Share some of your favourite reads - get a discussion going!

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
    6·
    4 years ago

    here are a few of my favorites

    Fiction

    • The City and the Stars
    • Life Artificial
    • Blindsight
    • The Lifecycle of Software Objects
    • The Prefect
    • Diaspora
    • Dragon’s Egg
    • Deception Well
    • Roadside Picnic

    Non-fiction

    • Phantoms in the Brain
    • The Fabric of the Cosmos
    • The State and Revolution
    • Das Kapital
    • The Selfish Gene
    • DessalinesA
      2·
      4 years ago

      Oooh I need to read city and the stars badly. Dang I haven’t read a lot of these, I’m gonna see if I can find em as audiobook torrents.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
        2·
        4 years ago

        City and the stars is one of my all time favorites, it’s not too long either. And hope you’ll enjoy the rest as well. :)

  • nope
    4·
    4 years ago

    I am surprised that nobody mentioned a book by Ursula K. Le Guin, like:

    • The Dispossessed (must read!)
    • The Left Hand of Darkness
    • The Lathe of Heaven
    • theFriendlyDoomer
      4·
      4 years ago

      Lathe of Heaven is the best fictional treatment of the dao I have ever read. It is a masterpiece.

      • Ofosho
        2·
        4 years ago

        I finished this book a few days ago. It was really great. I’m still in that post-book mourning period.

  • k_o_t
    4·
    4 years ago

    I don’t really keep a list, but some here are some recent favorite reads:

    • Crime and Punishment
    • Master and Margarita
    • War and Peace
    • The Karamazov Brothers
    • The Lord of the Rings
    • Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
    • The Righteous Mind

    I would like to specifically point out “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt. It was perhaps the biggest revelation about psychology, politics and human relations that I’ve ever had. It explained sooo much. Definitely worth reading.

    Most of these I read as part of the school program, but still ended up really loving them.

    • ephemeralsounds
      1·
      4 years ago
      • Crime and Punishment - liked it
      • Master and Margarita - started it but didn’t finish though I liked the start
      • War and Peace - I own a copy but never dared to start
      • The Karamazov Brothers - liked it though I got confused by all the names
      • Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - read it (thought it was funny) - but noticed the cult only years later

      I recently enjoyed Agejew/Levi: Novel with Cocaine (fits with Bulgakow, even darker)

  • SirLotsaLocks
    3·
    4 years ago

    I really love the lord of the rings/hobbit for fantasy, I also love the martian and the Red Rising trilogy for more science fiction like stuff.

    • DessalinesA
      2·
      4 years ago

      I grew up with LOTR / the silmarillion, and I re-read each every few years, they’re so good. I’ll have to check out red rising, I’ve been on a Kim Stanley Robinson kick lately, just finished blue mars of his mars trilogy, they’re really good. Also about halfway done with Ringworld, which is really entertaining.

  • DessalinesA
    3·
    4 years ago

    My fiction favs at least (yes this list is saved lol)

    Fiction

    • Scarlet letter
    • Brave new world
    • And then there were none
    • Enders Game
    • Frankenstein
    • The time machine
    • Call of chtulu
    • Asimov - Foundation
    • Dune
    • Nightfall
    • LOTR
    • Silmarillion
    • Call of the wild
    • White fang
    • Pride and prejudice
    • Sorrows of young werther
    • Heart of darkness
    • Huckleberry finn
    • Portrait of dorian gray
    • do androids dream of electronic sheep
    • jungle book
    • short story - the pearl necklace
    • Candide
    • The stranger
    • Catch 22
    • On the road
    • Madame bovary
    • Lady with the little dog
    • Iron heel
    • red mars
    • the little prince
    • snow crash
    • Angels and demons
    • the importance of being earnest
    • for whom the bell tolls
    • the old man and the sea
    • treasure island
    • flowers for Algernon
    • 100 years of solitude
    • Shogun
    • a Confederacy of dunces
    • love in the time of cholera
    • Interview with the vampire
    • The color purple
    • Arabian Nights
  • ksynwa
    2·
    4 years ago

    The last non-political book that I read and really liked was “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins. It gives an original perspective on how selection takes place is non-political (i.e. doesn’t talk about eugenics and stupid shit like that). The analysis of selfish and altruistic behaviours is also presented in an unbiased manner.

    • k_o_t
      2·
      4 years ago
      • White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
      • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy in five parts by Douglas Adams

      great books truly, although “White Nights” is not my favorite book by Dostoevsky, but still great

    • fairysnuff
      1·
      4 years ago

      White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky

      I’m pleased to see a Dostoyevsky book mentioned that isn’t Crime and Punishment or The Karamazov Brothers. This is certainly one of his best short stories and shouldn’t be overshadowed by his most well-known titles.

  • theFriendlyDoomer
    2·
    4 years ago

    If you want your fucking mind blown try:

    • Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Jack Weatherford.
    • Methaphors we Live By. Lakoff
    • I am a Strange Loop (or GEB). Hofstandter
    • The Book. Watts.
    • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Prisig.
  • fairysnuff
    2·
    4 years ago
    • Endurance by Alfred Lansing - I still can’t believe that Shackleton didn’t lose a single man throughout their entire ordeal
    • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - this was my first read when I recently delved into the middle-eastern world and it remains an outlier. Despite being fiction, it’s very much an accurate representation of the real world unfortunately.
    • Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - I read this once every year because it’s just a great work of fiction.
    • Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker - everyone should read this to become a better version of themselves by understanding their sleep hygiene and how their current sleep regime may be detrimental to their body and lives.
  • nope
    2·
    4 years ago

    Let me throw in two more books:

    • Maus by Art Spiegelman: Incredibly touching comic written by the son of an Auschwitz survivor about his father.
    • Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: A book that tries to analyze why particular parts of the world are poorer while others are richer using biology (e.g., which animals could be domesticated) and geography (e.g., what effect did erosion have on early agricultural societies).
    • k_o_t
      2·
      4 years ago

      Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

      Very interesting, although, in my opinion, sort of wrong with regard to the more modern times. I read it right before “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” by Daron Acemoglu, which I also thought was really interesting, but wrong with regards to everything but modern times.

      I remember thinking, how if we applied geographical determinism from “Guns, Germs, and Steel” to the pre 15th century times, and apply political determinism from “Why Nations Fail” to after 15th century, we get a perfect theory of origins of poverty and wealth.

      • nope
        2·
        4 years ago

        Very good point, and I agree regarding the explanatory power of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” which is only up to a certain point in history.

        Also, thanks for the reminder to read “Why Nations Fail”.

  • Halce
    1·
    4 years ago

    Mine have a little bit of a philosophical bent to them, most written in the first half of the last century:

    The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil - does what we know define us?

    The Book of Disquiet - a diary of sorts

    Prae, by Miklos Szentkuthy

    The Transilvanyan Trilogy by Miklos Banffy

    Favourite publisher in this area: Contramundum Press.