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Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Books You Wish You Had Read Earlier?
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.
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.
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.
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
+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.
Contact by Carl Sagan
and
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
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."