What books have left you slack-jawed with astonishment by the end of them, Hubski? Books that were just so brilliant and so filled with great ideas that you instantly wanted to re-read them or recommend them to the whole world.
As an example, I recently read Slaughterhouse Five based on the recommendation of a friend, and it absolutely floored me (Poo-tee-weet?). David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is another great one as well. Really interested to see what recommendations you guys have.
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Best ending of a book that I've ever read.
I would be interested in hearing what you thought of it. Please let me know once you have finished it. Enjoy the read!
About a year ago mk recommended The Guns of August to me (by Barbara Tuchmann). I have not stopped reading early twentieth century history since. Completely changed how I understand the world, and I think that is the best I can say about any piece of literature. Admittedly, I'm sure I have a much duller sense of what is 'mind blowing' than most people probably understand the phrase.
The first half was definitely interesting and engaging. Round about the time it became clear we were pointed for trench warfare I had a tough time following along. It was basically a giant pile of stacked stupid and I lost interest in the whole mess (and celebrated Woodrow Wilson for keeping the US well clear of aristocratic bullshit). For something more contemporary, I recommend The Cold War: A New History By John Lewis Gaddis.
I think I'm drawn to WWI, because of the aristocratic bullshit. It was basically a pointless war fought for the explicit purpose of family jealousy. Millions of people were sacrificed so that Wilhelm, Nicholas and George could battle for which one grandma would have loved the most (actually I don't think George V was a first cousin but you get where I'm going). And in the end it solved nothing but to set the stage for the biggest calamity in human history. I like Guns of August because it is a glimpse into the war's beginning and it is what turned me on to WWI. But to me the best book I've read on the political situation leading up to the war is Europe's Last Summer. Very clear and thorough while still a good read.
And I think that's what repels me. Don't get me wrong - we've cranked through four seasons of Upstairs Downstairs and two of Downton Abbey but there's this "stiff upper lip boys don't breathe the phosgene" about "The Great War" that makes me wonder why Socialism didn't sweep all of it, rather than just Russia.I think I'm drawn to WWI, because of the aristocratic bullshit.
I'm telling you, you have to read Pipes' The Russian Revolution. I know I've plugged it to you in the past, but its too fascinating to ignore. He argues that the lack of democracy in Russia is ultimately what led to their brand of communism, that Bolshevism would likely have been avoided had Nicholas allowed a constitutional monarchy (which is all the people ever demanded in the 1905 revolution, and was promised by ultimately reneged on). The fact that the citizens could vote in the other great powers gave them ownership of their governments and fueled the soldiers' will to fight. Whereas in Russia, men fought because they were sent to Siberia if they didn't. They laid down their arms en masse at the first opportunity in 1917, but even before that, despite their casualty rate being equitable to the other powers, they had a capture rate many times higher, owing to their indifference toward the state. Lenin didn't want his coup to be a Russian takeover; wanted to be a total European and eventually a world workers' revolution. But he found out that to most people, country and neighbors are more important than ideology. That is why socialism was restricted to Russia and whomever else they could force into it.
On your recommendation I started his Communism: A History. Gotta tell ya - it reads a lot like a history of MoveOn.org as written by BIll O'Reilly... Pipes is mentioned in The Dead Hand as one of the ideologues who helped sustain the cold war an extra ten years. He pretty much starts off with the basis that Communism in all forms is stupid and will never ever work, and then proceeds to highlight things about Marxism/Leninism that are even stupider. Which is fine - the dude knows a hell of a lot more political philosophy than I ever will and Reagan never asked me to Tiger-Team CIA intelligence estimates. But it's far more of a polemic than an analysis.
