Best Posts in Thread: Book Recommendations

Lord of the Rings, ageless Classic

 

I also read a series of 3 books by Robert J. Sawyer awhile back; Humans, Hybrids and Hominids. I don't remember now which was the first in the series...I read the first one on a whim and then downloaded the other books. A weird story topic but I thought they were different but good reads.

As mentioned by another poster Lee Child has some great books, especially the Reacher series. Stephen King's son goes by Joe Hill and has written a couple books that I really enjoyed.

Shawn

 

I personally like Stephen King, Dean Koontz and James Patterson...I'd assume some of the novels have been made into audio books, not sure as I've not listened to an audio book.

Shawn

 

Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. To get an idea of his style of writing, check out some of his early release material for his next book.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Medium

I have been attempting to devise a filter to deal with information overload. Asking about book recommendations may be the wrong approach. More useful might be to ask about authors (for both books and articles).

Another approach is to investigate subjects you're interested in. Using tools like Google Scholar, you can find published articles, citations, authors and a sort of timeline. You can see which names appear repeatedly, when they appear and which papers seem to be the big fish in the space. Skim through some of the well cited material as well as some of the newer material. That will give you an idea on the edge state of these subjects. What you find in this search is the material which a book would likely be based on.

This also arms you with a bullshit detector of sorts. I have started on best-seller books written by reporters only to find out that the latest research indicates that the entire subject may just be vapor space. The people these reporters are citing aren't ready to make the same claims these reporters run with and may just dissolve into nothing. There has been a lot of great science which has later been shot down. That doesn't make the contributions any less brilliant, but you wouldn't want to read a reporter's throw away rehashing of the material.

You could use a similar approach by reading through the list of citations in the back of a good quality book. Knowledge is iterative, it stands on the shoulders of giants. The more excellent authors you find citing the same work, the more influential that work is to our current state of knowledge. In those books, you will likely find yet more cited works and you can trace this lineage back to our earliest thinkers.

I don't know about fiction. That's an area which I need to explore more. I suppose you could do similar as above though. Every author was inspired by someone. Every genre has had its defining works.

Awards might be another clue. Hopefully less of a circus than the movie awards space.

 

Lord of the Flies was an interesting take on society and how it get's implemented by children stranded on an island.

Recommendation from TheDude in another thread. On my list of things to do.....

"Book recommendation on the subject. It's a great book and I'm going to read it again. I lost my book notes when someone stole my cellphone. Grr.

Against Democracy"

Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong.

In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.

A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracyis essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines.

With a URL name like this you can't go wrong.
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