I bought Hackers thinking it was about crackers (which my 16 year old script kiddie self was very interested in) but ended up reading it cover to cover and it helped me realize that real programming and hacking was much cooler than cracking some system ever would be.
I first read it years ago, 1979 or 1980. It was the first time I ever thought about how math related to music, art and nature. I had never heard of recursion or self-reference, never programmed a machine to do anything, never thought about how it could be done, or why I might want to do it.
So the book opened up new worlds for me. It changed the way I think.
How do you think you'd rate it today, already knowing about all those things? It's sitting on my table in my to read stack but I haven't managed to get to it yet.
My (potentially unpopular) feeling about GEB is that it's a book that explores some very interesting areas but that doesn't say all that much of interest itself. Reading it I felt like different sections could be put into two categories: (good and somewhat romantic) exposition about something interesting, and observations that seem profound until you think about them and realize that they're stupid (e.g. Hofstadter spends some time discussing how a Bach piece that ends up one semitone higher than it starts [and can therefore be repeated to form an infinite ascension] embodies self-referentiality and that this is the critical component of self-awareness, and that therefore the two are connected; of course, this is all just more-or-less meaningless fluff).
To give an alternate opinion. You should read through the first dialogue and the following chapter, then decide for yourself. Maybe skip ahead a bit. I read half of it sitting in a library when I didn't really have time to read it, it presented ideas I hadn't thought before. I hadn't heard of figure and ground, at least not generalized, so I enjoyed noticing that my conversations jumped around the subject rather than being on the subject. I also hadn't heard about recursion before, so...
If the writing engages you then you and presents interesting ideas, to you, in a non-obvious way, then it is worth reading.
>Been wanting to read "Godel ..." for years...
Me too. I have the book but every time I try to read it I go to sleep. (May be I just get in an infinite loop)
When I was in grad school I noticed that Gödel, Escher, Bach was the book about mathematics that non-mathematicians had on their coffee table. The one that the mathematicians had was The Mathematical Experience.
If I had to name only one other book, for this audience I'd have to go with Code Complete.
House of Leaves - What literature should be. Innovative both in design and in prose. It's very long but you can finish it in a maddening evening, it's hilarious, it's terrifying. Along with Steven King's It, one of two books to give me nightmares. Incredibly complex. It's a puzzle I still haven't fully solved. I consider it the first modern-era novel, and expect others will come like it. When I wrote a novel a year and a half ago, its design was my greatest inspiration.
Finnegans Wake - This book can't be explained until you've seen it. The pinnacle of the English language.
Unalone's enjoyment of Finnegans Wake notwithstanding, deciphering the footnotes and expository ultimately doesn't have the upside that learning the English of Shakespeare and Chaucer do.
I'd suggest readers try Joyce's wonderful short stories, then making an assault on Ulysses. Nabokov, a Joyce admirer, called Wake, "that petrified superpun."
Beckett, on the other hand, who was Nabakov's moral and intellectual superior, developed his style as an antithesis to Finnegans Wake and cited it as his greatest inspiration.
Ulysses is similarly a masterpiece, but if I could only pick one it would be the Wake. It's a testament to the power of language. I've always seen Lolita as a lesser Wake, actually. It does nothing as original or quite as beautiful, though it comes close with its opening passage.
Also great fun to read on crowded trains here in japan - a lot of curious stares when you have to start turning the book sideways and upside down to read it :)
I would argue that Stephen King's 'It' should also have the status of a great novel.
One French critic wrote of 'It':
«Ça» fonctionne parce que «Ça» fait peur. Pendant plus de mille pages – Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, L'Express
Translation: 'It' works because "It" scares. Throughout over one thousand pages.
How wrong can a critic be?
Yes the horror element is great but it's not why 'It' works at all, not for me anyway. For me 'It' works because of its insights into human nature – it's use of fantasy to look unflinchingly at human nature at it's worst and it's most beautiful, to do justice to a world that is full of both evil and goodness, because every story overlaps with other stories overlapping with other stories, just like real life, because it's a morally uncompromising book which presents no hard and fast rules of morality, because it portrays children and childhood accurately, because it shows us a world where abuse, neglect and apathy are rife, come in many forms, and can be perpetrated by people for all kinds of reasons, sometimes wilfully, sometimes from neediness, sometimes from a self-deluded sense of righteousness, sometimes from lack of knowing anything better. Because it also writes about the power of love and the deep bonds people share without a shred of sentimentality. Because it's a fantasy, and yet it shows our world perhaps more accurately than any story I've ever read, watched or heard.
I particularly loved the theme of standing up to oppressors. Many stories have this element, but 'It' is so true to reality that the standing-up is more inspiring and powerful than in other works. Typically however, King has the wisdom to have a side-plot which shows how standing up to oppressors can go wrong, by way of brutal vigilantism and bloody revenge. It's this steadfast refusal to accept clichés and black-and-white worldviews of any kind which I particularly appreciate in King.
