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Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

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61–69 of 69 posts

Re: Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

#61
post #45

PSA: 99.999% of people should ignore most of the entries on lists like this. I devour reading material. I love books - fiction, non-fiction, audio books, trade paperbacks, newly minted hardbacks, old musty stuff in a basement, all of it - and subscribe to Literary Review and Granta , and check in on London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement when I can. I subscribe to quality newspapers and periodicals,…

For someone who wants to sell the idea of not wasting time on reading, you're trying to waste a lot of time with your comment. You wasted mine for sure so I'll hopefully help somebody else with my short comment: ---------------- - op basically says: don't pay attention to recommendation lists - they assume you plan on reading all books recommended there or none - they do not present an realistic alternative to findin…

There are 32 sci-fi books listed. Let's suppose you have read half of them, and you read 1 book each week. You've now just got your list for the next four months. Congratulations!

But wait, there's another list out there you're going to find tomorrow. And then another list, and another, and another, and they all have this same quality of having some books you've read and like, and nothing by Neal Stephenson. Then, when you're in the book store you see a book called "100 Sci-Fi Books To Read Before You Die", and you note it has these qualities but there are 80 books in there you've not read yet.

If you're busy pulling a sub-list together, you're doing the thing I'm suggesting: you're editing and curating, not just seeing the list in its own right. I'm definitely not suggesting you take wild guesses - note the magazines I read to find my own "next thing", and even that method is problematic.

Re: Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

#62
post #13

If you enjoy the podcast or the newsletters, I do recommend the Discord ( https://discord.gg/oddlots ) - the folks there are generally very smart and it is a great place to discuss everything from the economy to climate to transportation to defense.

Is there a way to use Discord without using the awful childish interface?

Re: Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

#63
post #13

If you enjoy the podcast or the newsletters, I do recommend the Discord ( https://discord.gg/oddlots ) - the folks there are generally very smart and it is a great place to discuss everything from the economy to climate to transportation to defense.

Is there a way to use Discord without using the awful childish interface?

https://github.com/DiscordMessenger/dm

Re: Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

#64
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone who wants to sell the idea of not wasting time on reading, you're trying to waste a lot of time with your comment. You wasted mine for sure so I'll hopefully help somebody else with my short comment: ---------------- - op basically says: don't pay attention to recommendation lists - they assume you plan on reading all books recommended there or none - they do not present an realistic alternative to findin…

There are 32 sci-fi books listed. Let's suppose you have read half of them, and you read 1 book each week. You've now just got your list for the next four months. Congratulations! But wait, there's another list out there you're going to find tomorrow. And then another list, and another, and another, and they all have this same quality of having some books you've read and like, and nothing by Neal Stephenson. Then, wh…

I am not reading magazines, nor do I have the time to hang around book stores which0 here. don't even have qualified personal or a significant amount of Scifi literature.

So what is there left to do but follow recommendations online realistically?

Looking through the list I've found 2 books which might interest me. I'm done with the list now and won't return. If 1 of them is great, it is already a win.

Re: Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

#66
I am reading "The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset" by their guest MIike Bird. Its very good.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221772645-the-land-trap

Even though I know a decent amount of economic history I'm learning some fascinating things. E.g. that the U.S. imposed radical degrees of land redistribution in Asia post WWII, led by an impressive russian expat: Wolf Ladejinsky.

and of course Odd Lots is great overall.

Re: Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

#68
post #4

Odd Lots is a podcast hosted at Bloomberg, and so the discord is about analyzing market crazes and important economic trends. This explains why the book recommendations appear to be heavily focused on understanding history and economics at a deep level.

Interesting, that Superman Red Son is there, but I was not able to locate Orwell's Animal Farm?

Re: Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord

#69
post #13

If you enjoy the podcast or the newsletters, I do recommend the Discord ( https://discord.gg/oddlots ) - the folks there are generally very smart and it is a great place to discuss everything from the economy to climate to transportation to defense.

Very smart people on discord sounds like an oxymoron: why would anyone very smart contribute to the siloization of knowledge and support grow a corporate entity possessing highly questionable incentives? Discord is not a great place to discuss anything of substance. If that's not clear to some now, it will be once monetization kicks in and the inevitable blowup and loss of accumulated knowledge follows.

You're using Discord to describe the same thing that could easily be applied to any social network.

Yes, it's borne of teenagers and gaming, but for all it's dark corners it's just the modern IRC. There are good servers, there are bad servers, there are servers full of idiots and there are servers full of very smart people.

(and we're way past monetisation kicking in, the first paid options launched almost 10 years ago)

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