philosophy of Stoicism, and it is written by a credible psychotherapist who also takes interest in the study of Stoicism (hence the book!). It's not academic in any way, it's meant to be easily approachable and easy to implement into your life. Here's a quick breakdown of it all:

Stoicism is a life philosophy that was founded by the ancient greeks around 301 BCE. It's not a religion, or any kind of weird cult. It is a collection of principles that is meant to guide you towards happiness (in greek context meaning something more along the lines of inner well-being and tranquility).

I would suggest you read the book :-) Maybe you will come to pick up on everything stoicism has to offer, maybe you will only pick up whatever principles and wisdoms that you think are right, or maybe you won't find much agreement with it at all, all which is fine. However I think you will find some wisdoms you will definitely find to your liking, as you sound intrigued by the principles. The important thing is that no matter what, it will most certainly set you out on your way to think more about yourself and how to control your life and achieve your own understanding of well-being.

If Stoicism comes to your liking (start with the above book first, though), I could recommend books by some of the most famous ancient Stoics through time. I will leave some here for future reference for you:

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius - This is one of the most famous stoic texts.

Enchiridion - Epictetus

Dialogues and Essays - Seneca

These books read as manuals, not to be read in one sitting. They are huge collections of letters, essays and short passages from these excellent people about everything that has to do with achieving inner well-being, and how to view the world around you. They are remarkable ancient works, and it is truly inspiring and motivating to open them and just read a few of the lines from time to time.

As with anything, it's a learning process to change mindset. But it slowly comes when you study it. You learn the wisdoms and principles they had, you think about them and if they make sense, you apply them and live them, revisit them and so on, until they really become a part of you. It is truly worth the time though, and I think you see that too from what I could understand in your reply.

Best of luck to you! If you have any questions feel free to PM me as well, I'd be happy to help.

Adult Dystopian Recommendations:

• Oryx and Crake – Jimmy/Snowman coasts through life fueled mainly by ennui. His only rebellion is to be mediocre when his advantages in society (white, upper (maybe middle) class, Western male) have him poised for success. Glenn/Crake deliberately turns himself into the Big Bad in order to correct the wrongs he sees in society. Whether his main issue is with human nature, sucking the planet dry, socially stratified capitalist society, willful ignorance, or insatiety and curiosity is unclear. Oryx sees it all and accepts them all, knowing that she’s too unimportant to do anything except pick up the pieces and provide comfort in the meantime.
  
  
• The Year of the Flood – The world and especially capitalist society is stacked against you, but resourcefulness and an open mind will serve you well.
  
  
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Quiet rebellions like memory and record-keeping can be subversive also. But it’s only actions that set the stage for change. And the people you (maybe?) save will interpret everything differently from your intentions anyways.
  
  
• Never Let Me Go – Is it truly a dystopia when only a small group is affected? If you’re thinking of reading this, do not under any circumstances watch the movie trailer. The slow build to “something is not quite right” is part of the charm.
  
  
• Into the Forest – Literary fiction. More about acceptance and regression to a [“natural”](#s "and feminist, which apparently means incestuous but Deep! and Thematically! incestuous") state.
  
  
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Historical fiction about Chinese reeducation camps, but still pretty dystopian. Bourgeois teenage boy questions his educated, upper-class roots and teaches peasant love interest about Western literature. [She](#s "abandons him for a capitalist dream because the lesson she took from it was that love was worthless. Basically, they both take away the worst parts of each other’s starting philosophies and smash them together.")
  
  
• Wild Ginger – If historical fiction is happening, why not another Cultural Revolution one? If you keep your head down, you might just survive long enough to grow up and really see the hypocrisy – stuff even greater than what you saw as a kid.
  
  
• 1984 – Isn’t this more about how the system will break you and leave you a husk of your former self if you trust anyone completely? So you should be smart and skeptical and never assume things are in your best interest just because someone’s telling you so.
  
  
• Brave New World – Have to admit, at 12 this had me thinking that maybe fascism wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The despair and existential crisis aspects weren’t hitting me then: I just noticed how happy almost everyone else was.
  
  
• The Road – All about bleakness and futility and carrying on because the hope of family’s the only good thing left?
  
  
• Fahrenheit 451, where the people in charge are corrupt specifically concerning that thing you're fighting against.
  
  
• World War Z – I’m almost hesitant to call this dystopian, because even though it’s about a freaking zombie apocalypse, it’s uplifting to hear all the stories of human resourcefulness and ingenuity and the mental strength you didn’t think was there. Of course, some of the stories covered are “logical responses” gone bad.
  
  YA-ish Dystopian Recommendations:
  
  
• Feed – It doesn’t work out for the only [person](#s "(Violet)") who truly fought the system (she’s beaten down so horribly that it’s heartbreaking that even the reader wants to look away), but she does technically inspire one other person to at least notice what’s going on in the world, even if it’s probably too late.
  
  
• Hunger Games – Katniss is really only involved because she has nowhere else to go. Side characters have real motivations for being involved, but she really is a figurehead along for the ride and that’s OK. The story is about that and how she copes.
  
  
• The Selection – cough Popcorn cough. America is highly motivated by money (For her struggling family, of course). Ignoring the love triangle stuff, her ideal is to move from serfdom to literally any other [political system.](#s "And this never happens. The political buildup you see in The Selection and The Elite is stomped all over in the vapid cheesecake of the love hexagon finale.")
  
  
• Incarceron & Sapphique – Finn’s rebellion is that he just wants out to someplace that must be better. Claudia lives in artificial luxury and rebels mostly just for personal rebellion, not anyone else’s sake.
  
  
• The Giver – Probably more MG, but how did running away from one collective society automatically become “capitalism is best?” Jonah runs away because he’s learned enough to make his own moral decisions about one of the helpless members of his society (and artificial protection sounds socialist to me). I can’t remember reading the sequels.
  
  
• The Book Thief – Again, MG and historical fiction about a bombed out German town in WWII, but I think a setting like that qualifies it as dystopian. Technically, Liesl fights the system by stealing (possibly forbidden) books from the wealthy and by not reporting the Jew in the basement, but that last one is just showing loyalty to her new family. Her entire upbringing predisposed her to not trust the System, especially a War System, anyways.
  
  Other Dystopias:
  
  
• Matched and Delirium will be considered together because they are the same damn book, right down to the Boy-Who-Could-Have-Been-Chosen-If-Not-For-Rebellion! and the protagonist’s government-approved hobby. Delirium has better writing. Matched is easier to read and has more likable characters. We get it, teenagers should be allowed to date who they like and mommy and daddy non-biological guardians shouldn’t say no. Also, it sucks to have a guidance counselor Make A Schedule for you in order to prepare you for an office job equivalent that’s full of busywork but one of the few respectable positions left. The horror! Seriously, in what world is that rebelling against socialism? You know, that thing that promotes trade schools and equal rights for everyone, even the people you don’t personally like?
  
  
• Divergent – I’m going to let someone else handle that one because urgh. I know a lot of people like it, and it’s YA, so someone else, please support, qualify, or refute.
  
  I’d also be curious to hear what /u/bethrevis has to say about the societies on Godspeed and elsewhere and where they fit into this opinion piece.
  
  Guys, I think I just wrote an English essay. And probably put more work into it than I did in high school. And I won’t even get an A because it’s the internet and we deal solely in lolcats.
  
  But tl;dr: Adult dystopias (that I’ve read) tend to be about the futility of existence or the necessity of self-sacrifice to get a result. The YA dystopias I liked were a little more hopeful (usually) and didn’t support this opinion piece’s thesis. The ones I didn’t like made me understand the hate for dystopias.

Well, it might behoove you to read Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man before you dive into Ulysses. Both books are more conventional in style than is Ulysses--therefore easier to read through--and both books have characters in them that appear in Ulysses. Dubliners will set you up for some of the themes regarding the ambivalence of Irish national identity in the bigger book, particularly the section titled "The Dead." Portrait also contains some of these themes, but is more important in that it sets up the character Stephen Dedalus, who is one of the two main protagonists of Ulysses.

There are two companion books that might help you while reading Ulysses that I recommend: Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses, which is a huge collection of glosses and notes explaining obscure references and history. It tends to be slightly more accurate than the other book I'm recommending, but the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming, and some of it is kind of pointlessly digressive.

The New Bloomsday Book is an excellent summary of the plot episode by episode. Blamires makes a point to show the intentional parallels between Ulysses and the Odyssey. Some of the hypotheses Blamires presents seem kind of far-fetched at times, and there are a couple of inaccuracies (at least in the edition I used), but on the whole I referenced this more than Ulysses Annotated.

I would also suggest that you pick a good edition of Ulysses to read. For too many reasons to relate here, Joyce kept revising it throughout his life and many differing editions exist. The Gabler Edition is the best synthesis of Ulysses textual scholarship and is considered the definitive edition in academic circles.

As for approach, I would suggest that you be patient. This is a book that's legendary for rewarding consideration and rereading. If you care to spend the time and effort you'd do well to read each section through without references, then read the synopsis in Blamires, then return to the text and read through while referring to Ulysses Annotated before moving on. You will see things you hadn't noticed before each time you read it, especially if you've read Dubliners and Portrait. However, this can be a bit much for a casual reader as opposed to a scholar, so you could do almost as well simply reading the sections and then comparing your observations and reading with Blamires and moving on.

Best of all would be to find or start a Joyce book club and read it through with them. This will slow you down enough to actually grasp some of the intricacies instead of just robotically scanning pages, and allows you to discuss and hash out ideas and interpretations.

Good luck, and have fun!

First off, good on you for taking the initiative.

For introductory books, I'd recommend Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled. Now, I haven't read it myself, but it's been mentioned on this sub often enough for me to feel comfortable mentioning it. It might also be a good idea to pick up a miscellaneous collection of poems in order to get an understanding of the variety and depth of the subject matter. A more informal volume might be something edited by Garrison Keiler, like Good Poems. While that specific book is more bent towards Modern American poets, there's still a lot to draw from. A more academic book would be The Norton Anthology of Poetry ot The Norton Introduction to Poetry, which has a lot more to choose from. These two also give you a bit of structure – my copy of the Introduction has clear headings, like "Symbol" or "The Sonnet," with neat little introductory essays and poems chosen to help you understand how these concepts work. That being said, Norton tends to be a little expensive, though if you live in a college town you can probably find a cheaper copy. The benefit of these kinds of collections lies in helping you to find a poet whose style or subject matter you particularly like.

Regarding online sources, there's The Poetry Foundation, which has archives of poems and articles on the poets themselves. Their monthly articles can vary from the interesting to the banal, however, so keep your bullshit detector on. You can probably also find podcasts that deal with the subject. A personal favorite of mine is called "Entitled Opinions," and is run by a professor of Italian Studies over at Stanford by the name of Robert Harrison. Mind you, this particular podcast deals with philosophy and literature as well, so while I'd recommend listening to all their episodes you would have to do a little bit of searching in order to find a particular episode on poetry – though I would reccomend the one on "Dante and Prufrock." I imagine these kind of examinatioms would be useful because they can give you a sense of what poetry 'does' or 'how it means' beyond a surface play with words.

As for the writing of poetry, the first thing I'd recommend is that you read and meditate on a lot of poetry, good and bad, in order to get a sense of how its all done. Learn certain conventions – like, say, that of the sonnet – in order to see how poets follow through with them, or how they play with them. Learn prosody so you can understand how the precise meter, or 'beat,' of each line can affect the reader. I can't really give concrete advice with regards to this, save for a metaphorical "go west, young man!"

Here are some books I've read that I guess you could call "craft" books. I'm not speaking against craft books. They can be helpful, but again I would remind you that the best teacher is poetry itself. Craft books have to be taken for what they are, which is often that poet's own perspective on poetry that may conflict fundamentally with your own. But, there are some things that are helpful, and I know some of them may seem kind of "basic" but trust me they are helpful. You should never think you have poetry figured out. Once you feel that way I think you've already lost.

Anyway here are some books I've read, not always through classes but some are.
A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line- Edited by Emily Rosko & Anton Vander Zee. This is a collection of short essays by poets on the poetic line. Look at it as a way of collecting ideas about what lines can do, because many of these essays will contradict each other. It's not because one is wrong, it's because the line can do a lot of things. https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Thing-Poets-Line/dp/1609380541/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524596709&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=a+broken+thing+preston+the+line

The Making of a Poem by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland is a great book if you want to study forms more closely. It is an anthology of poetic forms, so it gives you the basic "rules" of the form, and then a ton of old and modern examples of the form. A good way to do a close study of specific forms. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Poem-Norton-Anthology-Poetic/dp/0393321789/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524596728&sr=1-1&keywords=making+of+a+poem

Sound:
Two come to mind. One is The Sounds of Poetry: a Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky. This is one that will feel somewhat basic because Pinsky frames it for beginners, but I promise it is helpful to review. He really understands sound better than most. https://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Poetry-Brief-Guide/dp/0374526176/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524596743&sr=1-1&keywords=sounds+of+poetry

Two, if you want to understand meter better, which every poet should, this is the best book on meter: Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell. It's out of print but you can probably find a copy at a local library, or at a university library. You may have to pay for access to it, but it's cheaper than a $100 for a used copy.

