Recommendations for sh*ty authors?

OneFortyDotSixOneFortyDotSix Alum Member
edited April 2018 in Logical Reasoning 634 karma

J.Y. summed it up perfectly in one of the intro LR lessons - the LSAT LR stimuli are terribly written. Not in the sense that they lack deliberate meaning, but in the fact that the meaning is impossibly worded and very difficult to discern.

I've been finding myself having to re-reard some of the stimuli 3-5 times to dissect the meaning, often being hard pressed for time towards the end of each section. This sharply contrasts with RC, where the passages are far more intelligible and I finish with plenty of time to spare.

So, I wanted to see if anyone has recommendations for authors that write in the similarly shitty style of the LSAC test writers? I think that reading overly verbose, awkward prose for meaning will help my speed on LR. However just like the LSAT the writing needs to be deliberate in intention and meaning (while still maintaining an awkward and generally shitty structure).

Recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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  • FixedDiceFixedDice Member
    1804 karma

    Academic works or philosophical writings would do, especially older ones. But stay away from Kant, Lacan, and Žižek.

    1. Visit website of any decent research institution.
    2. Find the list of its professors, scholars, or researchers.
    3. Pick any one of them, and see his or her curriculum vitae.
      3.1. Tip: Avoid famous or public figures, because they usually have relatively comprehensible writing style.

    As for a specific example... The History of the Family by James Casey comes to my mind.

  • btownsqueebtownsquee Alum Member
    1207 karma

    Jane Austen--obviously the opposite of a shitty author (haha) but she does use long sentences with complex grammar. :)

  • OneFortyDotSixOneFortyDotSix Alum Member
    634 karma

    very helpful, thank you both!

  • Seeking PerfectionSeeking Perfection Alum Member
    4428 karma

    Read some philosophy. Almost all of it is more difficult to read than the LSAT LR sections. Rather thsn trying to find something particular hard to read, I would read something interesting to you or you have heard of and wanted to read for a while. Nietzche's Beyond Good and Evil might give you a good sense for how he influenced our culture and some practice reading.

    Also try not to hate the way the LR questions are written too much. First of all, they are not that bad compared to lots of real world texts. Second of all, as a matter of testing strategy it's best to feign interest in them while reading them.

  • LSATisJustLikeDarkSoulsLSATisJustLikeDarkSouls Alum Member
    edited April 2018 439 karma

    Everybody already said it, but you want to be reading old philosophers. Also 19th century literature is pretty wordy. Thinking of Herman Melville.

  • keets993keets993 Alum Member ⭐ ⏰ 🍌
    6050 karma

    Agree with @"gerth.brooks" specifically Moby Dick. I read it for the first time this past September? October? Worse than LSAT to be honest.

  • testfromawaytestfromaway Alum Member
    280 karma

    Read some Derrida and Lacan-- for kicks, giggles, and tears.

  • LSAT_WreckerLSAT_Wrecker Member ⭐
    4850 karma

    You want real pain, try Finnigan’s Wake (Joyce).

    “Owing to the work's linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public.”

  • FixedDiceFixedDice Member
    1804 karma

    @LSAT_Wrecker said:
    You want real pain, try Finnigan’s Wake (Joyce).

    “Owing to the work's linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public.”

    ...or Ulysses, for that matter. But you know, there's a huge difference between training and torturing oneself.

  • _oshun1__oshun1_ Alum Member
    3652 karma

    I was a philosophy major I got you for wordiness and confusion and boredom

    Literally any book by Dostoevsky

    Sartre’s being and nothingness
    Husserl
    Franz bertano’s paychology from an empirical standpoint
    Mind language society by Searle
    Plato’s republic
    Hobbes’s leviathan
    Kierkegaard
    Rousseau’s social contract
    Bruno’s Ash Wednesday supper
    Galileo’s dialogue concerning the two world systems
    Descartes’ meditations
    Any metaphysics and philosophy of linguistics

    For something more interesting and short yet still kind of hard to read literature
    James Joyce A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
    Camus the stranger
    Camus the plague
    Nabokov Despair

  • OneFortyDotSixOneFortyDotSix Alum Member
    634 karma

    Thank you all for the great suggestions, and @"Seeking Perfection" for the tip on general mindset.

    I added Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Nietzche's Will to Power to my kindle - both have actually been on my list for some time; it's good to know their dense prose can serve more than one purpose.

  • tams2018tams2018 Member
    727 karma

    The best thing that has helped my reading is grabbing a grammar book and tear through it. Then practice on the most dense text you can think of.

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