There is no doubt that he is writing from a very distinct point of view (basically a staunch Neoliberal one), and he doesn't try to hide this fact. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he is incorrect on his version of history. After all communism hasn't worked anywhere its been tried. I suppose the difficulty for the reader lay in separating fact from conjecture from opinion. One has to also remember how ravaged his native homeland, Poland, was by the Communists. This plus the fact that stated the goal of the Bolsheviks was for a world government might make it difficult to have a lot of sympathy for their worldview. I think your comment in another thread yesterday that started "Dear Person Born in 1992" stated what I am trying to say quite well. Namely, that the world was minutes from MAD for a half century, and we therefore have to try to read everything from that time period in that light. Even if Pipes was responsible for the CW dragging on longer than it had to, he probably did it out of genuine love of the West and fear of the Soviets.
No doubt. Remember - I grew up in Los Alamos, NM. The W88 was designed by my peeps. Thing is, there's a lot more information available now than there was in 1984 and far more perspectives are available... yet Pipes' writing illustrates pretty clearly that he figured it all out back in the '70s and has been fitting all available information into his worldview ever since, rather than the other way 'round. I don't question his motives. I don't question his scholarship. I simply observe that his perspective is perhaps too archaic for my tastes, having grown up with the Soviets front'n'center and having adapted to a world in which they are not now, and never have been, the "Evil Empire."Even if Pipes was responsible for the CW dragging on longer than it had to, he probably did it out of genuine love of the West and fear of the Soviets.
Trust me, if it changed the way you understand the world, then it definitely qualifies as being 'mind blowing'. Really interesting choice - I haven't heard of the book before, but the early development of the first world war has always seemed really fascinating to me since I studied it in school, everything from the "powder keg" of pre-war Europe to the failure of all the great powers' battle plans and the formation of the stalemate. Thanks for the suggestion!
Disregarding what's already in this thread (Vonnegut!): Ken Kesey: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The Grandfather of LSD culture, but also an incredible author. The visceral descriptions and unreliable narrator make for a very interesting read to say the least. Then there's the colorful cast of characters... Joseph Heller Catch-22. A dark comedy with a Kafkaesque bent. Reflects upon a lot of society in the modern age. Albert Camus: The Stranger. The definitive piece of absurdist fiction. Also very short and exciting. Jean-paul Sartre: No Exit. OK, yes I like French existentialists. No Exit (or In Camera, The Others, or a couple other translations iirc) is the source of the oft-misunderstood quote "HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE". A short play with characters who find themselves spending an afterlife together. Thomas Pynchon: V and Gravity's Rainbow. Haven't read the rest of his work, but these are brilliant, wide ranging, complex woven narratives featuring masses of interconnected characters and events over years. Taking on one of these novels is a journey itself with their dense prose (and occasional lyrical interludes), confusing subplots and gargantuan length. But it's a journey full of rewards as well. and on a slightly different note Douglass Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach. A description of elements of number theory and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorum and application to computing, art, consciousness, music, puzzles, and more. Also poetic interludes.
| OK, yes I like French existentialists. | That's all the excuse I need to link to The Jean Paul Sartre Cookbook.
This is the funniest thing I've read in months.Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups.
Hey, don't forget about Le blog de Jean-Paul Sartre either! Or, similarly, Existential Star Wars.
You've gotten through Gravity's Rainbow? I've tried twice now and just haven't had the time to stick with it. The Crying of Lot 49 is another very good Pynchon novel, and a shorter one at that. Also, I second reading The Stranger and Catch-22, those are both very good books.
It takes a few months unless you're reading all the time. Lot 49 is on my list.
One of three Milan Kunderas: The Joke, The Unbearable Lightness of Being or Life is Elsewhere. Take your pick; I favor The Joke particularly now that we know Kundera was ratting for the Communists. Jeron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto despite the fact that I disagree with almost every point he makes. Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. Conrad Lorenz's On Agression or for those who need Austrian psychology broken down in bite-sized pieces and delivered to the through the artifice of a talking ape, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn or for those who wish to discount everything Conrad Lorenz had to say and replace the talking ape with Anthony Hopkins, Instinct the movie. Thank You For Arguing by Jay Heinrichs.
