This thread too is prompted by H.H's excellent inquiry here.

Share with us no more than five enjoyable works that will give you significant insight or new knowledge of our world. Tell us a bit about each.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

quote:

significant insight or new knowledge

One book that fulfils these requirements rejoices in the name The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879, by Donald R Morris. Amazon link.

It covers a particularly shameful era in British power politics and gave me an insight into area of history that I hardly knew existed. It covers (rather more truthfully) the events covered by the movies Zulu and Zulu Dawn.

Here's my list:

(1) Baruch Halpern, David's Secret Demons
(2) Bryan Moynahan, God's Bestseller
(3) Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve
(4) Philip Lieberman, Eve Spoke

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Hubeny:
Here's my list:

(1) Baruch Halpern, David's Secret Demons
(2) Bryan Moynahan, God's Bestseller
(3) Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve
(4) Philip Lieberman, Eve Spoke

Forgot to say something about each:

(1) This book studies Samuel and Kings as propaganda from Solomon's court and suggests that Solomon was not David's son. (That should be enough to either make you want to read it or never look at it again.)
(2) This book is the story of Saint Thomas More and William Tyndale. There are some burnings at the stake to keep up the interest.
(3) Here we see the DNA evidence for saying that the timeframe of our species extends back 150,000 years.
(4) This book talks about how language is learned and distinguishes us from all other species.

These five books changed me for the better. They are immensely enjoyable and easily readable. I still own all of them and dip into them on occasion for the shear fun of it.

1. Ferdinand de Saussure. 1916. Course in Geneeral Linguistics. When I first started to look at linguistics rather than languages, I was a confirmed Neo-Grammarian, but shortly after matriculating in university, I discovered Saussure. I learned structuralism here at its fount. It changed the way I looked at literature and film thereafter. I never looked back.

2. Ernst Curtius. 1948 European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Opened up a whole new world of literature and introduced me to one of my favorite genres of poetry, the macaronic.

3. Irving M. Copi. 1953. Introduction to Logic. There's a 12th edition from 2004. I used the 4th (1972) in college. Introduced me to syllogisms and logical fallacies. A great and gentle intro to the art of critical thinking. The text for my first college class, taken in the summer before I became a junior in high school.

4. Richard Hofstadter. 1963. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Opened my eyes to the history of poltics in the States, when I got hold of and devoured a hardback copy somewhere in the wake of the Nixon administration near the beginning of Reagan's.

5. Douglas Hofstadter. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This is one helluva fun read. Read it the year after I left university. Learned a lot about artificial and natural intelligence.

OK, so I cheated. The previous five books are non-fiction. The following five are fiction.

6. James Joyce. 1914. The Dubliners. This is still my favorite Joyce. For those naysayers who think he can't write, these are the best short stories. Right up there with Poe and Maupassant.

7. Stanley G. Weinbaum. 1934. The Martian Odyssey and Valley of Dreams. OK, I cheated again. These are two short stories, but together they make a sublime, short novella. They are the best, pre-war science fiction I know of. I cannot imagine Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Vonnegut, Ellison, or Gibson without Weinbaum. He died tragically young after these stories were published. They nurtured me during my junior high years. Everybody else was reading Tolkien (who's also good, but didn't make the cut).

8. Flann O'Brien. 1939. At Swim-Two-Birds. Probably the best comic writer in English. ASTB came out at the same time as Finnegans Wake and as Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland. O'Brien didn't publish his next novel until the '60s. The man was a mad genius.

9. Aldous Huxley. 1944. Time Must Have a Stop. Why this rather than Brave New World or Eyeless in Gaza? This novel hit me right between the eyes. A fun, atheistic view of the here-after.

10. Thomas Pynchon. 1973. Gravity's Rainbow. The first time I went back to college to get a post-grad degree, I took a bunch of writing classes, and somebody told me I should read Pynchon after I read them one of my stories. I checked on GR and read it over a long, fevered weekend. I was never the same. It is a brilliant tour de force.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

I'm amazed by your list of books. The one that I think might be worth trying is Flann O'Brien.

For English humor, have you read Saki?

I agree wholheartedly with zmj about Flann O'Brien. I enjored The Dubliners, too. In fact, it's the only work by Joyce which I've been able to finish. I know that doesn't sound like much of a recommendation, but it probably says more about me than Joyce.

For English humor, have you read Saki?

No, I haven't, but I've always meant to. Works I have enjoyed from the Edwardian period, or round about there, are: Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, or An Oxford Love Story (1911), Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier (1915), Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907), and James Branch Cabell's Cream of the Jest, A Comedy of Evasions (1917), though the last is an American work.

I had the opportunity to check out only a sample of Flann O'Brien's writing at the local library today and, yes, it indeed looks like it's funny.

I'll have to find the recommended book.

And arnie recommends it as well. That's like the second thumb.

quote:

Douglas Hofstadter. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This is one helluva fun read. Read it the year after I left university. Learned a lot about artificial and natural intelligence.

This one I recall reading some time ago, but the one I liked about Gödel was by Nagel and Newman, Gödel's Proof. It's also only 100 pages. I was able to browse it again today.

The problems mathematicians get excited about are of their own making. Perhaps that's true of all of us.

There's also a good, short book, on Gödel and Einstein. They were both at Princeton.

Palle Yourgrau. 1999. Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe. Chicago: Open Court.

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
I agree wholheartedly with zmj about Flann O'Brien.

I finished The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, unable to find At Swim-Two-Birds. I agree that this is funny and worth reading. It makes me think that this is what Monty Python or The League of Gentlemen would be like were they novels.

There doesn't seem to be any significant female role in this novel, or I would have compared it to Scary Movie as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Hubeny:
Here's my list:

(1) Baruch Halpern, David's Secret Demons
(2) Bryan Moynahan, God's Bestseller
(3) Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve
(4) Philip Lieberman, Eve Spoke

I've found an addition to my list, Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels.

Some evangelicals advertised a series of lectures trying to show that the DaVinci Code was wrong and, with nothing better to do, I attended. They mentioned Pagels with, I think, disapproval, so I figured that's the book to read.

These 150 pages made me realize how little I know about history or my own ideas.