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Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Books You Wish You Had Read Earlier?

Posted by msmash on from the let's-get-this-rolling dept.

Reader joshtops writes: Hey, community. Could you folks please name some books that you wish you had read earlier -- especially because these books presumbably had an impact on your life. The books could be from any genre or year.

14 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. Best books I've read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All the Adventures of a Curious Character (on Richard Feynman) by Ralph Leighton
    The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
    Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

  2. Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I first encountered Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy in adulthood and I immediately wished someone had introduced it to me in middle school. For the purposes of this discussion, it's about a kid who keeps getting moved from one society into another. Each time he assimilates into a new group he notices the strengths and weaknesses of the new culture. Most of the coming-of-age books I was exposed to glorified the misfit and tried to reassure the reader that it's OK to be different. Citizen of the Galaxy doesn't bother with that at all---the protagonist integrates more-or-less successfully into every society he joins and he never gets angsty about not fitting in. This would have been a good thing to read when I was younger.

    1. Re:Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein by Daetrin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Another important aspect to "Citizen of the Galaxy" is the emphasis that each of those societies were different for a reason. Each of them had come up with rules, both official and unofficial, which allowed them to survive and prosper in their environment. None of them had necessarily found the _best_ solutions, but they'd found solutions that worked well enough for them. It's important to learn that context matters. You can't just ignore a rule because it seems stupid to you unless you truly understand why that rule existed in the first place, and you can't take rules that worked in one situation and blindly apply them to an entirely different situation.

      (This is perhaps something to keep in mind before reading just one or two Heinlein books and deciding based on the society of the protagonists that Heinlein was a fascist or a hippie or a communist or a libertarian or a cannibal.)

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      This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  3. Down and Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell.

    While 1984 is better known, Down and Out is much more relevant especially today.

  4. Scifi/Fantasy by TWX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Kind of wish that I'd read Ringworld earlier, didn't get to anything Niven until I was already in my 30s. It's interesting to see what all Niven did with works in other genres like in the scripts he wrote for Star Trek: The Animated Series that included characters from N-Space.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  5. The Naked Ape; The Selfish Gene by fgrieu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Naked Ape (a Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal), by Desmond Morris, 1967.

    The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, 1976.

    These give clues about what we are, and why.

  6. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell by koavf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Perennially relevant to critical thinking about power. Similarly, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World can explain how we make ourselves slaves. Follow up with Amusing Ourselves to Death.

  7. Re:Atlas Shrugged by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Never understood that selection. The Fountainhead is an incredible book. It explains the basic principles incredibly well. And it does so without all the obvious stupid mistakes Rand makes in Atlas Shrugged. Shrugged was obviously written by someone with first hand experience in the problems with Communism but had no idea of how to do Capitalism correctly.

    Don't tell anyone to read Atlas Shrugged, it just makes them stupider. Point them at The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's true masterpiece.

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  8. Re:How to Win Friends and Influence People by fuzzyf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    +1
    Totally agree.

    But I've noticed that quite a few didn't notice the warnings on not to fake it. You have to work on yourself to actually BE interested in people.
    If you fake it, it will come across as weird.

  9. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre by gurps_npc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Bad Science should be basic requirement in all high schools. People need to understand the difference between good science and bad science. Too many people think good science is bad, and bad science is good.

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  10. Contact and GEB by Volfied · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Contact by Carl Sagan
    and
    Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

  11. Re:Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Along these lines, "That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships" By Deborah Tannen

    It is amazing how improving your ability to communicate increases your effectiveness and makes habit 5 from the 7 habits much more achievable

  12. Amusing Ourselves to Death by setvik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by the media theorist and NYU prof Neil Postman.

    Read it a week ago after letting it languish on my bookshelf since college. Really wished I had read it ages ago! I'd have a lot more books than TV series under my belt.

    Postman prophetically saw how TV would drastically reduce both our individual and our culture's collective capacity for critical thought and intelligent discourse by conditioning us to expect entertainment in every sphere of our lives (not just TV). In this important book, he sounded the alarm bell for American democracy. And his warning is even more relevant and critical today in our binge-watching, distractable, and social-media driven culture.

    Here's a snippet from Postman's own forward:

    "... What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture... As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

    This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right."

  13. Re:The Bible by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thank you. I made many deliberate theological errors in an attempt at absurdist humor. And also because I didn't feel like firing up Leviticus to see exactly what kind of bird needs to be sacrificed and in what fashion. Christians don't even really obey anything in the Old Testament - except when they do.

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    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.