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Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#751
post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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.

Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#753

"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,…

> "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…

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Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#754
post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#755
post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 frickin…

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.

Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#757
post #128

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…

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

Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#758

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 ar…

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.

Re: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?

#760

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…

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.”

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