Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins.
He goes into so much detail about training to become an astronaut, his first spaceflight, training and planning for the Apollo missions, and talks about so many of the details and complexities of spaceflight that I had no idea about before.
For example, in the early space walks, they didn't consider how difficult it is to use simple tools in microgravity and without a surface to sit/stand on. The astronaut got completely exhausted just keeping himself still while turning a wrench, because when you turn the wrench, it pushes you and starts moving and spinning you, and when you try to correct it, you'll most likely overcorrect and then have to correct that, and then correct that overcorrection, etc.
And the level of planning and training for the off-nominal scenarios is crazy. They picked the top 30ish most likely failure scenarios and practiced the responses to them in simulators until they're muscle memory, and have detailed checklists for hundreds of other ones (which they also practice, just not as much). For example, when Neil and Buzz land on the moon, they'd be awake for about 10 hours, so they had to decide whether the plan was for them to open the hatch and walk on the moon right after landing, or get a night of sleep and do it "next morning". The problem with doing it immediately was that, if something went wrong, they'd have to abort and get back to the command module, but then they'd end up being awake for 20 hours while handling an emergency. On the other hand, they realized that they wouldn't be able to get sleep right after landing on the moon anyways.
His writing style is awesome: it's easy to read, explains technical details in a really easy to understand way, and quite funny.
> keeping himself still while turning a wrench
Sounds like trying to take lug nuts off a tire you've jacked off the ground. but in space the whole car is off the ground...
And so are you and the jack!+
I lucked into this in my high school library, and need to re-read it. I've read a lot of books on Apollo, this is one of the best.
FWIW, my other favorite is 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', Murray and Cox, which focuses on the engineering and management effort, and the politics, behind Apollo. Their discussion of the development of the F-1 engine in the Saturn V's first stage is amazing, among dozens of technical and managerial excellencies.
Sounds fantastic, just bought a copy. Thanks!
These threads often end up, with everyone trying to prove they are literary scholars.
I prefer junky fantasy books. I'm really too old and cynical to give a damn what y'all think of me.
I probably liked David Edding's Belgariad series, along with the Mallorean series, the most. I reread them, regularly, and go through all ten books, in a couple of weeks. They are an easy read.
Also, Glen Cook's Black Company books are awesome. It's a toss-up, between them. Eleven books, in that series. His Garret PI series are fun, but really kind of "filler."
> These threads often end up, with everyone trying to prove they are literary scholars
I see a wide variety of answers ITT. Some are very "literary" fiction e.g. Ulysses, others are lighter fare like Harry Potter, there's also a wide variety of non-fiction works from self-help to electronics manuals to philosophy. Have you considered that other people might actually have different tastes than you, and aren't trying to "prove" anything?
C'mon. This is HN.
People are trying to posture and prove all kinds of things.
Of course folks have different tastes (I'm the redneck engineer, in my family. Most of my other siblings think James Joyce is da thang, but they are also into posturing).
But it also intimidates folks into not sharing some really good stuff.
<< But it also intimidates folks into not sharing some really good stuff.
That is probably the saddest part that good things don't have enough time/chance to spread. I like to think that there are more Adams, Pratchetts out there, but they remain largely undiscovered due to this society pre-approved list of things you can 'consume'.
And good here does not automatically mean "Ulysses" ( which I hated -- and quite possibly misunderstood ). Some stuff can be just lazy popculture level navel gazing, but it does not mean it can't be fun as it revels in excess at the same time ( Rick and Morty comes to mind -- yes, it is not a book, but I am making a point.. how many kids you see reading for fun ).
<< People are trying to posture and prove all kinds of things.
Agreed, but it still does not seem as bad as other internet locales. And maybe it comes with socialization. At certain point we learn no one really cares. I know I stated some mildly pretentious stuff before. Seemed like a big deal then; now it is just an amusing memory.
> But it also intimidates folks into not sharing some really good stuff.
Do people really care what some other Internet rando thinks about their book preferences? FWIW (though of course could be missing some), I haven't seen any recommendations that have been dumped on. Heck, your comment recommending "junky fantasy books" is currently #2 for me, in a very long thread.
But it also intimidates folks into not sharing some really good stuff.
There's that, but there's also an element that's more "frustrates" than "intimidates" I think. Case in point: it's VERY rare in my experience, that one can mention Ayn Rand in any kind of favorable light here without getting downvoted to hell. Have that happen a few times, and one is probably going to start to develop a "well, my opinions aren't welcome here" response and quit sharing. Never mind that the person who mentions Rand quite possibly also likes many, many other things and would like to talk about them. And I'm reasonably sure this phenomenon isn't limited to Rand. I just noticed that, because I'm one of the people who does like Rand - and has been consistently down-voted to hell for it. :-)
> People are trying to posture and prove all kinds of things.
I would hope that it’s a mixture of personalities posting here, rather than a subset of people who are following some personal agenda.
This crowd is hopefully mature enough to avoid this type of behavior.
Well, there's careers being made, egos being stroked, and insecurities being salved.
It's not just a shared interest community. YC isn't a benevolent organization, and many of the folks, hereabouts, have some pretty serious cred (and money/power). Lots of folks want to get on their good side, and may think that frontin' is the best way.
Note that you're one of a minority of people here who aren't using a pseudonym.
I don't use my real name here precisely so that I don't have to worry about what other people will think about me when reading my comments.
I’m not sure it’s a minority. Folks out themselves, all the time, and I encountered a couple of companies, when I was still job-searching, that required my HN ID, in the application.
But the main reason I do it, is because it forces me to behave. I may come across as a bit “stuffy,” but I challenge folks to find anything I’ve posted here (or anywhere, in the last eight years or so), that would be considered “troll-ish.”
I used to be a troll. I feel the need for some atonement.
Also, I found out that we are nowhere near as anonymous as we think we are.
If we participate in a public forum, I feel as if we need to be aware that we each have a personal Responsibility to add to it, and that we should just assume that we will be held to account for our words.
Just like IRL.
I know, I know. That’s a “quaint” attitude, but it’s the one I have.
I quite enjoyed David Eddings books when I was younger as well. It came as a shock when I learned that he and his wife had been jailed for child abuse, which only became known after he died:
https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2020/05/it-has-been-reveale...
Marion Zimmer Bradley too.
These threads often end up, with everyone trying to prove they are literary scholars.
Good point. I have to admit, I have some disdain for academic literary criticism, and I care very little about reading/liking the books one is "supposed" to like. Now of course I do in fact like some of those books, just by happenstance. But I don't define myself by seeking out the "blessed" books and reading and endorsing them.
And I like a lot of "low brow" / pulp-fiction stuff. Lots of horror (Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Clive Barker, etc), plenty of action/adventure novels by Lee Child, David Baldacci, Robert Ludlum, etc., and all sorts of sci-fi by authors of no particular note. And I don't mind admitting it. :-)
Scifi here but the most embarrassing one I have to admit to loving is the stainless steel rat series by Harry Harrison.
That series was great fun. (I wonder if stands the test of time since I last read it decades ago)
I also liked the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.
Awesomeness counts.
I loved the _Belgariad_ and _Mallorean_ years ago, and re-read them many times. Eddings then came out with a new series, whose name I've surprised; I read the first book and hated it.
And then, as I got older, I started to realize that most of the "good guys", other than Garion, were deeply-flawed awful people who would not be nearly as funny or heroic in real life as they were made out to be in the book. (Picture Polgara smashing everything in sight as she has a tantrum. Belgarath's no better.) And then I couldn't read them anymore, which is a pity.
It's not that I "outgrew" the genre by the way. I read as much fantasy as ever. But not this.
> I read the first book and hated it.
That was probably The Elder Gods series (Crystal Gorge, et al).
It is awful. I suspect it was written while he was dying of cancer, and his wife had a great deal of input.
The Redemption of Althalus is ... bearable, but not his best.
I enjoyed The Elenium and The Tamuli series. They had a lot of the character of The Belgariad, but bloodier.
I couldn't get enough of the Goosebumps series when I was a kid. Just encountering the books and looking at the covers was an experience. I would get them from the school library.
Same! The first books I really remember reading for myself.
When I was a kid, what got me into reading novels was Weis & Hickman's Darksword Trilogy. I loved the heck out of that series. I re-read it about once a year well into my 20s. Re-reading it in my 40s, it's definitely kind of cringe, but even now I still think it has some cool ideas.
The thing is, those books got a kid into reading. Now I've read thousands of books, but all my later pretentions to literacy started from that one experience which everyone else in the world would judge as junky.
I don't claim they're the best by most metrics. But as a catalyst for reading, they're right up there.
A great fantasy book is "The Fifth Season" by N. K. Jemisin. The whole broken earth trilogy by Jemisin is amazing. Here's to fantasy books!
This is exactly the opposite of what GP wants. N.K. Jemisin does not write page turners. He's looking for compulsive schlock at the Edgar Rice Burroughs end of the spectrum.
“She.”
J. K. Jemisin is a woman (of color). I had no idea, myself, until after I had read The Broken Earth series, and wanted to find out more about the author.
I did enjoy her stuff, but it isn’t what I’d want on my Desert Island list.
You are a "he."
> it isn’t what I’d want on my Desert Island list.
That's what I said.
My apologies, then. I misread the post.
Thanks for the correction.
That IS great, but hardly trashy!
I really enjoyed that series. My mother was a geologist, and it was a fun time.
I second the Black Company. I recently turned some friends onto it and got back in as a consequence. It was such a great twist on how a dark fantasy reads. Totally agree for Garret PI.
I'll have to add my other fantasy favourites : The Kingkiller Chronicles (though be prepared to be left hanging) and the Stormlight Archives are truly excellent.
Came here just to search for the Stormlight Archive. I mean, my username is a reference to that series (:
I've read all 20+ of the Jack Reacher books, some multiple times. Best bedtime reading I've found. Fun enough I actually want to go to bed. Shallow enough that if I miss a page or two because I'm drowsy, no big deal.
I've read all 20+ of the Jack Reacher books,
Same! I think they're great. But that's "great" when you appreciate them for what they are. I wouldn't compare, say, The Killing Floor to Nineteen Eighty Four or anything. But I'd say they're both great - in their respective ways.
> I prefer junky fantasy books.
Kindle books like that are what fill in the gaps in my free time. One recent fantasy series I liked was The Good Guys/The Bad Guys by Eric Ugland. Somehow kept me turning pages.
some others (not fantasy) Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey; Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin;
But sometimes there is a lot of dreck to wade through.
Been thinking of making a "stop reading and discard book" list like:
- main character has unknown/dead parents, is secretly "the chosen one"
- no plot, character goes there, minimal opposition, gets all the stuff.
- anything harem
The problem with a "kill list" like that is that most of these overused tropes are overused because originally, they worked really well. E.g. if you strictly followed the first item on your list, you'd miss out on the Belgariad, which is really quite good (in my opinion, and that of the GP poster, at least. I'm personally less sold on the Malloreon, it's a bit too much of a retread for my taste.)
That said, I do agree that too many red flags like that and I will put down a book. And some are stronger than others; I'm 100% with you on the harem thing because any book like that is most likely just an excuse for all the sex scenes.
I think I need a "kill list" when I'm just not engaged with the book.
There have actually been plenty of books that probably had elements on the list, but were thought provoking, entertaining, or had excellent character development or some other novelty that I didn't even think of stopping.
It's also interesting to look at the list when you're thinking about continuing with book 2 or book 3.
I liked the first Belgariad book I got, but after a few more, I felt like reread the same book over and over. Same for Mallorean.
The Black Company is great, especially the first book.
David Eddings' books are also my favorite of all time, agree about Belgariad and Mallorean. That reminds me that I should start them again. Thanks for bringing back a great memory!
In this vein, junkie Kindle Unlimited sci fi hits that spot for me too.
Currently reading a huge series with easily digestible books by Ryk Brown The Frontiers Saga.
Also anyone remember the old Sten books? There’s a modern rip off that’s very good, amusing and has cartoon violence it’s called the Undying Mercenary series by BV Larson.
And finally, Taken to the Stars and Backyard Starship get honorable mentions but really there is pretty much infinite versions of this shiz.
These threads often end up, with everyone trying to prove they are literary scholars.
I've probably read certain Discworld books more than a few times, if they fit under this category of 'junky'
I'm midway through my second reading through the Discworld series. Several years ago I discovered that they were just the right mix of interesting enough to read yet sedate enough to not raise my adrenaline that I could read them and reliably fall asleep within 5-15 minutes of going to bed. This was a godsend because prior to discovering this, it took my brain anywhere between 1-2 hours EVERY night to settle down enough to actually fall asleep, if it ever happened. Lifelong chronic insomnia solved!
(I'm not sure this is the glowing review that most authors aspire to, but here we are.)
Anyway, MOST Discworld books are well worth the time. A few are difficult to follow because Pratchett tried a bit too hard to rely on context. And he often reuses major plot points. But the narration and dialogue are more than clever enough to make up for any of these.
I use these books for exactly the same reason! I had a really hard time falling asleep until I discovered that putting a Discworld novel on in one earbud was enough to silence the voices in my head long enough for me to fall asleep.
It used to be that I'd take an hour or more to fall asleep, now I'll often be asleep within one 5-minute run of the sleep timer.
I finished Discworld and have moved on to Stephen Fry's Sherlock Holmes, which has much the same effect.
Black Company is fun and the recently published editions by Midworld Press are really nice.
I'm with you! I've always had a hard time finding Literary Works anything but a total slog. Recently I tried The Road by Cormac McCarthy and just couldn't get through it. Far too grim for my taste.
Anyway, if this is where to share our trashy fantasy guilty pleasures, I recently discovered and devoured the Cradle series by Will Wight. Fun if you're at all into "progression fantasy" (also known as LitRPG) where the characters go through a very clearly-delineated "leveling up" process.
Also the only books I've ever run across with outtakes at the end, which I thought was fun.
It's been a while since I read the belgariad and I don't think I ever picked up the mallorean. Thanks for reminding me about those books!
My all time favorite fantasy series is Malazan - not a light read though, and probably not a series for anyone new to fantasy. One of the few series I will read again.
> I reread them, regularly, and go through all ten books,
That’s the best part! Coming back to the simple life on Faldors farm again.
Try The Name of the Wind, basic but good.
"Name of the wind" would be on my desert island list!
The Elenium trilogy by Eddings is good as well.
Best fantasy series I read are the Elric universe ones
It isn't hacker news until I see a reference [1] below the text, an unneccessary italicized portion, and some word salad about how we've been doing it all wrong but suddenly this simple change will revolutionise things moving forwards.
And if we're feeling crazy, __Some of this__
Henry George’s Progress & Poverty conducted what can only be described as a coup on my worldview, and I am not alone in that experience.
It is an incredible argument that will just utterly transform how you understand a walk down the street.
If you’ve been seeing references to the Land Value Tax (LVT) here on HN, this is the book that originated the concept. Like most conceptual breakthroughs, it didn’t emerge solely from George with no related ideas in the vicinity, but this is definitely “the book” behind it.
In a similar vein, when I first got an e-reader I downloaded the old English version of Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations. It was eye opening. While I’ve forgotten a large amount of the detail the overall themes are embedded in my mind.
How is Wealth of Nations surprising for a modern reader? My (perhaps incorrect) intuition is that these sorts of old foundational books tend not to be too surprising because their ideas have permeated society already, which is why I’m curious to hear your take.
It was eye opening to me at that point in my life as I hadn’t given too much thought to the detail in the world around me, in my own life and the economy.
It was a strange experience to read ye-olde-English that outlined observations that still apply today.
To simplify it, in my mind it was like going to the moon (boring old economics book) and discovering someone else’s flag (we beat you to it, and everything we explain is still relevant)
Someone might not expect sth like this from the "father of capitalism"
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
Yep, Smith and Ricardo both recognized that land is unlike all other forms of capital.
> How is Wealth of Nations surprising for a modern reader?
Most people haven't read it, and tend to only reference things like "invisible hand", and skim/skip over a lot of Smith's 'moralizing'. His book before Wealth was after all The Theory of Moral Sentiments:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments
If you don't want to read Ye Olde English, perhaps see Glory Liu's book Adam Smith’s America:
> Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith’s original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60015569-adam-smith-s-am...
Interview:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbQjDpUfJrs
She goes into the "Adam Smith Problem"; one paper on it:
> Adam Smith is best known for his economic theories that extoll the free market and individual self-interest. These ideas are the focus of Smith's second book, The Wealth of Nations. However, Smith also made large contributions to the fields of ethics and moral philosophy. Nearly 20 years prior to the publication of The Wealth of Nations, Smith first became a renowned moral philosopher when he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith outlines the nature of morality. This morality, for Smith, places an emphasis upon sympathy and compassion, which are felt by imagining the plight of others through the impartial spectator. This impartial spectator is a mode of thinking that allows for one to adjudge the actions of others in relation to society's general attitudes toward that said action. Despite Smith's consummate rumination in both books, there seems to be a disconnect between Smith's moral philosophy, found within The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and his economic philosophy, found within The Wealth of Nations. How can Smith eulogize compassion and fellow feeling in one writing, while also holding that self-interest is necessary for the advancement of society in another? This disconnect is known as the Adam Smith Problem. The purpose of this project is to acknowledge the existence of The Adam Smith Problem by seeing it not as an attempt to undermine Smith's intellectual continuity, but as a challenge to reconcile the self-interested nature of humanity with higher moral standards accomplished through compassion. This reconciliation is accomplished through the notion of a liberal society in which an individual is both free to do anything that does not harm another and can expect society to maintain a higher set of moral standards through a justice system. Both wealth proliferation through self-interest and the upholding of higher values through compassion are predicates of this liberal society: the culmination of Smith's philosophy.
* https://quod.lib.umich.edu/u/umurj/16481002.0014.007/--adam-...
Taxing land is definitely not a revolutionary concept. What made George famous is that he wrote a manifesto that blamed the "rich" land owners for all the ills of society, and proposed that solving the problem would be as simple as levying another tax. It sounds good but has little substance or relation to actual economics.
I suspect you don’t know what you’re talking about based on your subsequent conflation of property tax with a land value tax.
That’s a good shibboleth for “never have actually engaged this idea.”
Property tax is a land value tax. You literally pay a percentage of some notional value of your property every year, largely based on how you use it. The fact you don't recognize that is a good shibboleth for "never have engaged with the real world."
A portion of a property tax is a land value tax, but 1) it’s only one portion of it and 2) it’s the opposite of the portion that you just described.
It’s very specifically not based on how you use the land. And that’s literally the core fact of the system. The two calculations yield entirely different incentives. It’s clear you misunderstood it. I recommend reading the book itself as it will be clearer than you’ve apparently had it explained.
>It’s very specifically not based on how you use the land.
Sorry but you are wrong. Farmers and homeowners pay less than investors. If you build expensive stuff on the property (put another way, if you USE it to do something expensive) you generally pay more.
Again, I don't need to read a whole book, much less one based on pure idealism and with no thought given to real economic data and real human nature, to know that it is generally wrong. I don't need to read the whole book here any more than I need to read the whole bible to doubt it. You need to learn about the real world and stop assuming you know better than everyone just because you read an old book. Sometimes a book review is actually enough to get the gist. I even got reviews from people who thought highly of the book, and I was unconvinced.
> If you build expensive stuff on the property you generally pay more.
This is not Land Value Tax. Georgism is an argument against this concept of taxing based on what you do with the land.
So, am I to understand that prime beach real estate is to be taxed the same as a plot in a desert or swamp? There is clearly a lot of trouble with taxing land, because an inherent part of its value is what you can do with it. People pay premium for land that is useful and desireable. The structures placed on land and the values thereof are proportional to this desirability and economic utility.
Furthermore, it might be necessary to use land for farming or warehouses when it is more profitably used for residential structures. A free market might eventually sort out higher food prices that can cover the taxes, but I think we can all agree that it's better to not arbitrarily increase taxes on a necessity like food.
> So, am I to understand that prime beach real estate is to be taxed the same as a plot in a desert or swamp?
Why would that be the case? A beachfront plot would likely have a higher value than a plot in a desert or swamp, so the tax levied on the beachfront plot’s value would, of course, be higher. It’s a tax on the land’s value, not a tax on the size of the plot.
The value of land is largely subjective. It is based on demand, among other things. If the government assigns arbitrarily high or low value to land based on hypothetical worlds where the land could be used for high rises, factories, or whatever as opposed to what economics has proven is the best actual use of the land and its best estimated price, that is just a terrible version of the same thing we have now.
Assessors observe market activity. The 'purchase price' when you buy land is based on the highest and best potential use of land. The "Land Value Tax" merely appropriates this observed value for public expense (and potential dividend distribution).
The fact that you compared 'prime real estate' to swampland or desert demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of ad valorem taxation and land rent generally. While the rate should be the same (ideally as close to 100% as we can get without causing issues) the actual -value- would be dramatically different.
Under your hypothetical question, the desert and/or swampland could very well have 0 rental value, which means the tax would collect 0 from these locations. 100% of $0 = 0.
Correct. In fact it’s the entire premise. If one doesn’t understand this fact then they do not understand literally anything about Georgism.
GP is woefully confused and so darn sure of it!
lol, you are unambiguously, 100% wrong.
By analogy: “I don’t need to read On The Origin of Species because I’m already familiar with the idea that a singular designer made all of life on earth and I don’t believe it! I already know that actually three intelligent designers made everything on earth. No sense in reading Darwin, who is an idiot for believing there’s only one intelligent designer!”
Like it is a satirical level of misunderstanding. To clarify, in case you’ve also listened to a podcast or whatever: Darwin doesn’t argue there’s one designer. George doesn’t argue for property tax.
There’s nowhere for the conversation to go if you think otherwise and are digging in your heels on it, so I’ll just reassure you that you’re exhibiting satirical levels of misunderstanding and frankly shocking foolishness to not be reacting to point blank demonstrations of your wrongness.
No, this is like saying I'm not going to read "Origin of Species" because it is dated and redundant. You don't have to disagree with something to know it's not worth your time.
>George doesn’t argue for property tax.
I don't think this is correct. But hey, you can redefine words all you want. A tax on land versus a tax on property, it's all just another tax.
>Like it is a satirical level of misunderstanding.
It's not satirical or a misunderstanding on my end as far as I'm concerned. I don't care to continue this discussion either. No matter what I'll say you'll demand I read the book, which I'm not going to do. When I compare it to anything you'll accuse me of misunderstanding something so basic as a tax. No thanks, take it up with someone who cares.
> I don't think this is correct.
Well, I know you don't think that's correct, but that's because you're wrong. You haven't read George's argument and I have, so we're just not on equal footing here.
> A tax on land versus a tax on property, it's all just another tax.
An income tax is also a property tax is also a land tax is also a capital gains tax, yes? This is one way in which you're wrong.
And no, if you didn't exhibit both a ridiculous misunderstanding and an astounding level of confidence in your ignorance, I wouldn't implore you to read the book. You're obviously welcome to carry your ignorance with pride though, so have a good week!
I'd prefer a more substantive critique than an ad-hominem statement
That is not an ad hominem statement. It is an opinion about how overblown the idea is and why George is famous for it. Some property tax is probably a good idea. Does this dude deserve credit for the idea? No. Is he right in asserting that all poverty results from a lack of access to land? No. Will property tax make the economy go brrr? No. The idea of choosing the uses of land by taxing the hell out of random entities just because you think have the money to pay for it is tantamount to communism. I'm not about to read a whole book on the supposed revolutionary merits of property tax, thank you very much.
Oh yeah, now that I got to this comment of yours… it’s very evident you haven’t read it by your (honestly, I don’t say this just to be insulting) downright cartoonish misunderstanding of its contents.
Even more impressive, it’s obvious you haven’t even read a decent critique or summary of it.
You should consider it! There’s a reason for its stature :)
I disagree. I listened to an hour long, glowing summary of it and read about it on Wikipedia. It is just not convincing to me. The only thing cartoonish is how hard people praise it, considering we already have property taxes much like George wanted, which are often quite high and don't add to the economy. Property taxes like that are very close to communism, especially if you take it to an extreme. The higher the taxes, the less you actually own anything.
I have also had the displeasure of arguing with someone who thinks Henry George had the right idea. The dude was literally defending the communist Chinese "property" model which is just a 70 year lease from the government.
Calling my view extreme is like saying that an atheist is religious. Just because I don't accept this idea and all the ensuing conclusions, does not make my views extreme or unreasonable, much less "cartoonish"...
Sorry, I didn’t mean cartoonish in the sense of extreme (quite the opposite), I meant it in the sense of not understanding what you’re talking about.
You’ve stuffed an impressive number of misunderstandings into these few comments, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to help you unwind them except to say you should read the book.
Well, perhaps the people glorifying this book are the ones who have misunderstood it. They certainly did not convey anything about it to me besides what I have said and criticized here. I don't feel the need to read it one way or another. If the main idea is simply that property tax can be good, I already think that. If the main idea is that property tax is likely to fix poverty and inequality (as I have been led to believe), nothing in it can possibly convince me of that. On a similar note, I don't think that reading a Bible will make me doubt the theory of evolution, or the laws of physics. And you can't convince me that the Bible is not contrary to those principles, because I know better than that.
That’s not the main idea. In fact it’s the opposite of the main idea. You do not understand what you’re arguing against, and it’s not a subtle misunderstanding either. You are wrong on the very core of the idea.
So, again, if I misunderstand the ideas and nature of the book, it is because fans of the book do not understand it either. I think we are disagreeing about definitions. I looked at a wiki page about Georgism and I am even more convinced that this is the case and it is being co-opted by communist/socialist influencers. Anyway, it does not matter. This whole thread is going nowhere.
No, it's because you misunderstand what you've heard and you are demonstrably impervious to doubting and therefore improving your own understanding.
The "disagreement about definitions" is the substance of the disagreement. You do not understand the terms that are being used, therefore you do not understand the argument being made.
You say up above that all taxes are just taxes, so a conversation with you about tax policy is bound to roughly a first grade level because you've chosen not to learn what words mean.
