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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?

#61

Post by aristofun »

tocs3 wrote: post #7
aristofun wrote: post #2

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.

> what do you mean by this

That books are not a commodity.

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

#62

Post by spicyusername »

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.

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

#66

Post by JKCalhoun »

a_square_peg wrote: post #60
JKCalhoun wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.)

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

#69

Post by tzs »

twoodfin wrote: post #50

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 ch…

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.

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

#70

Post by Brian_K_White »

mindcrime wrote: post #26

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

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.

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