Any of you guys like to read?

Cervantes If you were to write a novel, how would you use your knowledge of literary theory?

Recently finished "Paradise Lost" by John Milton. Took me a long time-- not because it's long, but because I kept getting sidetracked by life and stuff. Now on to "Paradise Regained"...

Balder: great picks. In addition to those the "Four Great Classical Novels" (Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber) are also on my 'to-read' list.

@player1 Divine Comedy is also on my read list!

I wouldn't! Because of a few reasons: first of all, I think the novel, as a genre, really peaked in the 20th century, and it's too hard to do much with it - you can, of course, create any great story, but as far as formal innovations go, it's hard to go beyond what was done by writers like Joyce, García Márquez, Guimarães Rosa and a few others, unless you're a true prodigy. I would try my luck at another genre, as the short story: there are also great writers on it, but at least I think it's a genre that still has a lot of possibilities. Second, I don't know how much the knowledge of theory would help me to write: I would certainly be more self-counscious about my choices, but I don't think that would make me more talented. It's like asking for a theoretical physicist to create his own physical world: the theory isn't meant to teach you how to create something; it's meant to give you an understanding of how some phenomena work (in my case, I usually study the relations between fiction, language and reality as perceived by a culturally-influenced point of view).

But anyway, reading a lot of literary works and understanding how some of them are "built" (linguistically/ideologically speaking) certainly gives you a lot of great ideas, and there are some great theoreticist/writer combinations (I would mention Borges and Edgar Allan Poe from the top of my head). As I'm really interested in the relations between fiction and cultural reality, I would be interested in something that was more or less in the style of (to use a video game as a comparison!) Metal Gear Solid 2 - that is, a story that begins completely usual, even kind of campy, and later goes completely surreal, with the language used to express it being completely changed through the way. Neon Genesis Evangelion also did something like that for anime; for literary works, "100 hundred years of solitude" feels more or less like that (Joyce's novels do, too). That's exactly what I admire in Borges' short-stories: they're usually stories that end up being about literature/literary theory itself. I really recommend it.

Is reading the bible consider reading?

And we'll leave it at that before this thread turns into Reddit-esque shitstorm, thank you very much.