You had me at "talking ape", frankly. Is that Kafka inspired? And I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being a while ago and it's definitely one of those books that just pops into mind randomly every now and again so will look at the others for sure. Also, interesting that you chose a book that you strongly disagree with - can you really consider a book to be good if you think its points are invalid?
I would argue it's because Daniel Quinn is a fucktard. Jeron Lanier is worth reading because the subjects he discusses have not been brought up by many people before and because his viewpoints are reasoned. That I arrived at different conclusions is far less important than the fact that it provoked me to examine the situation myself. Among his arguments: - Music died with the invention of rap - cultural fetishism will preserve artisan profits in an age of file sharing - file structure and file hierarchy have doomed the human applicability of computing. - Futurists' belief in the Singularity is perfectly parallel to Fundamentalists' belief in the Rapture - MIDI is the worst.thing.evar - VR will save you if only you aren't so selfish and stupidTo the narrator's surprise, he finds that the gorilla, calling himself Ishmael, can communicate telepathically. At first baffled by this, the man learns the story of how the gorilla came to be here and soon accepts Ishmael as his teacher, regularly returning to Ishmael's office throughout the plot. The novel continues from this point mainly as a Socratic dialogue between Ishmael and his new student as they hash out what Ishmael refers to as "how things came to be this way" for mankind.
Thank you for arguing was good, I read it on your recommendation. I read Ishmael years ago and recall really liking it quite a lot. Good recommendations.
I think I know what you mean. I'm just about finished Anna Karenina and I'm constantly rereading sections where he just sublimely describes universal human behavior and motivation. I really like it. Is that what you were referring to, his subtlety?There is a subtlety to Tolstoy that is overwhelming.
ANYTHING by Vonnegut is pretty mind blowing. Sirens of Titan was my personal favorite Vonnegut book. It's beautiful the whole way through, and had an even deeper impact on myself than Slaughterhouse Five. I even named my cat Malachi Constant after the main character.
They are all pretty good. Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions are another couple good ones to pick up if you enjoy Sirens of Titan. :)
I study Portuguese and Brazilian literature, so here are some novels you probably haven't heard of before: António Lobo Antunes, The Natural Order of Things
José Saramago, Blindness
Milton Hatoum, The Brothers
Chico Buarque, Budapest On a differente note: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Dostoevski, Brothers Karamazov
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Good choices! I recently read Calvino's Invisible Cities and absolutely adored it - it's just so full of pure inventiveness and wonder. Also really like Saramago and Dostoevski and have heard nothing but the best things about Faulkner. Definitely going to look through them all.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, by Robert M. Pirsig (read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, if you haven't already, first). People keep mentioning Aldous Huxley, so I'm disappointed that nobody's suggested After Many a Summer.
Currently reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance actually, and kinda enjoying it (though the references to "Phaedrus" do keep reminding me of all the philosophy work I'm not revising and should be...). Will definitely look at the others - it's always cool to learn more about psychology/influence and how depressingly similar all people are in the end.
currently struggling with Infinite Jest but the online summaries & concordances have been helpful. As for books so filled with great ideas that you instantly wanted to re-read them or recommend them to the whole world.
or that are just wonderfully fun
Paul Auster: The Brooklyn Follies, Oracle Nights then if you're hooked, the rest of his novels (except the ones that begin with a man sitting alone in a room)
but if you're willing to crack the 800-page plus novels, these are wonderful:
Wally Lamb: I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed
Jonathan Franzen: Both of his fabulous novels The Corrections and Freedom
Keep struggling on! I don't know what it is exactly about DFW, but just reading through his work makes me feel instantly smarter, and finishing something as epic as Infinite Jest just feels so, so great. Also check out his non-fiction stuff - some of it, such as his This Is Water speech (part of which is referenced in IF at one point, IIRC) or his take on Roger Federer is floating around online, whilst the rest are in his various collected works and are well, well worth reading. Interesting suggestions - Paul Auster is one of those writers I've never quite been able to entirely click with (I've read the New York Trilogy and Sunset Park: the former was pretty decent, but the latter was really deeply flawed and didn't really work, I felt), but I'm always willing to give people another shot. I've already read both of the Jonathan Franzen novels and they are indeed pretty excellent, and I know nothing about Wally Lamb, but definitely intrigued. Thanks for those choices!
