71–80 of 164 posts
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.
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.
If your dad owns private equity in starbucks and gives you money to buy software from IBM -- THAT is hardly pulling yourself up from the bootstraps yo.
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…
In one sense this is true, non-fiction works are much richer in factoids; conversely, however, fiction is richer in certain other facts: It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. This doesn't mean that non-fiction works cannot pertain to the reader/viewer that kind of knowledge, e.g. the iconic image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc burn by napalm in Vietnam ( htt…
Now, I know that many critics and authors I admire consider P&P to be one of the finest English-language novels ever written, so I have to ask: what am I missing?
I just took a road trip and looked at one of Bill Gates previous favorite books list, and picked "Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012". I've always wanted to know more about Mr. Buffet, so I thought this would be a great choice. I almost drove off the road listening to him talking about bonds vs stocks and percentages. It was interesting, but definitely not a road trip book. That…
The namshubs from Snow Crash are pretty heavily inspired by ideas from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It's a very interesting book. Richard Dawkins said of it "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."
I just took a road trip and looked at one of Bill Gates previous favorite books list, and picked "Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012". I've always wanted to know more about Mr. Buffet, so I thought this would be a great choice. I almost drove off the road listening to him talking about bonds vs stocks and percentages. It was interesting, but definitely not a road trip book. That…
With "The Baroque Cycle", you can combine the experiences. (I'm mostly kidding, I enjoyed it, but some parts do go on)
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What are some books you deem as good based on that criteria?
No, the "teach me about the world and myself" is not a criteria for being a good book, quite the opposite. It is not because a book teaches you something that it is good, it is because it is good that it teaches you something. But why or how is it good, then? Well, usually because the writer is a good writer (but not always, some books have no writers, or are good despite their bad writers). And a good writer is just…
"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…
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…
> They are fun, but they are useless as they never happened. There is no point thinking about them besides playing with your imagination. Just because something happened doesn't mean it's useful to think about. Conversely, just because something never happened doesn't mean it isn't useful to think about. I've read fiction books that made me examine my perspective or way of life in a way that nothing else has, and I'v…
"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…