Finally, Singing School by Robert Pinsky. Again, going to feel a bit basic. The whole book's purpose is to teach you to write and read poetry by doing imitations. Do not devalue the importance of imitating better poets than yourself. Every poet, even Keats, started by doing imitations. This book is a good guide to starting a practice of imitating. Imitations actually help you discover yourself as a writer better because you realize where you can and can't sound like another poet. Those are good things because often those can't's are what you find to be the things that make you unique. It also just really hones some basic skills every poet should have.
https://www.amazon.com/Singing-School-Learning-Studying-Masters/dp/0393348970/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524596763&sr=1-1&keywords=singing+school

Hope this helps! Best advice I can give you is read actual poetry and write every single day.

he is saying both sort of. life has no meaning, but meaning isn't found within the struggle exactly, rather we exist in between the struggle and we create our own meaning. we are free, we have only to realize that the rules don't apply.

I can give you some advice for reading existentialism and also some places to start.

just curious, tho, how old are you?

there's several ways to approach reading philosophy.

method 1:
when reading philosophy of any kind you can get bogged down in the references and footnotes. when I was just starting out I would get so overwhelmed by things I didn't understand I would give up. don't give up. and don't worry about what you don't understand, just keep reading and see what you get out of it.

method 2:
BEFORE you read a book, read the Wikipedia page on it. back in the day I had to collect Coppleston's history of philosophy volumes to read commentary, but now it's online. so before you read, do some quick background reading so you know a) where the author is coming from/their general point of view/any important details about their life that pertain to understanding the book B) the author's main argument in the book - this will help you pick out his argument and understand it better.

3) some tips: a) read for pleasure. don't feel bad if you hate a book and just can't read it or make sense of it. sometimes later it makes more sense, but it's ok to hate a writer even if everyone else says they're amazing b) read with a pen or pencil in hand - underline things you like, write "I disagree" if you do, sometimes I even write "LOL" if it made me laugh and related to that B) take some notes as you go along whatever you think is important.. a sentence, a point, I use notes to restate in my own words the argument I just read... it helps me get it better and I have a reference in my own lingo that makes sense to me

where to start I would start with two books:

1. Donald Palmer "does the center hold? an intro to western philosophy"
   Amazon price ~2$
   
   get this book if you get no others!
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0073535753/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783700&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=does+the+center+hold&dpPl=1&dpID=51hxbBbmgzL&ref=plSrch
   
   
   2.Walter Kaufmann "existentialism: from Dostoyevsky to Sartre"
   Amazon price 11$
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452009308/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783302&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=walter+kaufmann&dpPl=1&dpID=41lkh1kWkeL&ref=plSrch
   
   after that, depends on what you want to learn, but after the above I would read "Notes from Underground" by Dostoyevsky
   
   then maybe: JD Salinger "Catcher in the Rye"
   
   this was how I learned... after those two I went back chronologically and read Plato(he's foundational and easy enough to grasp), Kierkegaard, Dostoyesky, Camus and Sartre, then I started skipping around once I had a foundation.
   
   with existentialism the important thing to remember is that it isn't an exact philosophy. it was at first a reaction against exact philosophies with prescriptive definitions to how we should live. existentialism, rather, is a shared angst (Wikipedia Kierkegaard Angst) about life, an anxiety in the face of the meaninglessness of life. life has no meaning. now what? if life has no meaning, then all the rules are arbitrary, and you are truly free. free to do and be whatever you want.
   
   good luck on your quest, it's a worthy one.
   
   and my last piece of advice is this: there's no hurry... if a book takes you a year to digest, that's fine! if another takes you a week, ok! another might require 2 months. don't rush, digest the argument and internalize it.
   
   and I'm around on Reddit all the time if you have questions. and don't let philosophy snobs tells you you have to blah blah blah... philosophy should be accessible to all, otherwise it's a stupid endeavor.
   
   again.. good luck.
   

YES! I studied Irish mythology in University, so here a few of my favorite texts :)

The Tain is a lovely translation of the Tain Bo Cuailnge ^(sounds like "toy'n bo cool") which is the primary source of written mythology. It's dense.

Over Nine Waves is also, in my opinion, an imperative supplementary text on the myths and legends as well. It feels less academic.

The Lore of Ireland is just that - a book of Irish lore.

As for Samhain ^(I can't figure out how to properly give you a "sounds like" since I don't have little phoneme symbols - but basically like "sahwin") itself, I'm not sure whether holidays are out-right discussed in these texts. I will say, if you do find it - it'll be mostly in lore as opposed to myth or legend. Most Celtic holidays are focused on the changing of the seasons (like all holidays, really) and their connection to the Land of Eternal Youth (Tir na nOg - you can actually pronounce this one like you might expect it to be said) and the Tuatha De Danann ^(sub a "w" for the "th").

If you're looking specifically for myths dealing with faeries, they'll also be in lore. Myths/legends usually refer to the great heroes like Cuchulain ^("cuh-cul-lin") (there's a statue of him in the post office of downtown Dublin in honor of the Easter Uprising during the Irish revolution! Probably one of, if not the, most important myth/legend. In the war between gods and man, he almost single-handidly defeated Madb ^("mave") and her sons in a battle that last weeks/months/yeards depending the variation. He tied himself to a post as he was dying in order to look like he was still alive and held off attacks until crows landed on his shoulders and started eating his body. Basically. It's way better than my telling lol..) and gods and the cycles of power over the land itself.

Okay, fine, I'm done. Sorry for being so long-winded!

Oh! If you're looking for less heady material, I would also recommend Lady Gregory and Yeats. They were mythology nerds and wrote tons of plays/poems/retellings. L.Gregory's Grania is my favorite retelling of Grania and Diarmuid! I actually got a tattoo of one of the lines from the play in Ireland the first time I visited :)

Happy reading!

First of all, I want to say that it speaks very well of you that you are looking to use your time in prison to your advantage. Most people would see this as a catastrophe, but you see it as an opportunity. If you want to make this a full-time, in-depth study, this is the plan I recommend.

I would first start with a good introduction to the entire Stoic system. A great one is Stoicism by John Sellars.

Then I would start reading the source material. We are fortunate enough to have the lectures of one of the great teachers of Stoicism, Epictetus. I would go with Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook translated by Robin Hard.

After reading Epictetus, you can move on to Marcus Aurelius, who was directly influenced by the Discourses. Robin Hard has also done a translation of the Meditations.

To fully appreciate the Meditations (and to better appreciate Epictetus), next read The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot. This is an incredible analysis of the Meditations which explains Epictetus' influence on Marcus Aurelius and his work.

Finally, you must of course read Seneca. Two good sources are this book of his essays and this book of his letters.

Between the footnotes in these translations and the detail given by Sellars and Hadot, you won't need Wikipedia to get clarification on any points. You'll have the expert knowledge in your hands.

I don't think it's necessary to read one of the modern how-to type books before you begin reading these, but if you think it would help to read something lighter first to become acquainted with the core concepts ahead of time, I recommend Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson.

There are other sources, such as Musonius Rufus and Cicero, but these are the three most people start with and the three that I recommend first. You can look at the FAQ for more ideas if you'd like.

Find out how many books you are allowed to have at one time, as this may be an issue in prison.

As others have said, it's a very good idea to keep a journal of your thoughts, both on what you are reading and how you relate what you are reading to your life.

I'm in a similar boat as you; interested in continental, but surrounded by a lot of analytics.

Hegel is notorious for being dense and difficult to read, and while he was incredibly influential on many later continental thinkers, I don't think anyone who really wanted to help you get into continental philosophy would have you start on Hegel, unless they were committed to reading through it with you.

Heidegger's maybe a bit less obtuse at times, but he can also be confusing if you don't have a professor or more experienced student guiding you along. I asked a professor where I should start, and he recommended his published lecture notes from The History of the Concept of Time, which I admittedly haven't finished yet, but he spends a lot of time in it explaining Husserl's philosophy of phenomenology, which is crucial for understanding Heidegger, as well as a number of other continental thinkers.

As for some easier continental-esque thinkers, there are some that I think are a bit more accessible. Bear in mind that there isn't exactly a group of thinkers who all signed a document saying they were continental philosophers, but there are a number who seem to run in the tradition, and many others who were at the very least related to them.

To begin, I'd recommend some Kierkegaard. He was a Christian philosopher, and is often considered to be one of the earliest existentialist philosopher's. He did a number of works on concepts of faith, anxiety, dread and other elements of the human condition, adding his own angles on them to apply them to Christian philosophy. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms in order to create a number of different perspectives, although underlying all the chaos was a desire to get you to start thinking for yourself. A good place to start with him would be Fear and Trembling. Many of his ideas were influential on continental thinkers such as Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre.

To go in a very different direction, Nietzsche is another thinker who was very influential on many continental philosophers. The self-declared Anti-Christ, he basically believed that we are about to enter a post-God world, with his writings often either trying to burn our bridges back to the Church or trying to point us in a new direction. Like Kierkegaard, he doesn't always say what he means directly, but much of his philosophy is ultimately aimed at getting you to start thinking for yourself. I'd recommend this anthology, as it contains a number of pretty crucial writings of his.

If after this you're still interested in Heidegger, I don't have as much background there, although I've read a few of his Basic Writings, which is a collection of essays of his. In one of my classes, we also read an essay from his Pathmarks which wasn't terribly dense, so that might be a nice place to start as well. Being and Time is generally considered to be his most important work, but it's renowned for being dense and difficult, although there are a number of commentaries on that book alone that may prove useful.

For one final recommendation, I'll throw in Kaufmann's anothology of existential writings, which has a number of essays on existentialism, which was heavily tied to many core continental thinkers.

And I wouldn't worry about your roommate.

If you're new and really want a good wide sampling, I heartily endorse a well-edited anthology. Not a shitty anthology of the classics, but a good, well-curated, interesting, broad, informative collection of poems. My first was the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, which, though it's country specific and leaves out some good poets, is pretty terrific for the relatively recent, American stuff. A different route in the anthology department is The Making of A Poem, which covers formal aspects of poetry without treating you like an infant or talking over your head, and then gives a spectacular, chronologically organized range of examples of those forms.


I think the best way to find out what you like is to read a few issues of Poetry magazine, everything they do is on their website, and find out what clicks with you.


I like to read individual collections, so I'll list some of my all time favorites here. Obviously there are a lot more than this list, and I'm offering here the stuff I think is a bit more accessible, even the moderns and Whitman are pretty lucid, even if Pound is a bit dense and Williams is a bit flightly.


Contemporary/Recent:

Maurice Manning - Bucolics and Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions

Robert Hass - Praise

Donald Justice - Departures

Louise Gluck - Averno and The Wild Iris


Further Back:

Ezra Pound - Personae

Willian Carlos Williams - Al Que Quiere! and Sour Grapes

HD - Sea Garden

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass


Non-English:

Charles Baudelaire - Fleurs du Mal

Tomas Transtromer - New Collected Poems (tr. Robin Fulton)

Here are a few I think are good:

Getting Started

On Writing: This book is great. There are a lot of nice principles you can walk away with and a lot of people on this subreddit agree it's a great starting point!

Lots of Fiction: Nothing beats just reading a lot of good fiction, especially in other genres. It helps you explore how the greats do it and maybe pick up a few tricks along the way.

For Editing

Self-Editing For Fiction Writers: there isn't anything in here that will blow your writing away, land you an agent, and secure a NYT bestseller, but it has a lot of good, practical things to keep an eye out for in your writing. It's a good starting place for when you are learning to love writing (which is mostly rewriting)

A Sense of Style by Steve Pinker: I really loved this book! It isn't exclusively about fiction, but it deals with the importance of clarity in anything that is written.

Garner's Modern American Usage: I just got this about a month ago and have wondered what I was doing before. This is my resource now for when I would normally have gone to Google and typed a question about grammar or usage or a word that I wasn't sure I was using correctly. It's a dictionary, but instead of only words, it is filled with essays and entries about everything a serious word-nut could spend the rest of their^1 life reading.

^1 ^Things ^such ^as ^the ^singular ^their ^vs ^his/hers

Publishing

Writer's Market 2016: There are too many different resources a writer can use to get published, but Writer's Market has a listing for Agents, publishers, magazines, journals, and contests. I think it's a good start once you find your work ready and polished.

There are too many books out there that I haven't read and have heard good things about as well. They will probably be mentioned above in this thread.

Another resource I have learned the most from are books I think are terrible. It allows you to read something, see that it doesn't work, and makes you process exactly what the author did wrong. You can find plenty of bad fiction if you look hard enough! I hope some of this helps!

A number of Margaret Atwood's books have won awards, including the Man Booker and Hammett Prizes for The Blind Assassin and the Governor General's Award for English language fiction and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for The Handmaid's Tale. A full list of her awards can be found here.

Alice Munro is another Canadian author who has won a number of awards for her (many) novels.

