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Favorite Book(s) of All Time

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nakulanb

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Les Miserables by Victor Hugo was the last novel I read, and it was a couple of years ago now. I don't read a lot of novels. It is excellent, though.

The most recent book I finished was Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Bullock, which was excellent. (I read the abridged version.)

Right now I'm reading A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester, which is about how awful the Middle Ages were and how we got out of them. Manchester is good in terms of philosophy of history - he thinks every historical event leads to the next in a logical, comprehensible fashion. I don't know how factually accurate the book is, but I'm enjoying it.

Good thread!

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It's been so long since I logged in. I haven't been using message boards much since the pandemic struck. Just wanted to stay away from the internet and avoid noise (PS: not saying this forum produces "noise," just referring to the general use of the web.) Looks like it has been quiet here, unless I'm mistaken :). Hopefully, this thread will get going again.

A number of my favorite books have been mentioned in this thread before (Les Misreables, Anna Karenina, 1984, Old Man and the Sea), so I'll stick to a recent read that turned to be great: Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass (the full title is, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants). It melts the borders between fiction, non-fiction, and memoir, though most stores and sites continue to list this one as a non-fiction book (it is surely that, but not only that). It examines scientific objectivity and its positioning as the ultimate arbiter of knowledge through so-called indigenous epistemology. Very interesting to say the least.

 

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John C. Wright
- The Golden Age (Trilogy)
The Golden Oecumene (2002)
The Phoenix Exultant (2003)
The Golden Transcendence (2003)

A blend of sci-fi, well seasoned with some history and mythology. The first read is likely to hold several surprises that enrich subsequent reads.

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Among my favorite fiction books of all time are: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte  , The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland, Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil , and A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.

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On 4/21/2023 at 7:02 PM, Jim Henderson said:

Among my favorite fiction books of all time are: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte  , The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland, Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil , and A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.

The Man Without Qualities is indeed a fantastic, if daunting, book. A enriching book, too.

 

Just read Megan O' Gieblyn's God, Human, Animal, Machine - a terrific account of the ways in which we think of and relate to technology, especially AI- and Machine learning-related technology. It highlights the theological roots of the concepts and metaphors we use to talk of such things as intelligence, particularly Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity. In doing so, it also highlights the contemporary order of enchantment, which is crucial because we tend to think of the contemporary world as a world of disenchantment. By presenting our enamorment with tech as a form of disenchantment, we are not only committing transductive error; the book asks "what could the political goals of such a move be?" A thought-provoking read.

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