The Best Books I Read in 2013 • Hacker News Board

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#61

Post by ealloc » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 4:20 AM UTC

FreakLegion wrote: post #22

baby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, fiction is fiction. It's like all those questions : would you rather do this, or live all your life with this. They are fun, but they are useless as they never happened. There is no point thinking about them besides playing with your imagination. Fiction is the same to me, yes it came from a real context, but it's still a work of fiction and doesn't teach you anything about real life. e.g. Are you gonna learn…

Still, fiction is fiction. "You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer. For example, we've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies. Is it true? The answer matters. You'd feel cheated if it…

I read that book. It left me convinced that I couldn't learn anything at all from those fictional war stories since I couldn't distinguish the truths from the half-truths, and it was a turning point in my literary life as I realized I do indeed prefer to read non-fiction.

(PS I still read and enjoy fiction. I don't get why everyone's so up in arms about Bill Gate's mild preference for non-fiction)

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#62

Post by ealloc » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 4:40 AM UTC

jmduke wrote: post #12

baby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, fiction is fiction. It's like all those questions : would you rather do this, or live all your life with this. They are fun, but they are useless as they never happened. There is no point thinking about them besides playing with your imagination. Fiction is the same to me, yes it came from a real context, but it's still a work of fiction and doesn't teach you anything about real life. e.g. Are you gonna learn…

As a simple counterpoint, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a fictional book that imparts upon the reader many things about 'real life': both historical/factual (what Russian gulags were like; what the climate of WWII-era Europe was like) and personal (the true value of things; how one survives in the face of suffocating adversity).

On the scale from "totally fictional" to "totally non-fictional", Ivan Denisovich leans pretty far to the non-fiction side since much of it is directly based on the author's real experiences, so much so that it's often referred to as a "semi-autobiography".

As one of "them" who often prefers non-fiction, I enjoyed the book for that reason. Incidentally, I think it's stronger in this fictionalized form than as it would have been as a straight-up autobiography.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#63

Post by ececconi » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

Nonfiction still has the viewpoint of the writer. Even if the narrator is silent, their biases and worldviews infiltrate the work. At least in fiction this is explicit.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#64

Post by selimthegrim » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

ashearer wrote: post #48

sho_hn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading fiction tends to be the best way to train the habit of seeing the world through someone else's eyes, and a little empathy goes a long way in many life situations indeed.

There's an associated danger with fiction: though it reflects how the author sees the world, it may not match how the world really is. Fiction can intentionally or unintentionally invite readers to draw universal lessons which are misleading. I'd even suggest that some authors, particularly those with strong political views, may be motivated to write fiction in order to give support to their own ideas. It's a blank c…

Bingo. This guy gets it.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_the_Khazars

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2658437-knife

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1324835.ece

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/19/danilo-kis-...

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#65

Post by baby » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 4:51 AM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #13

baby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, fiction is fiction. It's like all those questions : would you rather do this, or live all your life with this. They are fun, but they are useless as they never happened. There is no point thinking about them besides playing with your imagination. Fiction is the same to me, yes it came from a real context, but it's still a work of fiction and doesn't teach you anything about real life. e.g. Are you gonna learn…

> e.g. Are you gonna learn about dating by reading romantic novels or real life stories? Well, since romantic novels aren't really about dating, I'm not sure the question makes sense. A better question would be: "Will you learn more about love from reading fiction or by reading nonfiction?" And for that I think the answer is obvious.

You mean it's obvious that love is nothing like what you read in books. Right? The only books that depicted relationship in a "real light" were non-fiction books. The only example that comes to my mind is Bukowski right now and it's not pretty.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#66

Post by baby » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 4:52 AM UTC

onedev wrote: post #47

gbog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine: Good books teach you about the world and about yourself.

What are some books you deem as good based on that criteria?

Personally here's a book that changed my life : The Game. But I think it's gonna be frowned upon here.

I don't see the world or even myself in the same way since.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#67

Post by dhaivatpandya » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 5:10 AM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #6

"But I read mostly nonfiction because I always want to learn more about how the world works." Boy oh boy, if I had a quarter every time I heard that probably I could get a tall Starbucks latte. Many, many people are under the assumption that fiction is stuff that somebody made up and hence useless while non-fiction gives you information about the world; so if you're a busy person, read non-fiction (it's of, course de…

This works on a philosophical level of "knowing more about the world", but with regard to just information, fiction doesn't cut it (nor is it meant to). For example, you don't learn more about shipping containers or processor architecture with fiction.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#68

Post by snowwrestler » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 5:23 AM UTC

ashearer wrote: post #48

sho_hn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading fiction tends to be the best way to train the habit of seeing the world through someone else's eyes, and a little empathy goes a long way in many life situations indeed.

There's an associated danger with fiction: though it reflects how the author sees the world, it may not match how the world really is. Fiction can intentionally or unintentionally invite readers to draw universal lessons which are misleading. I'd even suggest that some authors, particularly those with strong political views, may be motivated to write fiction in order to give support to their own ideas. It's a blank c…

This danger is hardly confined to fiction. Even a completely true set of facts can be presented in multiple ways to support different agendas. Also--who takes the time to check every fact in every book they read? Quite a lot is taken on trust when reading nonfiction.

Anyway, this is only a danger if the reader is credulous about what they are reading. But reading a lot of fiction can help a person learn to detect an author's point of view, biases, and, in some cases, hidden agendas.

This learning can be greatly accelerated by training. College-level literature courses teach students the mental framework to critically evaluate any piece of writing.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#69

Post by Shamanmuni » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 5:27 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #55

Jun8 wrote: post #6

"But I read mostly nonfiction because I always want to learn more about how the world works." Boy oh boy, if I had a quarter every time I heard that probably I could get a tall Starbucks latte. Many, many people are under the assumption that fiction is stuff that somebody made up and hence useless while non-fiction gives you information about the world; so if you're a busy person, read non-fiction (it's of, course de…

Well, if you compare the whole genre of "great fiction" to "another Gladwell book," that gives the initial advantage to "great fiction," for sure. I read some of fiction and some of nonfiction, but definitely skew to reading more nonfiction. One nonfiction book, which I think someone on HN told me isn't even the best book on its specific topic, was very meaningful to me and helped me learn a lot about myself. I read…

What are you arguing against? He didn't say that fiction is always better than non-fiction for learning about the world.

However, many people (Bill Gates included apparently) operate under the opposite assumption that non-fiction gives you more information about the world by default. And that's simply not true. Fiction can change your views, give you new ideas and insights, challenge your beliefs, etc.

Fiction writers create based on their life experiences, their feelings and ideas and also the information they got from different sources. It's pure ignorance to assume they only offer brainless entertainment.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#70

Post by ibsathish » Fri, Dec 13, 2013, 5:35 AM UTC

Need not have to label the Fiction genre as a non-educative one. Numerous amount of fiction books teach about the world, the cultures and provokes self-introspection.

Non-fiction, agreed. Especially Biographies of successful people who made it from the scratch after a lot of struggling, like Mr. Gates himself.