Cory Doctorow's science fiction novels have also won a number of awards, including the Locus and Prometheus Awards. Little Brother is YA and a free ebook.

In fantasy, Guy Gavriel Kay has won the Sunburst Award and Prix Aurora Award for novels like Under Heaven.

The best poetry (the arts, really) resource on the web, courtesy of Dan Schneider - no, not of Nickelodeon infamy, another one. Here's the link, and just dive in. Got some very strong perspectives regarding poetry and the arts, that many find off-putting, but he's invaluable, to my estimation.

​

If you find a poem that you like, but can't immediately access intellectually, see if you can find an entry of it on Shmoop. I love Plath and Stevens and Crane, but couldn't tackle them full on as a poetry novice. Shmoop (and others) helped me gain some insight on some of their poems. Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West" is a doozy, but Shmoop's analysis helped clarify some difficult passages.

​

And like everyone else has said, keep reading - anything and everything by anyone. The more you passionately pursue the subject, the more you'll find things beginning to make sense. Also, an excellent book for poetry lovers who want to delve into the craft: Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook.

​

Hope this helps!

The CELT (Corpus of Electronic Texts) database hosted by UCC hosts transcriptions of many Old Irish texts. There are some English translations, though they can be difficult to dig up. Nonetheless the database contains a wide variety of material the narrative literature section includes mythology.

Ignoring the somewhat dodgy-looking website MaryJones.us contains a wide selection of Irish (and Celtic!) material and more translations. The only real downside to MaryJones is that the sources of translations aren't always provided, so the accuracy cannot be checked against the actual texts the translation is working from. Nonetheless, the majority are good translations.

Irish Literature which includes many of the historical and mythological texts that CELT also has, and some Pre-Christian Inscriptions.

In terms of books, The Táin, early Ireland's great epic is a good one. I've yet to read the latest translation, admittedly, but I do quite enjoy Kinsella's version: he manages to capture the feel of Old Irish, so to speak, and its occasionally choppy narrative style, while making the text legitimately readable. It stays true to the text while still being accessible.

Likewise, Jeffrey Gantz's Early Irish Myths and Sagas is an excellent introduction to some of the more interesting, and important myths of early Ireland. The translations are very readable - though at times he has sacrificed the tone of Old Irish to do so.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Tales of the Elders of Ireland as translated by Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, has retained the Old Irish flavour, and is therefore occasionally difficult to understand.

In terms of secondary material, you'll have to be a little more specific as to what you're looking for. Miranda Green has a pretty good book, but she runs into the same issue that we all run into: we don't know how the myths that we have were perceived by or influenced the people who created them.

All of our stories, all of our information, really, is relayed to us through manuscripts that were created primarily in monasteries (though we have some created by laypeople and not monks, they're younger, and fairly well-removed from whatever paganism may be represented in the texts.) Few (if any) of them provide any commentary, or meta-analysis - and what we do have is pretty spare (ie. a note that the scribe doesn't believe any of what he's just written.)

The texts do tend to uphold the laws that we have, so I suppose you could argue either way: did the myths influence the laws, or the laws influence the myths?

But as I say, as we have no sources, really, from pre-Christian Ireland, only material that has been transmitted through a Christian lens, it's hard to know how the remaining texts were treated. Granted, their preservation does indicate that they were regarded with a certain level of reverence, but their actual influence is unknown. There is some literature that compares the ways in which the Christian authors follow some of the tropes of myth in their own writings of saints lives, but I'm not sure if that's what you're after.

I'd suggest starting with poems that are relatively brief, highly readable, and modern -- really get a taste for how poetry can be relevant to your everyday life. There are a ton of good books out there dedicated to poetry of this type, such as Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, with poems like Mary Oliver's Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Oliver has also written a Poetry Handbook which discusses the technical aspects of poetry like rhythm and form, and illustrates the principles with poems generally considered to be modern classics, if you're looking for something more technical.

Keillor also does the The Writer's Almanac on NPR, and you can go to the Writer's Almanac site for a (usually) good poem each day. Other good starting points include Billy Collin's Poetry 180 and Hirsch's How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry.

I'm also a fan of Catherine Bowman, who's a bit obscure (she's the Poetry... um... person for NPR's All Things Considered) and so I'm going to post one of her poems (Broke Song) because I'll probably never have another chance to do so as smoothly as I am clearly working it into this post.

You move through the world broken. Navigating
by the stars encoded on your hearts axis. July
grasses. Rain. How the world breaks us.
Midnight scatters across what’s left
from an evening prayer. The broken
song of the warbler at dawn
on the last day of winter. You move
through the world gathered
together in a pulse. Running your fingers
up and down what is odd and so familiar.
How dazzling the fit. To be remade
by the glue of your oaths and kisses.

Edit: Also, Robert Bly.

I believe form is critical at times. As a HS English teacher with a creative writing background, I see lots of my colleagues doing the awesome work of including poetry writing into their curriculum, but they focus so strongly on free verse and spoken word that the students do not honestly understand the genre tools they are trying to wield.

Form provides structure and context for the writer and the reader. Repetitious forms (villanelles seem to be especially popular in contemporary form poetry) call a readers attention to those repeated lines and phrases. Of course, in keeping with our creatively libertarian times, contemporary writers (and my students I teach form to), are given authority to break some of the rules so long as the structure still remains largely in tact.

Ultimately, I agree with those who have said that it really depends on what you are trying to write. I have tried to jam some poems into forms that didn’t work for the content.

I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Poem-Norton-Anthology-Poetic/dp/0393321789/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=mark+poetry+form&qid=1564951877&s=gateway&sr=8-2

It was a required text for a college course I took, I use it with my students now, and even gave my copy to an especially talented young writer in my classroom to keep (I need to use this link to order my new copy!).

Form matters. Free verse is good, too. It has its place. But form matters.

I did the idea a disservice by writing so quickly and rattling it off. My apologies. If you're interested, I suggest going straight to the source with George Lakoff's work. You might be first interested in the section near the bottom, "The Basic Claim." Here's an excerpt:

>...At the center of the conservative worldview is a Strict Father model. This model posits a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family as well as the authority to set overall policy, to set strict rules for the behavior of children, and to enforce the rules...

>...The liberal worldview centers on a very different ideal of family life, the Nurturant Parent model: Love, empathy, and nurturance are primary, and children become responsible, self-disciplined and 'self-reliant through being cared for, respected, and caring for others, both in their family and in their community...

If you want more on the concept of cognitive metaphor in general, check out Lakoff's book, Metaphors We Live By. At any rate, I'd love to hear what you think about the proper articulation of the idea of government as family. Sorry again for my sloppiness earlier.

A couple quick thoughts:

1> You have to really commit to your story. We're talking marriage level commitment here, none of this half-hearted crap. Treat your characters like they are real. Tell them that their story is worth telling, and promise to tell it for them. This is, of course, only necessary if you're really serious about writing a book. Otherwise it's just silly.

2> Set a daily quota. 1000 words a day. On days that you can't find any new words for your story, write notes about your story. This means writing when you don't feel like writing. This means closing your browser.

3> You can learn how to write a book. Natural talent is important, but your work ethic is much more important. There are more than a few instructional books out there that are very good. I recommend starting with Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. It's exceptional, and the chapter on active voice versus passive voice is critical to effective storytelling.

Best of Luck to you. Looking forward to reading more.

There's a few resources out there, none perfect.

This is a short little bit by Gaiman on how to read Wolfe. Not specific to Book of the New Sun, and a little joking, but it's completely accurate. Approach Wolfe in that manner and you may get more from the books.

This is a dictionary/glossary that can be useful to link different parts of the series to eachother, and provides a lot of context as to the real world origins of words he uses. Wolfe invents a lot less words that it seems at first glance, almost every unfamiliar word is either just a really rare/archaic word, or is invented, but pulled from a real life reference. Sadly, it's a book and not freely available, but what can you do.

This is a wiki about Wolfe's works, kind of hit or miss, but the list of obscure words is useful, and some of the analysis/discussion is good.

This is the best regarded in-depth literary analysis of the series, but it's super dense and not a straightforward explanation by any means.

There's also a super long running mailing list about gene wolfe's work, but good luck digging anything useful out of it, it's just way too much with no organization.

I'm a kind of casual reader these days, but Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor played a huge part in me getting into poetry ~10 years ago. Keillor grabs a good range of old classics and newer ones (though he kinda seems to favor beat era writers), and sorts the poems vaguely according to themes, like "Failure," "A Day's Work," "Sons and Daughters." I'd bet I've discovered 80% of my favorite writers due to this book. Props to u/JTK102 for also recommending this!



If that's too entry level, my other go-to anthology is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, but obviously that one sticks to contemporary American writers. I like this anthology because it also gives some background to the career and cultural significance of the featured writers.


Good luck on your hunt!

Not so casual and perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but definitely read the Linguistics Wars by Randy A Harris. It's enjoyable, extremely rigorous (it came out of Harris's PhD dissertation) and very, very insightful: it digs really deep into one of the most controversial period of linguistics in the United States. The author even went through underground notes. The best part about it is that it doesn't require you to be a linguist but it's even better if you are; a lot of things in there you simply can't get from modern textbooks and you get to learn how linguistic ideas originated and evolved. He has a second edition coming out so you might wanna wait for that.

For something perhaps surprising and illuminating: read Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson. Most people I know were impressed at how pervasive metaphors actually are in language and cognition. It's very intuitive and sensible once you get the gist of it. This one is quite specific though.

Finally, although now I don't quite agree with it, Language Instinct is what lured me into linguistics so definitely check it out.

These books are quite old now and obviously linguists know much more (although not nearly enough) about language today than they did back then. Claims are also often exaggerated (with the exception of the first one, I think) but they're fun to read and will interest you for sure.

I would check out the Icelandic sagas. While most of them focus on families or individuals, they have many of the trappings of legends. A few of my favorites:

The Saga of Egil Skallagrimson: Tales of a semi-historical Norwegian skald (poet) who gets into fights, recites poetry on the fly, engraves runes both to cure and to curse, and swears vengeance upon the King of Norway for daring to exile him to Iceland.

Njal's Saga: A family saga, detailing the family feud between two major Icelandic families, and how easy it was to spiral from petty fighting to outright murder. Also features Gunnarr Hámundarson, a remarkable warrior who, once he was outlawed, refused to leave his home in Iceland and decided to enact a heroic stand against his pursuers.

The Poetic Edda: You mentioned this one above, but it's worth seconding it. The Prose Edda and The Poetic Edda are both great reads and explain so much of how we view Norse mythology.

Heimskringla: One of the greatest sagas known to us, written by Snorri Sturluson. It details the history of Norway from the mythic past up to Snorri's present day in the 13th century. It's very long, but has some amazing legends and stories, especially about Harald Hard-ruler and his adventures working for the Byzantines.

Eyrbyggja Saga: Hard to find, but if you can, there's a section detailing what happens when zombies invade a Viking's home in Iceland. Spoilers: it involves Viking lawyers.

On the Irish side, if you can find the Ulster Cycle, it's worth a read; I think we get a lot of our popular Irish mythologies from that cycle. This one on amazon doesn't look bad, I think it's focused on the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley) side of the stories.

If you're really keen to develop your understanding, here are two books on literary theory to digest that will help you with this:

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction
The Very Short Introduction series is excellent. My wife is a philosophy teacher and we have about a dozen of them on our shelf. Fantastic entry points to building a solid foundation of understanding on just about any academic topic.

Seven Types of Ambiguity
This is one of the seminal works of modern literary criticism, and it's an engaging read.

Good luck! You are on a beautiful path and I hope you keep working at it because a deeper understanding and love of literature is truly a life-enriching pasttime.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers is hands down the best book I've read for creative writing.

Stephen King's On Writing is also very good, but about half of it is a biography more than writing lessons; still interesting though!

Otherwise the best things you can do are to write more, read more (think like a writer though - why did they choose the words they did, the order they did, the perspective, etc.), and seek critique for your own work.

For more formal writing, the most important part is keeping it organized. For example, once you get comfortable with the 5-paragraph formula, you just modify it to fit your need each time and you can pound out an essay in no time once you have your research on hand.

I've always found the Norton collections to be a solid starting point for good poetry.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Poem-Norton-Anthology-Poetic/dp/0393321789/
http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Poetry-4th/dp/0393968200
http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Modern-Contemporary-Poetry
http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Introduction-Poetry-Alison-Booth/dp/0393928578/

are all excellent introductions to reading. Very broadly speaking, classical poetry is more focused on rhyme and imagery that many can comprehend (albeit with some effort), while modern poetry is more focused on free verse and word choices, and tends to use imagery that's more self-referential (that's just my experience, though).

In terms of writing, I'd suggest scanning through /r/OCPoetry to see poetry written from a mostly modern, mostly amateur perspective.

What you're saying so far is basically akin to 'I want to know more about the ocean and everything living in it/relating to it. I know what a tuna, a blue whale, a great white shark, and an octopus are, but I don't know where to go to get information about them and learn about them. Can you guys help me find good sources for everything from marine biology to oceanography and everything in between?'

