Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure, absolutely brilliant. Its littered with literary goto statements, referencing every imaginable literary text. Its really pretty cool, Its hard to follow along with, and harder to catch all of the references but the norton edition fills half of each page with footnotes. I really liked this book. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039397278X?tag=safet-20
Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
61–70 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#62"Great Gatsby" by F.S.Fitzgerald. Really awesome book.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#63Influence,
Predictably Irrational,
Fooled by Randomness,
The Blank Slate,
House of Cards,
and Planar Microwave Engineering come to mind.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the reaction everybody has with Rand. To be completely fair to her, she introduces a lot of people to ideas they haven't grappled with before. I'm still glad I read her, even if, three years after, I disagree with all but a strand of her ideas. I doubt it's worth having another HN debate about Rand, though. We've thoroughly exhausted that discussion.
I would be interested in reading up on those. Could you perhaps give a link? I tried googling, but I didn't get very interesting results. Maybe you can think of a few memorable discussions that?
Two memorable discussions here in which I played a seminal part:
http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=359551
The link died, but it was a comparison between Rand and Gladwell, and provoked a lot of interesting conversation/drama. That's pretty old; I was actually still arguing in favor of Rand.
http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=499109
This one has some of the most elegant denunciations: This was one of the few arguments that wasn't overridden by one side or another.
But if you want a really terrific online discussion, I'm going to abandon ship and give you a link to MetaFilter instead, which starts with a series of critical articles and leads on to one of the most lucid, multifaceted discussions of Rand's many flaws I've ever seen. This was the discussion that severed the last of my connections to Rand and her philosophy.
http://www.metafilter.com/86325/She-screamed-You-have-reject...
rdtsc's link is thorough, but dry reading. I found it harder to digest than the community conversations.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#65Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. He starts with a takedown of the dietary fat-heart disease hypothesis, moves on to the dietary fat-obesity link. Finally he makes a convincing argument that neither eating less nor exercising more are good ways to lose weight.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#66For non technical easy reads you might try:
River of America Books (History of specific Rivers)------ American Trails Series (History of specific Trails)------ Great Game - Peter Hopkirk------ Black Lamb & Gray Falcon - Rebecca West - About Yugoslavia---- Lyndon Johnson - Robert Caro - (3 books)
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#67Haven't quite finished it yet, but Robin Buss' modern, unabridged translation of Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#68Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - page turner
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be interested in reading up on those. Could you perhaps give a link? I tried googling, but I didn't get very interesting results. Maybe you can think of a few memorable discussions that?
Two memorable discussions here in which I played a seminal part: http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=359551 The link died, but it was a comparison between Rand and Gladwell, and provoked a lot of interesting conversation/drama. That's pretty old; I was actually still arguing in favor of Rand. http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=499109 This one has some of the most elegant denunciations: This was one of the few argume…
But if you want a really terrific online discussion, I'm going to abandon ship and give you a link to MetaFilter instead, which starts with a series of critical articles and leads on to one of the most lucid, multifaceted discussions of Rand's many flaws I've ever seen.
I'm not defending Rand, but is it really intellectually honest to judge her stated principles by her behavior, as most of her critics do? Many of the most influential philosophers in all schools of thought have proven to be either hypocritical or downright nuts.
It's easy to attack someone as flawed as Rand, and it's even easier to attack strawmen fashioned from bits and pieces of her work. Neither of these facts tell you anything about the quality or relevance of her overall message.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two memorable discussions here in which I played a seminal part: http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=359551 The link died, but it was a comparison between Rand and Gladwell, and provoked a lot of interesting conversation/drama. That's pretty old; I was actually still arguing in favor of Rand. http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=499109 This one has some of the most elegant denunciations: This was one of the few argume…
But if you want a really terrific online discussion, I'm going to abandon ship and give you a link to MetaFilter instead, which starts with a series of critical articles and leads on to one of the most lucid, multifaceted discussions of Rand's many flaws I've ever seen. I'm not defending Rand, but is it really intellectually honest to judge her stated principles by her behavior, as most of her critics do? Many of the…
Actually, the linked discussion mentions that also. When discussing such an inherently flawed philosophy, it's important to really think about the origins of Rand's thoughts. Why did she think the way she did? Who inspired her? Objectivism is not a stand-alone philosophy.
In particular, the talk about her and the mass murderer horrified me. When her ideal of humanity cut a young girl to pieces, you have to wonder if the sadomasochism in her philosophy was more a personal kink than it was some step of logic.