It's still a respectable board that /b/ hasn't tried to shitstorm more than once.

What didn't surprise me:

-The never-ending stream of 1984 threads.
-Same for Brave New World, and threads comparing the two.
-Ayn Rand. Most people first encounter her at a young age.
-George R. R. Martin threads
-Lovecraft Threads.

>>491675
That's because /b/ doesn't read

>>491685

No, it's because /lit/ is one of the slowest boards and when /b/ came over in a raid about a month ago they just inundated the first three pages with HURR DURR and when they realized the threads weren't moving at all they left.

Surprised me that besides all the trolling I got a LOT of reading suggestions I wouldn't have found anywhere else. (never posted in a single Rand thread so far, I'm /lit/'s silent hero)

>>491694
That's true, the amount of actually good suggestions and general variety was pleasantly surprising, although the variety is mostly limited to recommendation threads.

I wasn't surprised that Lolita would be popular around here, I was surprised that even I would like it so much though.

I'm a bit surprised that Dostoevsky is this popular around here, but I was expecting to see him posted every now and then. Same goes for Russian literature in general, really.

I wasn't expecting people to be familiar with French literature beyond The Stranger, I've seen people post some Dumas, Balzac and Céline relatively often.

I was expecting shock books like American Psycho and Sade in general to be discussed fairly often, which it is.

I'm surprised that /lit/ doesn't entirely hate Sylvia Plath.

>>491702

Yeah, as stated before, overall it is lacking variety and there's still a shitload of trolling going on, but I can easily ignore that. Right now I even appreciate the slow pace, because sometimes I can just head off to work and when I get back 10 hours later, an interesting thread might still be there.

>>491718
I actually find that most people like Plath here. Not surprising, since she's one of the only good female writers who fit the traditional female writer stereotypes.

>>491708

Lolita has always been relatively popular, I guess.

I wasn't surprised about all the Dostoevsky, actually. He gets a lot of young readers. Russian literature, for better or worse, has become trendy.

As for French lit, I was expecting more Victor Hugo.

Bret Easton Ellis. Yeah, was expecting him. Ugh.

>>491723
Woman writer stereotypes? If you still think in those terms, you never should have left r9k.

>>491723
>traditional female writer stereotypes.

>>491718

no, just feel bad for her :(

I think The Bell Jar should be used to teach symbolism. Better than Lord of the fucking flies anyway.

>>491665

I think the lack of Tolkien is because Tolkien fans are usually afflicted with tunnel vision, and generally aren't literature in a more general sense.

What surprised me:

How the board can't shut the fuck up about Catcher in the Rye, Dostoevsky, Ayn Rand, Twilight, Dune and 1984.

Why can't you faggots move on?

>>491748

You knew Twilight would be trolled every 10 seconds.

Surprised me: Lack of waifu/husbando bullshit like other boards.

>>491736
>>491744

>Okay class. Now what exactly do you think Plath is trying to say when she compares this teacher's penis to a pale, white worm?

Yeah, that'd go over gravy with faculty.

What surprised me:
-The amount of discussion on old literature.
-The small amount of invidual threads on fanfiction and amateur writing. Only a few people made threads just to copypaste their shitwriting and fish for comment, and threads on fanfiction and amateur writing in general are usually earnest.
-Many people shared my hatred of literature tailored for people who aren't smart but want to believe they are, such as Dan Brown's shit.

I'm surprised there aren't many tripfags honestly.

>>491767

That's why I said "should." Doesn't mean I think it would ever happen.

>>491767
Shit, is that one of the poems in The Colossus? I really should read that once I finish Mrs. Dalloway.

In retrospect, some of her poems wouldn't be very good choices for high school level. They'd probably be depressed after reading a bunch of poems about a thirty year-old woman's depression, daddy issues, mental illnesses, and wanting to kill herself.

>>491775
I wasn't being antagonistic. I think it'd be funny.

If classes can do The Road nowadays I don't think it'd be an issue because of taboo subjects: it would just make for some difficult work to discuss. God knows I wouldn't want to lead a debate through whatever gender views impressionable 9-12th graders have.

>>491769

I don't think there's that much old literature discussion. For every 500th thread about Cormac McCarthy, there's maybe one about Homer, and half the posts are about how he's not relevant. There's some Dickens, but he's a High School author. Expected more Shakespeare.

I am extremely happy about the lack of Dan Brown, except posts to say that he sucks.

Not surprised that prose/novel threads vastly outnumber poetry threads.

>>491742
Any discussion of it would probably take place on /tg/, since LotR is more about the setting than the actual story, and /tg/ is all about settings.

/lit/ is better than I planned. Reasonable discussion.

We used to talk about harry potter. There's not much to talk about. The fans ground it up.

Also, /lit/ hates Tolkien for some reason. I fucking love Tolkien, I have the entire LOTR series, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, the Book of Lost Tales, and a bunch of other unfinished works that his son published.

>>491783
As if The Catcher In The Rye isn't already a depressing piece of shit that gets taught in every high school?

>>491807
I thought /lit/ would be shit when I saw Sasha Grey as Queen or whatever.