As such, my suggestion for the Norton's. If you find something that you like, you can help narrow your search field a bit, and it'll be a heckuva lot easier to help (in your reading search, that is).

Writing's a whole different ballgame, and I defer to /u/jessicay and/or /u/ActualNameIsLana for (possibly) helping you out a bit more on that topic, as they've far more experience than me.

You'd probably find this english/french "parallel" book (and others like it) pretty useful and in the genre of what you are looking for.

Also, I realize this isn't exactly what you were asking for, but setting custom google chrome searches to ping word reference has saved me SO MUCH TIME whilst studying. Specifically... you can set up google chrome so that if you type a special keyword in the search bar, chrome will run the "search" function that's normally on any particular page. So, I set three custom searches, and I use them constantly:

• fe will search the french-english dictionary
  
• ef will search the english-french dictionary
  
• conj will bring up the conjugation page for whatever verb i type in.
  
  So for example, i'd bring up a new tab, then type fe, space, and then aimant, and hit enter. I'd get the search page for aimant, which of course i then discover means "magnet" in english.
  
  When making flash cards or any of tons of other studying activites, double checking words in the dictionary can be time consuming, and this will save you a million seconds.
  
  You can also find plugins in chrome that will pop up with a definition of a word if you hover over it or right click... which is pretty useful for reading french news or other sites, when you need a little help.
  
  Edit: spelling is important :)

This is a very good video introduction to Stoicism.

The main ancient Stoic books that have survived are Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Epictetus's Discourses and Enchiridion, which is basically a summary of the Discourses, and Seneca's Letters to Lucilius and Essays. All these editions are relatively new translations and, in Seneca's case, abridged, but they will give you an idea of what Stoicism is about. I suggest you first read the Enchiridion (it is no longer than 40 pages) and then the Meditations (around 150-200 pages), and then dig deeper if you get interested.

There are other ancient sources, and quite a lot of modern work is being done currently, but those are the ones I suggest you begin with.

Then there are very active modern Stoic communities, like /r/Stoicism, the Facebook group, and NewStoa, with its College of Stoic Philosophers, that lets you take a very good four month long course by email.

The great thing about Stoicism as a way of life is that it has neither the blind dogmatism of organized religion nor the ardent skepticism of atheism. It puts the soul back in the universe, in a way, and, on the personal level, empowers you to take responsibility for your actions and to take it easy with what you cannot control.

Congrats to you and your husband, that is such wonderful news! :)

You should get us both this! I've heard great things about it, it's supposed to be really wonderful.

This one is supposed to be fantastic as well! I've been wanting to read both of them for a while, and I'm not sure which one sounds more appealing to you.

16 bucks an hour!!!

Thank you for the contest!

I'm afraid I don't know about The Kite Runner but equivalent books in French would probably push you quite hard. It's normally best with reading not to have to look too much up because it can be a drag. It's also why I'd recommend sticking to shorter works.

You might like to look into some parallel texts (ie French on one page with the corresponding translation on the opposite side). They really help when you come across difficult idioms and mean you can read easily out and about when you don't have a dictionary to hand. Here's a collection of short stories in French. There are more in this series. They will be harder than Le Petit Prince but it seems you might enjoy more literary writing.

If you're worried about difficulty you might like to look at this Easy French Reader which gets progressively harder. In fact, this might be the best stepping stone for you.

I went to one of the best schools in the country for writing and took poetry classes with well-established poets. I've won a few well established poetry awards. I'm not trying to brag, but I'm just trying to show that I'm not pulling the following out of my arse.

You are going to get lots of bad advice. There are lots of really bad poets out there.

I'm not the biggest fan of her poetry, but Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook contains pretty much everything a beginner could want to know about how to write poetry. It's easy to read and short as well.

Some pointers off the top of my head:

Be honest. Don't try to be something you're not.

Imitate your favorite poets. This sounds counterintuitive to the first point, but you're trying to learn how to write. You learn what your own personal style is through reading others'. It is absolutely not a bad idea to start writing imitations of your favorites first.

Avoid purple prose. For the love of god. Also avoid excess adverbs. They do the least for you but everyone throws them in.

Less is more. This is probably the most important point of all. Poetry is poetry and not prose. Every word counts in good writing. It counts even more in poetry. If you have a poem made of eight lines, every fucking word counts. Even the and's, the's, and it's. When you edit, make sure every word there is doing something. Cut absolutely everything out that is unnecessary. It will make your poem WORSE to keep the extras in.

I've found that most famous writers, poets or otherwise, describe writing as a two-fold process: creative outpouring, and then editing. When you want to write a piece, first write down everything you want--everything that feels right. Don't edit yourself too much as you do so. Then, put the writing away for a little while. When you get back to it, then edit. When you edit, you should be in the opposite frame of mind from when you were actively coming up with material. Instead of adding everything you can think of, you need to be cutting out everything that doesn't belong. This is very hard to do and I'm still learning how to do it. It takes humility. Editing is just as important if not more so than the initial steps of writing a poem. Most bad writers do not realize this.

If you want more recommendations for poets to read, or articles about how to write, I'd be glad to provide more.

Off the top of my head, I tend to refer to these four the most:

Self-Editing For Fiction Writers -- When it comes to editing, this book is what helped me break things down and showed me how to get the most out of my writing in a way that clicked.

Alan Moore's writing for Comics -- Nifty if you're really into comics or want to write your own. Spotted this in a thrift store. Best $1.00 I ever spent.

On Writing Horror -- Writer's Digest has quite a few of books on writing. And they all have exercises and excerpts, but out of the small collection that I have this one is my favorite. Kind of gave me an idea of what to watch out for. It's like reading bits of advice from different authors.

The negative Trait Thesaurus -- Actually, I love the entire series as a resource. The kindle has to be good for something. (Much cheaper) But it helps keep my traits together and my character's reactions from getting stale. Out of everything I'm always pulling these books out.

*Started with three, but I really had to mention the trait thesauruses.

Sure.

Irish Mythology (as opposed to more recent Irish folklore) is divided into four 'cycles'. Each cycle contains tales dealing with certain subjects or characters.

• The Mythological Cycle deals with the foundation myths of Ireland; the Tuatha De Danann, the Formorians, etc.
  
• The Ulster Cycle deals primarily with the deeds of Cú Chulainn, which are encapsulated also in The Táin - the 'Illiad' of Irish mythology. It also, however, contains tragedies such as Deirdre of the Sorrows.
  
• The Fenian Cycle is like the Ulster Cycle in that it deals with heroes and their deeds, but has a distinctly less epic feel - usually concerning distinct incidents in the lives of heroes such as Fionn Mac Cumhaill or Oisín. It also relates another favourite Irish tragedy, Diarmuid agus Gráinne
  
• Lastly is the Kingly Cycle, short fables that impart the qualities of great kings in the face of difficulty.
  
  Pretty much any and all of these tales are available in academic form online, but it makes it much more enjoyable to find a good prose translation by a good author. You can buy The Táin on paperback here, and Jim Fitzpatrick (the artist behind that famous Che Guevara image) has made a living out of creating fantastically illustrated versions of the Mythological Cycle.
  
  There are literally thousands of collections of Irish folklore, most of which are decent enough. Original collections by W.B.Yeats and Lady Wilde are also available online

When we encounter new phenomena, it's easiest to characterize them in terms of phenomena we already know, thus we give them labels. The new labels will usually be metaphorical extensions of existing words (e.g. a network, a pulse, a current, an atmosphere of pressure), or new words that come from resources already existing in the language. To make new words we can:

• make compounds, which combine two or more words (e.g. plane mirror, transverse wave; there's also a type of compound called the neoclassical compound in which the elements come from Greek or Latin but not in a way that the languages would have used them, like corpus callosum from Latin words meaning 'firm body' or eukaryote which combines Greek and Latin roots meaning 'true kernel')
  
  
• we can derive new words by adding affixes (e.g. acceleration from accelerate)
  
  
• we can coin new words (e.g. ohm named after a scientist and is a unit of resistance, and mho, the inverse of the word ohm and a unit of conductivity -- the inverse of resistance)
  
  
• we can clip words (e.g. gene from genetic, the adjectival form of the noun genesis)
  
  I get the impression that you're more interested in the metaphors of science. If you want an introduction to metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors we live by might be of interest to you. More directly relevant is Making Truth: Metaphor in Science by Theodore L. Brown. I haven't read the second one, and it's not written by a linguist, but it's written by a professor emeritus of chemistry so my guess is that it's probably well-researched from the science perspective and will give you some insight.
  
  EDIT: Missed a bullet point.

Ok here are a few ideas.

I would suggest this Yale course on Literary Theory as a good introduction from the humanities angle.

The major focus of literary analysis these days usually seems to be some variant of "close reading"

For a general overview of linguistics the wiki page is pretty decent. Martin Hilpert's Introductory Linguistics and Congnitive Linguistics courses on youtube are pretty good.

I don't know how much or what type of grammar is covered in an English degree but I would pick up a book on syntax such as:

Carnie - Syntax

A more traditional take:

Traditional Diagramming

Alerternatively, you can find a free book on Syntax here

Being able to parse a sentence into it's constituent pieces is useful for analysis. After that, major fields to look into are:

• Semiotics
  
• Cognitive Linguistics
  
• Stylistics
  
• Rhetoric
  
  Some books and resources that fall under these catagories in general (I haven't read all of these):
  
  
• Metaphors We Live By
  
• Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students
  
• Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose
  
• Rhetorical Style
  
• Silva Rhetoricae
  
• Rhetoric Timeline
  
• Recommended Rhetoric Resources
  
• Figures of Speech
  
• Literal and Figurative Language
  
  And because we are learning about English, here is a cheesy documentary that's actually pretty decent.
  
  EDIT: Here is the reddit Linguistics wiki for reference.

Well, here are a list of sources that talk about 'cultural marxism' from academics that have literally nothing to do with conspiracies, or nazis that I found while looking into it:

1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
   
   
2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014
   
   Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
   
   
3. "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144
   
   Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
   
   
4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093
   
   
5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artefacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd
   
   
6. The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
   
   Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.
   
   
7. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."
   
   
8. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.

There are some good recommendations here, and some I disagree with (Bukowski, ugh). But your tastes will change and grow. The poets you like now will be different than the ones you'll like a few years from now, most likely. So, I recommend finding this book. It's a pretty nice sampling of many great english-language poets from the last few hundred years and it's been my poetry bible for over a decade, now. This way you can flip through and just see what strikes your fancy. I could recommend some particular poets if you could give some examples of poetry you like or what you like about poetry.

It's hard to suggest a single text, but there are many histories of the different strands of literary criticism available. There are some written by practicing specialists, and others by historians of literature. There is a multi volume work published by Cambridge UP that deals with the history of lit-crit that is very valuable, but not easily accessible, or very concise.

My suggestion would be to break down your time-frame to maybe 50 year chunks and read some of the seminal works on the major movements in lit crit during those times. This is one that's used a lot in Universities, though I must admit it wouldn't be one of my favourites (though I can absolutely support it as an introductory work). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-theory-third-introduction-Beginnings/dp/0719079276/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-8&keywords=literary+criticism

Otherwise, there's the text based approach--where you read different texts from the history of lit crit, using an anthology. The uber-bible of this sort is the http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-4&keywords=literary+criticism. There are smaller, more specific (and probably overall more helpful in a non-reference way) ones too, like this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Criticism-Theory-A-Reader/dp/0582784549/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-11&keywords=literary+criticism.

Hope that might be of some help.
M_G

Some of it just recognition - if you see something in a book that reminds you of something you read about in another book, or something you know about the world, or history, or religion, then your mind may make the leap to say "Oh, this is a symbolic reference to trench warfare in France during WWI" or whatever. So the more "stuff" you know about, the more equipped you are to recognize references. So studying history, religion, economics, world news, various natural sciences, etc., etc. will help you with this And the more you know about the author you're reading, the time he/she lived and wrote in, etc., the more you can pick up on.

Note though that a lot of this symblic stuff is indirect / abstract... they are vague allusions using analogy or metaphor, and not necessarily explicit. So the more you develop your capacity for abstract thinking, thinking in metaphors, etc., the better. To that end, you might consider reading Metaphors We Live By, Surfaces and Essences, and similar books.

Also, a lot of "symbolism" is rooted in the thinking of Freud and Jung, even to this day. A lot of Freud's stuff has been discredited now, but from a "cultural literacy" standpoint, it wouldn't hurt to read his book on dream interpretation, as well as some of Jung's stuff. The stuff about archetypes and the "collective unconscious" would be good.

Also, a lot of symbolism may be rooted in, or linked by metaphor, to existing mythology. Some ideas from myth are tropes that appear again and again. With that in mind, I'd suggest reading The Hero With A Thousand Faces and The Hero's Journey by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. If you're really interested, any and all of his other books would probably be useful as well.

