641–650 of 980 posts
Many, but one of my personal, is Catch 22. The complexity of the structure, the humor, and the painful exhibition of human stupidity makes it a book for the ages.
This book completely changed how I view my city and other urban areas. I am now much more in-tune with my urban environment and understand how different aspects of it affect me emotionally.
It also led me to going back to graduate school for a degree in urban design and sustainability, and my focus is now how I can use my computer science background to improve my environment.
These threads often end up, with everyone trying to prove they are literary scholars. I prefer junky fantasy books. I'm really too old and cynical to give a damn what y'all think of me. I probably liked David Edding's Belgariad series, along with the Mallorean series, the most. I reread them, regularly, and go through all ten books, in a couple of weeks. They are an easy read. Also, Glen Cook's Black Company books ar…
I quite enjoyed David Eddings books when I was younger as well. It came as a shock when I learned that he and his wife had been jailed for child abuse, which only became known after he died: https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2020/05/it-has-been-reveale...
"The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life." Not because I remember anything about it, or believe anything it espouses, or even like it all that much, but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace. If someone I don't know too well asks me what my favorite book is, I say Atlas Shrugged. If they react inappropriately, I'll be cordial and treat them with respect,…
Canticle for Leibowitz was pretty good. Regardless of political opinions, that monologue in the middle of Atlas Shrugged is some quite poor writing. TBH if someone said their Atlas Shrugged was their favorite book, I would assume they were making some sort of political statement, which seems like a bit of an intrusion on what otherwise ought to be a fun chat about books. I was a teenager when I read her books, and th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And have it change your life? Yes, a literary work can both be life-changing and not something you agree with. EG: I do not at all agree with Marx. Me and others reading his works changed my life irrevocably. Ditto for Hitler.
But you do get that if you said "The best book I've ever read was Mein Kampf in 8th grade. Changed my life." then some people very reasonably won't want to be your friend, right?
Nonfiction: "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Taleb has had the biggest influence on me. Fiction: I dunno but maybe "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson.
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my feeling is that it's a "badge" book and by that i mean, you wear it as a badge in order to signal your fluency in pro/anti objectivism conversations. conversations about it remind me of my post-high school experiences with peers while discussing movies. people always chose apocalypse now, the crying game, or the usual suspects as the "best movie in recent memory" and the reasoning was generally because they wanted…
IMO a piece of fiction works better as a “badge” in this sense if it can be defended as a really good work of art in-and-of itself, without the message behind it. Part of the game is that being the one to obviously introduce ideology into the discussion is a bad opening move. Like what if the other party doesn’t take the political bait and starts talking about train sex or whatever?
anyway, yes, political conversations would be far more productive if they discussed train sex over against rand-based political/economic theory
The best books I read last year were the "Three Body Problem" books by Cixin Liu. It's a science fiction series about aliens, space travel and the universe and they're easily the best books I've read in a while. I genuinely can't remember the last time I got that absorbed in a series. I'd read until the early hours of the morning and sometimes just sit at the edge of my bed for like 20 minutes just contemplating the…
The coolest thing about them is that he solved the Fermi Paradox, I definitely buy his explanation.
If that was the question, there would be far simpler answers. Like encryption. An encrypted signal looks like noise. Or point to point communication, which is far more efficient anyway.
The Fermi paradox is also about another question. Why can't we find alien or their artifacts in the solar system? Any species that wants, could, with not much more advanced technology than we have, if it wanted to, essentially settle the entire galaxy in a few million years. von Neumann probes being one of the early ideas for how to do this. Species could do this even in the dark forest situation, but for some reason despite the universe being 13.8 billion years old, no one has bothered to. That's pretty strange!
The dark forest also isn't his invention. He invented the term, but the idea dates back at least to Greg Bear from Forge of God in 1987. He called it a "vicious jungle". Liu Cixin did state it in more game theoretic terms though.
Groving up: Papillon (Henri Charrière - 1969) & Samurai! (Saburo Sakai -1957) Lately: Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir - 2021) Obviously: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th anniversary edition (Steven Levy - 1984/2010) also: I've read all the books from David Thorne, last one: Let’s Eat Grandma’s Pills (David Thorne - 2022)