I know a lot of people just love the Russians here on Reddit, but the great lessons that you can take from the classics can be found in many different types of classics, and also depend on what you’re bringing to them, the reflection you put into what you read, and of course your own life experience. Which isn’t to say that you can’t learn about other people’s life experience from reading, just that – I read Anna Karenina when I was 21 and I certainly read it very differently when I was 40.
As with all self-help, it depends on what you want to improve. If you want to become better at negotiation, some self-help books will be better than others at that. If you want to stop letting your fantasy life get in the way of your real life because you’re concerned about the consequences, Madame Bovary is probably a more useful classic to read than Crime and Punishment…
igneousfisher on
Self help books are written by grifters seeking to make you comfortable in an alienating economic system.
Dostoesvky wrote in a semi-feudal period in a country in which capitalism had not become a totalitarian alienation machine.
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I know a lot of people just love the Russians here on Reddit, but the great lessons that you can take from the classics can be found in many different types of classics, and also depend on what you’re bringing to them, the reflection you put into what you read, and of course your own life experience. Which isn’t to say that you can’t learn about other people’s life experience from reading, just that – I read Anna Karenina when I was 21 and I certainly read it very differently when I was 40.
As with all self-help, it depends on what you want to improve. If you want to become better at negotiation, some self-help books will be better than others at that. If you want to stop letting your fantasy life get in the way of your real life because you’re concerned about the consequences, Madame Bovary is probably a more useful classic to read than Crime and Punishment…
Self help books are written by grifters seeking to make you comfortable in an alienating economic system.
Dostoesvky wrote in a semi-feudal period in a country in which capitalism had not become a totalitarian alienation machine.
Neither.