Gotcha. Here are short but very important reads in my opinion, by Malcolm Gladwell: Blink The Tipping Point Outliers Great place to start. Not necessarily in that order, pick whatever stands out to you. They're quite well-known and I've read them all; each one leaves you with a sort of wholesome contentment that I can't totally explain, and the resources to improve how effectively to understand/analyze things in different perspectives. Most of my reading is in finance/business and principally philosophy, so I can offer some recs in both of those fields as well if you like.
Be careful. Malcolm Gladwell is full of shit. At best he writes pseudoscience. If you're looking for some sort of general introduction to nonfiction, there are probably a hundred thousand books you should read before you start in on Gladwell.
i just finished a Psychology degree and before I started it I really liked Malcolm Gladwell and thought he was spot on, but to be honest a lot of the pop Psych I personally find unconvincing. It's kind of like they've been made to dine out on. They're interesting but I don't think very scientific. Do still quite like them though I guess. Just while I'm commenting, OP my favourite nonfiction book I've read recently was Guns, Germs & Steel - but I think it might suffer from the same sort of thing I was just talking about.
I guess it was inevitable Jared Diamond show up in this thread. Similar to what I said about the Selfish Gene (though the authors aren't remotely on the same level) -- if all you read is Guns, Germs and Steel, you'll have an incomplete picture of cultural anthropology and so on. Back when I read it I also read scientific reactions to it; not pretty. w/e
Sweet, let's get started: - The Consolations of Philosophy. Again an easier read, great way to get situated and have a lasting knowledge of the basics from Plato to the present day. - The Rebel by Albert Camus. Much meatier than Consolations, but a profound standard of philosophy and a significant necessity to every philosopher's collection. - Plato: Jumping to the other extreme of the difficulty spectrum, for our purposes I'll consider this non-fiction because it's intended to be. Read the Dialogues, Sophists, and get associated with the Republic. At my current internship, the founder of the bank (whom I did not recognize) started talking to me about my interest in books. I mentioned philosophy and made the grave mistake of citing The Republic... I last read it in 8th grade. As luck would have it he knew everything Plato ever put on paper by heart and wiped the floor with my stuttering uncertainties and backpedaling. Dear god, if you read Plato make it count and read it well. -Slowly but thoroughly go through essays by Nietzsche, Camus & Sartre, and other philosophers that interest you instead of trying to tackle a 1,000-page manifesto that you know you won't have the patience for. As a sidenote that isn't directly philosophy, the last leap to confidently calling myself an atheist (at least, confidently not associating with any faith or religion) was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, if you're into that. And if you are, The Selfish Gene is a much smaller, great read as well. roll the drums please, the endgame: I should probably include this on it's own, but there is a book called GEB- Godel, Escher, Bach- that is the only book I have ever tackled that I had to drop because I just wasn't ready for it yet. However, I've been told by a select handful of the most intelligent and successful people I've met that that is one of the most significant intellectual texts in recent times. I honestly can't say much more because I just don't know enough to say-- but according to the bigshots, this is the motherload. By the way, I'm curious kleinbl00 if you have read or heard of this book.. I feel like it would tickle your fancy; tickle it with an electric cattle prod, that is.
It's on the list. reasonably near the top.
The Selfish Gene isn't about atheism and it's only a tad shorter than The God Delusion while being much more complicated. It's an excellent book, but it's also worth nothing that a lot has changed since it came out and many prominent biologists have significant issues with various sections. If it's the only evolution book you read you'll be left with a wanting understanding of the (ever-changing) discipline. I'm in the midst of Godel, Escher, Bach. Boy. Don't start with that. Read it, but not first.
On that account I would recommend The Selfish Meme: A critical reassessment if you are at all interested in contemporary extensions of meme theory.
Her later work on Cultural Evolution has a bit of a twist. In it she rejects the term 'meme' in favor of the title, partly due to the mass adaption of the term between her writing. She's an independent scholar, and clearly well respected enough to be published with Cambridge.
Poor phrasing on my part, I didn't mean to imply Selfish Gene was about atheism. I was also unaware of its obsolete-ness, I was offering a path to take if the god delusion was of interest to him. You've read GEB? thoughts?
It's not obsolete, more foundational and representative of one viewpoint out of several. I'm not qualified particularly to say more. I am enjoying Godel, Escher, Bach in the extreme but I haven't reached the parts that are supposedly more troublesome. I haven't taken any math in some time so I'll probably attempt to draw big picture conclusions more than follow individual arguments. We'll see. I challenged myself on hubski a month or so ago to read 30 books this summer and I'm at 26. I imagine I'll get closer to 50. Will make a big post at the end with suggestions and so on.
jesus. Do you enjoy/retain those books? I read fairly slowly, I guess you could call it leisurely, but when I'm assigned a book at school or have a deadline to read it, I'm paralyzed and can't do it at all- certainly not while enjoying it at the same time.
Well, sure. Compartmentalized recall. It goes without saying that I enjoy them, it's free knowledge. I don't understand why the source of a book has to do with your enjoyment of it, but that seems to be a pretty common phenomenon with school books.
I'm not aware that it's a term per se. I meant it literally. I've read around 45 books so far this summer and I couldn't sit here and name them all but if you named the title of one I could give you the plot, the characters or events, what I thought about it, etc. To me that counts as retention, because your memory is rarely going to be tested in the former fashion.
If you want a good introduction to Foucault, here you go: The Funambulist Pamphlets: Vol. 2.