I don't know, maybe the best thing about it is that makes a giant telepathic space turtle seem like a perfectly plausible part of a novel characterized by gritty realism.
My second, not entirely unrelated, nomination is 'Psychology is About People' by HJ Eysenck. This is half a century old so I am sure there are now many better books saying much the same thing. But for me it was the culmination of a train of thought, which started when I came across the quote "wisest is she who knows she does not know" in Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World , which made me realize how little I know and how important it is to identify and question my own assumptions.
Psychology is About People is an attack on fuzzy thinking in the fields of public policy-making, social science and, above all, psychology (Eysenck was himself a psychologist). He demonstrates that pyschotherapy, at least in his time, was little more than storytelling which, when held up to the hard light of the experimental method, was almost always proven false. Likewise, he attacks governments for basing their social policies on similarly unexamined assumptions. These fields, especially psychology have all come a long way since Eysenck's time but it's still very easy to spot the kind of fuzzy thinking and refusal-to-question-assumptions everywhere you look.
I disagree with Eysenk in some of the conclusions he makes from his own research, but I think his general approach to knowledge and truth is fantastic. It certainly changed the way I think and has effected in me a permanent distaste for 'meta-narratives' of all kinds.
I found the black swan to be unfinishable. It started very (even extremely) well, but then got a lot worse quite rapidly. His attempt to create a structure around anecdotes from his life (and of his acquaintances) does not really work and at times his writing is ego-centric to the point of vulgarity.
The main problem however is that it would be much better (for the reader) condensed down as a long essay. Although many books in the genre are essentially essays flanneled out into books, the problem is particularly acute in The Black Swan.
I agree, after reading Fooled by Randomness, black swan was a let down, repetitive and ironically snobbish for a book thats about understanding the unknown
The Man Who was Thursday by GK Chesterton....very well written allegorical spy novel.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas... I'm a sucker for a good plot and this has always been a favorite of mine since I first read it in 5th grade.
Catch-22? That book drove me absolutely insane. I think I could appreciate the point but after awhile it was like the same joke(?) about the absurdity of the world being told 222 times in a row.
Sometimes a work is best appreciated as a meditation on a particular feeling, and the evolution thereof. Catch-22 was like that for me.
It is the same humor, told over and over, but at the beginning of the book you're laughing while at the end of the book you're crying because the humor in the situation has turned to horror at the inhumanity of it.
The Story of Civilization; 11 volumes of pure joy. Will and Ariel Durant will make you fall in love with mankind. The most humanist take on history I have read. I read them over 6 years and I still live under the Durants' spell. Exquisite and delightful read.
Muqadimat Ibn Khaldun. History, Sociology, Political Science, Scientific Empiricism, Theology, Superstition, Gossip, Leadership, Trivia .. it's everything. It feels like a collaboration between the Grim brothers, Karl Marx, Douglas Adams and Plato. People well versed in Islamic history will get the most out of it. It's a book written by a scientist for a religious and superstitious audience. You can see him walk the fine line, appeasing his princely sponsors while speaking his mind. It's full of code-language written for a better enlightened generation while accommodating the religious and cultural beliefs of his era. Read his biography and you should see bits and pieces of Rousseau; a hypocritical, pan-handling snob who makes his living saying one thing, and living his life doing another .. while still being a fucking genius :-D
Muqadimat Ibn Khaldun. You make this book seem very interesting. Based on your description and explanation of it, I think many people from outside the Islamic culture might find this book fascinating (buy a copy) if it came with a running dialog inserted into the text as needed that explained the history and cultural beliefs of that time. Might be a best seller in the west.
Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples cites Ibn Khaldun and covers much the same territory of Islamic history. A read I would highly recomment to anyone.
you should probably try guns germs and steel by jared diamond, it also is a different way to look at history and how and why it has spanned the way it has over different geographies.
1) The Way Things Work, by David Macaulay, first edition, first read when I was, maybe 12. Taught me half-adders. Degrees in physics and medicine, and I still refer to this cartoon book.
2) The House of God by Samuel Shem. It's about a medical intern 30 years ago. Raunchy, smart, and, now that I'm an intern, all too true.
230 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 318 ms ] threadThe diamond age
Manifold: time
edit: this thread is going to seriously mess with my productivity in the next couple of weeks.
PS:My English is not that good
;)
- Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
_Moby-Dick_ --Herman Melville
Fiasco - Stanislaw Lem
So the book opened up new worlds for me. It changed the way I think.
So I'd say skip it.
That pretty much sums it up.
If the writing engages you then you and presents interesting ideas, to you, in a non-obvious way, then it is worth reading.
If I had to name only one other book, for this audience I'd have to go with Code Complete.
Finnegans Wake - This book can't be explained until you've seen it. The pinnacle of the English language.
I'd suggest readers try Joyce's wonderful short stories, then making an assault on Ulysses. Nabokov, a Joyce admirer, called Wake, "that petrified superpun."