One last final note: It's entirely possible that all of most of this "symbolism in literature" stuff is total bullshit. What I mean is, you (or I, or whoever) can "find" all sorts of symbolic links in a work, and find arguments to support that link. But unless the author is still alive, and willing to confirm or deny his intent, you never really know if the "link" you've found is really "a thing" put there by the author, or just your own overactive imagination running wild.

Having read TBotNS twice, I'd also recommend the audiobook. The reader actually does a great job, especially with the "stage script" scenes, which I always found tedious reading. It goes by very quickly.

Also, Robert Borski's Solar Labrynth (http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Labyrinth-Exploring-Gene-Wolfes/dp/0595317294) has some good guiding essays on the books.

The fact that Borski is debated as being wrong about several conclusions just add to my interest in how various parts are interpreted. The Urth.net (http://www.urth.net/) mailing list also has a lot of interesting discussion.

In my mind, digging into TBotNS is as rewarding as Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest. I first read it in high school and just enjoyed the story. As I've gotten older, I keep finding more to enjoy.

If you want really excellent intro books then I definitely recommend Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today. This has all the really important schools that are important right now, except eco-criticism, which is kind of a bummer. But I think the latter edition hits a little bit on it under postcolonial theory. This is a good intro text that has overview of what's going on.

Norton Anthology of Critical Theory was mentioned, and while this is an excellent anthology, it's huge and can be a bit complicated to read the actual source material without knowing about it before hand, but it's pretty nice being able to read the actual texts of different theorists. Similar to this is Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan's Literary Theory: An Anthology. While Norton's goes chronologically all the way back to Plato, Rivkin's text groups all the texts under the major schools so you get a comprehensive view of each one. It's worth mentioning though that Norton does have a secondary Table of Contents where they group the readings under school as well.

You mentioned wanting to know postmodernism, and that's another thing that Tyson's text doesn't include, as it's more of a movement instead of a criticism. An intro text similar to Tyson's that does include eco-criticism and postmodernism though is Peter Barry's Beginning Theory.

If you have very little knowledge of theory and criticism, I'd really recommend picking up Tyson's book and reading that so you get an overview of the text before moving on to an anthology. Like I said, the texts can be incredibly dense and difficult to read, and if you've never been exposed to them before it'll just make it even more difficult. Tyson's text also has suggested readings under each school as well to expand what you're reading.

This book is generally considered to be the Ulysses bible - the end all guide to understanding all the references, jokes, minutiae, etc. I think it's better to have a guidebook that you can reference occasionally, rather than blunder blindly through what is known as one of the most difficult novels in the English language. That's just what I would do, but of course you have to be careful not to get too obsessed and just to enjoy it as well. Good luck and have fun!

You're in over your head. You've been mislead.

Am I right in assuming that you also believe "Cultural Marxism" is fake news, a fabrication by the "alt right"?

Let's look at some literature:

• Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
  
  
• Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014
  
  Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
  
  
• "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144
  
  Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
  
  
• "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093
  "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that
  
  "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. https://www.readings.com.au/products/6300010/cultural-marxism
  
  
• The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
  
  Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.
  
  For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/index/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", described as "long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."
  
  You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.
  
  I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies

There are so many ways into the western tradition that it kind of depends on your interests - do you like to think about ethics, politics, art, technology, questions of reality? Not knowing, here are some very general suggestions: Try Plato (anything), Descartes' Medititations (very readable), Jorge Luis Borges (fictional philosophy, speculative), Hannah Arendt (great writer, more recent). Or find a philosophy college intro textbook with a collection of authors and texts, and see what catches your fancy, then follow those interests further. A secondary source that is a good entre is Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy series amazon link - he's a clear writer and rather entertaining too.

P.S. I was thinking back to my HS days and I think I was really into Dostoyevsky and existentialism... and I think I began with a book called Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre by Walter Kaufmann, a classic intro with excerpts from each philosopher's works, amazon here. Kaufmann's intro to the book is a good read.

P.P.S. I just remembered that I wrote this blog post about your question a long time ago:
Our Top 5 Philosophy Classics for High School and College Students. Enjoy!

I mean, you really need to be reading anthologies to get a basis of the poetic tradition and then move on to individual books. While individual books of poetry help you get a sense of each writer, getting a taste of many poets throughout many periods is the only way to really become well versed (pun-intended). Also, part of the way to learn how to read poetry more critically is learn how to write poetry, or at least what goes into writing poetry. And my personal advice is to purposefully read poetry that is hard for you to grasp or find interest in, whether that be due to understanding or content (e.g. Yeats and his faeries don’t interest me in the slightest).

Theory/Reading Critically:

• A Poetry Handbook (super basic approach)
  
• How to Read Poetry Like a Professor
  
• Why Poetry?
  
• The Poetry Handbook
  
  American:
  
• Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American
  
• The Oxford Book of American (my personal favorite)
  
• Any of The Best American Poetry collections, to read the most contemporary poems.
  
  Other:
  
• The Norton Anthology
  
• Six Centuries of Great Poetry
  
  Source: Have a Master’s Degree in poetry and currently working on my MFA. My expertise is in 20th & 21st Century American Poetry, particularly post-War/post-45.

Marcus Aurelius, is not something you read and go "FUCK YEAH, I CONQUERED THAT BOOK. I'M A BADASS!!!!"

It's an investment that will pay dividends years to come. It's not the simplest stoic text to read. However if you want the feeling of reading the words of a Roman Emperor from 1,000 years ago, and also actually use his words to change and live your life by, here are a few ideas:

• Read and skim through it. Get a general sense of the book. Read the Gregory Hays translation. READ THE GREGORY HAYS TRANSLATION. READ THE GREGORY HAYS TRANSLATION (shout out to a hero of mine /u/ryan_holiday for this)
  
  (I'm trying to emphasise this and I might not get this point across, but honestly you can read a translation written by someone who knows the english language and the worldview context in 2002, or by someone from the 19th century. Your choice.)
  
  
• You won't really understand the book. But you'll get a sense of the general philosophy he was trying to remind himself. They're called The Meditations. Aphorisms and pieces of advice written in a specific format to remind himself how to live. We actually don't have any modern equivalent to this.
  
  
• Now, you're ready for the golden treat. The princess at the end of the castle. The goose that will keep laying golden eggs. Pick up a copy of The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot. Think of it as the guide to read the Meditations. The cheat guide to the crossword puzzle. The How-To Manual on how to understand Marcus Aurelius' mindset as he wrote that beast throughout his life. It's with this book that you'll understand Meditations. You'll understand the 3 central tenets he wrote by, and just why he wrote them in a codified mysterious way. You'll get a glimpse into the man. You'll understand just what role Philosophy actually played in ancient times. (Hint: it wasn't the circle jerking that modern philosophy is) And you'll come away with a deep understanding of Stoicism. Heck, it might just change your life.
  
  Honestly it's not the greatest introduction to Stoicism. Personally I prefer Seneca (I've gifted a short version of his On The Shortness of Life to 4 different friends), because he was writing for a wider audience as opposed to just himself. But if you want to go down the rabbit hole. If you want to take the red pill, read it like I've just suggested.

Here is a list of his complete works. For his 124 letters i would recommend this. All of them are very good, i would probably start here.

https://www.amazon.com/Senecas-Letters-Stoic-Thrift-Editions-ebook/dp/B01N9BAEOR/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=seneca+letters+dover&qid=1556029398&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

As for other works i have ranked in order what i think you should read first. They are all expertly written so all should be checked out eventually, regardless here is my order.

1. On the Shortness of Life
   
2. Of Providence
   
3. Of Peace of Mind
   
4. Of Anger
   
5. Of a Happy Life
   
6. Of Clemency
   
7. Of Leisure
   
8. Consolation letters
   
9. On the Firmness of the Wise Man
   
   This book has most of them except shortness of life, which you should buy separately as it is his best dialogue, or read it online on wikisouce which has all of his works for free.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Essays-Oxford-Worlds-Classics-dp-0199552401/dp/0199552401/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1556029795

I think the general philosophical idea that people are hinting at so far is Idealism. The essential idea is: The external world is in some sense dependent on the mind of the perceiver.

George Berkeley was was one of the first. He said that "to be is to be perceived, or to be a perceiver". So an object exists because I am perceiving it, and if no one was perceiving it, then it wouldn't exist.

Kant had a different form of idealism called Transcendental Idealism. He thought that although there IS a world that exists independently of us, we can't know anything about it at all. Our minds are responsible for imposing many of the properties we perceive onto the world. Everything from the colour of a wall, to the fact that objects exist in time and space. These are properties that mind assigns to reality, and we have no knowledge of what the external world is like as a "thing in itself".

How does this relate to the quote in Harry Potter? It means that the line between things that are real and things that are going on "inside my head" is a lot more blurry than common sense might suggest. Just because an experience is dependent on my mind for it's existence or it's characteristics, does not necessarily mean it is not "real".

However, having said all that, I'm not sure that J.K. Rowling had any intention of bringing up idealism, even though it seems relevant. It seems more likely that this could be some sort of meeting between Dumbledore and Harry's Cartesian Souls (since the Harry Potter books are 100% committed to substance dualsim). It could even just be some sort of reassuring "it's real for you because you had a nice experience, so it doesn't matter whether this was all just a hallucination or not". Either way, not very Berkeley.

There is a good book on philosophy and harry potter: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Ultimate-Harry-Potter-Philosophy/dp/0470398256/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

I bought it for my sister, but haven't had a chance to read it myself yet. It looks pretty entertaining for those who are interested!

You're right that this isn't really the right sub per the first rule, however, since the rule concludes by saying:


> We are here to get smarter and better each other.

I'll take a stab at this one.


Out of the gate you sound pretty fucking depressed. You should check on that. If you're doing any drugs you should probably stop. Working out can help.


Anyway... Most uni curriculum is aimed at breadth of study so that you can find what interests you and build a base of industry knowledge. As such some of your coursework may have been uninteresting, irrelevant to you, or seemingly unconnected. The CFA program is fundamentally different as it is a professional qualification exam targeted at a specific sector within a specific industry. CFA is (from my understanding) mostly targeted to investment managers/HF/M&A types. Perhaps you've found your calling?In any case, the above is really the only apprehension I can address. The questions you pose here can't really be answered by me, or anyone else, but you might be able to reconcile them for yourself.


In my opinion, you should read this book which has selections from 'existentialist' philosophers of old. I like Nietzsche, but Notes from The Underground or some of Sartre's work might suit what you're going through better. Maybe the ending of Beyond Good and Evil


Good luck.

Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying. Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.

1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
   
2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014 Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
   
3. "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144 Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
   
4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093
   
5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd
   
   The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
   
   -Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.
   
   
6. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."
   
   
7. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology. I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies
   
   http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sc1pi4

That's a deep rabbit hole, if you allow it.

There are different books for different parts of writing. Some focus on plot [Story Engineering], others talk you out of blocks [Bird by Bird]. Some deal with immersion [Wired for Story], others warn you of newbie errors [edit yourself]. Some only talk about the first page. [Hooked]

If you specify what you want the most, I can probably get more specific. The best way to deal with grammar, other than the dry "Elements of Style", is to take a free Cousera course, or OWLs online and test yourself. I also love this blog for crazy awesome advice both current and in her backlog.


Edit: Also too: Might as well hang out at /r/writing and pop in from time to time at /r/grammar

> Cultural marxism in my experience is a most definitely right-wing term.

No it isn't. Below is a quote from this twitlonger http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sc1pi4

**
Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying.

Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.

)1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450

)2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014

Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg

)3. "Culutral Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144

)4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093

Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".

)5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd

The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf

Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.

)6. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."

)7. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.

I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies.

***

Cultural Marxism is a real academic term, Orwellian efforts of Wikipedia admins to redefine it notwithstanding.

The Making of A Poem http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Poem-Norton-Anthology/dp/0393321789/ref=pd_sim_b_4

And Camille Paglia's Break Blow Burn http://www.amazon.com/Break-Blow-Burn-Camille-Forty-three/dp/0375725393/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341117050&sr=1-1&keywords=break+blow+burn

Are two great books that can serve as references to really unraveling the structure of poetry. Despite what people might say about "enjoying it on its own", I guarantee there is a world of poetry that one needs to study before it can be fully enjoyed. The most important structure or "lack of structure" in poetry is the use of emphasis and unless one understands how emphasis is being used by a poet, a truly beautiful poem can sound like absolute nonsense to an untrained reader.

/u/savdec449 is right - you ask a tough question. One little (literally) resource that I've found helpful is the Oxford Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory, which sketches out some of the big 'moves' over the history of theory, and has a decent Further Reading section for whatever takes your fancy.

I find it quite difficult to keep straight how the different schools and traditions relate to one another, and I don't really think it's the kind of thing you can totalize without years of experience or, I suppose, living through one of the sea changes in its epicentre (which I haven't done, but I imagine would be rather intense, and possibly not very pleasant in terms of day-to-day collegiality when Old and New crash together).

