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Thread: Top 10 Books First Read in 2015

  1. #26
    I was not aware of Zakaria's book until just now. I may have to check that out.

  2. #27
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    I'm assuming you've done research to note that Zakaria's book is about liberal arts education, and not a politically liberal education.

    Anyway. It has some nice historical facts, how the liberal arts exist as a vehicle for empathy and understanding, how they're there to undercut the hierarchal and perpetual family line that process through the Ivy leagues, and how the current commentators (David Brooks and others) are looking for the wrong things when they critique the millennial for not holding more to ideals. I think the final few pages are a little cursory and circuitously structured, when he turns to highlighting Bill Gates and others for their financial contributions to ideas, but it's overall an interesting read, and at 170 pages, it's a blur.
    The Boat People - 9
    The Power of the Dog - 7.5
    The King of Pigs - 7

  3. #28
    Quote Quoting dreamdead (view post)
    I'm assuming you've done research to note that Zakaria's book is about liberal arts education, and not a politically liberal education.
    Yep, that was my first assumption, and that's also why I'm intrigued. My quick look at its Amazon.com page also confirmed this.

    Quote Quoting dreamdead (view post)
    Anyway. It has some nice historical facts, how the liberal arts exist as a vehicle for empathy and understanding, how they're there to undercut the hierarchal and perpetual family line that process through the Ivy leagues, and how the current commentators (David Brooks and others) are looking for the wrong things when they critique the millennial for not holding more to ideals. I think the final few pages are a little cursory and circuitously structured, when he turns to highlighting Bill Gates and others for their financial contributions to ideas, but it's overall an interesting read, and at 170 pages, it's a blur.
    Thanks for the additional info. The stigmatization of liberal arts degrees (i.e., condescending, narrow-minded dismissals of the value of such pursuits) can get pretty wearying and lame, so that's partly why I'm drawn to this book.

  4. #29
    Novels:
    • Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
    • North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
    • Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
    • The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
    • Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
    • No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
    • The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)

    Short story collections:
    • The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
    • My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
    • Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)

    Non-fiction:
    • Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
    • More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
    Last edited by baby doll; 04-30-2015 at 09:24 AM.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  5. #30
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    What do you think of this whole brouhaha?

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ebdo-pen-award

  6. #31
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
    2. King Lear - William Shakespeare
    3. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


    Business Books

    The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
    The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
    Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
    The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - Eliyahu Goldratt
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  7. #32
    Ain't that just the way EyesWideOpen's Avatar
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    1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
    2. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
    3. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
    4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
    5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
    6. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
    7. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
    8. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
    9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
    10. Flight by Sherman Alexie

    [
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    Last edited by EyesWideOpen; 06-02-2015 at 03:11 AM.
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  8. #33
    Quote Quoting Irish (view post)
    What do you think of this whole brouhaha?

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ebdo-pen-award
    Granting that French Muslims are an oppressed minority, lousy cartoonists picking on an easy target is probably the least of their problems. In any case, religion should be made fun of. Because it's ridiculous. If some Muslims can't take it, they can move to the Islamic State and see how they like it there. As for the PEN award, the very idea of giving out a prize for free speech is insufferably smug since the whole point is to make the people handing out the awards look good; it's no different from people tweeting "Bring Back Our Girls" or "Boycott Woody Allen" to show how virtuous they are, or writing an op-ed piece on why Charlie Hebdo shouldn't get an award to show how much you care about oppressed Muslims.
    Last edited by baby doll; 05-05-2015 at 09:55 AM.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  9. #34
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
    2. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
    2. King Lear - William Shakespeare
    3. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


    Business Books

    The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
    The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
    Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
    The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - Eliyahu Goldratt
    Finance for Non-financial Managers - Gene Siciliano
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  10. #35
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Getting your MBA Benny?

    I've read the Goal and Lean Turnaround.
    Twitch / Youtube / Film Diary

    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  11. #36
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    No MBA. I didn't take a lot of business classes in college, and am just trying to fill in some gaps to help me at work.
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  12. #37
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    That Kahneman book is the closest thing I've found to a user's manual for the human mind. So good.