As a bystander, I am baffled. You are clearly misunderstanding the core ideas of the book, yet adamant that you wouldn’t learn anything from reading it. Your reduction of the ideas to communism is juvenile. In fact, the alternative tax system proposed would keep value produced from labor in the private hands of the laborer — in essence the exact opposite of communism. Taxation can take many forms, and the details matter quite a lot. Until you open your mind to realize this, even if you still disagreed with the proposals, I think you’ll continue failing to understand why Progress and Poverty is globally one of the most widely distributed political economy books in history.
An economic thinker that can garner praise from democratic socialists like Einstein to neoliberal ghouls like Milton Friedman has to have something going for it.
It's transformed my worldview as well, if nothing else by underlining that free markets and capitalism are not the same thing at all.
The Consolation of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.
It is a profound synthesis of classical philosophy and personal reflection on the human condition. Boethius, writing in prison while awaiting execution, blends Stoic, Neoplatonic, and Christian ideas to address timeless questions of fate, fortune, happiness, and virtue. It transcends religious dogma and focuses on rational inquiry into how one can find inner peace and intellectual clarity amidst an almost total inversion of fortune.
Unlike Marcus Aurelius, writing at the peak of his power, Boethius wrote his at the bottom, and did so with more skin in the game. Marcus gave us Commodus and the Decline, Boethius gave us Aristotle and the Rebirth.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'm interested!
Found it on Standard Ebooks, in case that helps someone else:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/boethius/the-consolation-o...
Curious if you have read A Confederacy of Dunces? It is how I learned of Boethius, although I can't say I remember much of either.
I'm curious as well, the GP comment immediately made me think of Ignatius, haha.
It set my pyloric valve off.
I think it showed the proper reverence for theology and geometry.
That is one of my favorite books. Read it in one day, couldn’t put it down.
Thanks for this brief endorsement. I'll add it to my list of books to read... Currently, running a rather high tsundoku...
My own fav is also called Consolation of Philosophy but it's by Alain de Botton, one of my fav contemporary writers. His prose is fine, and the writing's a treat. His book is of course a modern treatment of Boethius. Recommended!
1. There's a fun reference to this book in the movie "24 Hour Party People"
2. Chaucer's translation is referenced in the OED as the first use of the word "twitter" in the English language
Thank you for the recommendation - I'll take a look!
The truth is, if you ask me this 100 times, you'll probably get 100 different answers, because it's impossible to really pick just one (well two, separating by fiction/non-fiction). But for today I'll go with:
Fiction: Neuromancer
Non-fiction: The Selfish Gene
The Neuromancer has the greatest opening sentence of all times imho: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
This is a great line, though it might not have aged well. Younger generations might just think "Oh, the sky was black"
My kids would think the sky is blue because our TV shows a solid blue screen when there's no signal. For people with TVs like mine, I suppose the line still works.
as a genxer I was not sure if he meant blue or grey and snowing.
Sadly (for me) this now needs an annotated version for younger reader to fully understand.
I'm starting to feel old on a more and more frequent cadence.
The Selfish Gene gave me lots to think about during my escape from the influence of religion in my life. That book gave me a solid idea that a lot of mystery could be explained by very simple concepts over a long period of time.
Came to say The Selfish Gene for nonfiction. Changed the way I thought about things.
Haven't read The Selfish Gene, but reading the summary it looks like it touches on some very similar themes as Stephen Pinker's How The Mind Works, which I thought was also a great book. Gave me a good intuitive understanding of how the human neural system evolved, and I found so much of the book to be prescient and timely in our current "AI era".
What people forget to mention is when they have read a book. I read the Selfish Gene when I was a teen and it left a lasting impression. It was published in 1989. How the Mind works was published in 2011.
Reading the Selfish Gene today as an adult, when you've probably read a dozen similar books already, is not going to have the same effect. It's going to be pretty boring. That's why asking for book recommendations is flawed to begin with.
What similar books are there to The Selfish Gene? I read it not too long ago and found it astonishing.
People are generally enthralled by Sapiens which is just a very mediocre extension + shallow interpretation of Dawkins’ thesis.
Probably too similar, but do follow up with "The Extended Phenotype" if you haven't already.
Dawkins is not an original researcher. He is wonderful at synthesizing research and writing eloquent popular books.
The importance of The Selfish Gene is to write a correct summary of the neo-Darwinian project. In the future (perhaps even now), it will be more famous for the coining of meme (in an appendix IIRC).
However, The Extended Phenotype is a remarkably original exposition of important (then) contemporary frontiers of Darwinism. It is a powerful idea, powerfully described.
It is certainly his most important original contribution to the literature. And a beautiful book. True and convincing. It will change your view of the world. There is no higher praise.
I have been meaning to come back to this since reading Selfish Gene, but haven't gotten to it! I suppose I should :)
"The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture" by Darrel Ray follows in the footsteps of The Selfish Gene to certain logical conclusions about clusters of related memes/concepts (specifically: how religion(s) formed and evolved as clusters of overlapping concepts)
How the Mind works was published in 1997, and The Selfish Gene in 1976.
The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, not 1989. I read it as a teen in the 90s and it is probably my favourite book of all time.
Also,
Bill Bryson’s “Short History of Nearly Everything”.
Brian Greene’s “The Fabric of the Cosmos” (and all of his other books)
Richard Dawkins’ “The Ancestor’s Tale” and “The Blind Watchmaker” are also amazing.
Fiction:
Adrian Czajkowski‘s “Children of Time” and Orson Scott Card‘s “Ender’s Game” are both anong my favourites.
> Fiction: Neuromancer
I've tried twice to read this, but it looses me about 10% in for some reason. Is it worth continuing past that? Does it get "better"? Or does that just signal that the whole book isn't for me?
I was in your boat. I revisited later and powered through and it does indeed get better. The narrative forms into something more cohesive and you start being less exhausted by all the lingo because you've learned it. You settle in. You have to sort of try to immerse yourself. I'd recommend trying to read in larger chunks of time and really absorb the aesthetic of the world.
> exhausted by all the lingo
I think that was my problem with Burning Chrome. Every sentence contained a new word or three that the reader is supposed to guess by context or conversation. Combined with something that read like stream-of-consciousness narration. I literally had no idea what was even happening after 30 or 45 minutes of reading.
But then I had the same problem with Shakespeare, so maybe I'm just dimmer than most folk.
This is exactly how I feel about Dune. The invented words and world-building are overwhelming at first, but once you absorb them it makes the narrative richer.
Herbert was very clever in the sense that his made up words were close to real words. They were easily guessable.
At least Dune has a glossary in the back.
Neuromancer definitely has a unique prose style that Gibson came up with. And a lot of people do find it to be something of a turn-off. Me, I enjoyed it on the first read 30+ years ago and still enjoy it on re-reads. But it's hard to say whether or not somebody else will find it enjoyable. All I can say is that I/ve enjoyed Neuromancer enough to read it 4 or 5 times and will probably read it again at some point.
I read it fast and ignored all the words I didn't understand. You get in the zone. It was great.
I think when you read it matters. I read it after cyberpunk was already established and so I honestly don't remember much about it.
I love Neuromancer specifically for the first third or so, so maybe the latter?
IMO the first part of the book is peak cyberpunk vibes. In particular I read it almost like I would read poetry, late at night when I can't sleep, sometimes jumping back and forth between pages.
I was like you. Plowed through it a couple of times but most of the book didn't make sense.
Then I read a big plot summary I found online and read it again and I really enjoyed it.
It might be worth reading the short stories in 'Burning Chrome'.
Also, there is an excellent BBC audio drama made from the book. It's on Youtube.
It's been a long time since I read it, but it definitely gets better.
Neuromancer is by far my favorite novel. On first reading, it felt to me like someone was finally describing the world in a way that I saw it, but couldn't articulate myself. I come back to it every couple of years and it never fails to entertain me.
That's why it's an interesting question worth asking andbthinking about.
It's fine that it's hard to answer, or the answer changes. The goal is not to actually determine the correct answer but to explore the possible answers and the reasoning that produces them, and the differences that different people produce.
How do people read Neuromancer its just technobabble
A lot of the appeal is aesthetic / stylistic. Yes it's "hard to read" compared to more "traditional" works, but it has its own unique appeal... an appeal that resonates with some people and not-so-much with others.
Another part is that Gibson was the first to put together cyberpunk as a genre and an aesthetic and a little dystopian futurism. It was truly the first that spawned a number of now familiar ideas like AIs battling firewall and attack and VR as a UX method.
As a stylish thriller mostly
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. It's hilarious, absurd, and surprisingly thought-provoking. There are many philosophical questions and lessons that are not really presented as such (though they aren't hidden, either).
I read it when I was young, it really shaped my sense of humor and got me thinking about some of life and the universe's big questions.
So much this. I too read the book when I was very young, and enjoyed it for its awesome mix sci-fi, absurdity, dry humour and absolute classic one-liners.
What I love about it now is how it presents a view of life in the universe as entirely random, but mostly harmless and fun, and that interplanetary exploration is something you would do as a hitchhiker on an adventure, rather than a conqueror chasing resources.
That vision really lifts me when contemplating the future and our place in it when we reach for the stars.
Me too. I still cherish the black hardcover I got on my first trip to the US for $20 (must've been around 2006). This one: "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story".
HHGG is strange. I absolutely loved it when I read it for the first time (in my thirties).
Then at some point I decided to re-read the whole thing and it was decidedly underwhelming. A let down even.
Has anyone else experienced that?
Yeah that was going to be my answer too. They're some of the few books I've actually remembered stuff from.
The absurdity and slant on looking at things helps keep life in perspective (wasn't trying reference the Vortex there).
I remember occasionally when really get absorbed in it, that strangely the absolute absurdity almost starts seeming plausible.
And, I start seeing the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation all over the place now....
Steppenwolf By Herman Hesse. It's remarkable how a fictional character written by someone a century ago can resonate so deeply with a modern person. But then again, that's a common thread amongst great literature. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with loneliness or feeling like they haven't found their footing in this world.
“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at everything else.”
As much as I love Hesse - Plato's Republic allows me to channel the ghost of Socrates whenever I'm in need of company.
Back on topic - I would recommend all of Hesse's books. Glassbead is my personal favorite, but I wouldn't start with that.
Great recommendation. I think the magic for me is that you begin to read a strange narrative of characters in 1920s Germany. It is a tall tale of alienation.
SPOLIER ALERT - Then, slowly, and in the end, convincingly, you come to know he is writing about you the reader. That is a miracle of writing and time and space.
P.S. I think Catcher in the Rye also does that, if you are late teen, but is a far inferior work, and does not bear reading if you are past 20.
I like Hesse and I like Steppenwolf even though neither is my favorite -- but there is a fragment in Steppenwolf that I will never forget, that I have used often, and that anchors the love side of my love-hate relationship with the German language:
"...um im Gasthaus [...] das zu trinken, was trinkende Männer nach einer alten Konvention »ein Gläschen Wein« nennen."
English: in order to drink in the pub that which drinking men, according to an old convention, call "a little glass of wine."
But trust me, it really works in German.
Give his Glass Bead Game a try; it is dense, delightful, & its content would appeal much to the denizens of this site.
Not sure how I feel about the on-going vanishing of efforts to create The Glass Bead Game as a computer interface/programming methodology.
I want it to be something workable which helps folks in their use of computers, but the more I work with node programming interfaces and so forth, the more I worry that the fact that there is no universally agreed-upon answer to the question:
>What does an algorithm look like?
and that such systems are strongly-bounded complexity-wise by screen size, that they simply aren't workable beyond small/toy problems and educational usage, i.e., Blockly.
Narcissus and Goldmund is great. It feels like he's re-approaching themes from Siddhartha, but that notion of paths taken is worth exploring again and again.
Agreed! There is definitely overlap between the three books but my recollection of Siddhartha and N&G is that Hesse dwelled more into how hedonic pleasure corrodes the soul. On a side note, you'll get along well with Doestevesky's Brothers Karamazov if you found N&G affecting.
I assume Hesse was familiar with Kafka and Freud.
GBG has that dream-like Kafkaesque frustration of having a concrete objective, but not be able to achieve it, even though it should be simple and tangible.
However, in GBG it is all meta: the game is unspecified, the objective is unspecified, the adorable miraculous winning play is unspecified. It is meta-Kafka, which is incredibly doubly frustrating...
SPOLIER ALERT: then, slowly, awkwardly, painfully, a realization creeps over you - GBG is life.
Really a tremendous literary achievement.
I actually started with The Glass Bead Game, but I found it too dense. Perhaps I'll give it another try!
My favorite is Siddhartha.
+1 for this one, it’s such a delightful experience to read.
Nobody has mentioned:
- The Lord of the Rings. It is the secret gateway for us nerds to get into literature and poetry (do not skip the poems!). Read all the reference materials like The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, J.R.R.'s letters, the books his son Christopher edited and published, etc. If the poems seem weird or don't make sense, research why they are worded and structured the way they are.
- The Master and Margarita. Obscure and very unique. Make sure to get a good translation (if you don't know Russian) that has some annotations to explain the "inside" jokes/references
У "Мастера и Маргериты" лушчее начало из всех книг, которые я когда-либо читал!
And chapter 2: Pontious Pilate absolutely sealed it for me; I love that book!
Obscure wtf? It's a classic of Russian literature and taught in every Russian lit class.
It's 'obscure' in the sense that something like To Kill a Mockingbird is 'obscure' (The only reason I know it is due to the prevalence of US pop-culture and it being referenced there). Sure everybody in the US probably knows about it and many read it in school, but outside of the US it's pretty rare to meet someone who has read it. I'd be willing to bet a lot more people in Europe have read The Master and Maragrita than To Kill a Mockingbird for example.
Famously well attended courses, those, in the English-speaking world… ;-)
Agreed. It comes up a million times on HN and has an enormous amount of ratings on Goodreads, #3 in Russian lit behind only 1 book of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117833.The_Master_and_Ma.... It is widely popular in the English-speaking world; not obscure.
Obscure also means "difficult to understand" which seems fitting to me - I've read it, but didn't really understand it.
> taught in every Russian lit class.
Most people outside of russia and probably ex soviet republics don't have mandatory Russian literature classes.
That would make it obscure to just about everyone I know, except perhaps one of my friends who grew up in the Ukraine.
"The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life."
Not because I remember anything about it, or believe anything it espouses, or even like it all that much, but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace.
If someone I don't know too well asks me what my favorite book is, I say Atlas Shrugged. If they react inappropriately, I'll be cordial and treat them with respect, but I don't want to be friends. If they're way too supportive - the same rule applies.
If they're critical in a way I can appreciate, then I know they can either tolerate ideas they hate or have the social accumen to not go too hard in the paint early on in a relationahip. Really, I'm just looking for people who won't jump down my throat on a faux pas.
Later on in the relationship I'll tell them my actual favorite book, "A Canticle for Leibowitz", or "Neuromancer", or "The Dying Earth" (my opinion changes based on my mood).
> "The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life."
"huh, ok"
> Really, I'm just looking for people who won't jump down my throat on a faux pas.
I think you're dismissing the people such as myself that would note you as an idiot without comment and move on wanting nothing to do with you.
Edit: tests and trick questions with people you just met is an ineffective way to navigate the world. My 2c
> I think you're dismissing the people such as myself that would note you as an idiot without comment and move on wanting nothing to do with you.
> Edit: tests ... with people you just met is an ineffective way to navigate the world. My 2c
Do you see the irony here?
I wouldn't personally run the kind of test OP is running, but I think that even in your case the test succeeded: they've successfully separated themselves from someone who is inclined take one aspect of who they present themselves as and immediately put them in a box, label them, and dismiss them. They don't have to know that you're that kind of person for the filter to be effective.
There's a second problem here. OP is either unaware or doesn't care that they're being filtered by people who are wary of others who knowingly and consistently lie to strangers as the common case of getting to know one another.
I think most adults have a sensible aversion to that. In fact I'd go so far as saying that this common filter is to social cohesion what determinism is to a programming language. I'm happy to have an escape hatch for novel cases, but there are very good reasons for the common case being common.
Edit: clarification
Dunno, testing people like that is such an incredibly unhealthy and misguided way to talk to people that I have a very hard time thinking I'm missing out here. Maybe that's just me though
Unhealthy for who, exactly? People who I won't get along with?
Isn't it better that we don't interact, in this case? People aren't infinitely malleable - and I have no right to demand behavior from others. So, in my mind, it's better for everyone if we're separated from each other.
Do you hang around people that dislike talking to you? I don't recommend that. I don't think anyone recommends that.
Perhaps it's that you're filtering out people who don't like to be lied to while those who pass the reverse test don't have problem with lies.
Honest small talk can reveal similar biases without resorting to a too clever by half ruse.
Unfortunately, I have a problem where I love jerks, so we'd probably be good friends.
Yeah, it's likely that the two of you wouldn't get along. I think that's the point, though.
They want to associate with people who would respond with curiosity to a controversial statement, you don't want anything to do with someone who likes Atlas Shrugged and you aren't interested to know more. The filter worked and neither of you waste your time!
I think that is a bit of a misunderstanding of where I'm coming from here. Their assumption is that there is a limited subset of reasons why someone would not engage on this specific topic. I pointed out another that they may not have considered since this requires an assumption of intent that is unwarranted and in my opinion, unwise to make.
What they're looking for:
> I know they can either tolerate ideas they hate
Your explanation:
> would note you as an idiot without comment and move on
Maybe I'm also misunderstanding what you're trying to communicate, but it sure sounds to me like your motivations are exactly what they're trying to filter out of their life.
I feel like the point here is that there is a sort of silly manipulation that OP is actively conducting on initial conversations with people that only take one data point. I am 100% sure that people are much more complex than an Atlas Shrugged test, very similar to the way that prediction algorithms use multiple attributes. One test or attribute is overly simplistic.
I don't think it requires any special insight to understand that a fantastic approach to meeting people is to simply be genuine and honest.
There's a difference in reaction I think. Two people can hear "I love Atlas shrugged" from a new acquaintance and one would start arguing that it's a bad book and anyone who likes it is dumb, etc. Another would say OK, but will think that the speaker is dumb.
Basically there's no way to find if someone would "tolerate ideas they hate" or not if they refuse to engage with the idea altogether. The second guy in my example looks like he would tolerate these ideas but he won't.
No! That is not at all what is happening here!
>respond with curiosity to a controversial statement
It's not about being a "controversial statement" (the implication being anyone who reacts against it is a close-minded woke or something like that). It's about "I read it in 8th grade" + "it changed my life and it's still my favourite book". Honestly swap out for any book and it would be equally cringe to boast about how your thinking has not evolved or matured since you were 12.
> you don't want anything to do with someone who likes Atlas Shrugged
No, I don't like anything to do with someone who boasts about being immature in such a crass manner. For that matter, I also don't like anything to do with people who would intentionally lie and manipulate their interlocutor on their first meeting.
> If they react inappropriately, I'll be cordial and treat them with respect, but I don't want to be friends. If they're way too supportive - the same rule applies.
> Really, I'm just looking for people who won't jump down my throat on a faux pas.
I think when cactacea says "huh, ok", this is neither inappropriate, or "jumping down someone's throat", or being "way too supportive" -- so I think by tb_technical's stated standards, cactacea has "passed" the filter, but is understandably alienated.
Right, but the end goal of the filter isn't just to have a list of passes and fails. The filter exists because OP doesn't want to associate with people who are overly ideological—one way or the other.
If someone silently puts OP in a bucket and never reaches out again, the end goal is still achieved.
I think the filter is quite effective, I wouldn't want to be friends with anyone who has such a strategy!
Yea exactly, it's like "I just met you, and this is crazy, here let me shit-test you maybe". Like running a "reverse a linked list" test on first meeting. There is by definition judgement to it, which, judging strangers, can come off as arrogant / condescending
No, I don't see the irony. GP is making a judgement based on a statement that paints him as a crass individual (to say the least). GGP is making a judgement based on how people react to his own statement that is actually made-up to sound crass on purpose.
How about "tests with an obviously high risk of systematic, invisible false negatives are bad"
Is it a false negative if the point of the test is to filter out people who will immediately assume that anyone who likes Atlas Shrugged is someone that they don't want to know better?
It's not a filter I would choose to use, I'm just saying that OP isn't providing a failure case—the filter is still doing its job there.
Few books are more indicative of people I'd like to filter out immediately than Atlas Shrugged. It's about as close to saying "screw other people" as possible.
Yeah I guess if their filter is literally "will this person stop talking to me if I like Atlas Shrugged" and not actually something like "will this person engage in respectful disagreement with me."
Of course the first test is useless, so I suspect they're trying and failing to produce the second test.
Totally agree. While the logic of the comment wasn't bad, that's just a weird maniuplative style of social engineering.
Thinking one step ahead instead of two
> I think you're dismissing the people such as myself that would note you as an idiot without comment and move on wanting nothing to do with you.
Not OP. But I would say the filter is working. If you would treat somebody like an idiot for liking a book you don’t like, I indeed, would want you filtered out of my circle of friends.
It’s not just liking a book, as if they named some cliche young adult novel. It’s the magnum opus of the author’s philosophy as a novel. They’re dismissing them for the philosophical views they’re celebrating.
It’s the other end of the spectrum from disliking someone because their favorite book is The Grapes of Wrath or A Brave New World. I actually agree with the values expressed in those books, and I can also understand someone not wanting to be friends with me because of it.
But at least if you’re going to have friends with a different philosophy, seems like a better move to reach across to people who believe in community and collaboration over self-interest and individualism. That’s just me, though.
I can like a book without agreeing with it.
Ok but your favourite book?
Absolutely. You could say the ideas are well presented or it provided a contrast that clarified your own thinking. But, if someone asks "What's your favorite book?" and you say "The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life." then... come on. You either like it or are quite the tricky communicator.
"Someone dropped it off a bridge, hit my abusive step-dad and killed him dead. Soft spot for Ayn Ran ever since, beliefs aside." That's someone I'd want to be friends with.
Tricky communicators make the best friends.
And have it change your life?
> And have it change your life?
Yes, a literary work can both be life-changing and not something you agree with.
EG:
I do not at all agree with Marx. Me and others reading his works changed my life irrevocably. Ditto for Hitler.
But you do get that if you said "The best book I've ever read was Mein Kampf in 8th grade. Changed my life." then some people very reasonably won't want to be your friend, right?
Would you befriend someone who said, "The best book I've ever read was Mein Kampf in 8th grade. My life, however, was entirely unaltered thereby."?
I’d be mostly confused. How did the best book you’ve ever read not alter your life?
I was just quoting the actual question in the comment.
You had me until "reasonably". I'd rather friends who have read than friends who prefer ignorance.
I wouldn’t hold it against someone for having read it. Again, big difference between reading a book and saying it’s your favorite.
On a tangent, did you find brave news world describing a dystopia or a utopia? I find myself convinced of both depending on my mood.
Brave new world describes ... approximately the 21st century 1st world countries' upper-middle class. We are living it. TokTok/YouTube is soma.
> Edit: tests and trick questions with people you just met is an ineffective way to navigate the world. My 2c
Then it sounds like you won't ask someone their favorite book and write them off entirely if they say it's a raunchy romance novel about industrialists?
I liked the parts about the railway signaling, and suffered through all the multi-page anti-regulatory rants in the middle of lovemaking. Looking for recommendations for entertaining tales of signal networks. :P
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett has my favorite entertaining read about signaling networks.
In addition to the invention of a working mail system, you’ll read descriptions of semaphore towers working in a way that is similar to the Telegraph, except with light rather than pulsed waves over wire. It’s also hilariously funny and deeply philosophical at times.
I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Pratchett wrote some amazing books. And if you're into animation (especially older animation), you can find the old discworld animated movies on YouTube.
The first discworld book I read was Thief of Time, and I've been hooked ever since
Thanks! From the blurb, this looks perfect, and I've been meaning to read some Terry Pratchett. I really enjoyed being a substitute postal worker in Yoku's Island Express.
Every book is unique, but they all share his unique philosophy and wit. Highly recommend any of his works. The more you read of discworld the more of a world it will build, but none are so highly coupled that they can't be read independently.
I love how all the replies are focusing on how this is supposedly their favorite book and not the bit about "it changed my life"
> I think you're dismissing the people such as myself that would note you as an idiot without comment and move on wanting nothing to do with you.
Sounds to me like you failed the test.
Yeah you gotta go around assuming that anyone might lie to you about their favorite book in order to use your reaction to determine something about your personality. This behavior is normal and good.
You missed the point, I’m afraid. What’s neither normal nor good is writing someone off as an idiot because their taste in books differs from yours.
Exercising your judgement about how other people exercise their judgement is good actually.
I think being judgmental towards people who aren't seeking your judgement is parasocial and weird actually.
I have to agree. Basing any of your life decisions on quick hacks with bad assumptions seems like a fast way to a mediocre outcome.
Welcome to the techie obsession with heuristics.
For a test to be effective it doesn't have to be 100% effective every time. Just because it doesn't filter out rare individuums like yourself it doesn't mean it doesn't filter out 90% of them. If someone asks a question it's not unwise to assume they'll have a comment on that.
This is the root of why folks did not appreciate those cringy "social experimenter" kids growing up.
I think you are proving his point.
You're free to have your own perspective of course. I would suggest you re-read my post
I am having trouble seeing how this doesn’t just, one way or another, filter for people unfamiliar with both the literary and philosophical merits of Atlas Shrugged.
Possibility 1: A too-enthusiastic reaction. Filtered.
Possibility 2: A too-negative reaction. Filtered.
Possibility 3: a neutral-enough reaction to not get filtered, but at least some parts of their opinion just shifted toward the negative and wary. If not filtered, at least now distant for some time.
Possibility 4: a neutral-enough reaction because they have low familiarity with the book. Only pairing that passes unscathed.
I’d recommend saying Twilight instead. It doesn’t come with garbage-politics implications (at least, simply liking the book doesn’t)
[edit] hm. But then people being enthusiastic fans of it isn’t as useful a filter. This is tricky. Having it be something big fans of which are usually unpleasant is a benefit for filtering the other people, but sends false negative signals about yourself.
I agree. "Atlas Shrugged" isn't "Mein Kampf", but if someone told me MK was their favorite book, I'd back away slowly without stopping to figure whether they were making some clever commentary on open-mindedness and subtlety of thought. Now, if you told me you'd read Atlas Shrugged or Mein Kampf and found a nonzero set of ideas worth thinking through, at least to evaluate whether or why your own personal philosophy was able to determine they were bad ideas, let's have that conversation! But your favorite? Uh, I think my wife needed something in another room.