Ulysses is similarly a masterpiece, but if I could only pick one it would be the Wake. It's a testament to the power of language. I've always seen Lolita as a lesser Wake, actually. It does nothing as original or quite as beautiful, though it comes close with its opening passage.
One French critic wrote of 'It':
«Ça» fonctionne parce que «Ça» fait peur. Pendant plus de mille pages – Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, L'Express
Translation: 'It' works because "It" scares. Throughout over one thousand pages.
How wrong can a critic be?
Yes the horror element is great but it's not why 'It' works at all, not for me anyway. For me 'It' works because of its insights into human nature – it's use of fantasy to look unflinchingly at human nature at it's worst and it's most beautiful, to do justice to a world that is full of both evil and goodness, because every story overlaps with other stories overlapping with other stories, just like real life, because it's a morally uncompromising book which presents no hard and fast rules of morality, because it portrays children and childhood accurately, because it shows us a world where abuse, neglect and apathy are rife, come in many forms, and can be perpetrated by people for all kinds of reasons, sometimes wilfully, sometimes from neediness, sometimes from a self-deluded sense of righteousness, sometimes from lack of knowing anything better. Because it also writes about the power of love and the deep bonds people share without a shred of sentimentality. Because it's a fantasy, and yet it shows our world perhaps more accurately than any story I've ever read, watched or heard.
I particularly loved the theme of standing up to oppressors. Many stories have this element, but 'It' is so true to reality that the standing-up is more inspiring and powerful than in other works. Typically however, King has the wisdom to have a side-plot which shows how standing up to oppressors can go wrong, by way of brutal vigilantism and bloody revenge. It's this steadfast refusal to accept clichés and black-and-white worldviews of any kind which I particularly appreciate in King.
I don't know, maybe the best thing about it is that makes a giant telepathic space turtle seem like a perfectly plausible part of a novel characterized by gritty realism.
My second, not entirely unrelated, nomination is 'Psychology is About People' by HJ Eysenck. This is half a century old so I am sure there are now many better books saying much the same thing. But for me it was the culmination of a train of thought, which started when I came across the quote "wisest is she who knows she does not know" in Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World , which made me realize how little I know and how important it is to identify and question my own assumptions.
Psychology is About People is an attack on fuzzy thinking in the fields of public policy-making, social science and, above all, psychology (Eysenck was himself a psychologist). He demonstrates that pyschotherapy, at least in his time, was little more than storytelling which, when held up to the hard light of the experimental method, was almost always proven false. Likewise, he attacks governments for basing their social policies on similarly unexamined assumptions. These fields, especially psychology have all come a long way since Eysenck's time but it's still very easy to spot the kind of fuzzy thinking and refusal-to-question-assumptions everywhere you look.
I disagree with Eysenk in some of the conclusions he makes from his own research, but I think his general approach to knowledge and truth is fantastic. It certainly changed the way I think and has effected in me a permanent distaste for 'meta-narratives' of all kinds.
The Design of Everyday Things http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...
The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall
Sun Tzu -- The Art of War
Lao Tzu -- Tao Te Ching
The main problem however is that it would be much better (for the reader) condensed down as a long essay. Although many books in the genre are essentially essays flanneled out into books, the problem is particularly acute in The Black Swan.
Sun Tzu, which edition/translation?
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas... I'm a sucker for a good plot and this has always been a favorite of mine since I first read it in 5th grade.
and
Catch-22 by Josepf Heller
What makes you list it as one of your top two?
It is the same humor, told over and over, but at the beginning of the book you're laughing while at the end of the book you're crying because the humor in the situation has turned to horror at the inhumanity of it.
Fiction: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Muqadimat Ibn Khaldun. History, Sociology, Political Science, Scientific Empiricism, Theology, Superstition, Gossip, Leadership, Trivia .. it's everything. It feels like a collaboration between the Grim brothers, Karl Marx, Douglas Adams and Plato. People well versed in Islamic history will get the most out of it. It's a book written by a scientist for a religious and superstitious audience. You can see him walk the fine line, appeasing his princely sponsors while speaking his mind. It's full of code-language written for a better enlightened generation while accommodating the religious and cultural beliefs of his era. Read his biography and you should see bits and pieces of Rousseau; a hypocritical, pan-handling snob who makes his living saying one thing, and living his life doing another .. while still being a fucking genius :-D
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/index.htm
My copy of it is Arabic but heavily annotated by researchers. A translation of that would be great, I know.
Short bio:
http://www.cis-ca.org/voices/k/khaldun.htm
Longer bio (PDF):
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/books/ibn-khald.pdf
N.B: This is a medieval personality and the text is ancient. Please read it under that light. He lived 1332 - 1406 CE.
"The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton
One of the best fiction books I've ever read: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Tuner-Daniel-Mason/dp/0375414657
2) The House of God by Samuel Shem. It's about a medical intern 30 years ago. Raunchy, smart, and, now that I'm an intern, all too true.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Dave Thomas & Andy Hunt - Pragmatic Programmer