One strategy that you could use to combat the overwhelming nature of All of the Theory is to pay attention to your own scholarly disposition: what are you, personally, interested in when you read texts? Is it their structure, their nuts-and-bolts, and how they keep the illusion of mimesis alive? Maybe focus on structuralism or narratology. Are you interested in why certain texts arose when they did? Check out the history (ha!) of New Historicism, or maybe print culture studies or even materialist criticism. Are you into how the words sound, and how they create images and arguments? Look into poetics, rhetoric, and aesthetic theory. Are you interested in how certain key aspects of the human condition are represented and dealt with? Check out memory studies, posthumanism and animal studies, or ecocriticism. Are you drawn to certain genres of texts? Genre criticism!

Remember, it's easiest to figure out how a puzzle comes together when you have a little section done first. Work within your preferences and likes to develop some knowledge on a piece of the puzzle that you enjoy, and then build out from there towards things that are wheelhouse-adjacent, and then beyond.

Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying.

Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.

1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
   
   
2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014
   
   Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
   
   
3. "Culutral Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144
   
   
4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093
   
   Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
   
   
5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd
   
   The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
   
   Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.
   
   
6. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."
   
   
7. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.
   
   I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies.

I would look into purchasing or borrowing a poetry anthology. They usually include biographical information about the poet as well as an analysis. I've enjoyed reading Norton's poetry anthologies. I've purchased them from used bookstores, and sales at libraries. You can find used paperback copies for cheap (around $5) on Amazon. For example, here's one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0393979202/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

I also liked reading Harold Blooms collection of poems: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0060540419/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=&sr=

I like these collections and anthologies because of the commentary, and they include several poets. So you get exposure to several famous poets. If you like a particular poet you can choose to read more of their work.

If you're wanting more specific recs, you may like Walt Whitman, he uses vivid imagery. Also Robert Frost, Edwin John Pratt, Edgar Allan Poe, William Wordsworth. Pablo Neruda is good too.

I can't really recommend too many true crime novels because I don't really read as many as I should considering my interests. Typically I read my fictional material and watch my non-fiction material if that makes sense. Not saying they're bad, but so many true crime authors write about the same criminals and it gets so hard to pick out which one of those books is the most engaging.

I don't really have a favorite author; I kinda jump around. However, I can try to recommend a few fiction books in keeping with the theme and what you've mentioned. I would highly recommend Let me In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It has serial killing, the paranormal, and some romantic elements, but it sticks more to horror and I hate romance but loved this book. Acceleration, by Graham McNamee, which is about a kid who finds a possible serial killer's journal while working at a lost and found is also a book I remember fondly. And, if you want to give yourself nightmares as someone who frequents child free and is female, The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood is a must. Also The Giver has two sequel books; Gathering Blue and Messenger

I don't want to get too much further off topic and distract from OP's story (I could recommend books all day), so if you are looking for other potential books and authors, I recommend making a post on r/suggestmeabook . Happy hunting :)

This isn't a critique of your distillation, but I love the one Pierre Hadot gives in the Inner Citadel:




Activity | Domain of Reality | Inner Attitude
--------|-----------------|--------------

1. judgment | faculty of judgment | objectivity
   
2. desire | universal Nature | consent to destiny
   
3. impulse toward action | human nature | justice and altruism
   
   In other words....
   
   
4. Be objective in your judgments.
   
5. Amor Fati (love your fate)
   
6. Always be just and act altruistically (be virtuous).

Oh I envy you being able to read Patrick O'Brian for the first time. I firmly believe that the Aubrey/Maturin series is the greatest work of modern English literature.

I do know that the movie is actually based on the plot of The Far Side of the World, which is actually the tenth novel, and that the stole some of the best anecdotes from various novels. For example, the "lesser of two weevils" gag is from The Fortune of War, which is the sixth book.

Not sure what advice to give you before you embark on your journey but there's two major paths: using references to understand everything, and learning along with Maturin (PO'B uses Maturin to explain some of the more esoteric concepts and terms of square-rigged sailing). I wrote the following in a previous Reddit post:
>In Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's brilliant Aubrey/Maturin series (which may very well be the best-written English-language books post-WWII), we are introduced to Stephen Maturin, the perpetual land-lubber who acts as a guide for the reader to the more obscure jargon used by sailors -- especially that of the Royal Navy during the heights of the Age of Sail.

>When Maturin is being given a tour of the HMS Sophie, his first ship deployment, he becomes perplexed by the language being tossed at him and asks, "You could not explain this maze of ropes and wood and canvas without using sea-terms, I suppose? No, it would not be possible. ... No; for it is by those names alone that they are known."

>And that is how it is with the language of sailing; like learning a foreign language, one must become familiar with its terms and jargon for there is no other language to define it.

As for references, there are two major ones: "A Sea of Words", which is a dictionary and general reference for sailing/nautical, naturalism, medicine, politics, and sometimes foreign-language dictionary, though sometimes it comes woefully short on obvious terms; and "Harbors and High Seas", an atlas which maps out the various locations and journeys of Aubrey's missions.

Enjoy! And feel free to ask me any questions regarding the series. I've got whole passages memorized lol

EDIT: I forgot to mention my favorite fact: Patrick O'Brian never stepped aboard a sailing vessel...

I'm quite new to Stoicism myself and, like you, am trying to figure these things out. My advice would be to invest in some good books. Something you can take your time with, study, highlight, write in, keep under your pillow at night. Here's a short list of the ones I've found to be most helpful:

[All things Epictetus](http://www.amazon.com/The-Discourses-Epictetus-Fragments-Everymans/dp/0460873121/ref=sr_1_10?
ie=UTF8&qid=1382479293&sr=8-10&keywords=Epictetus)

And to help you understand Epictetus: Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life by A.A. Long

A very helpful translation and commentary on Epictetus' Handbook by Keith Seddon

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

Along with this indispensable study of the Meditations by Pierre Hadot

Here's the explanation of Alexander Macris (@archon on twitter) on why that's bullshit:


Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying.

Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.

1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
   
   
2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014
   
   Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
   
   
3. "Culutral Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144
   
   
4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093
   
   Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
   
   
5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd
   
   The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
   
   Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.
   
   
6. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."
   
   
7. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.
   
   I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies.
   
   
   
   credit: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sc1pi4

Where do you live (State / Country)?
Indiana

Male, female, other?
Female

How long have you been writing?
If you count the really weird book my friend and I typed up on WordPad back in 1999, it's been 18 years.

What is your writing motivation?
I would love to one day find an agent who can get a book with my name on the cover in physical bookstores across the world.

What programs do you use to write?
Microsoft Word... and also a really battered journal.

How fast can you type?
77 WPM (4 errors, adjusted to 73)

Want to share a photo?
It's up, at the very bottome :D

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My favorite writing book

My other favorite writing book

None of those are affiliate links. And if you can, buy them in print from an actual bookstore!

[A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver] (http://www.amazon.com/A-Poetry-Handbook-Mary-Oliver/dp/0156724006/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=1KW7NXQKV7AS70CM419V)

I'm not a big fan of Mary Oliver's work but this book is growing on me. There are things I agree with like studying poetry more than writing poetry, and hearing the words of a poem being important.

But I don't agree with the whole "poets are born but need training" idea. I do think anyone could be a good poet with enough willpower and practice. At least that's what I'm hoping for in my case.

Ditto!

I also am very interested in some of those books. I will edit my comment tomorrow after I look through my books to see if I have anything that you might like.

E: I have The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Edition, which is over 2100 pages and has only light writing in the back and some shelf wear. I can send you a list of the poets if you are interested.

The Norton Anthology World Masterpieces, Expanded Edition is in rough shape but contains lots of poetry.

I also have The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe, Plato's The Republic, biographies, and boatloads of literature and other books. Anything trip your trigger?

I would really, really like:

C++ Without Fear - Overland

Hacking, The Art of Exploitation- Jon Erickson

HTML 4 for Dummies

MySQL Visual Quickstart Guide - Ullman

Thank you!

Source: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sc1pi4

----

Sorry, But Cultural Marxism is Not an Invention of Right Wing Paranoids.

Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying.

Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.

1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
   
   
2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014
   
   Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
   
   
3. "Culutral Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144
   
   
4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093
   
   Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
   
   
5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd
   
   The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
   
   Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.
   
   
6. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."
   
   
7. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.
   
   I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies.

Hello! I am not OSP but figure I might be able to help a little bit (at least with the first question). For me, at least, when I hear "Fae folk" the first thing I think of is what became of the Irish's "Tuatha Dé Danann". This is not to say that other countries don't have their own "fae" or "spirit" beings (domovoi, hobgoblins, etc), but if I were you I'd start by reading up on Irish mythology. So you could probably check out books like, Tales of the Elders of Ireland or The Tain. If not that, then there are more general books like Fairies: A Dangerous History (I've never read it, but did a quick check on the author and they're a lecturer of Renaissance Literature so it at least sounds decently founded). Besides that, if you're in school and have access to a scholarly database or library you could always try looking up journals/articles relating to them within history or religion and culture. Hope that assists you. :)

Get him into philosophy, niestche, Wittgenstein, Plato, especially socrates, you should read this wikipedia article on socrates here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus

An amazing book to help you think more clearly about everything... an amazing read

Metaphors we live by

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011/

Title: Where does mathematics come from...

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Comes-Embodied-Brings/dp/0465037712/

Check out the standard encyclopedia of philosophy to find things you might think he would like:

http://plato.stanford.edu/

I happen to like Lexicon Urthus, which helps organize the material. I happen to hate the Solar Labyrinth, which I think is a lot of silly imagining of things that aren't there.

The truth is that there aren't a lot of straight-forward answers with Gene Wolfe. We want there to be; we want Dr. Talos's play to make perfect sense, if only we had the answer key. But Wolfe's work thrives in ambiguity, and while there are some clues hidden, I think there are far fewer clues, and far fewer real answers, than most people do. The point isn't to understand in a conventional sense; I think it's to experience a kind of wonder.

As for your spoiler question: [Spoiler](/s "The woman wasn't actually ever harmed during the festival, and there's no evidence she was a robot. Actually, this is one of the rare places where Wolfe leaves some pretty credible clues: there's good evidence that that lady is Severian's mother.")

Realize that it was written during a certain period, for certain readers.

The person who was interested in this book in 1922 would have likely read Joyce's earlier works and been familiar with Stephen Dedalus. He/she would likely have been familiar with some Latin (the Mass was still conducted in Latin then). ...would have understood the history of Irish and English conflict. Ideally (and Joyce did not expect this) he/she would have been familiar with Dublin.

All of this means that Joyce basically skips the entire common (and expected -by-the-reader) concept and writer's device of exposition.

Which makes for a confusing ride if you aren't an Irish catholic living in Dublin born at the turn of the 19th century and who has read all of Joyce's previous works. And especially because most of us come at this book due to its reputation and being lauded as a Modern Masterpiece. ...we don't usually choose to read it because we have read his other books and loved them, but because it is required reading, or because we have heard so much about it, that we give it a shot. This means we come to it unprepared.

But sheesh... who ever prepares to read a book? Well, we would prepare ourselves if it were a foreign language, or in a technical field we knew little about, or was perhaps Shakespeare in the original English, or Beowulf in Old English, or the Canterbury Tales, etc. etc.

Lots of books require a little more effort than we are often prepared for. The reward is in reading them in their original sense rather than in a sanitized easy-access version. This is one of those books, that's all.

Sure, I'm exaggerating a bit. But let's look at merely the FIRST PAGE (This is the page that convinced me I really wasn't quite the reader that I thought I was, when I picked this book off the shelf for the first time with false bravado).

What the hell is Buck Mulligan doing and saying? What's with the frigging Latin, and can I buy a footnote clarifying it? Well, no, you can't. You're supposed to know it's basically the Catholic Mass, in Latin. Hell. My mother, who had no desired to read Joyce, basically laughed at me when I showed her and she plucked it all out. "It's the Mass!" she said, whacking me in the back of the head.

Where are they? what the hell is this gunrest crap? Barbicans? Towr? WTF? ...well. Martello Tower. What other tower is there on the bay in Dublin? sheesh. everybody knows that

Why's he wearing black, and saying he can't wear grey pants? Jesus. I'm two paragraphs in and sinking fast. ...well, his mother died. When someone was wearing black then, it wasn't a fashion choice. You automatically assumed the person was in mourning.

And so (to beat this to death), Joyce doesn't trip over himself explaining this stuff. The characters do not think to themselves for the purposes of letting us in on things, or for explanation's sake, they simply think the way you do, to yourself. You don't use full sentnces, or explain to yourself what you already know.

So you aren't going to get a line from Joyce that says:

"Buck Mulligan, a guy who is kinda fun on the surface but is really just a blowhard ass, and who is taking from Stephen what he can get (lodging, beer money, and intelligence-cred, among other things), comes from the stairwell getting ready to shave, but first goofs around by pretending he's a priest and so (blasphemously) holds up the shaving cream in a bowl like the sacraments held aloft by a priest, and says "Coming to the altar of God", only in Latin."

This is why the book benefits from a little view behind the curtains. Because as u/danuscript says, except for Joyce, no real all-knowing reader exists. There's also no reliable narrator running consistently throughout who can hold our hand.