I would do the same. But maybe that's the kind, us?, of person OP doesn't want to do anything with at all.
OP is playing checkers; the rest of HN is playing chess....
I'm only smart enough to play checkers. But I'm happy with my lot in life.
Well done OP, this cactacea guy does not seem like someone you'd want to be friends with :)
cactacea said they would neither jump down OP's throat, nor show an excessive amount of interest. That puts them firmly into friendship material territory for OP. Not sure how it's a helpful test.
You just failed the test.
Good. I don't want anything to do with people that "test" others like this. You cannot do so without making assumptions about intent.
I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, yes you probably don't want to go through life "testing" people in this way as I'm sure there are some unintended consequences of doing so and you probably end up with kind of a boring circle of people around you. On the other hand, I would never want to be friends with someone who thinks someone is an idiot because they liked a particular book. "You liked this thing I don't like and therefore I want nothing to do with you" is extremely childish. So it would seem to have exactly the intended effect in this case.
Saying it is your favorite book is one thing. Saying it "changed your life" is another and yes, I'd think anyone who's life was changed by that particular book is indeed an idiot. I just don't see myself wanting to continue to engage with that person after a comment like that. Maybe I'm just impatient shrug
Cactacea Shrugged
Before I made a judgement about someone making that claim, I'd need to know in what way it 'changed their life'.
And this is where I usually come clean about the exercise.
Certainly worth asking, but in case of Atlas Shrugged like 90% predictable.
a better strategy would be a follow-up question on how it changed their life
i'm with the parent commenter here as i find your response very much telling on how you evaluate things and frankly, more idiotic than someone's life being changed, even by the "intended" interpretation of the book
e.g. would you say that everyone who liked / was influenced by reading "mein kampf" is a nazi?
Depending on context I could see myself asking a followup question. In this specific instance, no that's enough for me personally. As I can see from the other replies the OP made my assessment was in line with my personal values.
yes pretty much or at least a wanna be one.
Who start reading "mein kampf" beside scholar anyway?
I read books that have contrary opinions to mine so I can understand their ideological underpinnings and mistakes.
People who only read things they agree with means they're blind to the problems with it, and fold like wet cardboard when they try to argue it.
Or even more likely, as soon as you make a point even slightly against their beliefs they call you a socialist/communist/fascist/Nazi/whatever cliche they hate the most that particular day.
Yes, exactly.
There may be as many reasons to read it as there are people on the planet. People who want to control other people's thoughts give me the chills.
you can read it - I have read portions of it - but it’s still a pretty bad book by a lot of metrics. It’s just famous like maos red bible is famous - but both are horrible literature
Edit: so if you read and like it there is something wrong with you
Who start reading "mein kampf" beside scholar anyway?
I haven't actually started it yet, but I have a copy on my shelf waiting. Along with Das Kapital, Mao's "Little Red Book", etc.
Why? Especially given that I'm closer to a Randian than anything else (I really did like Atlas Shrugged although it's not my favorite book). Well, I feel like if you're going to reject a belief system, or feel somewhat at-odds with followers of a given system of thought or whatever, it's best to have some familiarity with that system of thought. It's just a matter of intellectual honesty.
I mean, looking back over the years here on HN and the various discussions that pop up around Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand. You can tell that a LOT of the people criticizing Rand and Atlas Shrugged have never read the book (or probably any of her other works) and are attacking straw-men.
I refrain from (most) attacks on Marx (and the specifics of what Hitler, Mao, etc had to say) because I don't have the deep familiarity with their material. OTOH, I have no problem saying I have enough general familiarity to mostly reject the thinking of those folks in a sort of abstract sense. The point being, one may read a work that you disagree with (or expect to disagree with) just so you can have an intellectually honest conversation about it, or a deeper conversation that goes beyond a superficial familiarity.
Mein Kampf is so retarded and boring reading you have to be a nazi / facist fanboy to like it
One must imagine Atlas shrugging.
I am guessing you have never met someone who actually did like "Atlas Shrugged".
The fact is, some people deserve harsh judgement. Including people who lie to someone and think they are morally superior for doing so.
I liked Atlas Shrugged.
Why? What redeeming qualities does it have that make you prefer it to less mediocre books?
Not the person you were responding to, but if you ignore the hundred-page speech (which isn't that difficult to do) it's a fairly serviceable pulp sci-fi romance novel. It's far from Shakespeare and far from my favorite thing I've ever read, but it'll do in a pinch.
I don't care for the philosophy/politics, but I've read a lot of good sci-fi that I didn't care for the philosophy behind. I like Starship Troopers, which isn't as fascist as some people think but is certainly right-wing. I like Orson Scott Card, regardless of what I think of his opinions on gay people. I like the Culture novels, which are lowkey anarcho-communist. I like China Mieville, and he's an unsubtle hardcore Marxist.
Those are all much better than Rand, but not totally out of the ballpark (I think the Fountainhead is actually much better written than Atlas Shrugged).
I agree with the original thread comment: people who can't separate literary and political merit are usually pretty tiresome in lots of other ways.
Thank You for the list, I'm going to look up a couple of these. I've never read the Culture wars or China Mieville.
Somehow I've missed a whole range of books from 80's through early 2000's.
A serviceable pulp novel is in line with my definition of mediocre literature, personally.
I don't prefer it to less mediocre books.
I liked Atlas Shrugged, but consider The Fountainhead a better work.
If the test is an insincere answer to a question that may tell me a lot about your worldview, then I'm fine failing it. I would rather know genuine people.
I wanted to post something similar.
It's crazy how many people essentially jumped at their throat with obnoxious comments and even outright ridiculing the poster (see the "checkers/chess" comment as an example).
Quite literally the author explained the whole reasoning and they still "failed the test".
I haven't even read atlas shrugged but I guess at this point I'm curious to read it and possibly adopt a similar strategy: it's clearly working way better than intended.
If you’re gonna do just one, I hear Anthem is the closest to being a decent novel. But I’ve only personally managed The Fountainhead (oh my god, don’t) and part of Atlas Shrugged (after the priming of Fountainhead, I could not get far), plus way too many of the essays and enough of her book on epistemology to know I didn’t need to keep reading (“ok so the fiction is terrible as literature and is entirely unconvincing, but maybe the non-fic is better?” I reasoned. Nah.)
Don't let me dissuade you, but it's not a very good read. There's a reason I forgot almost all of it.
But if you like her long-winded style, have fun! It's a long one.
I don’t want to pass this test. Someone who uses one of our first interactions to test how tolerant I am of Objectivism removing themselves from my life is an ideal outcome.
It wasn't a test about Objectivism. It was about ideological intolerance and zealotry in general. Note that you could fail it by whether you're pro or con Objectivism.
Maybe that’s the intention of the test, but that’s not what actually happened. Atlas Shrugged was the only subject in the question. Whether they generalize from that one example is up to them.
You can test someone’s general health with an eye exam, but it’s still an eye exam.
Lol yes, so much this
If we're doing litmus tests, your handle is almost certainly going to get you ignored by a lot of people.
And you just lost The Game.
Have you considered that someone who hears Atlas Shrugged is your favourite book might react similarly?
I'd be polite, but note you down as either an immature thinker or someone who likes to provoke. With a little more prodding, possibly also one of those people who has to be right about everything, and this is their hill.
I guess I'm on passive radar and you are on active.
> Have you considered that someone who hears Atlas Shrugged is your favourite book might react similarly?
I'm not the author of the post you're replying to, but that line of reasoning reminds me of an hiring bias that I read a while ago: avoiding a bad hire is more important than getting good hire.
In this context this could mean that the tb_technical really cares about avoiding people with extreme viewpoints, even if that means missing a few people they might get along with.
> I'd be polite, but note you down as either an immature thinker or someone who likes to provoke. With a little more prodding, possibly also one of those people who has to be right about everything, and this is their hill.
Weirdly enough, to me (as a third person) it seems you're proving tb_technical's point anyway: you still have some strong views on the matter, you just would not express them. Still somebody that, according to tb_technical's writing, they wouldn't like to be friends with. The main difference here is that the feeling is reciprocated by you.
The more comments I read, the more tb_technical's idea sounds good.
> In this context this could mean that the tb_technical really cares about avoiding people with extreme viewpoints, even if that means missing a few people they might get along with.
That's a defensible idea. Making friends with the wrong people can really mess up your life.
And yet, I keep reading about this epidemic of loneliness...
> Making friends with the wrong people can really mess up your life.
> And yet, I keep reading about this epidemic of loneliness...
Both things can be true at the same time, this is not a dichotomy.
At the same time, there's a old saying in my company that goes like "better alone than in bad company". Timeless wisdom, I guess.
On this matter, I was recently brought to pondering about the extinction of the so called "third place". The reasoning goes like this: people often used to have three places they attend the most: they home, their workplace, and the "third place".
The "third place" can be pretty much everything, and it's the place where socialising happen: for example, in many sitcoms it used to be some kind of bar/pub/restaurant: the McLaren's in HIMYM, "Arnold's" in Happy Days and another similar one whose name i can't remember in Friends. When I was a kid, it was a public park where we played soccer, and most kids just spent time there.
It seems this is going out of style or something?
Two things I noticed are:
- nowadays spending time in bars/pubs etc can get costly. Might be the general economic downturn, but it seems to be that going at the bar and having a beer or two used to be more accessible in the past (older folks are welcome to chime in and offer their perspective).
- pubs with larger university people tend to be more affordable, but the age band is quite restricted... Not formally, but somewhat implicitly.
> The more comments I read, the more tb_technical's idea sounds good.
Yeah, they're just doing a bit. A fairly tame bit for that matter. There's an expression "giving someone enough rope to hang themselves" that I think fits here.
Depending on crowd and delivery I might not clock it as a bit. But even someone earnestly answering Atlas Shrugged, they know what they're doing and that deserves at least a few followups. Probably a bit mischievous myself. "Oh, that's cool, because I always wanted to find someone I could ask why the statue is doing squats instead of shrugs?"
Exactly. I agree with OP. I don't think Atlas Shrugged is the best book around.
But by using a negative to judge the response of the other people, the other people could just as easily be judging him.
Now both parties are looking down on each other. When really they agree.
If I met someone who said that any book was their favorite book, and then didn't remember anything about the book or had any value for the ideas that it advocated for, then I'd have to consider that person a bit of a manipulator.
Being disingenuous is just a bad first and only data point to give someone about yourself.
I’m going to note you down as a manipulator and not only keep myself away from you but anyone I care about.
I have considered it. I generally don't like people who fly off the handle immediately.
I really like your radar analogy
I think you are missing point, not everyone is up for an inquisition at every new meeting. Using this method, people that agree with you might just move on, because they don't feel like probing you. You are turning away people that would agree with you just because they don't want to argue with you. You also haven't given any reason for them to even try'.
Or better example:
Person 1: I like Atlas Shrugged (secretly don't but use it as a test when meeting people)
Person 2: Amazing, I also like Atlas Shrugged (secretly don't, but don't want to argue with another Atlas Shrugged fan boy, so just nod head and agree, and just looking how to end conversation and move on).
I don't see how this isn't the filter still working. A polite end to the conversation and self-selection is just as useful to me as being scolded.
I've used the same test (simply reference Ayn Rand in a non-disparaging context when topical) and it's fantastic what the results are as far as actually finding independent, open, and prosocial people.
There's a narrow band of people that will actually give Rand a fair shot and treat her objectively without also mentioning that they're also in Mensa and into Agorism (the opposite and ironic red flags of slavishness to Objectivism).
With that narrow band of people you can have any conversation and explore any topic because they have their own thoughts! And I'd rather discover who is and isn't a member of that set early on.
In short, not a bug, will not fix.
So you want to also turn away the people that dismiss Ayn Rand too harshly?
So turn away the people really super into Ayn Rand, and also the people that dismiss her to quickly?
Kind of weeding out the Left and Right?
That is a narrow band.
I've seen some pretty smart people that react very negatively to Ayn Rand. Sometimes just as a reaction to the fan-boys of Rand that miss-interpret her and have made such a thin philosophy so popular.
It is possible for people that would give her a fair argument intellectually, but get tired of dealing with the fan-boys and not want to engage anymore.
Unfortunately, Rand has become part of the culture war, so it is hard to find anybody talking about her actual philosophy. But, guess that is the group you are finding.
It's not filtering out the left and right specifically, but it is filtering out the people that have succumbed to stereotypy as their default heuristic and forget that a conversation is between two humans, not simply a consumerist/anti-consumerist call-and-response.
Guilty. I like the narrow band of people who I can watch a football game with, and have it not be a chore.
Everything is so tiresome nowadays.
I know almost nothing about Atlas Shrugged, besides that it is very political, but this seems a strange and deceptive way to interact with people. I can't imagine it is very good for establishing trust with someone even if they "pass the test". I would think that many level-headed people you seek to select for would not appreciate being tested in this way, but I suppose you are selecting for a very specific kind of person who would find these kinds of social games and tests interesting.
It is political, but it is also not a good book. Like, it has a gigantic monologue in the middle where one of the main characters just stands there and expounds on the theme of the book, for many pages. It is not well written.
If somebody said they liked… some books by Heinlein or whatever, there’s a guy with some Political Opinions. But he can write. It is believable, picking a Heinlein book isn’t an obvious political test.
> for many pages
For those who do not know, this is an understatement. The monologue is some 60 pages long.
This is a great example.
Learning someone enjoys Rand's writing/philosophy diminishes them in my eyes, but Heinlein is just good taste in scifi.
my feeling is that it's a "badge" book and by that i mean, you wear it as a badge in order to signal your fluency in pro/anti objectivism conversations. conversations about it remind me of my post-high school experiences with peers while discussing movies. people always chose apocalypse now, the crying game, or the usual suspects as the "best movie in recent memory" and the reasoning was generally because they wanted to appear thoughtful/cerebral, but edgy, but also down with a little popcorn movie violence or other human vice. it was a signal, not a preference.
as such, i found atlas shrugged to be a dull, self-indulgent thought piece that was aesthetically and technically unappealing. however, it is an important work that has influence on philosophies of human politics.
but that's just, like, my opinion, man
IMO a piece of fiction works better as a “badge” in this sense if it can be defended as a really good work of art in-and-of itself, without the message behind it. Part of the game is that being the one to obviously introduce ideology into the discussion is a bad opening move.
Like what if the other party doesn’t take the political bait and starts talking about train sex or whatever?
wholeheartedly agree. i guess the message i was trying to convey is that i see people wearing familiarity with the work of art as a badge, not that i've badged them with it.
anyway, yes, political conversations would be far more productive if they discussed train sex over against rand-based political/economic theory
If someone starts talking about train sex, the ensuing conversation is going to be an absolute riot
When I was younger "2001" was my favorite movie. As I grew older, "The Wizard of Oz" moved into the front. There's never been another movie remotely like it, before or since. It stands alone.
> a gigantic monologue in the middle
So just because you can't think of another book that has this, it's not well written?
idk I'm no follower of objectivism but Atlas Shrugged is a book you definitely dont forget... and in my classification that makes it good
I mean… can’t really account for taste. But it is extremely rare that I’ll see anybody try to defend Atlas Shrugged as a good book in and of itself. Even you, trying to find some good in it, could only classify it as “memorable.” Lots of things are memorable and bad!
Honestly I would probably ask OP whether they re-read it as an adult and whether it held up on second reading. I know I've gone back to things I liked in 8th grade that seem very cringe to me today.
Consider Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle". A looong, socialist monologue takes up a big chunk of the book. It's the socialist version of "Atlas Shrugged".
The West Wing is this for American liberals.
Though not as dull. Rand's writing can send you off to sleep in no time - and then if you're reading in bed you risk having the book fall on your head.
Canticle for Leibowitz was pretty good.
Regardless of political opinions, that monologue in the middle of Atlas Shrugged is some quite poor writing. TBH if someone said their Atlas Shrugged was their favorite book, I would assume they were making some sort of political statement, which seems like a bit of an intrusion on what otherwise ought to be a fun chat about books.
I was a teenager when I read her books, and these days mostly disagree with her politics. It was a while ago, but I vaguely remember The Fountainhead being a better read than Atlas Shrugged.
The best part of the monologue is in-universe, it supposedly takes 3 hours, but everyone on YouTube takes 4-5 hours, which means John Galt was speaking at 1.5x speed.
Honestly Ayn Rand's sexual politics are more interesting than her economic politics. The books are mostly about masculinity and its definition. The ideal men in her books are immutable flawless beings, and the (good) women learn to define themselves by dating progressively better men.
In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny goes from Francisco d'Anconia (no ambition playboy) to Hank Rearden (ambitious steel magnate that's a slave to the state) to John Galt (genius that refuses to compromise on anything). Dagny achieves fulfillment by collecting personality traits from the people she dates—which ultimately leads to her realization she is the one responsible for her own self-actualization (kind of contradictory lol).
The Fountainhead engages with this more, because the conformist Keating is portrayed as more harmful than the physically abusive Roark.
I'm convinced Ayn Rand defined the "sigma male" and she'll get no credit for it as a woman. She engages with the concept much more than the manosphere, because her sigma males end up poor, homeless, and societally unsuccessful because of their inability to compromise.
Contrast the dream sold to young men on social media, which is "not compromising on anything will make you rich and attractive!"
I don't agree with Rand's value system but she accurately describes what happens to people that hate compromise. The only reason why one would be a sigma is if one prioritizes "being right" over every other aspect of one's life.
Like I said, it was a million years ago, and I was a teenager so I didn’t really engage with the material as deeply as you seem to have. But I vaguely recall Roark being the main viewpoint character in the Fountainhead, while Dagny was in Atlas, right?
I think that is one thing I enjoyed about the Fountainhead, it felt a little more grounded because, even though the main character is this egoist superman guy, we at least are with him as he’s having a bad time.
I just remember Gault being this rumor hiding off in the wilderness or whatever, then he shows up with his sci-fi engine, drops pages and pages of dialogue, and… wins? I forget how it ends for him, tbh.
> But I vaguely recall Roark being the main viewpoint character in the Fountainhead, while Dagny was in Atlas, right?
iirc the Fountainhead has two viewpoints, Roark (heroic architect) and Dominique (Roark's lover). My belief is that Roark is a fake protagonist. It's Dominique who undergoes most of the character growth, as she learns to accept Roark's heroism.
Roark gets kicked out of architecture school for not designing in a neoclassical style, then continually loses jobs or has to fight others to achieve his vision. He's suffering like a protagonist, but it doesn't actually lead to him changing like a protagonist. His struggles are generally the same—trying to design buildings and having his designs criticized/ruined on superfluous grounds.
Contrast Dominique who goes from Keating (mediocrity) to Wynand (societal success) to Roark (self-actualized man). Dominique's the one who redeems herself by the end of the book.
> I just remember Gault being this rumor hiding off in the wilderness or whatever, then he shows up with his sci-fi engine, drops pages and pages of dialogue, and… wins? I forget how it ends for him, tbh.
Galt invented a perpetual motion machine (supposedly not one) but refuses to give it to pseudo-Communist America and spends all his time doing manual labour. Society collapses because Galt starts a movement to make the genius capitalists of the world go on strike, then he makes a speech at the end to flex on everyone as the world descends into anarchy.
The funniest part is the speech has no relevance to the plot. Society would collapse regardless of Galt making the speech. The speech convinces the government to let Galt take over the country to fix it, but Galt tells the government to pound sand.
The ending of the book is a complete societal collapse so Galt can rebuild from scratch.
Ironically Galt shares his strategy with the Argentinian Trotskyist J. Posadas, who wanted the Soviets to start a nuclear war since the destruction of society would allow the workers to rise up.
I've re-read The Fountainhead about a dozen times and find a few new gems each time I go through it.
That monologue was PAINFUL. My god not just the length of it but what an absolute blowhard to deliver such a self-righteous diatribe. I forgot about that until you mentioned it!
The idea that the people are not ready for certain technologies strongly resonates with me. Every day I find myself falling further and further out of touch with new technology.
Never read The Fountainhead.
Man, what an ass way of choosing your friends... I doubt it's optimal.
I think you just proved his point. This response is clearly quite aggressive and over the top and thus falls in the camp of being unlikely friends vs. someone who takes a more cordial approach.
I don't view someone giving me a test on first meeting as "cordial" either.
Cordial or not, I certainly wouldn’t want to be friends with someone sociopathically “testing” me like that. It’s literal anti-social behavior.
No one deserves to be friends with anyone, actually - it's something two people decide mutually.
To see it any other way reeks of entitlement.
Folks aren't reacting negatively because they want to be OP's friend, they're reacting negatively because OP makes a practice of lying to people about something inconsequential in order to try to provoke them as a form of test. That's not the way most normal people think about building personal relationships. We don't go around deliberately setting traps for others.
Very amurican I’d say.
> The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged
I didn't read it until I was well into my 30s, but I very much enjoyed it. Not the best I've ever read, but I have read it a few times now.
I don't agree with a lot of it, and I can't relate to some of the characters personally, I just think it is extremely well written. The characters and their motivations are very well laid out, and we get to go on a journey with them.
I was pretty similar. I heard so much about it that I figured I should read it, but that wasn't until my late 20s. I feel weird telling people I liked it because of how it's used as a categorizer. It's obviously a flawed philosophy and I don't agree with huge chunks of it -- but its a book that just sticks in your head and the ideals it espouses are attractive.
Honestly I think of it as a piece of media similar to superhero movies. The practical reality of superheros implemented literally would likely be a complete catastrophe. But watching fictional superheros do acts of good is inspiring.
Regarding the last paragraph, I'd recommend the feature film "Mystery Men" and the graphic novel series "Astro City." The Amazon TV series "The Boys" also covered this ground but did it a little too ham-handedly for my liking.
Congratulations on your independence. May I recommend her other novel The Fountainhead, which is about the war between individualism and collectivism within a person?
I enjoyed that also, but found it much less character driven and I got lost in the weeds somewhere
What happens later in the relationship when you reveal you lied about your favorite book as some weird social vetting process? It seems the insincerity would turn a lot of people off.
Believe it or not its made quite a few people laugh
As someone who also hates extreme non-nuanced views, and seeks people who are thoughtful and emotionally level, I don't think I would be put off at all.
In fact I'd guess that if you really did talk with tb for a while, you would probably pick up that Ayn Rand is not a fit for the beliefs they convey.
So, you will lie about your favourite book to socially engineer people? That would be the end of any friendship even if your favourite books are actually good reads. Why would I want to be friends with someone who will lie to qualify me? I don’t put up with that amongst mobile device salespeople and that’s a small investment.
This is fine. People don't have to be friends, you know? And it's ok not to be friends with everyone.
I just know what types of people I like to hang out with - and they're typically people patient enough to put up with my dumb ass.
The only thing wrong with this whole thing is that you think it’s okay to start relationships with a lie. Thats not okay. It demonstrates a lack of integrity.
Your friends deserve better.
Perhaps, but they do seem to like me. Should I warn them? Tell them I'm dangerous?
No of course not. You're not dangerous...if so, uh, I am logged into a random stranger's Hacker News account. :)
Kidding aside friend, I get the feeling you've been hurt in the past and that's really sad. I can't change any of that. But I can tell you that you're a pretty cool person in the present and you can attract other cool people by being authentically you. Consider your list of favourite books - you're fricking cool.
If you're authentically you, you will get burned and that's sad. But in a way, you're burning other people to keep from being burned.
Thanks for this talk - I enjoy you.
Well, thanks! That's much appreciated. I was being a little whimsical with the parent comment, by the way.
The entire comment tree is honestly really baffling to me.
From people claiming I'm a secret fan of Rand, to people claiming I'm antisocial, or a sociopath - it's been a wild ride.
From my perspective, it would be worse to subject myself to people who hate me. And just because I'm not friends with someone doesn't mean I wouldn't jump start their car, or help them out in another way in a pinch.
It's all just so bizarre to me.
Have a good night.
I agree - the comment tree has been baffling to me too, but rather amusing. I understand that some people disagree with your original post about using a particular book to sound people out, but I don't understand the harsh reactions to the method itself (it seems some were against the method rather than the book?). That kind of thing sounds to me like an interesting conversation starter or prompt!
from an outsider's perspective, this has been some of the most fun hacker news comment chains ive seen for a good long while keep it up, if you can consistently come up with such entertainingly divisive stuff as this you'll go far, i'm sure.
Dude…you need to stop justifying this bullshit. This is too much - holy fuck. What you’re doing is wrong. Thats a full stop and there’s no room for debate. What you are doing is wrong. Functional people don’t lie when they’re asked about their favourite book. And you chose a lie that hurts the most people.
It may be bizarre to you. But you’re actually the most bizarre person I’ve met in a very long time.
I chose a lie that hurts people? Hurts them how? Have you never told someone that you're "having a good day" on an objectively terrible one?
I’m done with this. You’re either fucking with me or I’m not qualified to help.
I'm not fucking with you, and there's nothing to help.
I'm living my life happily surrounded by people I cherish and appreciate - and who cherish and appreciate me.
I pay taxes. I have a lover and children. I hang out with friends, and we all have a good time.
I can't see your viewpoint as anything but being inflexible. Contrary to popular belief lies are an important aspect of the human condition. We lie to others and ourselves.
> Your friends deserve better.
Maybe they don't.
How much one likes Atlas Shrugged may depend on age as well. When I read it at age of 20, it was the best book I had ever read and almost a Bible for me. At 25, it had some great points that were worth adopting. At 30, it was mostly a fantasy, but entertaining. At 38, it is just not worth the time.
Starting out a relationship by lying seems like a horrible idea.
15 years ago I had a colleague who was obsessed with Ayn Rand. I didn't know anything about Ayn Rand and her philosophies. I was/am good friends with that person.
Fast-forward a decade and I know who Ayn Rand is and her philosophies. I know generally what type of people adhere to her philosophies and they are the opposite of who I would normally associate myself with.
My opinion of my friend has not changed now that I am more familiar with Ayn Rand. It provides additional background for some of the values that my friend has, but does not change who that person is or my ability to be friends with them.
