quarc wrote:The book recommendation thread. Post the books you like.To start• I, Claudius - Robert Graves
• Beowulf -
• Cossack Fairy Tales - Robert Bain
• The Art of War - Sun Tzu
• The Gaulic Wars - Julius Caesar
• The Illiad - Homer
• The Republic - Plato
• Winnie Ille Pooh - A. A. Miller, translated by Israel Walker & Alex Lenard
bro you just posted cringe.
I barely, if ever, read fiction. That said, I remember liking
Dune and its sequels when I was a teenager a lot (just like everyone else). I saw Alex Garland's
Annihilation and enjoyed it so much I went and bought the entire
trilogy of books it was based off of last year. They were pretty good for light reading.
Things that are not fiction or at the very least not explicitly written for the purpose of light reading:
- What Happened was pretty neat. Seeing the ostensibly true inner workings of who has been the arch-Democrat for the past thirty years is pretty interesting if you're into American politics irrespective of where you stand on issues.
- I can't recommend Milton Friedman's Free to Choose: A Personal Statement enough to lay persons who have a vague interest in understanding the international economic system. It was also made into mini-series that I'm pretty sure is available on youtube.
- Daron Acemoglu's Why Nation's Fail takes a look at why nations have developed the way they have through an economic framework.
- Candide is pretty good, ever relevant, and honestly quite funny.
- Friedrich Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. This is a very difficult read, but I'm glad I did it. I'll admit that I had to read a lot of this in university. I'm skeptical I'd ever consider reading it cover to cover ordinarily. The influence of this book as reverberates even today. I'm doubtful it will cease being relevant anytime soon. It's difficult to say what about this is so good because there is so much going on it, but I find myself thinking about passages from it days, weeks, months, and years after having physically looked at it.
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Similar to above but feels infinitely more contemporary despite barely being newer. The book reads like a manifesto or holy text because it is one. I've seen a handful of English translations that don't feel feel very clunky or rough in certain passages which seems odd given the legacy of Nietzsche's and his work. That said, Thus Spoke is like other seminal philosophical works wherein you're left feeling different, for the better, after having read and digested their contents.
I don't know that I have favorite books. But those are some that I've read/reread recently that I would recommend other people check out if it sounds sufficiently interesting.
by quarc » Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:32 am 
