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YC’s Summer Reading

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131–140 of 188 posts

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#131
post #7

Nice, 2 out of 20 authors are women. Nothing like a balanced reading experience.

If you can recommend more female authors on par with, say, JK Rowling, Fred Vargas, Neil Gaiman or Patrick Rothfuss, I'd be happy to read them. It's hard enough to find good books, worrying about the author's gender is very pointless. Especially since I am not interested in women's issues, which nobody should be obliged to be.

Right, noone should. Except people who decided not to be obnoxious ignorant douchebags.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#132
post #12

Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

I write a lot while reading. Sort of like having a conversation with the author. I read less books this way, but the knowledge in the books become much more internalized. I tend to implement them much faster too. And aren't we reading, in part, to better our lives (short-term pleasure or long-term changes)? Of course, I read fiction just for the pleasure as well (like Ready Player One). This method of reading also sh…

Very interesting. I always had this fear in the back of my mind that reading books about personal development is useless since I can't retain the information long enough to apply at the right time.

Your method might just be what I need to do to get better at this.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can recommend more female authors on par with, say, JK Rowling, Fred Vargas, Neil Gaiman or Patrick Rothfuss, I'd be happy to read them. It's hard enough to find good books, worrying about the author's gender is very pointless. Especially since I am not interested in women's issues, which nobody should be obliged to be.

Right, noone should. Except people who decided not to be obnoxious ignorant douchebags.

There are thousands of problems in the world, and you, like all of us, are almost certainly doing absolutely nothing about the vast majority of them, even if you've picked a few that you do care about and are actively engaged in. Does it make sense for someone who has picked a different set of things than you to care about, to denounce you as an ignorant douchebag because you aren't fighting their fight?

If not, does it really make sense for you to call others, at the drop of a hat, ignorant douchebags for not fighting the battle that you've chosen to fight?

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#134
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pullman is another one for the Christians, I suppose. If you are not religious, it seems unlikely to me that you would enjoy it (I didn't).

Pullman wrote His Dark Materials as the atheist counter to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia IIRC. You might want to reread them if you came away thinking they were pro-Christian.

It's been a long time since I read it, but wasn't it all kind of about souls and soul mates and stuff like that?

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone seriously believe that there where books that didn't make the list because of the gender of the author? It's "Alan Kay's reading list" all over again. No one discard books based on the sex of the author, perhaps except extreme feminists. Books are picked because of their content.

Oh are they? Then explain to me, why it's always white men If your argument would be valid, it would be a random selection of the author's gender/race. So either we live in the most amazing statistical anomaly or you are full of shit.

There are two possibilities:

1. Women write the same books as men. Then it doesn't matter what gender the author of a book has (from the perspective of the reader who only cares about a quality reading experience)

2. Women write different books than men. Then it is possible that certain groups of people simply like books written by men better than books written by women. It could be simply a matter of subject. For example, fewer women work in tech, so maybe also fewer women write about tech. A crowd overly interested in tech would end up reading fewer female authors.

Personally I find it very hard to find worthwhile books at all. So if you could recommend some female authors that are great, I would give them a try. Atm I can think of two living female novel writers that are on my "read everything by that author" list, Fred Vargas and JK Rowling. If you can provide me with another name for that list, I would be grateful.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can recommend more female authors on par with, say, JK Rowling, Fred Vargas, Neil Gaiman or Patrick Rothfuss, I'd be happy to read them. It's hard enough to find good books, worrying about the author's gender is very pointless. Especially since I am not interested in women's issues, which nobody should be obliged to be.

I would highly recommend Lois McMaster Bujold. She is not hard sci fi though and the sci fi elements mostly act as a setting for the story.

Thanks, I will give her books a try!

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#137

I'm really surprised to see Ready Player One on there. It relied way too heavily on the 80's nostalgia, to prop up the shallow story telling. But even that got old, it was like hanging around with someone that talks entirely in movie quotes, while fun at the right times, gets stale fast. You didn't care about the character, because there was nothing for him to really lose.

And the fact that it's going to be a movie just makes no sense. Unless they make a major departure from the original story, I just don't see how it'll work.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#138
post #122

I'm really surprised to see Ready Player One on there. It relied way too heavily on the 80's nostalgia, to prop up the shallow story telling. But even that got old, it was like hanging around with someone that talks entirely in movie quotes, while fun at the right times, gets stale fast. You didn't care about the character, because there was nothing for him to really lose.

It's fun, but if you want dystopian capitalist world with a parallel vr universe, snow crash has more surprising ideas. (And better writing) Although it's a bit violent and has some... interesting mechanisms (as I was told: it gets weird) Also, the nostalgia comes baked in because it was written in the 90s. Still super relevant though

+1 for snow crash. RPO is like "Snow Crash For Dummies"...enjoyable, but not the same.

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#139
post #12

Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

I shot for 1 book per month last year and got through maybe 9.5. This year I've been more productive and have hit 12 already. Granted some of the reads I've done have been small (like the MIT essential knowledge series).

Re: YC’s Summer Reading

#140
post #7

Nice, 2 out of 20 authors are women. Nothing like a balanced reading experience.

If you can recommend more female authors on par with, say, JK Rowling, Fred Vargas, Neil Gaiman or Patrick Rothfuss, I'd be happy to read them. It's hard enough to find good books, worrying about the author's gender is very pointless. Especially since I am not interested in women's issues, which nobody should be obliged to be.

If you haven't read any Ursula K. LeGuin yet, she is amazing. Start with either The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or The Wizard of Earthsea, depending on whether you are most interested in gender, societal systems, or wizards, respectively.
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