I think that a lot of times it is easy to distance yourself from someone who has opposite beliefs from you, but at the end of the day, I don't think that is the only criteria in determining if someone is worth associating with.
I completely agree with you, and I have similar sentiments with my friends who hold different views.
The ol' treating social interactions as a chess match... I could have definitely related to this in my 20s, but I cannot relate to this anymore. At this point in my life it sounds truly terrible to me for multiple reasons. At some point I learned that it takes much longer than a conversation to truly get to know someone. People I was unimpressed with at first have turned out to be a really great friends a few months later. This has happened enough that I usually just give people a pass now regardless.
My response would be to slowly distance myself from you without you noticing.
And if I’m drunk I’ll laugh at you.
But the best books are "A Canticle for Leibowitz", "Neuromancer", and "The Dying Earth".
A Canticle for Leibowitz
I found Canticle kinda "meh" personally. It was a great premise, and the 1st third was somewhat interesting, but the rest fell flat for me. I'd say it was a book I wanted to like a lot, but the execution let me down.
I loved it, but I think I know what you mean. I feel like there's a lot of unrealized potential.
I think your technique is working because a lot of people got triggered by your friend test.
I kind of love it.
Yeah, I am totally going to steal it.
I have a twisted collection of semi contradictory beliefs that I feel fairly strongly about and make it so I don't really fit in with right wing, left wing, or centrists, though I am really accepting of other people with opposing viewpoints. This failure to fit well in a bucket has caused the loss of quite a few friends, and so having a filter for people who can't tolerate opposing viewpoints is pretty useful.
>Not because I remember anything about it, or believe anything it espouses, or even like it all that much, but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace.
Nietzche fills this role for me. Thinking he was right is a big red flag. But not knowing of him makes your opinions on philosophy meaningless.
I find a good follow up question is oh? what do you think he's all about? And if they start talking about master/slave morality or the ubermensch, then change the subject and move on,
That's interesting because the Genealogy of Morality was his greatest contribution as far as I can tell.
Is there something in particular that feels most egregious about master/slave morality or do you have some reading attempting to reject the ideas?
You will see very quickly whether or not the person understood Nietzsche to have been writing almost entirely prescriptively or descriptively. The former almost always holds a caricature of Nietzsche's thought as the edgy truth.
GoM is an interesting work on his ideas about the historical evolution of social norms and the psychological motivations behind them in many cases; in either it or TGS he says that a really comprehensive work on the evolution of norms throughout human history and different societies in different conditions would be invaluable, and that his work is only sort of a first step on an enormous undertaking. Unfortunately, we never much took it up. Maybe that's inevitable, since Nietzsche in a rare normative moment says the exception should not become the rule; we don't want a lot of people to not take their norms so seriously they reflexively reject serious consideration of their contingent character. If they do, you don't have much of a society.
It's certainly very hard for people to seriously think about these problems. Plenty of very smart people take thinkers like Rawls seriously, where Nietzsche's work clearly shows it to be without any serious foundation. You could of course still make a claim for moral realism, but it requires the acceptance of ideas the same people are usually allergic to.
But even more than that, Nietzsche is full of really incredible ideas and insights worded in clever ways. TGS is brilliant. When someone talks about these subjects I usually gather they didn’t really engage. Those topics are what come up in almost all secondary sources where they are treated superficially or often, like Russell, almost maliciously wrong.
Deep thought. For 8th graders I suppose.
I just have to say, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" shook me for a really, really long time afterwards. I'm not saying it's a bad book, it's quite thought provoking, but I took about 99 points of psychic damage from it.
Why is that?
It's difficult to describe without spoiling the book. The only way I can describe it without spoiling the three arcs is to say it has a very bleak outlook on human nature
I was instructed as an 11- or 12-year old to read aCfL. I thought it was clever the way the Middle Ages intersected with post nuclear war Earth as the setting. Questions about what is important, venerated, and why. What 'knowing' means.
As to the bleak outlook, I don't remember enough (it was a long time ago), but a few years ago looked it up on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz?usesk... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_M._Miller_Jr.?useskin=v... I learned that Arthur Miller Jr suffered from depression and chose to end his life with a firearm in 1996, age 72. I am always somewhat 'on guard' when I read works from people who were suffering with an illness like that, wondering how much of the story is infused with unnecessarily dour material when another, perhaps more upbeat approach, would have served the story as well. I guess I do not want to be dragged into depression by being overly bummed out by Fiction.
> If they're critical in a way I can appreciate
What about people who are critical in a way you'll never know? Personally I might check off a "don't ask for book recommendations" box in my head and never mention it to you again
I write off not knowing things I'll never know. Not worth the time worrying about it.
"but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace"
It is surprising that a book can become such a barometer. I liked the book originally, it isn't a bad introduction to some ideas. But even when I was young was able to poke holes in it.
But then many years later, it has become something like a 'flag' or 'rally cry' for certain segments of populating that either haven't read it at all, or have horribly miss-interpreted it, or most likely only idealized it by reading the first half.
“I lie to people’s faces to conduct a test around a mundane question in order to safeguard myself from the ‘meatspace’ ruffians that don’t like Ayn Rand” is a hilarious strategy.
As an aside, it kind of seems like Atlas Shrugged actually is your favorite book. You don’t appear to care what others think about Neuromancer or The Dying Earth but you literally require a specific and narrow set of feelings about Objectivism to pass The Test. (And obviously, it is the feelings that you mandate, not the lack of social graces, as you have noted that you don’t mind if others politely stop talking to you even after passing The Test. They do not feel positively enough toward Ayn Rand and as such are not worthy of your time)
I don't like Atlas Shrugged and you can't convince me otherwise. The most interesting paragraphs in that book were rants about cigarette brands, and even that was a total bore.
Neuromancer is enjoyable, but mostly because I enjoyed cyberpunk inspired media before reading it. Seeing all the influences Neuromancer had on books, movies, anime/manga, and even half life mods was a real treat. That and I empathized with Case - in my youth I was addicted to amphetamines, and it was a really nasty habit to kick.
As for Dying Earth, although the first wizards story is a little bit of a slow burn, seeing the elf sisters come back for their own pieces in the anthology was a real treat. Seeing the disturbed one overcome her sickness and find love was a fun triumphant end for her character arc. I'm also a DnD player, so seeing the early inspiration for the spell slots mechanic was a really cool experience for me.
But, really, what really annoys me about what people like you do is interrogate people for purity. I lost too much time in my youth trying to keep people, who I thought were my friends, like you happy.
That sort of stress isn't worth it. People who act this way are not a positive influence on my life, and I just don't have the time for it. And it's perfectly acceptable not to want to be friends with people who accuse other people of being too chuddy.
It's just gross, man
>I don't like Atlas Shrugged and you can't convince me otherwise.
> I lost too much time in my youth trying to keep people, who I thought were my friends, like you happy.
This is pretty much a summary of John Galt’s long speech.
Also,
I'm not surprised that in over 1000 pages, a parallel can be drawn by a statement, from a character from the work in question, and a sentiment I hold.
Stopped clocks and all that.
> Stopped clocks and all that.
It’s the fundamental point of the entire story. Like it is literally the thesis of the 1000 page book.
Guy figures out that there are two tiers of people, good or smart or whatever (John Galt, you) and less good or smart or whatever (me, your childhood friends (???)), and the way to address this is for the Smart Goods to protect themselves from the Dumb Bads through their wily tricks. It is the plot to every ayn rand book
Yeah as I've said before - don't remember much of the book. But freedom of association isn't exactly a concept the rand lovers have a monopoly over.
So to clarify here, you don’t know what the book is about — but you are confident enough in your knowledge of the Correct Feelings a person should have about it — that you hang the futures of your social interactions on that calculus?
Of course Rand lovers don’t have a monopoly over freedom of association. That said, doing something that looks antisocial and silly from the outside and then responding to the lightest of scrutiny by explaining that you have to isolate yourself in order to protect yourself categorically from anyone that might criticize you (to quote you: “But, really, what really annoys me about what people like you…”) is… a trope. It’s what every Rand protagonist does because she was not a good writer. It is somehow also the sort of thing that people that read and enjoy her books tend to seek to emulate in real life.
Dude I read it in 8th grade. That was close to 30 years ago. All I remember about the book was the rant about cigarette brands at the train station and some notions about selfishness being a moral good or some such nonsense. It didn't speak to me then, and every time I've been dared to read it I've been bored to sleep.
Now as for why I do this? This book creates such a wild reaction in people that it's an effective tool for sorting out radicals, purity commissars, and generally annoying people. And it works.
I don't actually care about the book. I don't understand why people care about the book. I care about keeping pains in the ass out of my life. And, let's be honest here, the feeling is clearly mutual with some of these people.
And people here clutching at pearls over a white lie?
People find ways to self select with all sorts of methods. Mine doesn't involve immutable characteristics, and I prefer it that way.
> I don't actually care about the book. I don't understand why people care about the book. I care about keeping pains in the ass out of my life
That is a yes to my question, then. You do not know what the book is about but you do know the Correct Feelings that others should have about it.
You’ve clarified that you do not lie to strangers because you need them to feel a particular way about Ayn Rand. It seems that you have voluntarily posted in the book thread, unprompted, that you lie to strangers about something arbitrary as a test to suss out who will and will not be adequately deferential to you.
It is an odd thing to post and then vociferously defend, and it reminds me of a post I saw, “People willingly share things online that you couldn’t waterboard out of me”. That being said, I don’t think anyone is clutching pearls here unless you define literally any criticism at all as such.
You must forgive me for pointing out that it seems like Atlas Shrugged is actually your favorite book. It is simply everything you said before and after our initial interaction that made it seem that way, and you have made it clear that it provides you a crucial value that no other book does, after all .
I think we're starting to understand each other.
> That is a yes to my question, then. You do not know what the book is about but you do know the Correct Feelings that others should have about it.
Yes. From past experience I've observed less obnoxious behavior from some humans over others. Obnoxious is subjective. I'm fine with this.
> It is an odd thing to post and then vociferously defend, and it reminds me of a post I saw, “People willingly share things online that you couldn’t waterboard out of me”. That being said, I don’t think anyone is clutching pearls here unless you define literally any criticism at all as such.
But what if I'm lying about lying about my favorite book being Atlas Shrugged? You will never know!
Honestly, I find this all a little ridiculous.
"You admitted that you lie in real life."
Yes. Everybody does. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying. I lie about things that won't hurt people if discovered, or about things to make people feel better about themselves. And it's not fucking weird to say it.
Men have been lying to their wives about how the old dress fits for a long, long time - and if you think the correct answer is the honest one, you're a fool.
Responding to a genuine question of interest with some sort of test says a lot about you. I guess your filter works both ways, because I would not want to associate with someone who does this.
Edit: Watching my points go up and down on this one has been interesting! I didn't realize people were so divided on whether or not it's okay to lie and test people as some sort of friendship filter.
It is somewhat odd to ask someone about their favorite book and instead get a lie that's intended to test whether or not you'll be a good friend. It's also completely offtopic for a discussion about folks' favorite books.
Fair. It's a bit of a bait post.
But the OP did say by any metric of "best".
And I did post three of my favorites at the end, too!
"A Canticle for Leibowitz"
I'd recommend also "Anathem" by Stephenson
Thank you
That might be a filter that goes both ways, not a bad idea on your part at all.
So you’re using a book as a political filtering mechanism. I don’t see how that particular book has any relevance to this discussion then. You might as well just switch it out with “The Turner Diaries” or something similar.
Pretty much, yeah. Any controversial political book will do.
Well how far do you want to go? Saying it’s the turner diaries means you’re left with a peer group that are only potentially violent, white supremacists.
I try to avoid white supremacists if at all possible.
Can you summarize what kind of responses you get? I'd like to believe I'd quickly figure out this too-on-the-nose response wasn't serious and it'd lead to a laugh and more interesting discussion
Yeah that's normally how it goes, actually.
that story checks out considering your actual favorite books all have dark, dystopian elements with a glim outlook on human nature in general.
My strategy is that if they reply “Atlas Shrugged”, I reply “Really? Nice to meet you! By chance my name is Atlas!”, then shrug and walk away.
Let’s meet soon
> _Not because I remember anything about it, or believe anything it espouses, or even like it all that much, but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace._
This made me chuckle wryly... :)
In a previous life, I might have been on who got along very well -- at least intellectually -- with those who loved Atlas Shrugged and swore by it as the bible of their lives. Now, with some age and wisdom, it's the exact opposite.
I myself wouldn't use a book as a filter for all things in social life... (for it generates way too many false positives), but I sheepishly admit to doing the same every now and then...
Different strokes, different folks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm glad you had a laugh. That's what I was going for - and normally how the interaction in question plays out.
I do the same thing except substitute The Communist Manifesto.
A really close friend of mine did this to me, actually. With this same exact book. It's how I learned the trick.
Now I'm left wondering how well this would work substituting in different books.
Different religious texts? Especially if you pick one that is not part of the primary religion of the area you are located in.
A Modest Proposal? Probably the worst choice. Most won't recognize it and the few who do will assume satire in your response. (Also, essays aren't books, but who is counting.)
A certain book by Nabokov?
What about someone who seriously considers the question, but then says that they've read many books but don't really have one they consider the best? Too much of a non-answer?
I've done that too. My reaction to their responses wasn't exactly neutral either.
Are you Scott Alexander? https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/12yn28h/com...
No, and I don't know who he is either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex
Its at least a bit interesting that this idea that "Ayn Rand exists as a roundabout litmus test for assholes" is quite weird, one I've never heard before, except from him. To arrive independently at the exact same, weird conclusion, there must be something to it.
"Ayn Rand exists as a roundabout litmus test for assholes" is a pretty widely held idea. I've never read a book of hers, but the extracts I've read... well, I can see why people say that.
If you want to believe that I'm this person there's nothing I can say to dissuade you.
But I'm not him.
... no one said that.
Is this some kind of test?
No I have no idea what any of this is about
> "The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life."
The obvious followup question is how did it change your life? Under this gambit of yours I wonder how you'd respond?
I'm not interested in Ayn Rand or her bizarre fanboys but I think if someone said that to me I'd honestly be curious enough, not out of empathy but out of anthropological interest, to ask the question
So your approach to a social situation with a new acquaintance is to give a dishonest answer to test whether they are willing to put up with your obnoxiousness in the future?
I'm sorry but if someone disregards you at that stage I wouldn't say that they lack "social accumen to not go too hard in the paint early" as you say, rather that they have sufficient experience with difficult people and just chose to willingly ignore you for their own good.
Even admitting to doing this is already off-putting to me.
Wouldn't this only be a functional recommendation if you were planning on being the sole determinant in whether the relationship moved forward because your response could pretty obviously be used as their filter just as easily?
Whenever I hear about that author the only thing I can think of is her adoration of a strong man in the person of a killer who kidnapped a little girl and propped up half her body in a car to ransom her back to her father then pushed the half a corpse into the street and drove off with the money. Then I think about her retiring on welfare.
> "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"
https://www.alternet.org/2015/01/how-ayn-rand-became-big-adm...
It's not a fair comparison but when someone says their favorite author is Rand I have a similar response as if they had said "Hitler". I can tolerate ideas I hate but see little profit in trafficking too much with sociopaths. Perhaps you don't either else why do you avoid those who are "way too supportive"
> Wouldn't this only be a functional recommendation if you were planning on being the sole determinant in whether the relationship moved forward because your response could pretty obviously be used as their filter just as easily?
This is a really good point, actually, but I am counting on this. What I'm trying to select in strangers is patience (also humor). If someone gives me shade in a silly enough way, everything is permitted.
Also, a nitpick, being friends with someone is solely up to you. If either you or someone else don't like each other, a relationship effectively cannot happen (although, there are exceptions, first impressions can be overcome).
So rather than even trying to predict what someone else is thinking, I just don't try (and pretend it's not a factor). I go with my gut, and most of the time it works out great for me.
I'll add some context though, most of the time I do this in dingy dive bars and small town pubs. People aren't typically very cerebral there, so it works.
So let me get this straight, you present yourself as a caricature of an obnoxious pseudo-intellectual, then "filter out" people who react against that? What a bizarre way to interact with people. Not only is it dishonest, you're also... making yourself look unappealing on purpose. I fail to see how this benefits you.
I tolerate different ideas just fine, but anyone over the age of 20 who tells me "The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life." will immediately strike me as a person I probably have little interest in being friends with.
> you're also... making yourself look unappealing on purpose. I fail to see how this benefits you.
My more-depressing interpretation of this is the value comes as an explanation for being written off by others. Rather than being a way to filter others out, a person with multiple socially off-putting habits or a generally disagreeable demeanor can do This One Weird Trick to then point at their cleverness as the reason why they are standing in a room fun of people that don’t want to talk to them.
There is no need for self-reflection if everyone else is simply too gauche to understand how actually pro-social your nakedly anti-social ruse is.
Ooh I love this take.
There are 2 books that have fundamentally shifted my thinking:
- The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics.
This has been covered by CGP Grey and now has a Netflix adaptation, so I figure it lies well within the HN Zeitgeist already. There's a lot to debate in this book, but I fundamentally didn't understand political power before reading it.
- Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.
I have a more complicated relationship with this one, in fact I never finished it. It's about men (mainly) who are abusive in relationships, and how they are able to manipulate their partners. It hits close to home because I've seen a lot of that growing up, and I've seen a lot of women close to me end up in abuse in a predictable but devastating cycle.
The primary controversial idea is that domestic abuse can be from man→woman, man→man, woman→woman, but the author pretty much discredits woman→man abuse. I don't think I can reconcile that with my own experience. But, where it changed my thinking was a chapter about "it's not emotions, it's values". I'd grown up knowing the importance of emotions and being open and communicative, but I was never able to put to words the disconnect I was feeling. Emotions are secondary, it's what one values that determines their emotions and actions, whether it be in an abusive relationship, or in any other place or time in the world.
It really shifted how I think about the world, and let me sever connections to people I was kept in my life because they'd had a bad childhood or whatever. I realized that they would never get over their turmoil, because they valued using it to hurt others.
Dictator's Handbook completely changed how I think about politics. Strongly second that one.
Here's CGP Grey's short version for those who want the broad strokes:
Godel Escher Bach is the best book I've read. Very interesting topics and the sheer creativity of the writing is amazing.
NGL, GEB was a slog. There is a free MIT course that covers it, and I'm glad I made use of that.
"I Am a Strange Loop" by the same guy covers the same concepts, albeit without the whimsey or color.
What is the MIT course that covers this book? Many thanks!
Thanks!
But... But...
But the whims and color were the best things about the book!
I also appreciate that I learned a lot of tangential things mentioned in the book that had nothing to do with the mind or consciousness.
It was a slog, all three times, and yet it's still probably my favorite book. Sometimes slogging through is just worth it, I guess!
(I also enjoyed Joyce the one time I read him, so it's possible that I can just appreciate a good slog...)
I think he misrepresents Russell and also Godel in ways. I enjoyed the book when I was young and it did launch my interest in logic but reading Godel’s personal writings, he had great respect for Russell and literally wrote in a paper defending Russell that he would not have made his discovery without the Principia Mathematica, because it showed him an instance of a consistent language and then he took the further step of noticing you could do this infinitely. My recollection was Hasshelhoff thought Russell was a kind of dunce who didn’t know what he was doing. He was putting in the fucking work for others to build on, and it was incredibly hard work if you read Russell’s autobiography of that time.
One of the few “you gotta read it” books from intellectual leaning friends that I never bothered reading. It could have states as much in 1/4 the number of pages.
I'm a little confused by this comment. How can you make this particular criticism without having bothered to read the book in the first place?
I prefer his autobiography (https://xkcd.com/917/).
Seriously though, this question is unanswerable, but your answer is probably one of the few books I'd get behind as an answer to this.
In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.
— Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, p. 363
i have the book and tried to read it many times, but never grokked it tbh. ;-)
I read it in high school and I probably would've picked it at the time. Fun note though: ~3 years later when I was learning Lisp it hit me that my understanding of GEB had been very shallow.
I second that.
Its translations are also the best translations known to mankind (I read the German one, the French is said to be as good or better).
Been reading it for about a year on and off, I did read I am a strange loop before and really enjoyed the ideas and also the emotional side of it.
Hofstadter is such a brilliant writer. All of his books are really on another level.
Impossible to pick just one.
I'll give a few that haven't appeared yet: Fiction: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Eliezer Yudkowsky) Non-fiction: Rationality - from AI to Zombies (Eliezer Yudkowsky)
Probably no books have impacted me quite as much as these two, barring early-childhood books that have impacted me from a young age.
Fiction: Worm (by Parahumans)
Best "superhero" fiction ever created. Just one of my favorite books in general.
Fiction: The Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson. Best fantasy books ever, IMO.
I can go on for a long time, but I felt like these haven't been mentioned and absolutely deserve a place on this thread.
For those of us who really hated HPMOR and didn't finish it, this review explains the issues in it better than I can:
Well, lets just say this guy does not understand what is happening in the book. "When Hermione DIES Hariezer does nothing, and a few weeks later Voldemort brings her back." - in the book Harry steals Hermione's body from under the nose of all wizards, and keeps it hidden and frozen for a future revival, etc. Also many of the things that "do not make sense" are actually from the canon, and EY is making fun of their absurdity.
> Well, lets just say this guy does not understand what is happening in the book. "When Hermione DIES Hariezer does nothing, and a few weeks later Voldemort brings her back." - in the book Harry steals Hermione's body from under the nose of all wizards, and keeps it hidden and frozen for a future revival, etc.
The reviewer predicted that this is exactly what Harry did when he got to Hermione's body disappearing.
I think you've cherry-picked a misleading quote - the reviewer at that point is pointing out that Harry is not changing his primary focus to actually be solving death, just ranting about how terrible it is.
If Harry were being rational and focusing on the problem, as the reviewer points out, he might conceivably investigate the relevant prior art and research from the wizarding community, like Death's Door and the Philosopher's Stone.
Yes, he steals a body to preserve against the day someone does beat death, but he doesn't actually reorient to trying to fix it himself, is the reviewer's claim.
That fits with my vague recollections of slogging through a big chunk of it, but it was probably seven years ago, so I could be way off.
> Also many of the things that "do not make sense" are actually from the canon, and EY is making fun of their absurdity.
As one who read the original series multiple times, I'm pretty confident none of the things that reviewer calls out as nonsensical are from the original series.
Yes, I think I misrepresented a little the review, I wrote the comment after just skimming quickly the beginning where he presents some conclusions. The rest of the review is quite detailed, and entertaining in a way. Because many times he stops just before the final step of understanding, and so he misunderstands the point. In particular this happens with many science bits, which makes it even funnier. Too many cases to mention here. But I agree with your "slogging through a big chunk of it", I think there is an issue with the flow of the story, which makes it hard to read for long periods of time.
Well that was an entertaining read. Needless to say I disagree with most of it (and think he's factually wrong on a number of things).
But it's entertainment - totally fine to disagree! :)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is splendid. Some of the most vigorous writing I've ever encountered. I agree, it is highly recommended.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
Edit: On a more serious note, this book actually changed the way I think in a very concrete (and positive) way. The book spurred me to start consciously reflecting on "what about X, specifically, is surprising" and/or "what about X, specifically, is confusing". It's impossible to quantify, but the habit has definitely, definitely, boosted my ability to disentangle complex situations and make better decisions.
Skulls for the Throne of Skulls! We march upon the Abyss!
Seriously though. "Codex Chaos" is pretty super sweet, if sweet is skyscraper size demons of the darkness of mankind. Excellent light reading.
Worm is outstanding. It's responsible for getting me into reading which has shaped my life since
HPMoR and Worm? Try Mother of Learning.
I've heard of it many times but never gotten around to reading it. Apparently an audiobook version exists, so I'll bump it up my list and read it soon.
Thanks!
I’m reading the mistborn books right now. I was up until 2 in the morning finishing the first book in the trilogy the other night. These books are fantastic!
I'm pretty much required by law to tell you that his other books are also fantastic, and that if you like Mistborn, you should (after completing the trilogy) try The Stormlight Archive.
Kidding aside, Sanderson is by far my favorite author, and his fantasy books are honestly some of the greatest books I've ever read. And I read a lot. I highly recommend finishing the Mistborn trilogy, and then reading some more :)
I loved Mistborn, and I heard great things about The Stormlight Archives, but to be honest, I found that they have very different pacing. My biggest gripe with most fantasy books is that you can suddenly realize that you've been reading for 100 pages, and nothing has happened. The Stormlight Archives has that problem in spades. I got about 1/4 into the 2nd book before I suddenly realized absolutely nothing at all had happened since about halfway through the 1st book. It just dragged on way too much for me. Mistborn 1 didn't drag at all; 2 and 3 did a bit but not egregiously.
I've made the argument before that A Song of Ice and Fire doesn't have a particularly high rate of character death. It's just that things actually happen in those books. I think that's why they're so loved: not because they're the best writing, or the best world, or the best characters, but because things happen, every single chapter. Character deaths are high per page, but not high per actual story event that happens. In the Stormlight Archives, it felt like after 1.25 books, each major character had had about 2 major plot events. Way too slow pacing for my taste.
I can totally get that. I didn't think it was too slow, but Stormlight is definitely slower paced than Mistborn. That's why most people (including the author) recommend Mistborn over The Stormlight Archive as a first read.
I actually started with the Stormlight Archives :D
He is a great author. I originally read The Wheel of Time, and the last few books in that series were cowritten by Sanderson. They were so great that I ended up buying the first book of the Stormlight series. Now I’m eagerly waiting for the next book to come out in December, but I’m enjoying Mistborn in the meantime.
+1 on Worm. I’ve read it twice and was captivated both times
> Fiction: The Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson. Best fantasy books ever, IMO.
I highly recommend listening to the GraphicAudio adaptation of this series. It's what got me into audiobooks.
Honestly, I've really disliked these kind of full cast recordings every time I've tried them. No idea why.
I'm a fairly voracious audiobook consumer, though.
Probably because it's a jarring deviance from the traditional audiobook experience if you're used to it.