It's essentially unfolding in little vignettes seen though others' eyes, or from an uninterested narrator (objective as possible).

So, grab the Gifford annotated volume (the bigger thicker one HERE ). But realize you don't need EVERY notation here to understand it. And some are speculative. really, does the yellow color of the dressing gown warrant three paragraphs? A lot of folks have read in more than joyce may have intended.

Also, try the "New BloomsDay Book". It is is an excellent synopsis, with as much exposition as is needed to understand the meat, and what is happening.

Last... the book is NOT meant to be a one hit wonder. It's not a beginning/middle/end thing, which is read once, and whose 'climax' is some great revelation or surprise. It's meant to be re-read. You would then understand the subtle unsaid things (e.g. which occur in interactions between people, which hinge on these), and you'll understand what's happening which you will have missed the first time through.

And skip.

There. I said it. Bogging down? Eyes glazing over? Try skipping a bit, or reading the first and last line of the medium-sized paragraphs. No shame in it.

If you find that you like the language, are getting the story (with help), and are glad you waded in, then you'll likely be back for a second read, and that can be the one where you focus, and delve, and read each line.

Took me three times, frankly, to make it through.

But I was aware that it wasn't Joyce's failings. but mine, which kept stopping me.

There really is a there there.

My first time through the series I just read the books without any special guide to the terminology - just full immersion except maybe for some Google searches here and there. It's a bit like learning a new language by immersion and over time you will figure a lot of it out via context. That said there is a book I picked up which helps a lot as a reference: https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Words-Third-Companion-Seafaring/dp/0805066152 . I think I got this near the end of my first read through or the beginning of the second. It's a great reference book.

As for audiobooks, that's not my thing so others could chime in on that. I hope you enjoy the series!

There is an element of truth to this. Abilities are built upon previously learned abilities. Even thinking abilities are tied to "embodied metaphors" learned at a young age (originally researched by Lakoff & Johnson' "Metaphors We Live By"). The only aspect of this is that no form of knowledge has perfectly symmetric learnability with any other. If you can squeeze the concept into a metaphor you know you can learn it more easily but sometimes the metaphor will take you to wrong conclusions.

In terms of "intrinsically physiologically easy" things that can be learned, in the extreme we are constrained by our mesoscopic existence to learn only embodied metaphors that resemble the mesoscopic world we live in. This is why Newtonian physics is easier than quantum physics (microscopic) or relativistic physics (macroscopic). This is what Dawkings is talking about in this Ted video.

We form embodied metaphors based on how we physically interact with our world as children. This is also the basis of the GOMS model for user interfaces to machines and computers (the basis of mouse-window operating systems - first at Xerox Alto, then Apple Lisa & Macintosh, then Microsoft, et al.).

You learn time arrows by experiencing them. You learn basic math by filling containers and seeing the addition and subtraction. You do not see quantum or relativistic effects so you never have a proper intuition for how them work. You only learn about them abstractly and if very lucky you develop an "alternate universe" intuition for them through abstraction. It never becomes "purely intuitive" though. It will always surprise.

Also, this book, Man's Search for Meaning, is great and really goes well with Stoicism.

http://streetschool.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Viktor-Emil-Frankl-Mans-Search-for-Meaning.pdf

If any of the stuff I linked to interests you, definitely check out Marcus Aurelius's book Meditations and Inner Citadel. You can probably get the latter book through interlibrary loan.

I've just always been interested in how people psychologically overcome horrible tramas, like surviving concentration camps or prison or stuff. IMHO, the philosophy of Stoicism is a great tool for this and it has helped me in some aspects of my own life. So just throwing it out there.

There's no shortage of both paid and free resources.

​

I would recommend:

​

1. Robert Mckee's "Dialogue". The definitive tome on writing dialogue.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455591912/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
   
   ​
   
   
2. "Self -editing for fiction writers". All-round comprehensive book on craft. Covers all aspects of writing, with clear straightforward advice.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-Second-Yourself/dp/0060545690/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_pt_BR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=self+editing+for+writers&qid=1563126077&s=books&sr=1-1
   
   ​
   
   
3. "Helping writers become authors" podcast. Heavily focused on craft and technique.
   
   Listen for free here:
   
   ​
   
   https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/podcasts/

Honestly, it was bugging the daylights out of me too. THANK YOU.

For those who care, and contextually reasonably close to the setting:
http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Words-Third-Edition-Companion/dp/0805066152
Actually fascinating, and you can find them used on Amazon for $1.

I revived my Kindle in mid-March and I've been reading like a fiend!

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card, $7.99 USD

A fantasy romance that won't make you retch, this mashup of Russian folklore features a plucky scholar-athlete, a headstrong princess, Baba Yaga (naturally), a bear-god, and a Boeing 747. A solidly weird, wonderful story, I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or fantasy and wants a little romance that's not sickly sweet.

Next by Michael Crichton, $7.74 USD

Firmly in the "so bad it's almost good" category, Next is a genetic engineering horror story ripped straight from the headlines... but that's pretty much all the research Crichton did for the book. Featuring a smart-aleck parrot, a potty-mouth orangutan, a human-chimpanzee hybrid (that also talks), and loads of awful people doing awful things, it goes best with a strong drink of your choice and a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 mindset, but I had to read it for class.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, $9.99 USD

This 10 minutes into the future dystopian tale is narrated by a woman who knows the society she lives in is oppressive, but she's too smart and not pissed off enough to come out swinging - after all, dissenters are publicly executed and gibbetted or mysteriously shipped off to "The Colonies" never to be heard from again - so instead she quietly scratches out her own agency, and finds some unexpected allies on the way. A satire on what happens when the line between politics and religion blurs, and maybe more relevant today than it was when it was published in 1985, I'd recommend this for anyone who's ever felt oppressed or threatened by conservatism or gender politics.

I see we have both separately discovered the importance and practical value of George Lakoff's work :-)

His book with Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By was a revelation for me, it completely changed my understanding of how we use language. I now consciously look for metaphors to describe things that highlight the important aspects of a situation. It is impossible to choose a name/metaphor for something that describes that thing perfectly, so

I hope that people will see your post and read some of his work, as his ideas make it much simpler to see how people are using language in a way that draws attention to some aspects (often, like you say, to their benefit) and downplays others.

Regarding a name for (Full-) RBF, the most significant part for me is that not only can the fee be raised to increase the chance of a miner including it, but the outputs can be changed(!), and so what is being "replaced" can be the most important part of the transaction, the person who receives the payment. I am trying to think of something that better captures the sinister, undermining behaviour of Full RBF. Some ideas I have are "Pay To Redirect", "Pay To Rewrite" and "Pay To Divert" (PTD), although I think PTD better captures the risk of accepting a transaction ("redirect" sounds like an innocuous postal service).

> For clarification, are you recommending/would you recommend that I listen to Delany concurrent to reading each chapter

Yeah he literally breaks it down page buy page. Sometimes an episode will be fifteen minutes on one paragraph. It is amazing.

Yeah and if you have any questions I can do my best to answer them.

This is the edition I have. It is the 1922 text as reset in 64? or something like that. Make sure you get a copy that is not trying to peddle the 'original' 1922 printing as it is full of errors.

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Modern-Library-Reprint-Hardcover/dp/B00C7F057E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458323096&sr=1-1&keywords=ulysses+modern+library

Get this book. It makes the framing of Joyce's Dublin really easy to understand.

http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Notes-James-Joyces/dp/0520253973/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458323069&sr=1-1&keywords=ulysses+annotated

>Also, I appreciate the invitation to share a chat about it, I may indeed take you up on that. Thanks.

Any time. Any question. It wont just help you but it will also help me understand the book more.

You might want to also read Hamlet and be failure with the odyssey seeing as Joyce used those works for the basic outline of the book.

I agree with what a lot of people have said about just reading it for the language, and letting go of understanding every sentence. However, if you're curious about the connections to The Odyssey, and also want to know as much as possible about every reference in the novel, I recommend Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated. I liked having it on hand to use if I felt like referencing a place, name, or slang word, or when I just was trying to figure out what the hell is going on at certain points.

Morthy demands:

old posh Englishman: old posh Englishmen like to write, right? (Writing Stuff)

Never seen in public: these slippers would look ridiculous in public (Other Stuff)

Most phallic: this is the best I've got(Other Stuff)

Akeleie demands:

Most geeky: probably my Adipose toy (Other Stuff)

Achieve a goal: I would love to be a writer (Writing Stuff)

Deserted island: who doesn't need a ukulele on and island? (Other Stuff)

Thanks for the contest!! :D

Just start. You read mass quantities as broadly as possible, you read as much in your genre--or genres--of choice as possible, and you write as often as possible. You finish what you start, you revise what you've finished, and you read the final result with a critical eye in the hopes of improving your craft. It's simple. The shit just ain't easy.

Start simple. Pick your favorite genre. Write some short stories in that genre. Use either first person ("I shot the sheriff") or third person ("He shot the sheriff"). And use past tense ("He shot the sheriff") instead of present tense ("He shoots the sheriff"). You can branch out from there once you get the basics down.

Grab a few of the best how to books in your genre(s) of choice, but don't stop writing as often as possible, and don't just keep on reading every how to book ever published.

One of the best books is a general reference, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

But really, it comes down to read, read, read, and write, write, write.

My favorite poetry book that I take everywhere is The Making of a Poem. It's a Norton Anthology and it's amazing. Honestly recommend reading it cover to cover if you want a foundation in traditional forms.

It's currently 15 bucks on Amazon!

I already posted link to The Handmaid's Tale being on Kindle Unlimited but I found some more links for these books so I thought I would just make a comment here!

Here is an "extended preview" of The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey.
Here is A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf on Australia's Project Gutenburg.
And again, here is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood through Kindle Unlimited, which you can get a 30-day free trial to.
Couldn't find anything for The Complete Persepolis, but I'm sure you can find it at your library :)

If you believe your words are gospel, then just accept the feedback and move on with your life. If you want to start down the road of legitimately writing poetry that someone who actually reads poetry can appreciate, it's time to get to fucking work.

Of course, you think your "words" are special, but they aren't. This is the same thing every beginner churns out. It's cliché abstraction and it's not worth sharing with anyone. You can call it "poetry" and say it's your "art" and that poetry can't be "defined" -- whatever.

But anyone who actually reads poetry will recognize your "words" immediately for what they are and turn the page.

Read some poetry, man. Read some books about writing poetry and the tools poets use to craft their poems. If you need recommendations, I can give you some, but you'll have to do some fucking work. You might have missed the memo, but writing poetry is hard work.

***

Edit: Here some recommendations to get you started.

• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  
• The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser
  
• In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit
  
• The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
  
  And if you insist on trying to use end rhymes:
  
  
• Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
  
  And please, please pick up a good book of poems from multiple authors so you can get some exposure, such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry or the compilation Good Poems by Garrison Keillor. One of my favorites is A Book of Luminous Things by Czeslaw Milosz.

For other tips for reading Wolfe, and general theories and whatnot, there are a few books well worth picking up.

Lexicon Urthus

Solar Labyrinth

The Long and the Short of It

The first book here is by Michael Andre-Driussi and has a foreword by Wolfe. This is mostly a dictionary and etymology-tracer of the words and names and theories in BotNS. Considering Wolfe's endorsement, it feels fairly official, even borderline cannon.

The last two are by Robert Borski and are absolutely great reads. Very imaginative, even if some of his theories seem too wild to be true.

Post a pasta, recieve a pasta, shill. Educate yourself:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sc1pi4
Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying.

Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.
Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014

Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
"Culutral Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144
"Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093

Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
"Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd
The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.

For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."

You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.
I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies.

Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism is Based in Jewish Mysticism
https://murderbymedia2.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/1417900885468.png

The Frankfurt School and Its Legacy
http://www.morveninstituteoffreedom.com/FrankfurtSchool.pdf

Critical Theory (Cultural Marxism) and Jewish Thought
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/theology/events/2013/critical-theory-and-jewish-thought.aspx

Satan's Secret Agents: the Frankfurt School and Their Evil Agenda
http://www.darkmoon.me/2013/satants-secret-agents-the-frankfurt-school-and-their-evil-agenda/

Fallen Jews, Critical Theory, and Cultural Marxism
https://originsofleftism.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/notes-fallen-jews-critical-theory-and-cultural-marxism/

Bill Whittle on the Narrative: Political Correctness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrt6msZmU7Y

The Spread of Cultural Marxism to Latin America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Reb9wvTzg

The Triumph of Cultural Marxism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk9CWm0W4Q4

Cultural Marxism
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism

Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdBuK7_g3M

Erich Fromm, Judaism and the Frankfurt School
http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell24.htm

Freud, The Frankfurt School, and the Kabbalah
http://www.conspiracyschool.com/blog/holiness-sin-freud-frankfurt-school-and-kabbalah#.VGsgXIeRk7B

Frankfurt School
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School

Frankfurt School of Social Research
http://jettandjahn.com/2010/10/frankfurt-school-of-social-research/

The Frankfurt School & Cultural Marxism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghx3d1GiAc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkcy7256tBM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG6TcYfpQOg

The Frankfurt School of Social Research and the Pathologization of Gentile Group Allegiances
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/chap5.pdf

Frankfurt School - Satanic Judaism in Action
http://www.henrymakow.com/frankfurt-school-satanic-judaism-in-action.html

The History of Political Correctness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acjIw7cVc2k

How a Handfull of Marxist Jews Turned Western and U.S. Culture Upside Down
http://davidduke.com/how-a-handfull-of-marxist-jews-turned-western-and-us-culture-upside-down/

The Jewish Frankfurt School and the End of Western Civilization
http://www.dailystormer.com/the-jewish-frankfurt-school-and-the-end-of-western-civilization/

The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and "Political Correctness"
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_91-96/921_frankfurt.html

Who Stole Our Culture?
http://www.wnd.com/2007/05/41737/

Sabbatean-Frankist Roots of the Frankfurt School
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBfT0pi0cMs

Your best bet is to pick up something like The Norton Anthology of Poetry which is basically a collection of a thousand years worth of poetry with analysis. This volume is a little pricey ($30 used), but if you look around you might find some older editions for cheaper. Once you get an inkling of what you like then you can start getting collections of poetry from specific periods/poets. Hope this helps!