I'm so sad when people start Paul Auster with the wrong books - and note: the New York Trilogy does begin with a man sitting alone in a room and has a character named Paul Auster. Cute, but not the best. so imagine you have never read those and try Brooklyn Follies some time. My first was actually Oracle Nights and I immediately wanted all my friends to read it. By the way, when it comes to finding used books abebooks is the best. Many many books for $1 + shipping -- although you may be an e-book reader. Have you ever heard of the book Ten Thousand Lovers by Edeet Ravel? It begins "A long time ago, when I was twenty, I was involved with a man who was an interrogator."
This book combines so many unlikely things into one of the most passionate and tragic love stories ever. So many books, so little time. Now back to DFW. Thanks for the encouragement.
Haha, I will definitely try to erase those books from my mind and start afresh then! And thanks for abebooks - it has a really good selection from what I can see (at surprisingly great prices), and has a UK outlet, which is perfect. I do admit that I tend to use my kindle more nowadays for convenience (especially as it has its built-in dictionary which is the best thing ever: seriously, try it with Foster Wallace if you can - that's how I first discovered it), but there is nothing really that beats the feel/smell/everything of a proper book, so I do try to mix and match where possible. Ten Thousand Lovers looks interesting - I can add that to my ever-expanding list of books to read. You're not kidding about how little time there is to read everything...
I feel Aldous Huxley's Island is at least as good as Brave New World, and imo, even better. It basically takes all the aspects that made the world in Brave New World a dystopia and shows how they could work in a utopia... And how that utopia eventually falls. It's depressing, but amazing. If you loved BNW, you owe it to yourself to give Island a whirl.
Confession: I've never actually read BNW. I am a bad, bad person, and will definitely seek to rectify that soon, especially as it seems to fit the criterion of being "mind-blowing" perfectly. The synopsis for Island does sound really intriguing though, albeit maybe just a little bit depressing. Both excellent suggestions!
It's eh. The message at the end is basically "life's a bitch and then you die." On the plus side it'll take you like an afternoon to read it. I opted to do a book report on it my junior year because a) I'd already read it once b) I could re-read it and write the book report in the amount of time it took my family to drive from Greely CO back home (4.5 hours). It's also kind of a mandatory underpinning of modern hipster dystopian thought and people will throw it in your face, usually in cartoon form.
"that's why we get high"
still relevant. What do you think of the argument that BNW is a utopian future, not dystopian.
Not buying it. Everyone who is happy is painted in a deeply unsympathetic light, and everyone who struggles gets POV. Huxley makes it pretty clear who we're supposed to relate to as fellow human beings, and it isn't the guys who are enjoying themselves. I think the argument is sort of like saying Time Machine is Utopian because both the Morlocks and the Eloi are making a living at it.
On a side note, I often wonder how "Utopia" came to represent a nice place where everyone is happy and things work perfectly. In More's Utopia, Utopia is an island where slavery is a key aspect of life and private ownership of any kind is outlawed, a place where State is everything and person is nothing. If anything Utopia should signify what we call a dystopia, and dystopia should not exist. And I'm not picking on you, just throwing it out there, because its something we hear so much in pop culture.
The one that instantly comes to mind is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The ending was amazing. And it's told from what I found to be an extremely interesting perspective.
I would definitely have to agree with you on Slaughterhouse Five, had the same reaction my first time through. The other two that floored me upon finishing were All Quiet on the Western Front and East of Eden.
Yeah, Hemmingway and Steinbeck are definitely two authors I need to read more of - only read The Old Man and the Sea so far (I did really enjoy it though - a masterclass in stripped down prose for heightened effect). I've heard fantastic things about both the books actually, especially All Quiet on the Western Front, so will definitely pick them up.