  13. #38
    Novels:
    • Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
    • Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
    • The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
    • North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
    • Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
    • The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
    • Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
    • Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
    • No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
    • Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)

    Short story collections:
    • The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
    • The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
    • My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
    • Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)

    Non-fiction:
    • Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
    • More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)


    Total number of books read: seventeen.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  14. #39
    Ain't that just the way EyesWideOpen's Avatar
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    Updated:

    1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
    2. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
    3. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
    4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
    5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
    6. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
    7. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
    8. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
    9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
    10. Flight by Sherman Alexie

    [
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    Catastrophe: Season 1 (2015) A
    Rectify: Season 3 (2015) A-
    Bojack Horseman: Season 2 (2015) A
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    Currently Playing: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (replay) (XB1) / Contradiction (PC)
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  15. #40
    Winston* Classic Winston*'s Avatar
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    Quote Quoting EyesWideOpen (view post)
    Updated:

    1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
    Hey, neat.

  16. #41
    Ain't that just the way EyesWideOpen's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Winston* (view post)
    Hey, neat.
    Your post about it was the reason I read it so thanks. Hadn't even heard of it until then.
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    Currently Playing: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (replay) (XB1) / Contradiction (PC)
    Recently Finished: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) A+ / Life is Strange: Ep 4 (PS4) A / Bastion (replay) (PS4) B+

  17. #42
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    I haven't posted in here yet? I could've sworn I had.

    1. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
    2. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
    3. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
    4. Letters - Kurt Vonnegut
    5. Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology - Belt Publishing

    I didn't start reading for pleasure until early May, I'm happy with five books in a month. I also reread Inherent Vice.

  18. #43
    I'm in the milk... Mara's Avatar
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    I haven't been updating this at all. I'm not going to bother listing every book I've read... just the ones that might end up top-ten worthy.

    1. Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore
    2. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
    3. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
    4. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder
    5. The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
    6. Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
    ...and the milk's in me.

  19. #44
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
    2. Julius Caeser - William Shakespeare
    2. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
    2. King Lear - William Shakespeare
    3. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


    Business Books - Unranked

    The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
    The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
    Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
    The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - Eliyahu Goldratt
    Finance for Non-financial Managers - Gene Siciliano
    Decide - Steve McClatchy
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  20. #45
    1. Germinal (1885, Émile Zola)
    2. Bastard Out of Carolina (1992, Dorothy Allison)
    3. The House on the Borderland (1908, William Hope Hodgson)
    4. The Torture Garden (1899, Octave Mirbeau)
    5. Bel Canto (2001, Ann Patchett)
    6. The Wild Boys (1969, William S. Burroughs)
    7. Sans Famille (1878, Hector Malot)
    8. Man Plus (1976, Frederik Pohl)
    9. Swamplandia! (2011, Karen Russell)
    10. Mother (1906, Maxim Gorky)
    11. Peter Pan (1911, J.M. Barrie)

    I have just started Moby Dick, so I won't be updating this for a while.

  21. #46
    Novels:
    • Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
    • Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
    • Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
    • The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
    • North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
    • Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
    • The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
    • Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
    • Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
    • The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)

    Short story collections:
    • The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
    • The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
    • My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
    • Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)

    Non-fiction:
    • Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
    • Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)
    • More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)


    [
    ]
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  22. #47
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    1. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
    2. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
    3. In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan

    4. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
    5. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
    6. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut

    7. Letters - Kurt Vonnegut
    8. Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology - Belt Publishing
    9. Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov

  23. #48
    Ain't that just the way EyesWideOpen's Avatar
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    1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
    2. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
    3. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
    4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
    5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
    6. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
    7. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
    8. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
    9. Tim and Eric's Zone Theory: 7 Easy Steps to Achieve a Perfect Life by Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim
    10. The Good Girl by Mary Kubica


    [
    ]
    Last edited by EyesWideOpen; 08-16-2015 at 08:53 PM.
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    Currently Playing: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (replay) (XB1) / Contradiction (PC)
    Recently Finished: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) A+ / Life is Strange: Ep 4 (PS4) A / Bastion (replay) (PS4) B+

  24. #49
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    1. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
    2. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
    3. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
    4. In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
    5. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
    6. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
    7. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke

    8. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
    9. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
    10. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick
    Last edited by ledfloyd; 07-19-2015 at 12:09 AM.

  25. #50
    Novels:
    • Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
    • Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
    • Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
    • The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
    • North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
    • Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
    • The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
    • Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
    • Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
    • The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)

    Short story collections:
    • The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
    • Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann, 1897-1912)
    • The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
    • My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
    • Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)

    Plays:
    • A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595 or '96)

    Non-fiction:
    • The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (David Bordwell, 1981)
    • Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)
    • More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
    • Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Kristin Thompson, 1999)
    • The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens, 2001)


    [
    ]
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

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