Be sure to check out some of the volumes (yes volumes) of literary review written about A Book of the New Sun.

I recommend Lexicon Urthus and Solar Labyrinth.

The essays therein really helped me reach a new appreciation for Wolfe's work and let me enjoy them on a new level.

Morthy demands:

1. Item which would most make you seem like an old posh Englishman: This book.
   
2. Most "oh god, I would never be seen with this in public" looking item: Well I mean...NSFW
   
3. Most phallic looking item: WELL I MEAN...NSFW
   
   Akeleie demands:
   
   
4. Most geeky item: This might be more nerdy, honestly.
   
5. Item which would most help you achieve a goal: Organizing!
   
6. Best item to bring to a deserted island: Yum.

> Außerhalb der Rechten Argumentation hat dieser Begriff keine Verwendung

Weshalb die Linken den Begriff so sehr fürchten, dass sie ihn mit allen Quellen aus Wikipedia gelöscht haben und nun auf einen Artikel der sich mit Verschwörungstheorien befasst verweisen.

Kultureller Marxismus ist real.

Dazu ein Text aus dem Anfang der GamerGate Zeit. 26 Sept 2014 https://twitter.com/archon/status/515729906521890817

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sc1pi4

> # Sorry, But Cultural Marxism is Not an Invention of Right Wing Paranoids.

> Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying.

> Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.

> 1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450

> 2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014

> Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg

> 3. "Culutral Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144

> 4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093

> Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".

> 5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd

> The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf

> Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.

> 6. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."

> 7. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.

> I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies.

I personally enjoy reading Aristotle and he's pretty foundational to a lot of medieval and renaissance criticism so there's no good reason not to start with him. The thing about criticism (like most philosophy) is that it rapidly became a series of responses to other critics/philosophers which can be hard to follow. Like jumping into a story halfway through. So it's best to start with the greeks. Plato's got some interesting thoughts too, but more on the philosophical purpose of literature in a society so that might not be germane to your interests. On the other hand, I can't think of a good reason anyone shouldn't read The Republic at some point in their life.

If you're largely unfamiliar with literary criticism, then I would recommend this book

If one starts reading those novels, I'd recommend getting some guides to aid in the lubber's understanding:

• A Sea of Words, lexical guide. Trust me, even if you're something of a sailor, you won't understand a good bit of what goes on in the books. Well, you'll probably get the general idea, but there's a lot of nautical nuance that will be utterly lost. Good even for seasoned fans of the series.
  
  
• Harbors and High Seas, geographical guide.
  
  C.S. Forester's Hornblower series is also great.
  
  I haven't tried the sci-fi RCN series, which was influenced by O'Brian, but I should give it a shot.

If i may suggest something.

Elderly people need to make peace with their ageing process (both physical and mental) and a study of philosophy is the only way. This gives you the big picture in the "grand scheme" of things and you realize that everything is just natural and as they should be. Thus one learns to adapt themselves to the situation instead of being miserable over it. Obviously, this is easier said then done and hence the need for life lessons from a teacher via philosophical study. I have found the following books helpful in this regard;

• On Life and Death by Cicero - Contains the essay "On Old Age".
  
  
• Dialogues and Essays by Seneca - Contains the essays "On the Shortness of Life", "On the Happy Life" and "On the Tranquility of the Mind".
  
  
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by Gregory Hays

The estimated premiere is April 2018, similar to last year. The filming starts soon if it hasn't already. Moss stated that it will begin in September. It will be 13 episodes instead of 10 if the rumors are to be believed.

I assume they'll film primarily in Toronto, but since the world is expanding considerably - according to the showrunner - they may film in other locations as well. Here are some of the locations they filmed at last year.

Enjoy the rest of the show! (Also make sure to read the book, if you haven't!)

:D :D :D I would love a USED copy of this book--there's a "like new" copy for $7.28 including shipping! Thanks for the contest!!

Dressed All Over and Zesty Mordant :D

I've got a lot of benefit from reading 'parallel texts' (par example https://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-French-Penguin-Parallel/dp/0140265430 ) - I don't know your exact level but I really enjoy it and the translations on the other side of the page are accurate and helpful.

Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated is chock full of interesting tidbits, although Penguin's Ulysses: Annotated Student Edition is also good for someone who doesn't want to go as deeply as Gifford will take you.

That being said, I completely agree that you don't "need" the notes, especially since they can mislead readers into thinking that they can get a total picture of the world Joyce is creating. More to the point, it is missing the forest for the trees: the point is that Joyce is recreating the world he lived in; it isn't expected (or possible) that you relive it as well. The first time I read it, I got fixated on references. Now, I just refer to the notes when my studies or interests necessitate more information.

Eavon Boland and Mark Strand's anthology 'The Making of a Poem' may be the perfect resource for you. The editors arranged the collection according to poetic form with each chapter containing brief histories, descriptions, and exemplar works to illustrate the many ways in which they can behave. Blank verse, sonnet, villanelle, sestina--it's a trove of wonderful models to work from, a truly invaluable resource for someone writing their first (or thousandth) poem. Link below: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Poem-Norton-Anthology-Poetic/dp/0393321789

I'm a little late but I would also like to say that reading Ulysses in a group is very rewarding, especially if lead by someone who has read and studied the text. I read it in college and our professor was a bit of a Joyce scholar and it made everything so much easier to get the context of. Additionally, the companion book that has all of the contextual explanation and references is a must buy if you are going to undertake it (http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Notes-James-Joyces/dp/0520253973). Also, it wouldn't hurt to read The Odyssey first either.

If you want a more general introduction into philosophy there's a Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn and the older What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy by Thomas Nagel. A more academic introduction (the last two books are more aimed at a general audience) is Fundamentals of Philosophy edited by John Shand. If you're willing to sit through it there also Russel's classic A History of Western Philosophy, which is a sort of introduction to philosophy through the history of the field (the audiobook is on youtube btw), and there also his Problems of Philosophy

I'm not that familiar with eastern philosophy, but a classic introduction to Existentialism is Walter Kaufmann's Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre and it should go nicely with Existentialism is a Humanism.

Hope this helps :)

off the top of my head:

Meditations, with The Inner Citadel as a reader

Letters from a Stoic

A Guide to the Good Life by Irvine

Do The Work by Pressfield as well as The War of Art by Pressfield

Managing Oneself by Ducker

Man's Search for Meaning by Frankl

What Predicts Divorce by Gottman

Nicomachean Ethics

Models by Manson seems to be popular on reddit

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Newport, as well

I'm currently reading Triumphs of Experience by Vaillant and find it insightful.

I'm not sure about what questions you could ask a coach, but any information i'd ever want to learn about writing can be found in the following books:

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1444723251

Stein on Writing
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0312254210

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0060545690

Maybe some questions you can answer for us? Why have you sought out a writing coach? What kind of writing do you do? How long have you been writing and at what level?

You may get some better responses after these questions. :)

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-Second-Yourself/dp/0060545690 A lot of it might seem a bit obvious if you already have editing knowledge, but as an editing beginner I found this book to be super helpful.

I can give you three books that I recommend without reservation. The first is the easiest to read and a solid introduction to fiction editing. The second goes into more depth, with an excellent workflow for the revising process in the latter chapters. The third is the most dense, like a college class in fiction editing with a focus on how the 19th and 20th century masters actually revised their works, but it is also the most thorough.

Self-editing for Fiction Writers (written by two editors)

Stein on Writing (written by an accomplished editor)

Revising Fiction (written by an college professor, writer and editor)

The Making of a Poem, by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.

An excellent anthology that outlines many of the major poetic forms, as well as providing examples and classics in those forms. Explains the forms and then lets you read some of the best expression of those forms. Widely taught in many major university poetry classes.

Penguin books does side-by-side short stories (New Penguin Parallel Text, in French...I have the Japanese one), and personally I'd say French first.

The parallel text makes it easier to go sentence by sentence, so I'll read the Japanese side first, and go back and read the English side so I can practice picking up the Japanese first, instead of going in knowing what it says. It's also a good test to see if you remember this or that word from when you looked it up last time, and maybe by the 5th time you'll have it down pat. This is totally unfounded personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but I feel like reading the language you're trying to learn first helps you learn more.

I don't think any of these really matter. They don't make me heartsick. I get that it's just a series. I have no problem accepting that there's a lot of mistakes and plot holes, and I don't mean to suggest that JK thought through the economic, philosophical, and political implications of her world. But she did create a world that, by necessity, provides valid grounds on which to address those issues-- and address them I shall.

The really goddamned awesome thing about HP, for me, is that it has such a depth, and such a fan base, that in a very real sense it's a new universe. I like thinking about how economics would function in the HP universe, or the implications that it holds for philosophy. As the author of the first suggests (I'm stuck behind a firewall, so forgive me for paraphrasing), there's a lot to learn about economics, philosophy, and political science (along with many others) in Harry Potter for the sole reason that so many people care in the first place. What exactly is it about an HP society that makes people view it as simultaneously realistic and utopic?

I'm utterly unapologetic about my fandom. It's something I love, that I'm good at, and that I use to stimulate my brain. I refuse to find anything embarrassing about that.

Writing dilemma overtakes every writer. The desire to achieve perfection makes us blind to feel the reality. In such days I prefer to make my head free of disruptive thoughts: running, mediation, walk in the forest. Then, I read. Read in the morning and in the evening to find inspiration the works of literary criticism. My favourite is Beginnin Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory written by Peter Barry who is sharing a window to the ideas and principles of literary theory. You will wind your way. Do not re-read your own books and do not try to find something similar to your topic. It can confuse you. Also, avoid plagiarism and do not imitate someone else's style or idea: writing manipulations corrupt good manners.

Táin Bó Cúailnge is amazing. https://www.amazon.com/Tain-Translated-Irish-Epic-Cuailnge/dp/0192803735/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=ulster+cycle&qid=1554669328&s=gateway&sr=8-2

​

Anything published from Oxford's World Classics is always great quality too, although I haven't read any of their Irish mythology books.

Here is the textbook I used for my Critical Theory Class at UCLA. It's called the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory. While this is a good introduction to many theorists, I also suggest you to research supplemental materials on databases - ie. JSTOR - to understand movements/concepts.

There is also a comic book series that's descent depending on what you pick. While I enjoyed Foucault for Beginners, I hated Derrida for Beginners.

Lastly, Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is an excellent entry point. I actually met Culler when I visited Cornell. He's an awesome guy. Anyways, I think Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction should also be an excellent resource, although I haven't read it myself.

Oh no, I don't mean to dismiss them, just to repeat what I've heard around this subreddit about the (possibly mistaken) perception of readability in Hays and Staniforth. I've only read Hays in its entirety.

Also, there is an original translation in Pierre Hadot's The Inner Citadel (2002). In the preface he said he was planning on publishing it, but Hadot died in 2010. I've been looking for it and don't know if it was ever finished. He also originally wrote it in French, but Michael Chase does (I think) a great job of translating French to English. The Inner Citadel is scholarly and I'm interested in the translation, so if you know anything about it I'd appreciate it.

There's a difference between reading a book and understanding what's inside. If you want to read complex literature, you have to understand what's going on. A good place to start is Barry's Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.

You can read the great books, but you won't understand them until you learn some theory and interpretation.

These are not like YA books. Those are baby food. They are one-dimensional and tell a story. You won't find deeper themes or much symbolism or literary quality. They're easy to digest and designed to sell a lot of copies. YA is OK for what it is, but it's the frozen microwave pizza of literature. You'll have to develop new tastes if you want to grow up and get past the baby food.

I got into theory and interpretation when I got my first degree in English literature. Though I didn't really learn to think critically until law school. It was traditional, with plenty of caselaw, slippery slopes and Socratic questioning. Not pleasant at first, but it forces you to think on your feet and adjust to a moving target. I don't know if it can be learned otherwise, but I would look into some legal texts for the layperson.