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What's the Best Book You Read This Year?
The year is almost over. It's time we asked you about the books you read over the past few months. Which ones -- new or old -- were your favourite? Please share just one title name in the comments section (and if you would like, rest in parenthesis). Also, which books are you looking forward to reading in the coming weeks?
1984
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Daring Greatly - Brene Brown
Not just the best book I read this year, but one of the best I have read in my life.
The Dark Forest.
I love the Cixin Liu books... refreshing sci-fi.
Hugh Howey's Silo post-apocalyptic series is really worth reading. I read the first part, Wool, in a few days : it's about people living in a one hundred forty-four stories silo buried in the ground and the reason why they survive like that. Very good.
Definitely The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Enchiridion by Epictetus, and various writings by Seneca the Younger. Anybody in the quest for philosophical insight would be well served by giving the Stoics a shot. Kind of a western analytical version of Zen Buddhism.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
1984 argues that humanity is destroyed by totalitarianism; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley argues that human individualism creates the conditions for totalitarian rule.
Alternative Right.
Actually, he was a good leader. Problem is that much of the history about him has been transmitted by the Muslims, who in his day, were some of his biggest enemies. Incidentally, the Mongols, unlike the Muslims, were tolerant of religious minorities everywhere they went. Which explains that while much of west and central Asia was Islamized, all those places were not permanently converted to Tengrism (the native religion of the Mongols) despite the Mongols conquering and ransacking cities like Samarqand, Qonyeurgench, Herat, Baghdad, Aleppo, et al. While the Mongols did massacre cities, they did it to people who resisted them, but did not try stamping out their culture/religion. Which explains how 3 Mongol dynasties - the Chagtai, Ilkhanate and Golden Horde (unfortunately) became Islamized some 100 years later.
One of the great achievements of the Mongols was stamping out the Assassin cult in Iran, which terrorized people. Also, when they started, they sent envoys to Khwarezm, and the sultan of that sultanate executed the envoy and sent his head back to Genghiz Khan on a platter. This happened 2 or 3 times, following which Genghiz Khan spent a year preparing for war and then started his invasion of Khwarezm which culminated in the ransacking of the above cities and expanding the Mongol empire into Khwarezm and the Abbasid Caliphate
The Mythical Man Month. Most people follow the antithesis of this book.
Light read, yes, but a surprisingly engaging novel.