311–320 of 747 posts
Mere Christianity , by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by-step approach. The Elements of Style , by William Strunk and E. B. White. I liked writing since I learned how to. I didn't find this book until I was 17, and it unlocked me to write in a way that better helped others. The Language Instinct , by Steven Pinker. I guess…
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101904224/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_HY...
Another good one from the same author - Recursion: A Novel https://www.amazon.com/dp/1524759783/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_G0...
For Mind games, something from the Culture series - Use of Weapons which does have a nice twist. For sheer scale and sensawunda - A Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.
I concur on the Vinge picks. The Vinge story that really blew my mind was "Marooned in Realtime", which I contend is best read in the context of the other works in "Across Realtime": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime For mind games, I submit "Kiln People" by David Brin. What if you could fork your consciousness into another body and rejoin periodically? "Kiln People" explores this idea in som…
I was able to get about a third of the way through the book because my friends kept saying it gets better... but it’s a thick book and I just didn’t get it as I kept chugging
If I’m reading fiction it’s OK to put a book down. I ask you, dear internet stranger, what do you enjoy about these books?
Framed as a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, the book is a series of vignettes describing fantastical cities Polo has visited in his travels.
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins The book is written to convince the reader that evolution is valid. But to me, the shocking thing was to really understand the religious argument for the first time, and understand why evolution challenges that world view. In a nutshell, there is a web of related arguments which support the belief that God exists. One of them is that the eye is so complicated, that it must have…
I suppose your praise is more due to Darwin's original book, although it is much less accessible nowadays - Dawkins does indeed explain it well. The thing that struck me was how Darwin's ideas achieved such quick adoption, even in that most pious of times, where to avow yourself an athiest was unthinkable. It's an idea, once you are exposed to it, is so immensely powerful and perhaps even to say in hindsight obvious…
Years later religious arguments against Darwin popped up.
Dawkins' book addresses these religious arguments head on.
Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?
Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?
However, there are some "popular" examples. Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Kate Chopin (literature), Rachel Carson, Ayn Rand, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion (nonfiction). They aren't as fashionable today as they were in earlier generations, but that's fashion.
For me, Svetlana Alexievich (born 1948, in modern Ukraine) has been a revelation. I haven't read all of her works yet, but they're on my lists. I can give a strong firsthand recommendation for The Unwomanly Face of War (which recently got a P&V translation: https://www.amazon.com/Unwomanly-Face-War-History-Women/dp/0...).
Her work incidentally illuminates how we systematically lack certain accounts of history. The implication is that we miss pretty much everything "important", when we read history through the traditional lenses of the armed conflict and politics. The literary motif of giving voice to the politically voiceless is an everpresent theme in Russian literature (going back through Turgenev's treatment of serfs), and in the late 20th century it was brought to nonfiction, through Solzhenitsyn and Alexievich.
Statistically-speaking, most people do not spend their lives in the politburo, or in the general staff of the army, but those statistically-significant people do not usually write the history we read. It seems obvious in retrospect, but it's a revelation, and it tends to change one's perspective on the relative costs and utilities of war. As a culture, we're obsessed with the "individual", and we're typically obsessed with the "wrong" the individuals (i.e. the ones whose lives are exceedingly uncommon).
I think her work should be required reading for those seeking to become public servants, whose personal lives are often significantly detached from the consequences of the decisions they make in their professional lives. I don't know if I would call it life-changing, but it's up there.
Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?
> To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing Adventure in Combinatory Logic (1985, ISBN 0-19-280142-2) is a book by the mathematician and logician Raymond Smullyan. It contains many nontrivial recreational puzzles of the sort for which Smullyan is well known. It is also a gentle and humorous introduction to combinatory logic and the associated metamathematics, built on an elaborate ornithological metaphor.
Here's an example puzzle from the first half (the second half deals with combinatory logic):
> Suppose I offer to give you one of three prizes-Prize A, Prize B, or Prize C. Prize A is the best of the three, Prize B is middling, and Prize C is the booby prize. You are to make a statement; if the statement is true, then I promise to award you either Prize A or Prize B, but if your statement is false, then you get Prize C-the booby prize.
> Of course it is easy for you to be sure to win either Prize A or Prize B; all you need say is: "Two plus two is four." But suppose you have your heart set on Prize A-what statement could you make which would force me to give you Prize A?
Fun book.
Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?