4 ms·
A year or so ago, I decided I wanted to read all of the "best" books so I found a few lists of the best literature in English from the past few hundred years an
by ksdale 8y ago
A year or so ago, I decided I wanted to read all of the "best" books so I found a few lists of the best literature in English from the past few hundred years and read a few dozen of the books that showed up on most lists, and I realized that really well written books aren't nearly as low-bandwidth as a lot of more pulpy type books are.
Obviously I didn't enjoy all of the books on the list, but even the ones I kind of slogged through felt like they contained more... knowledge (wisdom?)
I'm also really into sci-fi and fantasy, so I've been working my way down awards lists like the Hugos. The books on these lists also seem more high bandwidth, with the bonus of giving you exposure to a bunch of different authors who have mostly all written a bunch of stuff that's similar to whatever won them the award.
- dantheman0207 8y agoN. N. Taleb always says you shouldn’t read any books that are less than 200 years old. If a book survives for 200 years it must have something genuinely valuable to say. I think this is good advice. I try to follow it for the most part, but obviously I don’t apply that to technical material. Still, I bet if you read Euclid instead of O’Reilly you’d end up a pretty good programmer.
- gassiss 8y agoI've read some of Taleb's books and while I find him very smart and with very valuable insights, I'd rather take some of these extreme things he says (like what you pointed) with a grain of salt.
- logfromblammo 8y agoAnd how old are his books? Paradoxes are fun, but dangerous to organize your life around.