For someone like me who hadn't listened to many audiobooks before trying GraphicAudio, it was a very good experience.
crap what was that website that had such crazy ramblings - 2600 like technobabble spy hacker games... it wasn't what Shin Megami Tensei was based on... oh well, failed memory shapes reality
The best books I read last year were the "Three Body Problem" books by Cixin Liu.
It's a science fiction series about aliens, space travel and the universe and they're easily the best books I've read in a while.
I genuinely can't remember the last time I got that absorbed in a series. I'd read until the early hours of the morning and sometimes just sit at the edge of my bed for like 20 minutes just contemplating the universe. Highly recommend.
I don't know why, but I could NOT get into it. I read what felt like 2/3 or 3/4 of the first book, and still felt like I had no clue what was going on, and it felt like a difficult slog (for reasons I don't understand), much like how the Silmarillion felt to me. I wish I had enjoyed it, because every review or bit of spoilers I've seen about it sounds like a fantastic story, so I don't understand why it was so unenjoyable to read.
Meanwhile I'll read any chapter of a Neal Stephenson book and feel the comfort of a tea and warm blanket on an (imaginary) dreary day, and never care about the overall plot, and only feel remotely bad about not finishing the book.
No that's perfectly understandable! I actually didn't like the first book either tbh. But the second book and especially the third book were chef's kiss
The coolest thing about them is that he solved the Fermi Paradox, I definitely buy his explanation.
The dark forest was one of the most popular Fermi solutions long before Liu's books, people just didn't refer to it by that name. Take a look at Fermi paradox Wikipedia article revision history.
I don't think Dark Forest is a good explanation, though. If you were one of the first space-faring civs and meant to avoid competition by striking younger civs preemptively, you could spread von Neumann probes all over the galaxy and either keep new civs at some technology level cap or destroy all the planets right away.
Also, there is no stealth in space, so you can just send a relativistic kill missile to any worlds where civs pop up, without having to step foot outside of your home system.
Isaac Arthur has made many videos I like on these topics, but admittedly they are pretty long. E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlhHE2VA1ic
I love the book, but he didn't solve the Fermi Paradox. Nor did he come up with this explanation.
If that was the question, there would be far simpler answers. Like encryption. An encrypted signal looks like noise. Or point to point communication, which is far more efficient anyway.
The Fermi paradox is also about another question. Why can't we find alien or their artifacts in the solar system? Any species that wants, could, with not much more advanced technology than we have, if it wanted to, essentially settle the entire galaxy in a few million years. von Neumann probes being one of the early ideas for how to do this. Species could do this even in the dark forest situation, but for some reason despite the universe being 13.8 billion years old, no one has bothered to. That's pretty strange!
The dark forest also isn't his invention. He invented the term, but the idea dates back at least to Greg Bear from Forge of God in 1987. He called it a "vicious jungle". Liu Cixin did state it in more game theoretic terms though.
Agreed, I read the 4 of them in 4 days, easy reads, very interesting. I like how 4 (which Cixin Liu recognized as canon despite being a fanfic originally) completed the story vs how it ended in 3.
I was interested in the series until I heard the worldbuilding bit about how the aliens have FTL 12-dimensional supercomputers the size of an atom that can cause hallucinations and interfere with particle accelerators from orbit. Author basically just gave the antagonists god-powers to prove some kind of point about how hopelessly pathetic humans are?
> FTL
They are not FTL, they are lightspeed.
They managed the computers through quantum entanglement.
It's not god powers, imagine 21st century humanity vs middle ages humanity. Like Arthur C. Clarke said, "advanced enough science is no different than magic" or something along those lines.
My understanding was that they sent the computers faster than light while their ships were traveling at sub-lightspeed, or something like that, which is why they could get here and fuck up the planet centuries before their fleet would make it.
My point, though, is that we're making up a fantasy world where the impossible is possible, and a bleak universe isn't more "realistic" than a hopeful one. It bothers me that people try to praise the "realism" in these books. They might as well have just sent Frieza to blow up the planet. It's within the same realm of possibility.
No, they sent them at lightspeed, and arrived within 4 years (earth and their planet was 4 light years away) once they were completed.
Interesting read - I thought that the reason the aliens sent the supercomputer probe things ahead of their invasion fleet was because they understood the humans capacity for advancement would far exceed their own capabilities if left unchecked for the duration of the invasion trip, indicating "pathetic" now, but capacity to be far superior.
Devoured all three books - really interesting hard sci-fi, although as noted by others, the first one took a bit of effort to work through.
I don't think it's humans that are hopelessly pathetic, it's just species that are less advanced technologically, mostly because of developing later compared to another species.
The Count of Monte Cristo -- I've read it a few times and I know I'll read it again. While there are a few books I've read more than once, I can't think of any I know I will read again.
I recently read the unabridged version, and really enjoyed it. The pacing is a bit patchy, but has (what we would think) surprisingly modern things mentioned - cannabis, lesbianism.
If anyone wants a recommendation for another good book from around the same date, I recommend Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. It has it's adventure aspects, but is also just a great tale of male friendship between two different characters.
There's nothing anachronistic about hashish in 19th-century France; it was a widely-known narcotic long before that. If you read Wikipedia's "history" entry, Dumas and Paris are explicitly name-checked (among a lengthy list of writers),
- "In the 19th century, hashish was embraced in some European literary circles. Most famously, the Club des Hashischins was a Parisian club dedicated to the consumption of hashish and other drugs; its members included writers Théophile Gautier, Dr. Moreau de Tours, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Baudelaire and Honoré de Balzac.[19]"
I occasionally use this service called serial literature that sends an email on the cadence you want for their selection of stories. I chose Count of Monte Cristo twice a week. After the first couple emails I ended up reading then clicking the “send next installment” link multiple times. I finished the book in a week. It was such a great read.
Just remembering my first reading thinking: hey they had complex financial instruments back in the 1800s. Also - market manipulation by use of faster comms.
But really a nice story.
- "Also - market manipulation by use of faster comms."
Optical telegraphs! They were a recent invention in Dumas' era,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
(How did Dumas colorfully describe those things? I think this is the paragraph: "Yes, a telegraph. I had often seen one placed at the end of a road on a hillock, and in the light of the sun its black arms, bending in every direction, always reminded me of the claws of an immense beetle, and I assure you it was never without emotion that I gazed on it, for I could not help thinking how wonderful it was that these various signs should be made to cleave the air with such precision as to convey to the distance of three hundred leagues the ideas and wishes of a man sitting at a table at one end of the line to another man similarly placed at the opposite extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of volition on the part of the sender of the message. I began to think of genii, sylphs, gnomes, in short, of all the ministers of the occult sciences, until I laughed aloud at the freaks of my own imagination.")
To expand on one's enjoyment of this, be sure to look up the historical biography of Dumas père's father, _The Black Count_.
For even more fun, if one enjoys fantasy, Steven Brust's _The Baron of Magister Valley_ is TCoMC w/ all the names changed and the serial numbers filed off in a fantasy setting (and _The Phoenix Guards_ is _The Three Musketeers_, _Five Hundred Years After_ is _Five Years After_, and _The Viscount of Adrilahnkha_ is _The Man in the Iron Mask_).
Wonderful, wonderful book. One of my favorites.
It's old, but the beginning especially is just a non-stop adventure. It always drags a bit for me after the first third, but picks up again and continues to be great throughout.
>> It's old, but the beginning especially is just a non-stop adventure. It always drags a bit for me after the first third, but picks up again and continues to be great throughout.
Yeah, as much as I love Count Monte Christo as a story, being it a movie (https://youtu.be/qesn8pV9yu8?si=ssccZfQGf9F1fCk3), series (https://youtu.be/bF1Z7irZLdY?si=oDF0OnB-1NWVfwZq) or anime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gankutsuou:_The_Count_of_Monte...), the book gets so slow after first third that I have never actually read it through till the end.
Its a pity that we can have new cuts of movies (Zack Snyders Justice League vs original one) but we will never get George R. R. Martin version of Count of Monte Cristo.
Tangentially: the 2024 version [1] of the movie has been a huge success in France (quite deserved in my opinion), and is about the open in the US.
The imagery of the movie has a definitive "Batman" vibe - sort of "full circle", even though, apparently CoMC was not _really_ an inspiration for the Dark Knight, as the legend went. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo_(202...
[2] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/254769/was-batman-...
Thanks - I will check it out.
The trailer looks a bit generic and definitely has a bit different vibe than Im used to (me not knowing French does not help at all :) ). Also the Count after transformation seems to have a different style - feels not as distinguished as old school actors in previous movies. But maybe it will be exactly what this story needs.
Try "Best served cold" by Joe Abercrombie. Followed by The Heroes. And to avoid minor spoilers, read the First Law trilogy first. All good books are great, The heroes is probably the best!
Thanks, it looks more like fantasy than fiction - I always liked that Count is embeded is real historic events despite me being fantasy fan and almost never reading historic fiction. But somehow in Counts case it seems essential (and that's way anime adaptation was my least favorite).
Anyway I will check it out.
This is one of my favorites. It's one of the few where the hero manages to become the villain in the end, and does so convincingly.
Do you think? He does show some mercy towards some people that have wronged him.
That’s certainly one way to interpret it.
The Boy's Second book of Electronics by Alfred Morgan(1957) introduced me to electronics in the 1970s, and lead to a technical mindset and lifestyle.
The Engineers Notebook by Forest Mims really taught me the basics of electronics.
What do you care what other people think by Richard Feynman(1988) introduced me to the idea that nobody is really as much of an expert as you might think.
1632 By Eric Flint, and the subsequent series, got me thinking about the nature of civilization and all the things that go into making it.
There are a lot of books in this world, and they all helped author who I am.
"the way things work", the book with all the woolly mammoths in it. Learned a lot from it
Grew up with the original "The Way Things Work" [1] (found out later it was an English translation of the German book, "Wie Funktioniert Das").
That is the literal pillar; physically and figuratively the foundation, of my knowledge corpus; aptly the bottom book in my corner-turned-library.
I spent hours as a kid, slowly parsing, contextualizing, researching every iota and minutiae of that book.
I had an encyclopedia just to help supplement that book.
Didnt recogize the english title before i read this comment and it immediately clicked. The copy i have is from the late 80s and even then it was a bit dated, but it didnt matter. Awesome book. Now 35 years later my kids and I sometimes spend hours looking through the same book. Even more dated now, but that probably makes it even more amazing for them and now they know how a tape recorder works \o/
theres an updated edition as well
I recently got a NEW copy as an adult. So happy to have it on my shelf!
Taking “best” to mean, “About to be banished to a small, rocky island in the North Atlantic, can pack one book”: Ulysses, and it’s not particularly close.
The book is fractally intricate and intellectually puzzling in the best sense—something new and special to notice every time you pick it up.
But it also wears like old leather, and I find myself returning to favorite chapters simply to sink indulgently into the characters, dialog, and setting.
Anybody who says no one has actually read Ulysses is unknowingly half-right: You can certainly get to a point where you’ll never finish reading it.
Good answer. Most people who answer the one X to take when banished pick don't take into account that in their banishment they might not be provided with anything intellectually challenging, and just pick their current favorite X which is often something that 6 months from now will rarely be revisited because they have a new favorite.
They are really usually answering "what one X would you take with you on a vacation?".
A good X for banishment might even be an X that has never been a favorite of yours. For example if I had one musical work and one book I'd seriously consider Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and a German to English dictionary. Neither of those is anywhere near a favorite of mine--I do own a copy of Der Ring des Nibelungen but only occasionally listen and then only to the famous parts, and I don't think I've ever even looked in a German to English dictionary.
That's 15 hours of opera in a language I have close to zero understanding of. But much of the music is quite good, and trying to figure out enough German from the lyrics and the dictionary to follow the story could keep me occupied a long time.
I was scrolling down the comments thinking, huh, what if I just kind of threw it out there that Ulysses is my favorite book, by far. What would happen? Bunch of young'uns dumping on me?
Well bring it on. It is in fact, not particularly close that Ulysses is my favorite book.
It hadn't occurred to me though to just reread chapters as they appeal, I'm heading out to reread the calvacade one. Then there is that pub with the dog... And the newsrooom... what a great day, thanks!
I started Ulysses when I was in my early twenties, stalled, and then picked it up again and finished it straight off 35 years later. Same copy! Pissed off I didn't push it through way back when.
How do you read it though? I tried but felt like I'm lacking a lot of context without which it doesn't make much sense.
This seems to be a very polarizing book. I for one thought it was among the worst I've read, but know plenty who have said it's one of their favorites. It's certainly not a traditional novel.
Ulysses feels more like Joyce showing off his command of the written word and extensive vocabulary - of which both are greater than any other writer I've read - than it feels like a novel meant to tell the reader a good story.
In that sense, the novel wasn't particularly entertaining. If he could choose between a well known word for something and a very obscure word for something, it was always the latter. The same goes for sentence structure.
As a way to show off literary skill though, there's nothing else that comes close.
Here's a choice bit of stream-of-consciousness from the "Lotus Eaters" episode, as Mr. Bloom is contemplating the wares at a tea shop on a balmy June morning:
... So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah, in the dead sea, floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn’t sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the. Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It’s a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second, per second. Law of falling bodies: per second, per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It’s the force of gravity of the earth is the weight ...
The vocabulary is colorful but hardly obscure, the sentence structure is broken but readily comprehensible.
Personally, I find it utterly transporting.
I bounced off of it expecting to enjoy it because I read lots of Pynchon.
That's interesting. I never had a problem ploughing through Pynchon, and as I mentioned I bounced off Ulysses in my early 20s. I am right now in the last pages of my 1st reread of Gravity's Rainbow. I have to say I prefer Joyce now. And I think I liked my recent read of Against the Day over GR, an unexpected development.
Gotta say though, GR is still awesome. Fearless.
I rank GR and V highest, with AtD and Mason & Dixon close seconds. I like the layering of themes in GR and the whole fever-dream deliver of it. I will probably revisit Joyce.
Did you make it past the opening Stephen-centered chapters? I bounced off “Proteus” for years, but as soon as I managed to struggle on to “Calypso” and the mind & habits of Mr. Leopold Bloom I was off to the races.
It's been long enough that I don't recall. I will have to re-try sometime soon. Currently burning through a few other books.
I was very influenced by Kurt Vonnegut when I was a teenager. Coming of age is a perfect time to learn that the fact that life is absurd doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't laugh, just the opposite. Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five are some of my favorite books of his.
As an adult, I've been very influenced by the late Daniel Dennett and his naturalist philosophy. Books like From Bacteria to Bach and Back or Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
Agree with both.
If you like Vonnegut, perhaps try the fiction of J.G.Ballard.
Empire of the Sun is rightly famous, it is autobiography - but read that too. If you are American, you might not know that other things happened at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor [Yes, it was 8 December 1941 in Hong Kong, but across the dateline, so contemporaneous. IIRC 8am Honolulu to 6am HK is +4 hours].
Vonnegut was such a genius. His books mostly light reading. Funny and fully of goofy sci-fi tropes. All building up to revelatory philosophical lessons about human nature. "We are what we pretend to be" hit me like a ton of bricks. Right up there with "We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different."
Great choices!
I've read Vonnegut sporadically and decided this year to read through all his books. Sirens of Titan is an old favorite I've read multiple times, but I reread it about two weeks ago, and Slaughterhouse Five a few months ago.
Same, I didn't like reading much at all but Kurt Vonnegut really connected with me.
Player Piano has felt more relevant in this new AI age
For another take on Vonnegut, my favorite of his were Bluebeard and God Bless You Mr. Rosewater.
Anna Karenina. Nothing mind-blowing. I didn't see a light in the sky.
I read a lot, fiction and non-fiction. When I read Tolstoy, I remember thinking "What sort of dark magic is this?" He drew characters in a way I haven't seen since. I _knew_ these people.
I remember this book, decades later. I remember a lot of what I've read, but Tolstoy was the man. I have no idea how or why his magic worked.
Anna Karenina is a masterpiece of a novel. I highly recommend it as well.
I often jokingly mention that this is the first book that ever made me want to get married. While many now that the novel describes the tragic life and relationships of Anna, only those that read it will now that here is another, as important and positive story, about the love between Kitty and Levin.
That novel helped me understand love.
I second this... to this day, I am in awe! Such a profound and readable book in the same time. Each character lives within me, and in many situations, one of them emerges :)
As Nabokov said, it is the supreme masterpiece of 19th-century prose.
Actually it is mind blowing. For example, it has exact description of a flow state in few paragraphs.
As long as we're using "best" in air quotes, I'll throw in a suggestion for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It's victorian-era alternate reality fantasy. Which is something I never would have imagined liking.
Yes, it borrows a LOT from existing stories. To the point that it's nearly a pastiche. But it is incredibly well done and you appreciate it more when you learn that it was the author's first novel. I recommend skipping all of the footnotes on the first read through and saving them for the second read, if you go back for more.
I was going to recommend it for the footnotes.
Anyone who makes up a fake history for a book then adds footnotes arguing for a different interpretation of that fake history really tickles me.
Really enjoyed Piranesi by the same author too. Reminded me of some of the odder parts of Iain Banks catalogue.
A wonderful, wonderful book. Highly recommended.
> Yes, it borrows a LOT from existing stories.
Honestly, I don't connect to this - this book has such a unique voice, so unlike most fantasy. And the plot is so different from the typical Tolkien-esque fantasy you normally find.
For me, it's The Grapes of Wrath. Simultaneously raised my bar for what I consider good writing and made me much more empathetic to the plight of those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder through no fault of their own. As relevant today as when it was written.
That is such a good books, the ending is a little weird though. I also loved Tortilla Flats, also by John Steinbeck. In the non-fiction genre, Roadside Picnic is also really good.
How you think about or are influenced by books are also dependent on your current mode and situation. I also enjoying and have great memories from reading "The Soul of a new Machine", the stress that I felt from that book reflected my own work situation of at the time, so it some how stuck with me more that I believe it would have done at another point in time.
On the weirder side of things: As I grown older I felt like I lost the feeling of magic during Christmas time. So every year I read a stupid Christmas themed romance novel. The previous two have been "Snowed In for Christmas" and "The Christmas Bookshop". I recommend both.
It is interesting to note the mentionings of it and the socio-political fallout in the letters which mention it from the end of his _The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights_ (and if someone were to take up using Mallory to write a sequel to that, I would pay good money for it).
Anything from Sagan: Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God could convert the Pope to agnosticism.
Stephen Ray Gould: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin: will both challenge every preconceived notion you've had, link seemingly impossibly unrelated phenomenon together using similar models and patterns, and leave with a much more intuitive understanding about complexity, randomness, and chaotic systems.
A Briefer History of Time: For those who truly would like to exalt their personal God of the Gaps to the small unit.
Sagan’s Demon Haunted World was probably the reason I ended up going into the sciences!
I would put this down as my best book ever. It contains one of the most important ideas (IMO) for a scientist to keep in mind:
“But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.”
The Cosmos series, which was on PBS when I was a kid IS the reason I went into science.
This author is by far my favorite. Everything he wrote was amazing and made me think so deeply about things.
I recommend Dragons of Eden especially because it sheds light on how fabric of our culture is woven by old thoughts that are recycled in interesting ways. The Demon Haunted World does a good job at explaining how we have to escape magical thinking and be more rational about how we approach life.
After seeing Carl Sagan's Cosmos I got and read the coffee table book "Cosmos" I really liked it at the time(about 10-12 yo). It was pretty influential but I do not know if I could sit through the book again.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
It’s kind of cliche for a white male nerd of a certain age, but it has stuck with me. How imaginative the book is, the huge mix of characters and stories in the book, and the style of writing are incredible. The pace of interesting ideas is very fast and engrossing, and the language used to describe things is complex but not overly so.
It’s on my to-read list, but starting is daunting. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (the essay collection) was amazing. I think about it often.
Read a physical copy. Use two bookmarks, one for the footnotes. Read until the toothbrush photo before thinking about putting it down.
i tried that. didnt work for me. im actually reading it now as an ebook. this means i can jump seamlessly back and forth between notes. i dont love this because i am definitely a dead tree type reader, but in this instance the ebook is the only solution. the physical copy sits on my bedside in case.
its a wonderful read but sometimes dfw just seems unecessarily hostile to the reader.
Yeah, my strategy is to when I start reading move my bookmark from where I am in the book to where I am in the footnotes so that while I'm reading I use the bookmark to quickly find the correct place in the footnotes.
This is good advice.
At least read the first chapter. I've never read anything like it (and I've read a lot). It was an experience more than anything. It became abundantly clear to me that I was reading something could only have been written by a true genius. No other author has a command of the modern English language like DFW did. The way he combines humor, wit, and wordplay was magic. It really showed me the power of writing.
I read this and didn't find it all that interesting, although it was quite funny in parts. I'm curious to know what you found amazing about it?
There were a number of essays that influenced my world view and a story that left a strong lasting impression.
The essay on why we consume mass media was insightful at the time and particularly prescient given the rise of influencers, streaming, and short form video.
The essay “Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness” influenced me greatly. It made me realize how much pure artistry and mastery there is in the world. And most of it goes entirely unappreciated.
Incarnations of Burned Children was an amazing piece of literature in a harrowing and terrifying way. To this day, years later, I experience extreme l’appel du vide when carrying hot water around my children.
The idea that entertainment could be all engrossing and some forms of entertainment addictively destructive to our well-being? That we could have cameras in video conferences but would want them effectively off? It was delightfully/scarily prescient in some ways.
Actually I wish people would lead with this more: because it's a book about entertainment and how some forms of entertainment addictively destructive to our well-being, and that's why it's relevant today.
I see a lot about David Foster Wallace and "it meant a lot to me personally at once time" but very little about its objective merits (which are real to be clear).
I feel like there were many instances where something would be described, either a a character's internal feelings or an observation about the world and I would think, "damn that just perfectly put into words something that I've thought or experienced" or I'd be like "wow that's so true and insightful." And I would be thinking this all the time while reading.
On top of that I liked all the drug stuff and the kind of dystopian world created in the book.
It changes all of the time, but one is Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. Completely re-shaped my perceptions of reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusions_(Bach_novel)
While I only made it halfway through, Atlas Shrugged had a big impact on me and my liberal, southern California upbringing, where I was under the assumption that certain things (food, healthcare, money, etc) were due to me by nature. I try to avoid preaching to others, but it considerably increased my self-resilience.
I am also a fan of Illusions. :)
created: January 27, 2017
Very nice!
I feel like there could be a secret society around Illusions references.
(You'll understand if you read the book.)
The best non-fiction book I have ever read is 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb'[1] by Richard Rhodes.
Fantastic early history of the people that eventually comprise the Manhattan Project. I feel any person who is interested in physics should read the book.
It is mindblowing the scale of the facilities that they had to build to generate a very small amount of the fissile material needed.
Strangely enough, I started on (a few times already) the second part, 'Dark Sun' [2], which is about the making of the Hydrogen Bomb focused on Edward Teller but I haven't been able to complete it yet.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb-ebook/d...
I scrolled to find this and add my vote. 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' is a daunting read, but it does a great job of tackling the physics, politics, project management, the difficulties, triumphs, and consequences of the bomb. I feel like reading it is part of what is necessary to understanding the 20th century.
Mistakes Were Made by Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson. It's a long discussion on the mechanics of cognitive dissonance and self-justification.
--
"A man travels many miles to consult the wisest guru in the land. When he arrives, he asks the great man:
'O wise guru, what is the secret of a happy life?'
'Good judgement,' says the guru.
'But, O wise guru' says the man, 'how do I achieve good judgement'
'Bad judgement,' says the guru"
The book has been on my shelf for a long while, and I haven't read it yet, but I really like the full title "Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"
Non-fiction: The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer. US Navy destroyers, escort carriers and destroyer escorts face off against Japanese cruisers and battleships. The Japanese had many times the firepower of the US, yet incredibly brave US sailors and airmen attacked anyway. Incredible story of courage under terrible conditions and odds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Stand_of_the_Tin_Can_... and https://www.amazon.com/Last-Stand-Tin-Sailors-Extraordinary/...
Fiction:
Project Hail Mary is very enjoyable, don't read spoilers and you'll enjoy it even more. https://www.amazon.com/Project-Hail-Mary-Andy-Weir/dp/059313...
The Discworld City Watch series of books, starting with "Guards! Guards!" The characters are hilarious, there's so much humour yet still enough space for meaningful prose. Terry Pratchett was taken from us too soon. https://www.amazon.com/Guards-Discworld-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0...
Edited to add: non-fiction "Most Secret War" by Dr R V Jones. Funny, easily digestible short chapters, wonderful account of the author's work in WW2. "(the author's) appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Second World War." https://www.amazon.com/Most-Secret-Penguin-World-Collection/...
I absolutely second Project Hail Mary. It's been the only sci-fi book in years to have me glued to the pages.
'Project Hail Mary' was a great read. Especially 'Rocky' (no spoilers).
Everybody has already mentioned most of the best books I've read, so I'll mention one that I haven't seen on this thread yet - The Little Schemer.
Unless you're actively working through a bunch of problems/examples, reading most books is a form of passive learning. That is, you are simply being told information. The Little Schemer is the only book I know of that is written almost entirely in the form of increasingly intricate questions to the reader (active learning). There are maybe about two dozen or so statements ("Laws" as the author calls them). Everything else is a question in an extended Socratic dialogue aimed at refining the reader's knowledge of Lisp, how computation arises from recursion, computation in general, and lambda calculus culminating in the y-combinator.
The Little Schemer is the most unique, most fun, most educational (in the sense that it _forces_ you to work your way through it) book that I've read. Moreover, it's a great way to grasp computation in a more abstract sense.
Totally agree. Loved this book. Reading "The Little Prover" right now. I can't get enough of this style of textbook writing.
The best book I've ever read isn't the best book I've read but one that connects me with a particular moment: The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov.
It was the start of summer school holidays back in the late 1980s, in my teenage years. I went to my local library and, because I didn't know what I wanted to read, I decided to pick one book blindly from the fiction section. I didn't know what book I had borrowed until I got home. I had never heard about Bulgakov or that particular novel. I had no easy way to know who that writer was or if the book was good or not. I was tempted to return it. But I didn't.
I read the book over several weeks of a particularly boring (and lonely) summer. I enjoyed reading it although I didn't love it. Looking back, I suppose that book gave me something I needed in a completely random way.
