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Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

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Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby Ragamuffin_artist on Tue Jul 27, 2010 5:04 am

Have you ever read a book that you found simply amazing? Or perhaps one that somehow radically altered your way of thinking about something? What books completely blew your mind?

My degree is actually in Art History, but my all-time favorite books have nothing to do with that. They are as follows:

1) A brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking. Perhaps being a non-specialist actually increased my enjoyment of this amazing book. Black holes, wormholes, time-travel, the shape of time, etc. How could anyone not be absorbed in this? It is also very reader-friendly. You’ll never look at the world the same way again.

2) The Cosmos, Carl Sagan. I thought this was going to be boring. Instead, it opened my eyes to the sublimity and grandeur of the universe and the fragility of life. Written in the height of the cold war, this book also served as a plea for humans to use technology for good and not for evil, which perhaps sounds cliché, but was very brilliantly done. It is indeed still applicable today.

3) The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington. This may be a surprise. I’ll admit, it’s no masterpiece. Huntington admittedly treats all civilizations as monoliths. Yet Huntington dispelled quite a few misconceptions I had regarding relations between the West & the Rest. The doomsday scenario he concludes with (a theoretical war between the U.S. and China) is a bit too possible to be taken altogether lightly.
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby RedCelt69 on Tue Jul 27, 2010 6:42 am

Ragamuffin_artist wrote:Have you ever read a book that you found simply amazing? Or perhaps one that somehow radically altered your way of thinking about something? What books completely blew your mind?


The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

A hugely-engrossing examination of evolution which far out-stripped the (too-)simplistic notion of "survival of the fittest". A perception-altering book, and the one I read has now been accompanied by a signed edition.
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby wild_quinine on Tue Jul 27, 2010 2:30 pm

1984.

It's been so long since I read it that I can't comment on how good it was as a book. But I remember the effect that it had on me, at the young age I read it. I remember how it explored the world of organised authoritarian hypocrisy - in a way that has coloured my thinking ever since.

And I remember how I felt like I really understood it - not because it spoke to me and things fell into place within my own field of understanding, but because it brought me over to where it was coming from and showed me around. I feel like I discovered new ways of looking at the same facts, and it was one of the first experiences of that widening of contexts that I remember having.

I know it's become almost cliche over time, but I won't disregard just how powerfully it affected me as a teenager, simply because it's no longer fashionable.
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby Ragamuffin_artist on Tue Jul 27, 2010 3:06 pm

Those are both books that I have not read yet, but really want to. I will likely attempt The Selfish Gene when I finish slugging through Dawkin's Ancestor's Tale (it's a bit of a monster).
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby LonelyPilgrim on Fri Aug 06, 2010 8:27 am

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Better than 1984, which I also enjoyed, in my opinion. Presents a far more likely future, too... broadly speaking. 1984's lesson was that if you can control people's access to information, especially historical information, and you can manipulate that information, you can create a totalitarian hell. Brave New World argues that it's easier, and more effective, to just make it so people are so wrapped up in hedonistic distraction that they just don't care or even realise they are in a totalitarian hell. Probably the source of my anti-commercialism, somewhat Luddite worldview.
Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. --Giacomo Casanova
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby RedCelt69 on Fri Aug 06, 2010 9:31 am

Brave New World is on my list of books-to-read, and has been for quite some time. Sadly, it's a very long list.

LonelyPilgrim wrote:Probably the source of my anti-commercialism, somewhat Luddite worldview.

Whenever someone describes themselves as a Luddite (even with the addition of the word "somewhat") on a keyboard... I smile a little.

^.^

See?
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby Ragamuffin_artist on Mon Aug 09, 2010 1:55 am

wild_quinine wrote:1984.

It's been so long since I read it that I can't comment on how good it was as a book. But I remember the effect that it had on me, at the young age I read it. I remember how it explored the world of organised authoritarian hypocrisy - in a way that has coloured my thinking ever since.

And I remember how I felt like I really understood it - not because it spoke to me and things fell into place within my own field of understanding, but because it brought me over to where it was coming from and showed me around. I feel like I discovered new ways of looking at the same facts, and it was one of the first experiences of that widening of contexts that I remember having.