The large amount of philosophy discussion caught me by surprise.

the fact that there's more than two posts a day arguing about Robert Jordan.

>>491817
>Catcher in the Rye
>depressing

It's been five years since I read it, but I don't really remember it being depressing.

Pic related; THAT was depressing.

>>491817
Catcher in the Rye isn't that depressing.I read it as an angsty pubescent preteen and enjoyed it

/lit/ is fairly awesome. I'm happy to be here. I'm interested in seeing the memes evolve. So far all of our memes are derivatives of other boards. We need more /lit/ specific reaction images (hard to do as /lit/ is fundamentally about the written word).

>>491818
That didn't last.

>>491835

Surprised
It was initially very good
it has still retained its status as my personal favorite
Not enough classic literature

And for those talking about Sylvia Plath... I hated her during my Junior year. We read her poems and my FEMALE teacher fucking sucked her metaphorical cock. I hated her with a BURNING PASSION.

Senior year: I read Bell Jar with a male teacher. And I accepted her and found her a pretty good writer. Not the best, but acceptable and decent.

What surprises me is how the board went from literature discussion to deviant art 2.0.

Critique my shit. Inspire me to write a short story, u gaize. Read this poem I wrote. Read this short story I wrote. Lets discuss fan fiction. Publishing advice? I want to write a story but need help creating the fantasy world. How do I make my stories sound deep? Is Lulu a good place to publish?

God damn, it's like I'm at yahoo answers with all the authors around here.

>>491844
>I hated her during my Junior year. We read her poems and my FEMALE teacher fucking sucked her metaphorical cock. I hated her with a BURNING PASSION

I hate when teachers do that.

I was surprised by how many people hate Ayn Rand, yet this board can't seem to stop talking about her. I think I see at least one "atlas shrugged was a shitty book and Rand was a dickshit" thread a day

>>491850
Agreed, it really sucks.

>>491859
tsundere for Rand

Wasn't expecting as much Joyce. I'm still cynically inclined to believe that most Joyce posts are masturbatory in nature, ie, HAI GUIZ I READ ULYSSES AND IT WAS FUCKING HILARIOUS I DUNNO Y U THINK ITZ SO HARD LOL.

Surprised at the amount of Finnegans Wake, too, but that's even worse.

>>491839
Fucking saved

>>491844
I had a teacher that did that with Jane Austen. I still hate Jane Austen.

>>491865
Fucking Joyce man. I can't do this shit. Fuck you, Ulysses. It's sitting on my desk and I feel ashamed that I can't make it past five chapters. Maybe I'll take a god damn class on it or something.

>>491873
I gotta ask: was your teacher a woman?

>>491876

No, actually. He was a jackass in other ways than Austen shitflooding.

>>491876
It's always a woman with Austen.

I hate /lit/ so fucking much. I wish this place would change.

>>491835
I'm also hoping to see more inappropriate or strange signs posted on bookshelves as a prevalent image type on the board. I'll dump what I have so far.

>>491890

>>491897

>>491903

Believe it or not, I was actually surprised at all the Chuck Palanyuknyuk. I thought he was played out with Limp Bizkit.


>>491897
Sour grapes, anyone?

>>491887
>>491885

It feels like female English instructors are ALL about female authors (I can understand why). I'm totally okay with it since the only female writers on my shelf are Plath, Woolf, Sexton, Atwood, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, and Wharton (the last three are because of a previous class; I didn't like Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, or House of Mirth at all). Granted, I can see why it would frustrate some people.

>>491897

>>491928

That reminds me: what is it about Vonnegut that attracts teenagers like flies to shit?

>>491934
Easy prose, reckless defiance in the face of vague, easily replaceable authority figures. Poop jokes. Harrison Bergeron being in every high school short story anthology ever.

>>491934
I didn't even know that Vonnegut did attract teenagers like flies to shit, although I did read Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions when I was eighteen. I live in a redneck town, so that might be why I didn't know.

i expected more bret easton ellis

>>491943

Thank God your expectations were not met.

>>491978

what about those of us who LIKE ellis?

>>491982

I thought you'd all be at parties being trendy or something. (ellis fans)

Surprised:
-What little variety there is on this board.
-That there is not more Chuck Palahniuk fags.
-That half of the threads are not Twilight/meyers bashing.

Not Surprised:
-That this place is infested with James Joyce fagots.
-The number of homework threads.

>>491999

nah, man. we're like, so over the party scene. at least i think we are after we take off our wayfarers and 800 dollar armani shorts and climb into bed with erica, or maybe her name is sarah, either way she's sucking my cock and i'm thinking about buying a new porsche

I remember coming on here for the first time like two days after it got put up and on the first page saw a Kierkegaard thread and immediately everything was better than expected. What surprises me is that so many people here read decent stuff and book I enjoy yet I never found anybody like that in the real life.

>>491934
Because its normally the first forced reading they get in high school that isn't unbearable and boring to a group of people with the attention span of a moth.

And look at that suit in >>491928 He is just awesome.

/lit is 100% better than I expected, most of the time. And it is getting better, not worse.

I'm surprised when people show off their bookshelves they don't hide all their pulp lit, like books about Halo, Star Wars, War Hammer, etc.

