Reddit mentions of The Essential Kierkegaard

There are a really a number of ways to approach reading him, none of them right or wrong. It just depends on what you want to get out of reading him. I typically propose the following options:

Topical/thematic: Since Kierkegaard’s multi-genre authorship covers a diversity of themes and topics—including irony, aesthetics, ethics, religion, time, history, modernity, society, politics, groupthink, self-deception, love, death, anxiety, despair, the phenomenology of selfhood, and much else besides—you might browse relevant secondary literature, which will guide you to the primary source works which appeal most to your own thematic interests.

Slow and cautious: If you want to ease your way into Kierkegaard, try starting with one or more of his shorter works: Fear and Trembling, Repetition, The Concept of Anxiety, Prefaces, Two Ages, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, and The Sickness Unto Death.

Broad sweep: If you would prefer a taste of (nearly) the full gamut of his writings, I highly recommend The Essential Kierkegaard, which has a sampling of excerpts from nearly every one of his works (even some of the more obscure ones). I suggest supplementing this with Papers and Journals: A Selection, ed. Hannay.

Chronological-developmental: Kierkegaard considers Either/Or to be the official beginning of his “authorship” proper. Either/Or is a longer book—two volumes in the Princeton editions—but well worth the read. Here is a list of the Princeton editions of his writings; they tend to follow chronological order. And this list divides his writings into signed and pseudonymous, if you are curious which are which.

Christian classics: If you’re a person of faith, Works of Love and Practice in Christianity deserve to be at the top of the list, hands down. (I would compare these two works, albeit loosely, to C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves and Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.)

—To these options I would add the following, given your interest in pursuing his works from “a more existential background”:

Existentialist classics: Kierkegaard’s most existentially significant works are Either/Or, The Concept of Anxiety, Fear and Trembling, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Present Age, and The Sickness Unto Death. I would also include ‘At a Graveside’, the first of Kierkegaard’s Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. And Stages on Life’s Way (the sequel to Either/Or) and Repetition (companion volume to Fear and Trembling) are also especially worth reading from this vantage.

Additionally, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Kierkegaard is helpful, and C. Stephen Evans’ Kierkegaard: An Introduction and M. Jamie Ferreira’s Kierkegaard are both good introductions to his thought.

Abstract:
In this video, Brian of the “distillationsbl” philosophy podcast, reads a selection from "The Essential Kierkegaard" edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. The selection is from Kierkegaard's letters to a Peter Wilhelm Lund, written in his 5th year at Copenhagen University.
Brian draws a connection from Kierkegaard's writing on his confrontation with "the ordinary run of men" and "their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man" to what Brian hypothesizes is a common experience had amongst those that are philosophically inclined.
The "so-called practical life" is something our peers might not recognize as it is 'the water they are swimming in'. For those with a disposition seeking deeper answers, it can be difficult to volitionally return to that state in which the water is indistinguishable from the environment. But that is exactly the skill required in order to attain social well-being and form meaningful relationships.

• more distillationsbl links

I haven't read his diaries, but from what I've read of both some of his pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous works, I would guess that either you're misunderstanding some things (not trying to be insulting here) or perhaps his diaries contain some of his more esoteric tricks. He's well-known for using irony and variety of other tricks, such as writing in a variety of different styles from different perspectives, largely with the intent of pushing against the problem's of the Denmark of his day, which might be most succinctly described as a Hegelian-Christendom. To take on a couple of points in particular:

• He thought reason and science were useless
  
  While a historian of philosophy could do better than I could at understanding what 'reason and science' were for him, it's worth noting that Kierkegaard's context was dominated by Hegelian philosophy, which had placed philosophy (which likely still included what we might think of as 'science') above everything, to the detriment of individuals thinking for themselves and about themselves. He felt that the dominance of Hegel's philosophy, which put a huge emphasis on the importance of the state/community (and in Christendom, the Church), was cutting individuals off from thinking about questions that reason may not be able to answer. Hegel's thought tries to collect everything into the Absolute/Universal, but in doing so, Kierkegaard felt that it neglected the depth and complexity of people's inner lives.
  
  
• He states that nothing finite can ever matter
  
  This reminds me of a passage from one of his later non-pseudonymous works, Works of Love, which I'll quote part of.
  
  >The actor's art is the art of deceiving; the art is the deception. To be able to deceive is the great thing, and to allow oneself to be deceived is just as great. Therefore one must not be able and must not want to see the actor through the costume; therefore it is the pinnacle of art when the actor becomes one with what he represents, because this is the pinnacle of deception. But the actuality of life, even if it is not, like eternity, the truth, still ought to be of the truth, and therefore the other something that everyone essentially is should continually glimmer through the disguise. Page 299, my emphasis.
  
  The point, for Kierkegaard, is not nihilistically giving up on our finite existences, but not holding onto ourselves as the truth, but instead allowing ourselves to live in such a way that God's love shines through us and our lives. Our lives are finite, but lived well, our lives can be of the infinite. This point gets developed much more rigorously in Jean-Luc Marion's God Without Being, as well as Ben Morgan's On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self, and you could probably also draw connection between Kierkegaard's idea here and Derrida's application of deconstruction and differance in his ethical writings.
  
  If you're looking for guidance, I highly recommend Jon Stewart's book on Kierkegaard, which delves into the various ways Kierkegaard used irony and other styles to get at different points from different perspectives. It's one of the best books I've read on him, and discusses most of his major writings, as well as looking at Kierkegaard's life and Hegelian context.

Good looks, bro. I ain't no nerd I can't get down with some 800 pages the second book Fear and Trembling sounds like it's right up my ally, that and I found this The Essential Kierkegaard

This emo dude and his existentialism is sounding right to me, thanks for the recommendations, bro.

all your answers can be found here!