I know it's become almost cliche over time, but I won't disregard just how powerfully it affected me as a teenager, simply because it's no longer fashionable.




On the basis of your reply, I decided to devote this past Saturday to reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, which, embarrassingly, I have not read before. (Though I was forced, quite rightly, to read Orwell in school, I was assigned the more child-friendly "Animal Farm"). Although the book subsequently gave me nightmares all night, mostly involving rats, I have to say I'll add it to my top 10.
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby Hennessy on Tue Aug 10, 2010 12:47 pm

My favourite book was actually a play, Translations by Brian Friel. Read it at A-level I think, and I've tried to have a copy hanging around somewhere ever since. Otherwise the haunting original Starship Troopers book by R.Heinlein made a huge impact for it's controversial portrayal of a positive yet dystopian future where society has been militarised. Still controversial 50 years later, which is an indicator of how good it is.
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby RedCelt69 on Tue Aug 10, 2010 12:57 pm

Hennessy wrote:My favourite book was actually a play, Translations by Brian Friel. Read it at A-level I think, and I've tried to have a copy hanging around somewhere ever since. Otherwise the haunting original Starship Troopers book by R.Heinlein made a huge impact for it's controversial portrayal of a positive yet dystopian future where society has been militarised. Still controversial 50 years later, which is an indicator of how good it is.

Hennessy, in trying to overwrite the last 2 years of contrary information, has replied to a two-week-old thread in an attempt to show how intelligent he is. Managing, with difficulty, to ignore all of the trashy reading material that he knew wouldn't make the grade. Funny stuff.
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby Hennessy on Tue Aug 10, 2010 1:56 pm

RedCelt69 wrote:
Hennessy wrote:My favourite book was actually a play, Translations by Brian Friel. Read it at A-level I think, and I've tried to have a copy hanging around somewhere ever since. Otherwise the haunting original Starship Troopers book by R.Heinlein made a huge impact for it's controversial portrayal of a positive yet dystopian future where society has been militarised. Still controversial 50 years later, which is an indicator of how good it is.

Hennessy, in trying to overwrite the last 2 years of contrary information, has replied to a two-week-old thread in an attempt to show how intelligent he is. Managing, with difficulty, to ignore all of the trashy reading material that he knew wouldn't make the grade. Funny stuff.


Or I could just be replying to a thread after some time away from the sinner. I'd advise you to keep your flaming to the thread I created, rather than running around accusing me of being stupid on threads created by others in a more serious vein. Nevertheless watching you do this is an immensely satisfying vindication of what I suspected elsewhere, redcelt. Ragamuffin_artist, I apologise on his behalf for his attempt to flame this thread as well, he's a bit excitable today!
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby Ragamuffin_artist on Sat Apr 30, 2011 8:39 pm

LonelyPilgrim wrote:Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Better than 1984, which I also enjoyed, in my opinion. Presents a far more likely future, too... broadly speaking. 1984's lesson was that if you can control people's access to information, especially historical information, and you can manipulate that information, you can create a totalitarian hell. Brave New World argues that it's easier, and more effective, to just make it so people are so wrapped up in hedonistic distraction that they just don't care or even realise they are in a totalitarian hell. Probably the source of my anti-commercialism, somewhat Luddite worldview.


Sorry for dredging up a dead thread, but I felt compelled to let you know that I've just bought Brave New World, principally because of your reply. This book had better be good, Lonely Pilgrim!
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Re: Most incredible books you’ve ever read:

Postby wild_quinine on Sun May 08, 2011 9:44 am

Ragamuffin_artist wrote:Sorry for dredging up a dead thread, but I felt compelled to let you know that I've just bought Brave New World, principally because of your reply. This book had better be good, Lonely Pilgrim!


Don't worry; it is.

Brave New World and 1984 are often considered together, although they're really very different. I think that I also read them at nearly the same times, as well. I enjoyed both of them immensely, and there are respects in which Brave New World is probably the better book, but 1984 was the one that stuck with me.

I think that, unlike LP, I find Brave New World the more fantastical of the two.

I don't really see 1984 as a vision of the future, I see it as an exaggerated description of the present.
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