Probably Brothers Karamazov
I didn't really understand what it was trying to tell me when I first read it, the ideas just sort of ruminated. I read it when I was either 19 or 20, was completely at odds with who I was then but helped me grow as a person
The way that we think about individual agency and self-interest in modern society is at odds with what our emotional needs are. He makes this point in many of his books
The way that he describes guilt is incredibly accurate. He's very good at seeing and describing emotional conflict
I also grew up as a non-religious jew but reading him made me realize that christianity has more ideological depth than what I initially thought
I read it this year. I loved it. I think if I read it a few years earlier it would be totally lost on me.
For my self what I found interesting is the depiction of Russia in the 19th century, and the on-going transition from a peasant agrarian society into "modernity" and all the confusion it creates. I am not Russian, yet it all seemed so familiar to me. Why? Because I think this same transition is going on in my ethnic country - though 200 years later. Because the archetypes of people shown, the attitudes among former aristocrats and landowners, inefficient (and unserious) bureaucracy, conflicting ideas about religion vs secularism, inferiority complex towards "modernism", changing views of women's role in society, etc I've seen all the same things.
And of course, the book finally convinced me that I should not give into nihilism and pessimism even when everyone around me does.
I just remembered, Irvin Weil has a bunch of Dostoevsky lectures for free on YouTube. He provides a lot of good info and speaks really well. A lot of it is biographical and historical context
+1, especially the 'Grand Inquisitor' portion. And a close 2nd would be Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment.'
Diaspora by Greg Egan. No other book has caused such a seismic shift in how I think about consciousness, personhood, continuity of self, the enormity of the universe, and practicalities of galactic timescales. It also triggered quite a few existential crises (which nearly goes without saying, given all that).
A great book.
I personally prefer Permutation City - for similar reasons. I don't think a book has quite affected my thoughts on what consciousness means quite as much as that book, and it's very interesting to boot.
Reading this right now. I resonate with everything said in the comment above.
Great choice. There’s so much to love in that book.
Came here to say this. I finally read it last year for first time and was delighted. It has aged rather gracefully as well.
I’ve read many books, fiction and nonfiction, but the one that has truly changed me for the better in the long term, was “How to win friends and influence people”.
Its premise is extremely simple (simplistic even) and you can boil it down to “just listen to people”. But it did affect me - maybe because it finally made it “click” how humans work.
And further more, I did recommend it to my friends, and whoever managed to actually read it, changed too, sometimes literally overnight.
Honestly it was incredible to witness people who used to be jerks to transform into thoughtful and tolerant people right in front of my eyes.
'Bashō, dichter zonder dak' with the subtitle 'Haiku en poëtische reisverhalen' by professor Willy Vande Walle, a Belgian Japanologist. It's a translation of Basho's travel diaries with a lot of contextual information, kind of like Martin Gardner's 'The Annotated Alice', if you've read that one. It's an amazing intellectual tour de force by one of the foremost experts in his field, and it helps that the original works are of very high quality of well.
Unfortunately I don't know if there's an English equivalent, and considering how awful of a language Dutch is to learn it may be easier to learn Japanese, read the originals, and look up all the references yourself.
> how awful of a language Dutch is to learn
Curious, why do you think so? As a Russian I found Dutch to be much easier to learn than Japanese, and English knowledge helps. The largest problem by far is Dutch speakers falling back to English almost always.
Well, as a native speaker I don't really have first-hand experience to how hard it is, but here in Belgium it generally agreed on that it's easier for Flems (Dutch speakers) to learn French than for Walloons (French speakers) to learn Dutch. And past tenses of verbs in Dutch are absolutely borked, so much so that this past weekend my sister and I (and we're both quite well read) had no idea what the past tense was of a word, though which word it was escapes me at the moment.
Thanks, I’m marking this to look into
Borges: Selected Non-fictions. Think his fictions are good? His non-fictions, imho, are even better. You can read three sentences and feel like you just listened to a symphony - you get that constant Borges wit, erudition, mystery. The English translations are SO good. Are they even better in Spanish?
I devour Borges' books. I thik my most favourite is Fictions but the library of babel was pretty good, too.
Unless youve just read a handful of books in your life it is impossible to give a good answer to the question.
Books are not oranges.
"Books are not oranges."
As an aside, what do you mean by this? I would have an even harder time giving and answer to the best orange I've eaten.
The Hobbit. My brother read it to me when I was just starting to read. When he was done I asked him to read it again. he said no and I learned to read in earnest. I was often shooed out of the adult section of the library. I have read lots of books by now.
The best orange has a structure of a peak ripe grapefruit. Peel doesn’t stick, micro-columns separate easily and burst with juice. If grapefruits were orange-flavored, I’d eat them all day.
Still waiting for January and my morning ritual of juicing a small grapefruit into an 8oz ice-filled mason jar.
It's a damn shame we haven't figured out how to coerce citrus like we do tomatoes.
Ever tried pomelo?
> what do you mean by this
That books are not a commodity.
The point _may_ be that oranges can be evaluated based on a few simple variables (eg., richness of flavor, juiciness, etc.), where there's no common set of variables that can be used to evaluate all the different types of books (ie, what makes a good history book differs to what makes a good philosophy book, etc.) and if they can't be compared, a 'best' can't be established.
That said, as the author alluded to, 'best' in this context is vague and can mean what we want it to, eg., person a may consider best to mean the book that has had the widest influence, where person b may consider it to mean the book that they personally found the most insightful, etc.
I feel like it would be hard to choose the best of a commodity, so this is even more perplexing to me.
Easier because directly comparable, harder because one can't tell the difference?
Right. That’s why it’s helpful to get recommendations.
It's also impossible to give a bad answer, what are you worried about? Go for it.
Au contraire !
I was a ridiculously voracious reader (if I saw it, I wouldn’t put it down until I’d read it) and my answer was always “hard to say, no favorite.”
But then one day you read that book that stands out from everything else (to you, for various personal reasons that might not translate the same for the next person) and suddenly, just like that, you have a favorite book.
I wish you will discover this feeling one day!
I got to thinking -- a handful of books is approximately one book.
And who ranks their oranges?
I'd guess most people that eat oranges regularly will have a favorite brand.
Depends on the books of course but the old pulp paperbacks were such you could hold 5 to 10 maybe. Today a tablet could hold 1000s (? how many I don't know ?)
Some books are oranges. Some are apples. Some are kumquats and carrots and key-lime pie.
Some are soups made by your grandmother while you sat in a high-chair and your parents laughed and talked with your uncles in the living room.
Some are the smell of coffee and bacon and eggs and a little more smoke than usual in the air in the morning when your dad cooked breakfast.
It's okay to have a special and favorite book, just like it is okay to have a special and favorite food.
>Unless youve just read a handful of books in your life it is impossible to give a good answer to the question.
And yet, there are many answers to that question in this thread.
and none of them directly and reliably answers the asked question :)
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
She was a great visionary and turned the Science Fiction genre upside down. This book is a thought provoking story; an "An Ambiguous Utopia" (this is the subtitle of the book. It really makes you think but also a mocking glass for our society. Close second is The Left Hand of Darkness from the same author.
I would seriously have to consider her _The Lathe of Heaven_ as my nomination.
I am reading it right now. I will leave this thread to avoid any spoil.
Yeah, I was thinking about putting a little summary but I don’t want to spoil the fun and also, it’s hard to summarise this book in a few sentences
A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
While this book has its problems, it is a wide-ranging, engaging, and readable history of ideas from antiquity to about the turn of the 20th century. I'm finding it difficult to put any other book ahead of this one.
Depends at what age you'd ask me that.
Harry Potter 4 was the first book I binged when I was a kid. Lord of the Flies was the first book that made me feel weird emotions, and I liked it. Snow crash is the book that made me think "Fuck, how can one write a book like that ?" and therefore started what I hope to be a lifelong hobby. I still think of Flatland from times to times, as I'm jealous and amazed of the brain of its author.
Snow Crash made me work on being a writer. Just an incredible book, and I am only saddened that he will never again write another book like it.
I see, we are from the same cloth !
I sat down once and read all 8[0] Harry Potter books, and while the author is a terrible person, the books are absolutely fantastic IMO.
[0] I'm including the script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
I read /Cannery Row/ once a year, and have for over ten years. I am a Steinbeck fan, and this is my favorite of his, but I'm not sure if I keep doing it because it's really the best or if I just enjoy judging my own changes in outlook against a standard unit of literature. I suspect it's the latter but it's a short book and I recommend anyone read it at least once.
Its one of the most beautiful books for me...I'm afraid to reread it and lose that feeling.
I get it every year, possibly even stronger. The opening line still gives me chills every read-through:
> Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
Although I'm not generally into fantasy, I found "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" by Stephen Donaldson to be fantastic.
I tried to start it twice and gave up (there are some disturbing elements) but once I got into it I was hooked. Loved that the hero wasnt into being a hero and was deeply flawed.
For non fiction, "Godel, Escher and Bach" is right up there, along with The Selfish Gene.
I have bought and read the entire decalogue of the Thomas covenant series. The first 2 trilogies were prime fantasy. The final quadrilogy probably deserves a re-read but it wasn't quite at the same level on the first read for me as the others.
It's the only book that I can remember that has sent me scrambling for a dictionary as the sentences contained words whose meaning could not be discerned by inference.
"The surquedry of the Elohim was their downfall", for instance.
I've been reading history books lately, and my ebook feature "look up selected word in dictionary or Wikipedia" is such a useful little thing. I wish I'd had something similar in the 80s (the convenience, I know I could get a dictionary)
A built-in pronunciation guide would also have been very appealing to this 80s bookworm.
Although I absolutely loved the first two chronicles, I could not get into the last chronicles at all. I read the first 1.5 books of those and gave up.
Part of that is the extreme verbiage, as you point out. Really breaks the flow when you're reaching for a dictionary three times a page. I also frankly just didn't like anyone at all in the last chronicles, and stopped caring. But maybe that's just because of all the dictionary lookups!
Thomas Covenant is only acceptable to readers who will accept a protagonist who rapes an innocent girl quite early in the work.
Yes, that is the disturbing element that made me stop reading twice. I pushed past that eventually and came to appreciate the story as a whole. This does not mean I or the characters in the story condone it or forgive it.
Update: his other magnificent sci fi series, "The Gap" also deals with extreme abuse. His works are not comfortable, but they are great stories.
Nonfiction: "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Taleb has had the biggest influence on me.
Fiction: I dunno but maybe "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson.
Two of my favorites, too, although I'd go with Anti-Fragile from Taleb.
I think Anathem is Stephenson's best. The Diamond Age is also really good. For every one of his books, I just wish he could write an ending that matches the quality of the rest.
>> I think Anathem is Stephenson's best
Hard to choose for me, but I might cast a vote for the Baroque Cycle, although I love almost all of his science fiction as well.
Another vote here for Anathem. That was a world I just wanted to curl up in and learn more about.
As a teenager I read 'Catch 22' over and over.
I read Feynman's 'Surely You're Joking', and that led to me becoming a physicist.
For software engineering, all the essays in Fred Brooks' 'Mythical Man Month' were formative.
Rand's 'Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged' were also thought-provoking.
For investing, reading Warren Buffet's 'Letters to Investors' shaped what I believe works.
The best business book I've read is 'Invent and Wander' and 'Working Backwards' about Amazon culture.
100 Years of Solitude is my favorite. I majored in Spanish literature in college, that was my first exposure to Gabriel García Márquez (I read it in the original Spanish, but I'm told the English translation is faithful and very good).
I've struggled through 2 or 3 Marquez books in Spanish (I'm far from fluent), and have read all of them in English. Gregory Rabassa was an excellent translator and ,from my unexpert point of view, captured the essence of Marquez' work.
Translated literature is interesting and I've recently read a few differing views on the "best" translations of Homer.
I've resigned myself that I simply must trust the masses in some places and I won't be learning Russian to read Tolstoy authentically.
I rant about this too much, but I urge anyone who is thinking of reading a non-English book to check reviews of the translations first. Translations vary wildly and the quality of the translation makes or breaks your enjoyment and understanding of the text.
I would probably have to say The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I’m a sucker for fat historical fiction books and this one delivered everything I want from that type of book.
I was blown away by Pillars of the Earth.
I had never read a historical fiction before it. It is so well crafted, showing different characters and their perspectives, all in the backdrop of medieval England.
I just finished the Kingsbridge series last night! Excellent books.
It's certainly rich, and the trilogy is satisfying to read, but I had to stop with his giant epics because he's just so relentlessly cruel to his characters. Every remotely sympathetic female character is going to spend at least a decade being repeatedly raped. Every ordinary man is going to have his family murdered and be enslaved. Yes the stakes might be elevated that way and for sure his chosen time period wasn't exactly kindly to those at the bottom of the social pile, but after a while it just felt gratuitous and more reflective of some pathology in Ken Follet's mind than any desire to tell a good story.
Great book. Some other historical fiction recommendations:
- The "Welsh Princes" series by Sharon Kay Penman (same era, different perspective)
- Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Black Death)
- The "Grail Quest" series by Richard Cornwell (Hundred Years War)
- The "Last Kingdom" series, also by Cornwell (Viking invasion, Alfred the Great)
Shogun by James Clavell as well!
This is an amazing book and I've read it 10+ times despite it being ~1000 pages. I tried a lot of the "sequels" but they just didn't deliver the same way and felt too samey and not a great continuation.
I loved this book. I read it as a kid and I didn't understand all of it but it was the first book I encountered of that scale and scope and it showed me what books could be like.
For me that would be "How experiments End"
This book is written by a science historian with science background. It gives a real perspective about how scientists reached concensus about some of the nowadays well known facts in physics. It goee through some technical details and history including people involved and how personalities and the circumstances around these times affected the progress. If you read it you might find it somehow difficult with some technical details although he tried to simplify it. But once going through that you will find that each chapter is really a journey that you will enjoy.
I really recommend it for people interested in learning new stuff and also enjoy some reading down the line. And get a first hand look into how things are usually done in physics.
The absolute best for me: The Malazan book of the fallen.
Book 1 is really hard to get into and doesn't reward as much. But if you stick with it, as early as the end of Book 2, you'll know what you're in for.
I was skeptical but after a rough start I enjoyed book 1 by the end. Not generally into fantasy and dropped Way of Kings, Wheel of Time and others.
Hm.
If I say best as in long lasting, “Master and Margarita” uniquely has the power to make me feel a kind of romance when I remember it, not just while reading.
The short story “Fumes the Memorious” changed in a literal sense how I perceived the world, at least for an hour or so.
“Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” was the best self-help book I’ve ever read, and fundamentally changes my politics as well. I came to recognize the significance of true and perceived agency as a factor in mental health.
“Seeing like a state” was the worst written and edited book I’ve read that I nevertheless recommend to people because the ideas therein are fascinating.
It’s an impossible question, as the list of answers only gets longer with time spent on looking for answers. So I suppose Master and Margarita, as that was the first answer.
Walter Issacson's Steve Jobs bio. I legit disliked Steve Jobs. I could not put this book down for the week it took to read. Then I became an Issacson junky. He just digs into the minutia and makes it digestible.
Currently reading Frank Ramsey by Cheryl Misak. Will appeal to philosophy nerds mostly. Fascinating how a kid of 26 changed the fields of philosophy, mathematics, and economics, but no one really knows of him.
For an interesting deep dive on everything wrong with Isaacson’s Jobs’ bio.
>I legit disliked Steve Jobs.
Do you mean before reading the bio, during, or after?
Fiction: Hyperion by Dan Simmons (especially The Consul's Tale)
Non-Fiction: Peopleware (opened my eyes when I was a young newcomer to the industry)
I read Tristan Donovan's "Replay: The History of Video Games" in middle school (back when my own access to video games was very limited, so I had to resort to reading about them), and it partially influenced me to pursue game development myself.
A lot of my current knowledge about the game industry comes from things I learned in this book (or used as a base for further research later on). Each chapter is a vignette into a different era, technology, and country, up to the indie boom of the 2000s. It's not a life-changing read by any means, but it's an extensive and memorable one.
I want to answer this question as if you asked which book had the biggest impact on me, that I remember with the most fondness, the one I wish I could forget so I could experience again from zero.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Long and sometimes tedious, as his books can be, but the characters are so memorable. Bobby Shaftoe is one of my all-time favorites. The book takes place on two timelines, involving two generations of characters, that have interesting parallels. The audio book narrator does a great job, if you're into audiobooks.
Runner-up would be Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. His best, IMO.
I still use Stephenson’s definition of “failing an intelligence test” from those books. I’d heard the term before, but the example he uses is concise.
"Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psychology" by Valentino Braitenberg.
Has shaped my outlook on artificial intelligence more than anything else, and this was written in 1984, long before GPT-3 was a thing. Absolutely "mind-blowing" in that it deconstructs and then reassembles your understanding of what a mind is.
Best short story: "The Egg" (by Andy Weir); just read it, is very short, no spoilers.
Best entertainment/fiction: "Murderbot Diaries"
Is highly entertaining, very unique protagonist, raises some very interesting ethical/philosophical questions and does far-future sci-fi worldbuilding insanely well.
Just read the egg. Amazing! I had read Weir’s other works and somehow missed this. Thanks for sharing!
The best book I've ever read is perhaps "cheating" because it's "The Next Whole Earth Catalog" and, as the name says, it's a catalog of (mostly) books.
(You can see it for yourself in all it's glory here: https://www.wholeearth.info/p/the-next-whole-earth-catalog-f... )
Other than that I'd have to say the Tao Te Ching.
(The best fiction book I've read is almost certainly "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe. It's in the league of Tolkien and Dune.)
For fiction, came here to say the same about Gene Wolfe, the whole solar cycle series by him might honestly be the (for now at least) absolute pinnacle of both the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Great world design, great characters, great writing (and variety of voice, the way he pulls off different characters writing is just brilliant, it really feels like a series written by several completely different authors.) The kind of books you read and reread and taken something new out of them every time. I'd honestly give just about anything to be able to go back into them completely blind again.
Indeed
;-)
The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/366821.The_Evolution_of_...
See also https://ncase.me/trust/ for a really nice 30-min interactive summary of the ideas presented in the book.
My rough definition of "best" here is "most potentially impactful to humanity" (see also Andrew Breslin's Goodreads review).
There can be only one answer to that - the Bible. Twenty years ago, I was convinced the content alone justified the claims of a divine origin, which opinion has only grown stronger in the years since. Even if you don't believe in it, it is worth reading as literature - an extraordinarily epic story, and a lot of stuff to say about humanity and divinity along the way. Everything else, comparatively, seems to me like it was written by children.
But that's a useless answer, as the purpose of such a question is to generate recommendations, and that's unlikely to be a new one to anybody.
One of the books that's impacted me the most in the last few years is Homer's Illiad. I used to wonder why we read The Odyssey in high school and never talked about The Illiad, but I don't wonder now! I think all the violence in Illiad would warrant more than a PG-13 rating. ;) But it is a great story about men and gods and struggle and war, with a lot to say about what mankind is and what it can be, and a lot of heroes to want to grow up to be someday. The introduction to my copy includes the quote, "It is a good thing that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow to love it too much." That quote will make no sense to most people; if it resonates with you, this book is your kind of book.
I am currently reading through Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology, as I am looking for wisdom on how to navigate the highly technological time I find myself in. I haven't finished it, but I find the insights profound, and I see the ideas everywhere. I think it may prove to be the best thing I've ever read on the topic of what it means to interact with technology and remain human.
Shakespeare is legendary for a reason. I haven't read one of his plays yet that that I didn't deeply enjoy. They never hit right in high school, but as an adult I find them profound. I giggled my way through A Comedy of Errors recently and it still makes me smile.
A Christian recommendation - I've very much enjoyed Jeremy Taylor's 1650 Holy Living and Dying. Probably the best book on Christian life I've read, and I've read quite a few - and it's a book that rarely makes people's short lists. It's long and I haven't finished it, but as much as I've read so far continues to impact me.
Edit: I almost forgot! I read The Princess and the Goblin several years ago. It is a fairy tale intended for children, and is yet one of the best books I have ever read on the subject of girlhood, and I have spent a lifetime searching for them. If you have (or are, or find yourself in an occasion to love) a girl, I can't recommend it highly enough.
I'm atheist-agnostic, but I've read the Bible several times and the Qu'ran twice. I think it is important to have at least a passing knowledge of these books, and TBH, as long as you cherry-pick, there is a lot of good life advice in there.
I'm fascinated by both books for their history and authorship, though. Who wrote them? Why did they write them? How did they write them? What parts of their content is backed by historical record? etc.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy
I know, right? These works are deeply mysterious and not to be dismissed lightly. I remember coming away from the Bhagavad Gita with the same sense of Who? What?? How??? What on earth?
An experience not to be missed, to be sure. The world is full of the bizarre and inexplicable, and would surely be diminished by a need to explain everything.
Stick with QCT, I’ve been coming back to that essay for 20 years. Given your other recs, you might want to go back to a few of the Dialogues: the Apology, the Laches, maybe the Phaedrus. And if you’re serious about the divine origin stuff, after reading the Apology, read the third chapter of Walden.
Thank you for that, I will.
Glad someone mentioned that. I couldn't say it better.
Numbers and Leviticus are the worst slog of a book I've come across. Don't think people are very honest with themselves when they read through it and think, yes God made this so beautiful.
You know, the names of a couple of the oldest books of the Bible in English are not very good. "Numbers" does have a census for the first few chapters, and I'll grant that a census isn't gripping reading. It impresses upon the reader the intended historicity of the account - Illiad has a long description of how many troops and boats came from where for a similar reason. After that, though, the book continues the narrative that left off in Exodus, and is similar in tone and content. The original name of the book, "Ba midvar" or "In the wilderness" is a better title, as it recounts the story of Israel's time in the wilderness.
Leviticus was my favorite book for a long time, and I still regard it with great affection. But I've also heard people deride it as nonsensical, and I get where that is coming from. Throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom has been similarly derided as "the destruction of some jewelry", which is how it must seem if you aren't familiar with the backstory and the symbolism. We live in an age that really likes to downplay context and symbolism and historical connections, and would tend to regard "the destruction of some jewelry" as a reasonable take - maybe even an enlightened take. Such a perspective sees the blood of bulls and rams in Leviticus as nothing else, and it's no wonder it seems gross and uncompelling. To me, that take is missing almost the entire story: if you can talk about the One Ring without saying anything about power, you have basically missed everything of significance about it. And in Leviticus, blood is life, God gives it and God claims it, and we learn from the rituals surrounding it that holiness and life requires sacrifice and death, something both immediately true and a deep truth at many levels. The invisible things, the symbols and connections and significances and virtues, have retreated from the modern mind, first becoming unimportant, then not real, then not even perceptible. I regard this as a tragic turn of events, and I think it is not unrelated to our current civilizational struggles. But any rate, ancient works in general, and the Bible in particular, put a lot of emphasis on the poetic, the symbolic, the deeper meanings of things. If you're going to enjoy such works, you're going to need to see beyond the literal.
For me, Leviticus has this breathtaking mix of the intensely symbolic and the intensely practical. I am often taken aback at the imagery being so on point, and yet so accessible to a poor bronze age people. And I think often on its lessons in leadership as I navigate related challenges. Above and beyond that, it does a lot to illustrate what God is like in terms of day to day relationship with him - an education about how this whole affair works, in contrast to the idols and magicians and cults. This is how things are, this is the sort of God you serve. Plenty of what it has to say about the life of the man of God is profound, perhaps even shocking.
And one more thing - it is unsurprising that an ancient handbook on ritual would seem incoherent to a people who have abandoned all practice of ritual and are energetically at work burning down any stray ones the last generation might have missed. Our individualism has metastasized to the point that it seems all common experiences must be destroyed on principle. I not only hail from that culture, but am doubly poor: as an evangelical protestant, my Christianity is shorn of tradition and liturgy, with sacrament reduced to the bare minimum required by the text. There are certainly historical reasons for that, up sides or at least intended up sides, and I'm not looking to convert. At the same time, I have been thinking recently about the role of ritual in teaching and binding together, in turning individuals into a people, and I can't deny that the body of the Catholic and the Orthodox seems to have a sort of spine to it that the Protestant lacks, and I'm starting to think this is why. Leviticus is ... God's solution to that need, at one place and time. I am a student, likely not even knowing what the poverty of my historical circumstance has left me ignorant of. But it may be not just an example to the religious - it may be that our society could learn a thing or two from this ancient social technology. This religion did survive for millenia, whereas our attempt at an anti-ritualistic, rationalistic, individualistic civilization seems to be fraying after a few short centuries. Maybe we could do with some civilizational mortar.
Anyway - that's some of what I see. I think it would take a lot of education and spiritual experience to get similar things on your own. Leviticus is a hard book. It may or may not help, but you can always look at a commentary to get some of the flavor of what an experienced reader sees. Here's one online example - https://ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1/mhc1.Lev.ii.html
What is "the Bible"? As many threads in this post have pointed out, the translator and translation have a huge impact on the final product.† Are you referring to ancient Hebrew? A version approved by the Catholic Church or is it something concocted by that German heretic? Something else?
† Sometimes with death sentences handed out for challenges to R̶o̶m̶a̶n̶ papal supremacy!
Keith Johnstone: Impro
Nominally about improvisation theatre, but has many insights about human behavior you will not find anywhere else, especially about status hierarchies.
Maurice Nicoll: Psychological Commentaries On The Teaching Of Gurdjieff And Ouspensky, Parts 1-6
This book is probably the best introduction to the teachings of Gurdjieff that have quite literally changed my life. Gurdjieff was a spiritual teacher whose approach is quite different from organized religions, new age gurus and such.
This approach is for people who have experienced or have a sense that there is something that the materialistic world view cannot explain, but feel that existing religions are lacking, for example they require you to believe in things that do not make sense.
In this approach there is no need to believe anything. You become convinced by your own experiences about some fundamental truths about human organization and capabilities, allowing you to start learning more.
You could say that it is "preparatory work", allowing you to learn enough to be able to discern helpful teachings from those that are less helpful.