>>491999

>Bret Easton Ellis being trendy

what is this, 1990?

>>492024
Who gives a fuck about pulp lit? It's fun to read. It's the junk food I indulge in in between serious stuff.

-the amount of shitty philosophical discussion threads with sophomores spouting whatever they were reading the previous day

>>492028
Well how do YOU picture his fans

Was hoping for more Zelazny/ Amber threads. And everytime it is mentioned it's only mentioned by name, with no in depth discussions

Surprised:

The (very small) amount of people who seem to be the real deal and may actually be famous one day.

Hurt durr

>>492024
I'm surprised we don't actually get too many threads on those. Only stuff I've ever read like that is some Battletech books but still they were interesting. Would inevitably get trolled to hell as published fan fic shit though.

>-The amount of discussion about William Gibson. I was pretty sure that today, Cyberpunk=Stephenson, but I was pleasantly surprised.

well, Stephenson only wrote two cyberpunk books right, and hasn't written one for like 20 years. Hard to become equated with a genre when you move away from it.

>>492073
He's the only goddamn cyberpunk author I've heard being discussed till this board. It's usually "Oh yeah, Gibson invented the genre but anyway STEPHENSON BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH"

I was expecting lot's of twilight threads. I got lots of Ayn Rand threads.

Overall /lit/ is one of the most intelligent boards on 4chan and I've been dissapointed with the number of "my degree is better than your degree/english lit degrees are shit tier", troll threads that have been posted lately.

>>492024
I read two Halo books when I was sixteen. It was enjoyable. I see no reason to be embarrassed for liking pulp fiction.

>>492111

i guess a whole lot of people like Snow Crash a whole lot.

What surprised me about /lit/ is that there are no threads on modern books that are just out.

Except of the OC threads, threads about books are either classics or modern classics. That's not a bad thing to be honest.

Another surprising thing was that /lit/ came together and created a /lit/ zine. I already have threads archived related to the process.

I have not actually read the actual zine yet, but I will soon.

Aviendha is mai waifu

A little disappointed in the limited number of contemporary lit. threads, but I think that's more a result of newer books having less time to establish a large fan base than a representation of /lit/'s preferences.

>>491926
Atwood is fucking shit.

What surprised me:

People taking female writers seriously

What didn't surprise me:

Highschool lit threads

I knew Finnegans Wake would eventually reach semi-meme status.

>>492446
I'm in complete agreement. I'm still trying to figure out all the hype. Can't.

>>492446

>>492446
>"No, it certainly isn't Science Fiction. Science Fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. That isn't this book at all. The Handmaids Tale is Speculative Fiction in the genre of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty Four. Nineteen Eighty Four was written not as Science Fiction but as an extrapolation of life in 1948. So, too, The Handmaids Tale is a slight twist on the society we have now."

>>492508
Fuck you Margaret Atwood. Embrace what you are.

>>492508
But there is a difference between science fiction and speculative fiction. It's not like she made that up.

>>492487
Handmaid's Tale is a favorite of politically correct English Lit departments. If not for that, this book would fade into obscurity like it deserves to.

The only thing I hadn't expected was all those bookshelf threads. Seriously, who fucking cares about your bookshelf?

>>492508
I don't think she understands what science fiction is. She seems to have it confused with sci-fi (something halfway between science fiction and space opera, and inferior to both).

>>492578
>bookshelf
I just kinda keep my books in cardboard boxes or lying on desks/chairs/the floor. Or as files on my computer.

Bugger bookshelves; I'm not a librarian.

>>492578
Those are an unfortunate import from /r9k/

>>491665

not much has surprised me... I expected constant Ayn Rand + Gibson + Catcher + Twilight + 1984 discussion

I guess most surprising is that there ISN'T as much Hitchiker's Guide or Harry Potter discussion as I was expecting, and more people seem to like existentialist crap than I would have expected. Also Catch-22 is more popular than I expected even though I guess it's not that surprising when I think about it.

It's the closest thing to intelligent discussion I've ever seen on 4chan.

>>492678
/tg/ used to be a centre of intelligent discussion until last summer.

Y'see, usually the kiddies come to /tg/ in summer and then migrate away when it ends, but last year, they just... stayed.

I didn't expect to get yelled at whenever I suggested someone read Gargantua and Pantagruel instead of A Confederacy of Dunces.

>>491718
Me too. The Rand situation is also perplexing.

>>491835
Give it a year. A year can really change things.

I'm impressed by the number of helpful philosophy threads that have been on here, including threads where a familiarity with Speculative Realism is obvious.

CYCLONOPEDIA FOREVER

>>492618

An interesting thread about Atwood's science fiction comments can be found here:

http://www.metafilter.com/89895/Talking-squid-in-outer-space

Basically, Atwood is an awesome author, but she's also sort of a snob, but she's also keeping herself divorced from sci-fi to avoid getting ghettoized in the talking space squid section, but really most everyone is just a fucking snob who can't admit that Gene Wolfe is awesome.

>>492474
Well, "high school lit" covers a huge scope of good literature. We read French existentialist literature in our AP English class, for example.