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The Best Books I Read in 2013

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Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#141

Post by Shamanmuni »

onebaddude wrote: post #135
Shamanmuni wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mr. Gates didn't say that non-fiction is always better for learning about the world. Of course he didn't, he said something worse. The literal quote from Bill Gates is: "But I read mostly nonfiction because I always want to learn more about how the world works". The immediate conclusion that you can take from that is "if you want to learn more about how the world works, then don't read fiction". It's the assumption…

> The immediate conclusion that you can take from that is... Your problem is assuming there's an immediate conclusion to be drawn. Maybe you can take a step back and understand that this is a guy writing an article about some good books he read this year, rather than a treatise on the uselessness of fiction. Look at the context. Because I certainly didn't come to " the " immediate conclusion that you did. A big compo…

This discussion is turning useless, you are arguing with an imaginary strawman that isn't me. You are assuming and stating things about me and this community and it's becoming tedious.

Reread this thread, I didn't claim fiction as a whole is better than non-fiction in any way, but you did claim non-fiction as a whole gives you more information about the world by default, irrespective of individual examples. I'd be thankful if you stopped denying that you said what you said, or at least admit that you were mistaken.

You can't make blanket statements about categories like that, it's a futile exercise because you are putting great books and garbage books in the same box. They aren't all the same, neither in fiction nor in non-fiction. That's the critique we made to Bill Gates' blanket statement.

Instead of arguing for argument's sake, read what I wrote calmly and analyse it, none of your previous answers apply and I don't have the time to answer to each part of your comment. I'll just answer the only one in which you could have a point.

About Paris Hilton's book, it's true that there's some value in it, but you can't compare it to the value that you can take from 1984 and the insights it can give you about society and the human condition. And that was my point, a counterexample to the blanket statement "non-fiction gives you more information about the world than fiction by default". It simply isn't true. Literature is much more complex than that.

And by literature I talk both about fiction and non-fiction, I don't redefine things or refer to an imaginary "most of us".

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#142

Post by staccatomeasure »

ch4s3 wrote: post #132
staccatomeasure wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infinite Jest, Herzog, Ulysses, Things Fall Apart, The Magic Mountain, Zeno's Conscience, The Sun Also Rises, Underworld, ...

Trying to read Ulysses is like trying to learn Haskel, but maybe more difficult. Also, I would add The Crying of Lot 49 to your list.

I think it's a common misconception and negative stereotype that things like Ulysses or Bebop are difficult. They're just an experience. Calling them difficult would be like calling Yosemite difficult (and lamenting that you don't fully get all of the rock formations, geological history, social history, flora, fauna...etc).

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#143

Post by twoodfin »

staccatomeasure wrote: post #142
ch4s3 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to read Ulysses is like trying to learn Haskel, but maybe more difficult. Also, I would add The Crying of Lot 49 to your list.

I think it's a common misconception and negative stereotype that things like Ulysses or Bebop are difficult. They're just an experience. Calling them difficult would be like calling Yosemite difficult (and lamenting that you don't fully get all of the rock formations, geological history, social history, flora, fauna...etc).

Anyone interested in tackling Ulysses in 2014 would benefit greatly from Frank Delaney's ongoing Re:Joyce podcast, in which he "unpacks" the book a paragraph or so at a time. He's been at it for three and a half years and is almost through "Calypso", the fourth chapter. That's an advantage for a first-time reader, as it gets you through the (deliberately ponderous and self-indulgent) "Proteus" stretch in Book I.

http://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-joyce/

Ulysses is a singular book: Well-worth it if you love language, or for that matter almost anything about life as it is lived.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#144

Post by tokenadult »

contextual wrote: post #120
tokenadult wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gladwell comes up so often here on Hacker News that I have a FAQ about him: Malcolm Gladwell, who has said in an interview[1] that he writes to try out ideas, is good, while trying out ideas, at crediting his sources. Any reader of a Malcolm Gladwell book (as I know, from being a reader of the book Outliers ) can check the sources, and decide from there what other sources to check and what other ideas to play with. G…

The BS on HN is much worse than anything I've read from Gladwell. Where's your FAQ for that?

My all-time favorite link to share in a comment on HN is this one, by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker and director of research at Google:

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

This link responds to a lot of new stories (and not a few comments) that are posted on Hacker News each day.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#145

Post by minutetominute »

amerika_blog wrote: post #122

These are coffee table books about interesting/ironic details of our world, not any actual reshaping. I used to read such books in the pursuit of being an "intellectual," then picked up Marcus Aurelius and realized how puerile all the coffee-table folderol really is.

Too many people would rather not deal with the difficulties of reading foundational works. The task of reading coffee-table folderol is much easier than having to actually rethink what you know when you read works that have stood the test of time. I, too, am guilty of having read too many coffee-table books and have only really started to learn now that I avoid those books. Picking up a kindle and a tablet have especially helped in my newfound pursuit of knowledge because, ironically, the most valuable books/articles/essays tend to be freely available online.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#146

Post by amerika_blog »

minutetominute wrote: post #145
amerika_blog wrote: post #122

These are coffee table books about interesting/ironic details of our world, not any actual reshaping. I used to read such books in the pursuit of being an "intellectual," then picked up Marcus Aurelius and realized how puerile all the coffee-table folderol really is.

Too many people would rather not deal with the difficulties of reading foundational works. The task of reading coffee-table folderol is much easier than having to actually rethink what you know when you read works that have stood the test of time. I, too, am guilty of having read too many coffee-table books and have only really started to learn now that I avoid those books. Picking up a kindle and a tablet have espec…

The truth is often hidden in plain sight simply because most will never go looking for it.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#147

Post by mcguire »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #51
spenuke wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many college-educated liberal folks with a non-engineering background do you know? It's all but impossible to avoid him in these circles. (I say this as a philosophy degree-holding liberal pinko who is is exasperated by Gladwell. To be fair, I'm more exasperated with the culture of cherry-picking near-banalities wrapped in an engaging narrative that he and the TED folks have propagated rather than their work itse…

I know a few, but perhaps they're not close enough to New York? Sounds like you're complaining about style over substance... I suppose I'd find it annoying as well.

More generally, a certain lack of substance.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#148

Post by mcguire »

dylanz wrote: post #37

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…

Have I gone 'round the bend, or has Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Tap-Dancing-Work-Practically-Everythin...

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#149

Post by Joeri »

twoodfin wrote: post #143
staccatomeasure wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a common misconception and negative stereotype that things like Ulysses or Bebop are difficult. They're just an experience. Calling them difficult would be like calling Yosemite difficult (and lamenting that you don't fully get all of the rock formations, geological history, social history, flora, fauna...etc).

Anyone interested in tackling Ulysses in 2014 would benefit greatly from Frank Delaney's ongoing Re:Joyce podcast, in which he "unpacks" the book a paragraph or so at a time. He's been at it for three and a half years and is almost through "Calypso", the fourth chapter. That's an advantage for a first-time reader, as it gets you through the (deliberately ponderous and self-indulgent) "Proteus" stretch in Book I. http…

A book so complicated that it requires a podcast to make sense of it is not the best formulation of whatever message it is trying to bring.

But then I admittedly have not gotten past page 200 of ulysses in the three times I've tried, so that may be coloring my perception.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2013

#150

Post by Joeri »

jmduke wrote: post #9
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…

My mantra: Non-fiction teaches you about the world. Fiction teaches you about yourself.

And yet I learnt more about myself by reading the non-fiction book 'The Happiness Hypothesis' than from any fiction book.
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