The book is out of print. To get a physical copy you need to order it used from Amazon. Usually they are sold one book at a time. Just get any one book, there is no need to buy the full set. The books record individual discussions, and the same topics repeat in all the books. If the book resonates, I recommend that you continue with In Search of Miraculous by Ouspensky.
Picking a "favorite" is generally hard. I once learned that the best way to phrase this question is in the form of e.g. "What are some of your favorite books?" so the responder doesn't have to force rank their all-time-favorite in their head, which can feel taxing. So I'll name two:
I'm actually a bit surprised to not see "Brave New World" mentioned yet. That was a life-changing experience to my teenage self
And since someone else has already picked Steppenwolf by Hesse, I'll mention Demian instead.
The vision in "Brave New World" seems so unrealistic and far fetched that for me to treat it as any sort of warning or deep insight.
Agreed.
I remember getting assigned this book in high school, I think Freshman Year, and not being able to put it down. Just left me with this feeling of, "Shit, if we sacrifice freedom and individuality for happiness and a sense of security then we're really going to be fucked." I know that's probably too political for HN, but man, the message I got from this book has resonated loud and clear with me ever since.
"Think Like a Computer Scientist", right after an introductory course where I learned to program (only to discover that for-loops were done by myself when I was a teen and didn't even know about it, writing macros to level up skills in Ultima Online RPG.)
I combined all the books mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41807759
"Nonlinear dynamics and Chaos" by Steven Strogatz.
It's the only textbook I really read during my university education (sad to admit). Even though I consider it a textbook and not pop-sci, it's incredibly approachable and teaches a framework about dynamical systems which was completely missing from all other courses I took.
Sounds like a humble brag. But it being the only book I managed to read really makes it stick out for me!
Fiction: Independent People by Halldór Laxness or Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Non-Fiction: The Feynman lectures on Physics.
A number of my favorites have already been mentioned so I’ll round out the list with Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
If you have kids, an interest in gardening, or a curiosity about Native American culture, this book will hit you in all three.
I got it on audiobook, and felt like I wanted to use a highlighter on every fifth sentence. So I bought a paper copy so I can just open to random pages and start reading.
I am not sure about being the best, but one book that really felt special and still does is :
- The beginning of infinity by David Deutsch.
This book really ignited my love for epistemology in general, and the nature of scientific progress and understanding.
Another notable book for me :
Finite and infinite games by James Carse.
I find the book fascinating if only because the concept the author is describing is both intuitive and counter - intuitive at the same time.
"The beginning of infinity" by David Deutsch is the definitive book on Optimism.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell.
Taught me everything I needed to know about being a painter.
Perhaps not the 'best' book ever, but certainly one of the most impactful for me as a common-or-garden 18-year-old realising for the first time that our political and economic systems aren't some sort of almighty edict and could be critiqued.
Nonfiction:
- The Goal, Eli Goldratt - changed the way I thought about getting things done. The Theory of Constraints is important to anyone who makes things.
Fiction:
- Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - I love me some Sherlock Holmes, and nothing is more Sherlock Holmes than Hound of the Baskervilles. Terrific writing, great story, spooky setting. Love it.
Obviously a very reductive question -- even if sharpened slightly to "most influential" book. I will reduce it even further: one of the few books that I have read twice (and the only one that has exerted different, profound influence on me on each read) is Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine." This is a book that every engineer should absolutely read, though not without an uncritical eye for Tom West and Data General. I wrote about my second read of "Soul" five years ago[0], and I know that there are folks who have read it on my recommendation -- and I don't think anyone has regretted it.
[0] https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2019/02/10/reflecting-on-the-so...
I finally read it recently (few months back or so) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the many takeaways for me was how similar the SW world is to the HW one when it comes to actual human being behind engineering -- I guess I shouldn't be surprised but for some reason, the book reinforced that notion in my head. I'm sure I will read it again at some point.
Based on the amounts of re-reads: Das Boot. A soldier and artist, caught in the strangest of circumstances, either under the most extreme, life threatening danger or waiting for it, both in slow motion. Fascinating, state of the art technology, a miracle of science, but with a need of highly trained, expendable slaves running it for a single immoral purpose. Completely dependent on other peoples decisions, sitting far away in front of a chess board, ready to sacrifice him at any given time for their strategic goals. Any attempt to escape, to scream on the insanity of the situation or even to question it are grounds for immediate execution. Based on a true story. I‘m reading this book for 30 years and the authors ability to describe the nightmare that happened to him still haunts and fascinates me.
The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman. The audio book is also great. The writing style is gripping and it's a very funny book despite being about a serious subject: WWI. It also gives a sense of how much pressure the leaders were under and how some managed while others simply broke as initial plans went awry. The author makes clear how individual decisions made huge differences and the entire outcome of the war could have been very different based on the personalities of those involved. These personality insights and descriptions really shine through. The book is not a definitive history of the start of WWI by any means but it is highly entertaining and reads quickly.
The chapters about Turkey can be skipped since they don't seem to fit in with the rest of the book. I found them boring.
My absolute one would be Don Quijote de La Mancha by Cervantes - Taught me the beauty of language, to follow my own ideas and the power of a little craziness. Second would be anything from Jules Verne, his books got me to love science and engineering when I was a kid.
Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut. Like others could change any day you ask. Social commentary is probably at the top followed by well researched recent historical works.
For fiction no idea, really hard to come up with a criterion and that is great actually.
For non-fiction, by far the one that had the most novelty factor and effect of my worldview probably Chomsky - Understanding Power. Not 100% because it's almost a tie with Manufacturing Consent - this one being much darker.
+1 for Understanding Power. It taught me how to apply my research skills to things that matter, as well as how to read the news.
The best book I've ever read has been The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1 thru 7.
https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html
History, Philosophy, Mathematics, and more!
- The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
- The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
- The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Jose Saramago
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- The War of the End of the World - Mario Vargas Llosa
- The War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
etc.
I can't do "The" xD
> The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Jose Saramago
Have you read Blindness? I liked The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, but personally I liked Blindness a lot more.
Fiction: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
Non-fiction: Pilates Anatomy by Rael Isacowitz - it changed me and changed my body.
Did you ready Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum?
I've managed to get about 1/3 in but found it boring and messy. That was years ago so I might give it another shot. Thanks for reminding me about that book.
It took me a few tries as well, but when I finally got through it I loved it more than Name of the Rose.
Not sure which one I would pick but the Culture series by Iain M Banks probably had the most impact on me.
You like thrillers? You like non-fiction? You like absolute page-turning non-fiction thrillers?
Check out "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston - it's about the Ebola virus and a strain that wound up in a primate facility just outside of Washington, D.C.
Stephen King called the first chapter "one of the most horrifying things I've read in my whole life." It's so true. Preston caught some flak from CDC scientists for sensationalizing the effects of hemorrhagic viruses, but I think he painted a fairly accurate picture for the layman in all of us: they turn your flesh into soup.
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
VALIS, Philip K Dick
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance + also Lila, Robert Pirsig
Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
Immortality, Milan Kundera
Catch-22, Joseph Heller (pair with The Deserters, Charles Glass -- In fact a lot of the stuff in Catch-22 is actually toned down from reality)
Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha, Daniel Ingram (but ignore 80% of it)
Catcher in the Rye was the right book for me at the right age. It really set a North Star for me as to what I wanted to be when I looked at myself in the mirror.
Funny how as I grew older, I found myself understanding more and more about what the older characters were saying, without me sacrificing what made what Holden Caulfield ring so true to me.
Fun fact: in university at the bookstore they had a written poll as to what your favorite book was (before the Internet). I was one of the first ones and wrote down Catcher in the Rye. A month later I read in the school paper that Catcher in the Rye was the winner that year, and it was the first time that the Bible didn't come in first place.
Out of curiosity, when did you read it?
It's one of those books that everyone's heard about, but I find not many people have read. I myself hadn't read it until about six years ago (in my late 30s). I was underwhelmed by it. Maybe the book hit a lot harder when it came out than it does in modern times?
I also read it when I was 16, and throughout my 20s. I haven't read it in 10-15 years now. It's something that speaks to you as a teenager more than it does as an adult, because at least for me it put into words what I hated about the world, ex. phonies, and how I wanted to hold myself to that. I'm in my 50s and I'm not a phony so it won't hit me as hard, but I still remember how much it meant to me.
I read it at 12, got nothing out of it. Read at 16, thought it was the best book in the world. Read it at 22, got nothing out of it.
Not a best seller but if you like Continental philosophy, The Tears of Eros by Georges Bataille is profound and disturbing.
The central thesis of the book is that eroticism and death are inextricably linked - that the most intense erotic experiences often involve elements of sacrifice, and the transgression of taboos. The author argues that this connection between Eros and Thanatos - the drives of life and death - is a fundamental part of the human condition which he sees as a means by which humans confront their own mortality and the limits of their existence.
The conclusions are often questionable but the scope of the work and the historical deep dive makes for quite a ride.
I've been immensely enjoying Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's free, fun, and I don't find myself having to skip unnecessary paragraphs ever.
Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking
I find a lot of my successes are driven by building powerful and convincing narratives about my own life and circumstances. Unfortunately, the anti-smoking messaging that comes form every website, doctor and other resource all parrots the same tired arguments I had been hearing since the 90's. My earnest efforts to find new perspectives hit the same wall of propaganda every time. This book offered me multiple new perspectives, it relieved me of the shame placed on me by other resources and social stigmas, and it acted as an upbeat and optimistic cheerleader.
I quit 7 years ago when I finished the book and haven't had the urge to smoke since.
Is there a book like this for ice cream and sugary desserts?
He later wrote multiple books on weight loss. Search for "allen carr lose weight" and you will find several. I don't know if his other books are held in as high regard as his quit smoking book. This one seems especially relevant: "Allen Carr's Good Sugar, Bad Sugar"
question: I'm not a smoker, but would the information be able to be generalized?
I think it was uniquely suited to break through the homogenous anti-smoking propaganda and offer new perspectives. Though he did write similar books about alcohol and diet.
Because Anna Karenina is already listed,
I'll plug Scandal by Shusaku Endo. It is by a Japanese Catholic novelist and was written near the end of his career (lifetime achievement award timeframe).
It is about a Japanese Catholic novelist near the end of his career, who is accepting an award when he is accosted by reporters asking about rumors that he has been seen carousing in the red light district. He decides to investigate the rumors, but he isn't ready for what he's going to find.
It's a kind of meta, semi-autobiographical interrogation of the author and the pillars on which he built his life, that in some ways would be impossible to adapt to any other medium.
Cloud Atlas would be my choice for fiction. The novel covers an incredible range of interesting ideas and great writing.
Antifragile for nonfiction. It really changed the way I think about how both the natural world and human institutions function.
I truly loved Cloud Atlas. It's also a rare example where the book and movie adaptation both lift each other up (though I saw the movie first, and can't know if I would have felt that way in the other direction). I felt like the movie is better at emphasizing the thematic connection between each story, while the book is better at showing the impact of each story on the next, and showing that each story exists for the characters in the next. I loved the movie even more after reading the book.
It was hilarious, and I learned a lot of new words.
That said, the first/last story was a bit of a grind because of the language style.
I didn't think the movie captured it at all. The trailer is great though, and got me to read the book.
Best book I've read in a long time: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt -- it's not often that literary fiction reads as smoothly as a Stephen King book. It's a coming of age story, a drug story, a heist story all rolled up.
Best book I ever read (for myriad other reasons) probably remains Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- never has a book amused me like that. I don't think much about my sensibility, beliefs, way of looking at the world would be quite the same if that book hadn't have come along when I was eleven and said, "you're okay, you're not alone. Don't panic."
I'm reading The Goldfinch right now. Indeed, master storytelling, super readable. I'm enjoying it immensely.
- The works of Richard Feynman: All are very nice reads. - The Idea Factory (Jon Gertner): The only book I’ve read more than once and gifted to several friends and acquaintances. - The Silmarillion: Incredible World-Building - The Master and His Emissary (Mcgilchrist) Dense, but rewarding. Considerably changed the way I think. - God’s Debris (Scott Adams, yes, THAT Scott Adams) Read it in undergrad and not sure if it was a JIT kind of thing, but it impacted me.
Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber shifted my worldview quite significantly.
In the fiction department, I've never encountered anything to match HPMOR, even though I disagree with half of what it says nowadays.
East of Eden by Steinbeck really changed my college mindset on what it means to be "good" and "evil", "right" and "wrong".
It's really hard to describe what the book's about. It's an epic, through and through, and all epics are hard to detail precisely. Inter-generational trauma? Handling one's "sin"? Making a livelihood after repeated failure, be it yourself or external factors?
Contrary to my first sentence, there is one character that I would describe as pure evil. But I feel that just supports one of the conflicts; however incredibly rare, what can an individual do when they come across a bonafide force of evil?
It is dripping with Biblical imagery, and Steinbeck's prose is rambling and tangential for some (though poetic for me), and his characters are not "realistic" and larger than life (but that's what makes them pop off the page for me and so memorable. I guess it's always a balance).
"Now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."
That's my favorite book as well. I came to it much later than college, and still found so much wisdom in it.
Honestly, not making this up, I have no idea how any of you have time to read.
Last few books I read (non-{technical,programming,electronics}) were in college. Perhaps a few for fun, mostly for class.
I work all day, when I am done with work, I have house work to get done. Every single time I grab a book and think "I will read this book", heck even technical,programming,electronics books I _want_ to re-read, time vanishes, I put it up and get too busy.
Reading these comments, seems like a lot of people read books. I have no idea how you all find the time.
I did read tons of books when I was younger, now not so much. Pre-internet, we had less distractions and more focus.
I did read tons of books when I was younger, now not so much. Pre-internet, we had more free time.
I love hard sci-fi and I keep going back to Blindsight: https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
Making a distinction between intelligence and consciousness was interesting and I think applies to current AI systems, at least that what came to mind when seeing ChatGPT for the first time.
Also vampires being real apex predators brought back from extinction with a decent explanation as to why they don't like crosses is just entertaining to me.
I wondered if I would see that here. It is an interesting read, packed with ideas. Not exactly light reading.
Dead Memory, a graphic novel by Marc-Antoine Mathieu. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/329097.Marc_Antoine_Ma...
It describes the collapse of a rectiligne society (The City) based on hyperconnectivity and hyperinformation and poses the base of The Circular Foundation.
It has been written in the end of XX century and seems to have anticipated issues of our society related to communautarism and the loss of some part of our memory.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/606849.Dead_Memory
Aside this album, the author made a great série inspired by the readings of Kafka, Julius Corentin Acquefacques, and explore way to take avantage of code of narration found in comics.
I love the fantasy style of Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
But on the lighter side i consider the Murder Bot series by Martha Wells having a charm that i just find lovely
Best book: Snow Crash
Best short stories: Borges
Ok, I want to be your friend.
I read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and I loved both of them, can recommend.
Seveneves is an amazing book, just make sure you skip the last part.
If you are into history I can recommend The last days of the Incas by Kim MaqQuarrie, it's just an insanely interesting description on how the Incas was conquered, it feels like you're there man.
If you like evolutionary biology/phsycology then check out The Red Queen - Sex and the evolution of human Nature by Matt Ridley.
> Seveneves is an amazing book, just make sure you skip the last part.
It's funny that you say that. My impression after reading it is that Stephenson really just wanted to write the last third, but felt that he needed a bit of backstory, and so wrote the first two-thirds.
>The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Amazing books....
+100
For fiction it would be Dan Simmons’s Hyperion for me, it would be a great short stories anthology, but is far more than that.
Regarding Non-Fiction, my current bet would be Antifragile by Taleb.
The Commonwealth Saga. A sci fi series by Peter F. Hamilton, it covers so many ideas that I'd stay up wondering about. I got engrossed in the sci fi future it created.
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs.
This book completely changed how I view my city and other urban areas. I am now much more in-tune with my urban environment and understand how different aspects of it affect me emotionally.
It also led me to going back to graduate school for a degree in urban design and sustainability, and my focus is now how I can use my computer science background to improve my environment.
From The Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple https://shepherd.com/book/from-the-holy-mountain
I read this in my early 20s and it had a huge impact in changing the course of my life, sending me traveling over a Christmas break, and changing my entire perspective. He is an amazing author and this book is beautiful.
He also does a very good history podcast, 'Empire': https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921
Ah good to hear, I just downloaded some episodes last month and need to get on that :)
And bought his new book!
Do you have a fav of his?
I haven't read any of his books, yet. But I probably will.
The sheer insanity and quality of writing in Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas cements it as probably the best book I've read in terms of enjoyment and influence on my own prose.
In terms of the book that's perhaps made me think and reflect the most, Daniel Keyes Flowers for Algernon has probably had the greatest effect on me.
I didn’t know it at the time but Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I read it in high school and didn’t think it meant much to me. I’ve been rereading it recently and realized a lot of insights and observations it has on living a simpler life are core beliefs I follow. It’s funny reading it again and discovering how great of an impact it had when I originally read it to write a paper for a high school English class.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
It saved my life, two times. First time inspiring me, second time literally.
My parents had the soundtrack LP from the film when I was growing up back in the 70s, I loved that (and I still have a CD). The book remains one of the very few I've read more than once.
Illusions by Richard Bach is also mind-blowing, or at least was for me during puberty..
What happened the second time?
I was riding my bike with some friends and one of them launched a challenge. This was 30 years ago and I was 17. We were climbing up a hill. Who was going to reach the old church at the top of the hill first?
Fast forward to me being ahead, miscalculating a turn before the church, and heading full-speed straight for the edge of a cliff. I couldn't brake because I'd lose control. I couldn't jump off the bike because I'd start rolling. I remembered Jonathan and how he learned acrobatic flight. I didn't have wings to barely bend but I slightly, slightly, lightly than a feather, turned the stem, and got out of trouble right at the last inch in the fastest turn ever performed on a bicycle.
I’ll give a few.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (and the great TA I had teaching the course) got me to change my major to English as a college freshman. I was just hit with a thought like, “I’ve never read anything like this and I’ve never heard a teacher want to talk about books this deeply.”
Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell showed a voice that I’d never heard before — knowledgeable about history, indie rock, cult movies, rural living, and very funny. It was like, “This is exactly who I want to be.”
Then I spent my whole life thinking I was a disorganized person and through the power of a really good memory I was able to hold things together at work. Then I read Mindset by Carol Dweck and Everything In Its Place by Dan Charnas that convinced me that a) I was holding myself back by thinking I was a disorganized person and that b) I could become an organized person. Maybe the best professional decision I’ve ever made because it turns out that being organized is really really useful.
Many, but one of my personal, is Catch 22.
The complexity of the structure, the humor, and the painful exhibition of human stupidity makes it a book for the ages.
'Catch 22' had quite an effect on me when I read it as young man. I'm not sure whether I will read it again, I'm worried it might dissapoint some 40 years later.
I went back and read it after reading it as a teenager fairly recently.
It still worked for me. It didn't quite have the same impact and the it sags a bit in the middle but it's still a great book that well, shaped the way I see the world.
Until a few years ago I would have answered "Um copo de cólera", by Raduan Nassar... but then I read "Crônica da casa assassinada", by Lúcio Cardoso.
My favorite music album is "Fun House", by The Stooges. "Um copo de cólera" has the same chaotic fury of "Fun House", but transposed to literature - and "Um copo de cólera" is the same, but it was written 20 years earlier, is even stronger, and it touches lots of tabboo topics.
I don't know if there are decent translations of them from Portuguese to other languages.
My favorite book _that is available in English_ is "The Lives of Animals", by J.M. Coetzee: <https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-to-z/...>.
There are always better books than the ones I read, and there will never be the best. I’ve tried selecting a few that I can remember at all times, the most interesting book to me, and I’ve listed them on my website at https://brajeshwar.com/#books
If I had to return and re-read, I’d re-read “Leonardo da Vinci.”
I've got 3 different non-fiction books for me:
Thinking Fast and Slow. This book discusses how we think and at what level and where some of the shortcuts we use when thinking occur and what impact they have on us. It really was one of the best books I've ever read; and like many books on that subject, you don't have to read the whole thing to get a lot out of it.
The Dictator's Handbook. This is the book that spawned the video essay series by CGP Gray: Rules of Rulers ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs ). It has been a strong recommend for me on how and why the political world is the way it is.
Brain Lock: This is a book about OCD and it discusses a method of helping manage the symptoms and manifestations of OCD that creates a measurable and material change on the brain itself. Like self-help books, it does repeat itself quite a bit over the second half of the book. If you struggle with OCD, I do recommend it.
Anathem:
You could read it as just a fun first contact adventure coming of age book that involves some hard science and some fun space stuff.
However, it also touches on some very core concepts of nominalism vs. realism, quantum mechanics and how it affects our lives, what consciousness entails and it does so as part of its plot.
It's very fun and very interesting.
Nonfiction: Thinking, Fast & Slow
Fiction: Project Hail Mary
Project Hail Mary is amazing, but personally I think it is just one step below The Martian. Both incredible books, though. I've read the Martian three times.
Late to the party, but for anyone looking for inspiration:
Fiction: Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig) by Thomas Mann[0]
Nonfiction: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard[1]
Illustrated: The Insect God by Edward Gorey
Various "bests" based purely on feelings - They're Going to Love You - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Roadside Picnic - To Kill a Mockingbird - Catch 22 - Blindness - No Country for Old Men (various McCarthy books could rotate into this slot)
Type Theory and Formal Proof (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/type-theory-and-formal-...)
Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide, by Darian Leader and illustrated by Judy Groves.
Freudian theory really was just a way to psychoanalyze Freud and his complexes.
Lacan jettisoned the weirdly specific Freudian stuff and had a more general template, with a focus on the relationship between language and the subconcious.
For nonfiction I think about Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon (and Ed Burns for The Corner) a lot. They are very funny and very sad and really changed how I see the world. So I cheated, two books.
As far as enjoying it at the time I was reading it?
The Once and Future King.
I was on summer vacation while camping and fishing and I read the entire book in a couple of days in the evenings. Maybe it was the lack of distraction, but the Arthurian legend of that book has influenced a ton of modern fiction.
I am That - talks with Nisargadatta Maharaj. Best for me.
"A history of western philosophy" by Bertrand Russell. The world's most prominent philosopher at the time, took a few years out of his working at the front line to write a summary on 2000 years of thought for layman's and won a nobel prize. It's not the easiest read, you can take issue with some interpretations but theres nothing like it. I think it required reading for being a thoughtful human.
“A precious book … a work that is in the highest degree pedagogical which stands above the conflicts of parties and opinions.” – Albert Einstein
Best book of books - 1984
Fiction - Ender's Game
Horror - Voices from Chernobyl. I'm currently read it. I need a pause on every 2-3 pages to refresh my mind.
Biography - "The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town". This is only Grisham book that wasn't fiction and based on true event.
Non-fiction: Pale Blue Dot. Fiction: The Diamond Age.
We're pretty much living parts of The Diamond Age right now. I feel like we're within a decade of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer being a real book, especially with Claude and ChatGPT's multimodal aspects.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan - spent the most time reading it and got the most value from it. This book series is my device for the language learning. It was translated into Russian so painfully slow I've just forced myself to read it in English, learning the vocabulary and grammar on the way. Later I did it intentionally with Dutch, and now I'm going to do the same with Spanish.
It's so big you can reread it as many times as you want and still be surprised by the details you no longer remember. In the end I've read it 2 times in Russian, 3 times in English and 1 time in Dutch - and I'm not going to stop.
Wow. I'm a fast reader, and it took me ages to finish that series. Reading it 6 times would take a lifetime of effort for most people.
I think you can only answer this at a point in time - the book you loved at 20 may not carry the same weight at 50.
For now, though, I really enjoyed Plutarch's Parallel Lives. He compares the life of an ancient Greek and Roman - EG Alexander vs Caesar.
"Aniara" by Harry Martinson reminded me that there are levels to this game. It's the kind of book that somehow makes you feel like a master at imagining epic scenery. The awe / word ratio is very high so even though it's short it feels very deep and rich.
Well, I don’t reread books. But I’ve read this one science fiction book five times. That book is “The Long Run” by Daniel Keys Moran.
As for non-fiction I just bring out the classics that taught me Lisp and Lispy things: Simply Scheme, SICP, On Lisp.
Transall Saga by Gary Paulson. One of those young adult survival stories he was known for writing but with a sci-fi element. The book has been living rent free in my head since an elementary school book fair 26 years ago.
I loved any and all Gary Paulsen books. This one was so unique and I still think about it from time to time as well. I’m due for a reread.
Several immediately come to mind.
Short stories: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (Ken Liu); Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation (Ted Chiang); The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
Novels: The Monk (Matthew Gregory Lewis); Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
I read Frankenstein a few years back. it is an interesting book, years ahead of his time. But while the monster is quite a sympathetic character (apart fron the odd homicide) Frankenstein is such a drip.
Which edition of Frankenstein would you recommend, 1818 or 1831? (Gutenberg.org has both.)
There are too many…
But I’ll pick The Psychology of Money. There are few books that have so drastically changed my view of reality and affected my behavior.
(Bonus because I couldn’t help myself: Getting things done, Man’s search for meaning, Surrounded by idiots)
Hi, _benj, i found you were in lobste.rs, may i get invitation please ? here is gmail davidkoperty@gmail.com, i would really appreciate that !
Eric Hobsbawm's tetralogy on the long 19th century: Age of Revolution, Age of Capital, Age of Empire, and Age of Extremes.
A truly epic date-driven summary of how the industrial and political revolutions of the 19th transformed the world.
Well, I have no "best" but some, if you really want just one: The Science Of Government, Founded On Natural Law, by Clinton Roosevelt also available freely: https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/items/sciencegovernme00roo... it's strange at first, but if you accept the first pages in 15' you'll learn today economy at a whole.
If you are still hungry, Propaganda by Eduard Bernays would be the second.
Christianson and Chater's "The Language Game". This book changed the way I viewed everything, and also led me to read "The Philisophical Investigations", which I would also put up there.
Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris." Really got me into a lifetime of thinking about what comprises life and our relationship, as humans, to other life forms. Has informed my personal philosophy ever since.
I'm not sure I'd call it "best", but it's definitely one of the more interesting ones that I've just never heard of anywhere else. I found it in an antique store like two decades ago: An Alien Light
It's mostly from the perspective of primitive humans being studied by aliens while the aliens teach them various topics like math and science. The aliens are studying these lost tribes because out in space they're at war with humans and cannot figure out how the humans are able to fight each other and still be winning the war with the aliens.
This will sound like a cliché but it was “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Not sure I can write anything here that has not been written a million times already, but suffice to say there is a reason why it’s in every “best of all time” lists. It’s a deeply human story with lots of twists and turns and told masterfully. The closest to a “perfect” book that I can think of.
P.S. Just wanted to throw a bonus recommendation here, on a completely different tone: Blood Meridian (best enjoyed without spoilers).
As a subset of "best" I read "The Daughter of Time" because it was voted the best crime novel ever.
It was good. A modern (well, 1951) detective solves a historical mystery while bedbound.
As for things that might be "Best" with a capital B I Loved pretty much everything by Umberto Eco.
Neal Stephenson used to feature an NYT quote on his website that described his works "bogging down into lectures like Umberto Eco without the charm", so if you like the historical lectures in Neal Stephenson, check him out.
48 Laws of Power. Gave a deep understanding of how people manipulate each other to gain influence and dominance. A must read if you want to advance your career or avoid being manipulated at work.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The first 90% of this box is awesome (I think the last part is a little too hand wavy). However, it helps you understand so much of how people think, including you. I think it also explains much of how we shorthand so much of our "thinking". It implies a lot of how tribal humans are in our actions and beliefs which bleeds into religion and philosophy. There is no book I recommend more and the implications and understanding this highlights can be life transforming.
As a kid, Krabban Konrad, "Kermit the Hermit" in English (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_the_Hermit), was one of my favorites.
In high school, 1984 hit me hard.
As an adult, I'd pick Pojken som fann en ny färg (literally translated "The boy who found a new color"). I really liked it's ultra-short chapters, making up snapshots of a romance and family being built and falling apart.
Woah - this is strange. This was posted yesterday but I see that the timestamp has changed so it's only 4 hours old now. The timestamps for the comments seem to have changed also.
I think it’s a bug in how they merge threads. I saw this glitch in the Matrix a couple weeks ago. Went to respond in a thread and found I already had the day before. It was first thing in the morning in and telling me I posted four hours ago. Uh, no.
Asimov's New Guide to Science
Easy to read, he explains difficult concepts in a simple manner. I felt smarter when I finished it.
I love the Count of Monte Cristo. I had adventure and mystery. Also I felt I learned a lot about being a man while reading it, though that might be due to me being 20-21 at the time so I was learning a lot about that anyways. Also I loved listening to the audiobook of Treasure Island :)
To each their own. Mine likely 3 body problems: dark forest book
This was my favorite one in the trilogy. I also liked the first one. Third was weakest for me (but still enjoyable).
Dune Chronicles, the 8 books, as I consider them one single long story told in +4000 pages. The God Emperor of Dune (4th book) I consider to be the apex of the story.
I'm kind of shocked that anyone would recommend anything after book 4. (Book 4 is the last one I would recommend. As far as I'm concerned you can get everything you need from summaries for everything after that.)
Collected Works of Shakespeare
The Tempest was my way in. Hated him as many did at school, but when my path was my own I decided there must be something to the extraordinary reverence in which he was held so I decided to have another go.
I had to plough through for a while rereading until I finally "got" the flow.
After that it was a long journey through some of the most beautiful words and thoughts I'd ever encountered, my life genuinely deepened and enriched.
Fiction - [Trouble on] Triton by Samuel Delaney. It just has so many relevant big ideas told in a very subdued way via a not very likeable but appropriate character.
When I’m asked about best book I always bring up „The Last Ringbearer” by Yeskov.
It’s a fanfic in LOTR universe, and it wasn’t very interesting when I was reading it but it revolved around a twist that helped me develop critical thinking skills.
In short and without too much of a spoiler - it’s about relativism of everything, including history and importance of narrative in shaping perspectives.
Somewhat similar to much later Indoctrination Theory in Mass Effect games.
"History is written by the victors" would be the succinct way to describe it.
I can’t disagree, but such succinct description is robbing the story from its value.
For me it was coherent (and back then I knew Tolkien lore well). Stark contrast between believable realities gave me plenty of space for wandering thoughts.
E.g. both are work of fiction, so no ultimate proof of truth can be found, but what are the elements that make world real; who stumbled more in their story?
Each story was very much a product of the society in which its author lived.
Tolkien grew up in a country with a state-funded news agency which had honest information as a core driver and was trusted by the population, while Yeskov's country instead had the goals of the party and was viewed with distrust and disdain and resulted in widespread cynicism.
Tolkien was a scholar with a mastery of language few have reached which has been widely translated, while Yeskov's work is only available to Russian readers and the one translation is not available for want of authorization, so arguably doesn't really get out the gate.
Obviously, I'm not impartial:
(which is everything except _Letters_ --- I have the new edition on my Kindle and am waiting on a corrected new edition --- if someone knows of an academic/publisher who would be interested in either a reprinting or a new edition of _The Book of Exodus_ please contact me, I'm most of the way through resetting it in LaTeX, but was rebuffed by Turville-Petre's son who holds the copyright on the commentary)
Here are some translation recommendations (I haven't read them, but would add War and Peace, which I have read, and which is freely available on gutenberg.org):
10 of the best novels in translation into English
https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2024/10/06/best-books-...
"The Wall" from Marlen Haushofer was one of the best experience I had with a book in a long time
One of the most memorable books I’ve read is by Paul Ekman, who explores emotions and nonverbal communication.
War and peace. You get to build a very close relationship with multiple characters whose life is unwinding during one of the greatest histories of human
Ken Kesey - "Sometimes a Great Notion"
A very rich, very human story generally about what drives people, with a river as an unrelenting foe. I think.
I agree, fantastic book.
The Once and Future King by T.H. White. Fantasy fiction.
The most impactful book I've come across? "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. Yes, it's old, and the title sounds like clickbait from a LinkedIn influencer. Or worse, it reeks of self-help nonsense. But bear with me.
In my early 20s, I noticed a peer who seemed to have cracked the social code. Their ability to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics and sway opinions was remarkably consistent. He always seemed to get what he wanted, and people seemed to love him for it.
Intrigued, I asked about their secret. The initial response? Denial and a hint of offense. Classic information hiding.
An hour later, they circled back with an unexpected recommendation: this book.. But he asked me not to tell people around us that he recommended it.
Carnegie's work is essentially a manual for optimizing human interaction. It's really just written as a set of antidotes from his experience, with some commentary.
Key areas include:
1. Techniques for effectively dealing with people (social engineering techniques)
2. Methods for building a positive reputation ("making people like you")
3. Strategies for persuasion ("win people to your way of thinking")
4. Leadership approaches that don't trigger resentment
While the examples are dated (first published in 1936), many find that the core principles remain surprisingly relevant. The ideas scale across various contexts, from one-on-one interactions to large organizational structures.
Word of caution: Some may view these techniques as manipulative. Using it ethically is important, but really, it just provides some good examples on how not to be an ass.
This is one of my favorite books as well. While I read it several years ago, I still ponder and apply its advice on a near daily basis. The section on Lincoln and criticism should be required reading before getting married.
I have been surprised that it has a reputation for being manipulative, and I suspect people are reacting to what they imagine the book says rather than what it actually says. A recurring theme is that manipulative people may use these techniques, but to inferior results - the secret sauce is to actually care about people and want what is best for them. I have found that the ideas it promotes make me more civilized, empathetic, and considerate.
I've moved enough times to have thinned my book collection down quite a bit. Books that I can't quit, the original "The Boy Mechanic" books, "The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus", "Jingo Django" (I have quite of few of Sid Fleischman's books, actually), a set of "The Book of a Thousands Nights and a Night" (the Arabian Nights) ... to name a few.
There is no best. Books mean different things at different times in your life. When I was a kid, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Conan Saga, where the greatest books ever written and I still think they were amazing but, my reading interests have changed, here are a few of the best books I've enjoyed reading recently.
The War of Art - Pressfield Outlive - Attia The Fourth Turning - Strauss
Not the best book, but the maddest was IQ84 by Haruki Murakami. It’s a wild story and lead me down a path to read several of his other books.
If you enjoyed 1Q84, and haven't yet read the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, there's a little bit of a connection you might enjoy.
The first Murakami book I read was Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and it's still one of my favourites, with a new translation by Jay Rubin coming out later this year. The book of his that's always spoken to me the most is South of the Border, West of the Sun.
If you're ever in Tokyo, consider visiting the Murakami library at Waseda University. It's got a small cafe downstairs, sometimes with live music performances, and lots of nooks and corners for sitting and relaxing with a book. There are copies of all of his books, and tons of translated copies in many languages.
It's been years since I read that one, I'll need to queue it up!
Good suggestion on the library, I might have a chance in late 2025 to head to Japan again so I'll check it out if I can.
In the fictional corner I must place the Nights Dawn Trilogy and Dune.
Other corners don't really have a best book, for me. Recently read 'Emperor of all maladies' and found it a fascinating journey through cancer, both as an illness and as a research subject.
Also recently read 'The Grand Chessboard' which was also fascinating for a completely different reason.
It is challenging to define what's "best" but I used a simple criterion to write this comment: the book I have read the most is the best book for me.
With this criterion, Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald is the best book. Each time I reread it, I find a new nugget! And as a bonus, this book is also available as an audiobook narrated by the author himself.
Thinking and Reasoning: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan St B. T. Evans, 2017 Oxford University Press
"I read books [...] I've read a couple of books a week for [...] 50 [years]"[1] - Jim Keller (CPU designer) with Lex Fridman. OT, but I like the reminder that reading can be a voluminous endeavor.
The Origins of Virtue - Matt Ridley (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Virtue) The book provides an evolutionary argument for altruism. It significantly changed the way I thought about human behaviour and morality.
Children's Literature: Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window
Tech: Code the hidden language of computer hardware and software
Non Fiction: Talking to My Daughter
_A Short History of the Printed Word_ by Warren Chappell --- also his _The Living Alphabet, and his cousin Oscar Ogg's _The 26 Letters_ because they inspired in me a lifelong love of the written word and of books, resulting in a career in typography and book composition.
I'd also recommend Robert Bringhurst's _The Elements of Typographic Style_.
House of Leaves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves
You must use a physical book, it's full of typographical and color changes to impress context different then just the words. Every time I re-read it, I look though a different lens and get something different from it.
You do have to buy the right edition to get the full effect. It was also published without color.
Groving up: Papillon (Henri Charrière - 1969) & Samurai! (Saburo Sakai -1957) Lately: Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir - 2021) Obviously: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th anniversary edition (Steven Levy - 1984/2010) also: I've read all the books from David Thorne, last one: Let’s Eat Grandma’s Pills (David Thorne - 2022)
"Papillon" is a great read. But it's veracity is highly suspect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papillon_(book)
The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto.
Before the English took New Amsterdam, it was a thriving settlement full of interesting economic ideas and gripping narratives. I can't recommend this book enough. The audiobook is great, so I bought the paperback. 10/10
"The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. Very succinct and beautiful explanations for evolution, which in turn explains why chaotic systems under a set of rules tend to spontaneously self organize.
Apart from pop-sci like Dawkins, I'd say the "Discworld" series by Pratchett. Probably the Watch/Sam Vimes books
Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger is one of my favorites. It keeps on giving. Amazed that Munger had access to all this wisdom 40 or 50 or even more years ago.
Even wrote a review in case: https://krishna2.com/munger
I'd question that it's the "best" if you read it as an adult (though it's probably still good), but I feel like Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (which I read as a child / young teen) has influenced me and my outlook on the world more than maybe any other book I've ever read since.
"The Passenger" and "Stella Maris" by Cormac McCarthy are fantastic. In general, I enjoy McCarthy's work because I believe he manages to present interesting ideas drawn from philosophy and religion, and if you read between the lines of his work, there is a fairly elaborate cosmology behind them. With these final works, he manages to combine this tendency with his decades of residence at the Santa Fe Institute and work with researchers in complexity science, mathematics, physics, etc. Moreover, he does so without the more trite ways non-scientists often draw upon science (for instance, just crudely using quantum mechanics as a stand-in for the supernatural). I think you could probably write a thesis on the way he integrated advances in complexity science and mathematics/physics with philosophy/religion/mythology with a close reading of his work. I mention this first and with particular emphasis because I believe it is chronically under-discussed and deserves a systematic study by someone who understands philosophy and modern physics and complexity science much better than I do. There is a hauntingly dark and beautiful cosmology behind this work, in a way even darker than his earlier works like "Blood Meridian."
I can also see the works of Arthur Schopenhauer being of great interest to many HN readers. His reconciliation of Western philosophy (especially Kant and British Empiricists) with Buddhism and Hinduism is unique and for me the most interesting overall system. His work is entirely worth reading for the quality of writing alone. For me, his works evoke the experience of mathematical beauty. I would recommend gaining a basic understanding of Kant, Buddhism, Hinduism, and then reading his work "Essays and Aphorisms," followed by "The World as Will and Idea."
"Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" by Jacques Ellul is the book I have read that best explains the human experience in the modern media environment. Like "The World as Will and Representation," it also forms a sort of complete system, which can be read as an organic whole as well as with self-referential parts. I believe most of the "alienation" we experience from technology, which is often blamed on the internet, is really a much older and broader phenomenon, which Ellul attributes to the development of the radio, "technique," and broader phenomenological experience within 20th-century totalitarian societies.
"Simulacra and Simulation" is another that I have enjoyed. It is the work I have read that, in my opinion, best provides a model for living in a post-modern, post-industrial society, and my intuition is that it will also prove authentic in the age of artificial intelligence.
The Animator's Survival guide taught me about project management. The Design of Everyday Things taught me about how people interact with things. Ender's Game taught me to think outside the box. Fairytales taught me dragons can be defeated.
The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development (Commissioned affiliate link: http://amzn.to/2DK6kVP)
It's technical, mathy, economics, and business all wrapped together.
I remember reading "One Day", quite a long way through the book. I was sat in economy on an Emirates flight back from Islamabad, it was 4th November 2010, and it hit my like a truck when I got to that bit.
Might not be a "good book", but it was certainly memorable.
I went through a phase where I enjoyed short stories more than a book, as many authors have used that form (the short story) to work on a particular theme or topic of interest to them.
Orson Scott Card's Maps in a Mirrors comes to mind.
Came here for the recommendations in the comments. Thank you all internet strangers!
The "best" book I ever read was Moby Dick because everybody tells me it was, and because I could never make it through Ulysses. The book that was the most fun to read was The Count of Monte Cristo. And my favorite book is The Diamond Age.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
The Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut - I re-read it about once a year. It hits a nerve for me and helps me focus on whats important.
"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, by the RAND Corporation, 1955. Preferred is the 2001 edition w/ new forward.
Thanks to Plato's Republic - I have two bffs living rent free in my head.
Non-fiction: The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes.
Fiction: The Gods Themselves Asimov.
These are the book I always recommend to friends and colleagues. There are runners up based on taste, such as Zero to One,The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and Anathema.
I've been reading Caro's multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. This was the best book I've read at overcoming my initial expectations (Johnson is a hugely flawed human being, wowza).
The Dawn of Everything, GEB, and House of Leaves are probably my top 3.
The Courage to be Disliked
I can second this! Almost the only book of its kind I actually liked, not going to say that "it changed my life", but it was quite eye opening
My favourite fiction is Ready Player One. Great story and very nerdy!
Impossible to pick one... best I can do is five-ish, all fiction:
The Odyssey; David Copperfield; Moby-Dick; Anna Karenina; Borges' short stories, in particular Ficciones & The Aleph
Do you have any comments on how to best absorb Ficciones? I read it recently and struggled through the whole book, needless to say, I don't comprehend why many hold that book on such a high pedestal.
Borges is not really an amazing writer, literary-wise. His works are popular because they are essentially mental puzzles in short story form. In this way, he's very similar to most sci-fi writers, which is why both Borges and sci-fi tend to be liked by mathematically-inclined people. These works are praised for their ideas, not their forms.
"The years of rice and salt' by Kim Stanley Robinson
Sorry, series instead of books.
Best Sci-fi: The Commonwealth Saga
Best Fantasy: The Wheel of Time
Fiction: The Way of Kings, and by extension, the rest of the Stormlight Archive. Some seriously fantastic therapy mixed into the beautiful fantasy world.
Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. The entire series is worth it, and I am waiting on the edge of my seat for the last book in the LBJ series.
"Analyse numérique pour Ingénieurs" (en: Numerical Analysis for Engineers )by André Fortin. This book changed my life 12 years ago!
Masquerade, by Kit Williams.
He hid a rabbit made of gold and jewels somewhere in the UK and then wrote a book filled with clues and pictures on how to find it.
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It changed the way I think about what's important, both to me and to other people and societies.
Bhagat Gita. Never found a book more correct and applicable to life for the big things in life.
I know this is considered by some to be a religious text. However, I have read some bits of it and know that there are gems there. Still, could I ask you to expand on why you think so?
Greg Egan’s Axiomatic anthology of short stories was the best I read in recent years.
Probably The Singapore Story by Lee Kuan Yew or Titan by Ron Chernow. To me great biographies are more addicting than great TV.
For me it is more Plato less Prozac, I read it at 14 and it really influenced me.
I really enjoyed Factfulness by Hans Rosling et al.
Potentially a bit dated now, but A New Kind of Science by Wolfram was pretty eye opening.
The best book I've partially read is the New Testament. The best book I've actually read is Taleb's Antifragile.
So many people talk about this one and they never give spoiler alerts.
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
If ever I’m struggling with something I pick it up and open to a random leaf and just read until I feel better.
One book and two book series:
Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.
The Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian.
The Red Book Liber Novus, Life changing, genuinely. I think it’s a historical and cultural work that stands alone.
The Mind is Flat by Nick Chater
(so hard to pick just one, and I may be affected by recency bias, but that's my finalist right now)
Growing up ‘The Brothers Lionheart’.
As an adult, ‘The Idiot’.
I guess Ender's Game since it got me into reading again as an adult. I love all Vernor Vinge as well.
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil The Gospel to According Jesus Christ - Jose Saramagu
etc.
there are two: Pirsig's "Zen..." and Thoreau's "Walden...." the quality which is defined is not the quality, and the sun is but a morning star. iykyk. no posturing intended, just answering the d*n question.
"How To Win Friends And Influence People" by Dale Carnegie
There's a good reason why it's still in print.
Baudolino by Umberto Eco. I like all his works, but this one is the most moving and epic. I still think of it.
I am still discovering new best books, recently "bird by bird" which taught me and made me laugh.
Dungeon Crawler Carl (series)
Sinusoidal Circuit Analysis
NEWWWWWWW Achievement!
I should have picked "The Ultimate Book Of Ultimate Foot Care For Ultimate Results" for my non-fiction choice.
Hard to say really. One of the few (if not only) books i wish i could unread was the fountainhead
Best novel: Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Best Scifi: The World of Null-A A. E. van Vogt
Best Childrens: Swallowdale Arthur Ransome
1001 Arabian nights and The Odyssey
I just read "When We Cease to Understand the World," and it lives up to the hype.
"The book of joy" by the Dalai Lama and Desmund Tutu (they were lifelong friends)
In terms of info per dollar, you can't beat Littler Books' master collection.
It changes all the time. For fiction, I would say “Augustus” or “Stoner” (by Williams).
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. When you are young, it is a remarkable book to read.
This book is one I re-read religiously, but the first time was as a young adult and I agree with you, remarkable. It seems to have a correcting effect on my psyche when I stray too far into anxiety and burnout.
Meditations by marcus aurelius
Can you please recommend the best version to read of this for a beginner?
Pick any from library or best sellers from amazon
Siddhartha.
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul.
Someone able to make a list? Feel like a lot of good books to read
As someone who used to read voraciously as a kid, and nearly stopped entirely as I burned out throughout school, There Is No Antimemetics Division, and later Ra by qntm got me back into reading by reminding me how satisfying science fiction can be.
Antimemetics Division is a fantastic read if you're at all a fan of the SCP Wiki -- being the author of some of the foundational entries in the wiki, like SCP-055 (https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055), qntm shows a deep understanding and appreciation for the SCP universe and uses it to tell a compelling story about ideas, memory, and sacrifice.
It's worth noting that you can't currently buy a physical copy of this book anymore, but the original story is still available to read for free on the SCP wiki. https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
[light spoilers in this paragraph] This book caught me during a particularly difficult part of my life, when I was struggling with depression and self-doubt. Reading something that framed ideas as being things that are not only infectious and mind-altering, but killable was comforting for me, and gave me hope that I could climb out of the hole that I was in.
Ra, on the other hand, is a book set in a completely different universe, one in which magic not only exists, but is a bona fide scientific study, having been discovered in the 1970s. It starts out by exploring the ramifications of magic's use as self-defense, but evolves into mystery when the main character witnesses her mother performing magic that by all accounts should be impossible, compelling her to devote her life to uncovering the phenomena's true nature and origin.
This one is considerably longer, and paced slower than Antimemetics Division, but in my opinion is no less satisfying. The parameters by which magic works in-universe feel believable and self-consistent, and so do the reasons behind why some mages are able to bend them. The ending does feel slightly unsatisfying when the book is taken as a complete work, but when considering that Ra was originally released as a web serial over the course of years, I feel it's a bit more forgivable that the landing wasn't stuck perfectly.
What's particularly interesting to me about Ra is that after completion, the author hosted a Q&A thread on their site where people were able to ask questions about how certain mechanics of magic work in-universe, and the answers given by qntm show just how much thought and care they put into making magic feel less like a hand-waved deus ex-machina and more like a complete system.
Highly recommend both of these, as well as qntm's other works if you're looking for something that scratches a particular sci-fi itch.
The Letters of Chan Master Dahui Pujue - Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163)
Without a doubt, "Exact thinking in demented timed".
One Hundred Years of Solitude -- Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.
(Part 1 of) Fist Stick Knife Gun by Geoffrey Canada
The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine.
John McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy".
Fiction : the history of love Non fiction: start with why
As a fan of Sinek’s messages - I would recommend his Ted/YouTube talks over the books.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
No other book has made as significant a difference in both my personal and professional life. Concepts like the emotional bank account and seeking first to understand (then to be understood) have been the key things that have helped me find a partner, develop a relationship with her, and develop a great career where I'm given a lot of autonomy and trust to solve problems in my own way.
I find myself teaching concepts from the book to coworkers while mentoring them through work-related interpersonal problems and without fail they come back ecstatic about what a difference it made in their work relationships.
I genuinely can't recommend it highly enough.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker
The better angels of our nature is also a good one from Pinker
Anna Quindlen - A Short Guide to a Happy Life
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover
The Holy Bible
It's the entire basis for the western world.
The Poor Soldier Svejk is up there
The Holy Bible
Absolutely, it is very impressive that it has been preserved for so long. (Since we humans tend to destroy stuff…) And it is the book that is most printed and distributed around the world. Plus available in the most languages of all books. That alone makes it the best book.
Tao Teh Chingh
Easy and accessible
Will take me my whole life to read
Probably "Zorba the Greek"
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now read “Experience” by RWE and your answer will change.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.
Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon.
Dare to Succeed by Van Crouch.
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.
Middlemarch. It has everything.
When I Say No I Feel Guilty.
Never Split The Difference.
The Gift of Fear.
Those 3.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
autobiography of a yogi
Can we just skip all the Atlas shrugged swellhead arguments? They take up all the air in the room/(scroll in the page) of every best book thread. Just bump it up if you agree, provide an alternative if you don't.
Probably Catch-22
Anna Karenina
Flowers for Algernon
Genesis Revisited
The Selfish Gene; Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Robinson Crusoe
Deadhouse Gates
Fiction: The little prince
Non fiction: Maus
ie. the best and worst that humans can be.
The Planiverse
as i lay dying by william faulkner
For me it's either "Cry, the Beloved Country" or "Slaughterhouse-Five".
EDIT: Oh wait, or maybe it's "The End of the Affair", or "Je l'aimais".
Zero to One
Don Quixote
C the programming bible
`It` by Stephen King.
Trillion dollar coach
One of the previous posts mentioned that it changes for them frequently, and I'm pretty much the same way. But for right now:
Fiction: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Non-Fiction: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
To be clear, both are fiction, it’s just that one is fantasy and the other is set in modern reality.
Hmmm I don’t believe so? Zen is at least portrayed in its conclusion as a true, autobiographical story (with obviously dollops of philosophical musings).
It is a fictionalised autobiography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_...
I'm sure you meant, both are non-fiction.
> The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Probably one of the few books (the series that is) I could read on repeat and still laugh out loud from.
I agree it's one of the best books out there.
> I think it's an excellent question.
Because?
ChatGPT: roll up this thread, extract all author-title pairs that describe books, and look up the corresponding amazon.com links where I can buy the whole set.
I think this is as meaningful as the question "what's the best food you've ever eaten?", which is to say, it's not a very meaningful question.
Sure, but for the rest of us it might suggest a food we had not yet tried.
Fair enough. I feel like I've been seeing a lot of questions on Reddit along this line that comes off as very low effort to generate engagements so that's really the reason behind my comment but I see how my response also comes off as snarky.
It is a low effort method to generate engagement, but it does generate really good engagement.
Likewise, your other example of “what’s the best food you’ve ever eaten” is a lazy question… but I bet the answers would be really interesting.
I know what you're saying. It must work though — it engagad both of us for different reasons, rose to front page of HN. (Perhaps you would rather it did not though.)
You're absolutely right on both accounts - it did work to engage us and that I would rather that such posts don't get upvoted.
Thanks for your understanding. :)
Funny thing is, despite being an avid reader, I can't really say what my "best" book is. But I can easily describe the best meal I've ever had: we were on a tour in Chengdu, and they took us to a restaurant without any introduction. The meal was good but nothing special, until halfway through, when that nagging feeling that the flavor wasn't quite right made me realize that this is the Buddhist fake meat I'd heard about. And I only realized because I'd lived in China and eaten lots of meals so I knew what things were supposed to taste like. I have to say, the fish soup was incredible, the fish even flaked properly. To be so good that it took me halfway through a formal meal (which involves multiple courses) to recognize it speaks to how well it was done.
Steak and eggs made by my grandfather.