25 Great Thinkers Every College Student Should Read. By Donna Scott College is for expanding one’s intellectual horizons. Unfortunately, drinking and having fun, can distract from learning about history’s great thinkers. From Mark Twain to Confucius, an educated individual should posses some knowledge of certain philosophers, artists and thinkers. Here are 25 great thinkers every college student should read, even if professors don’t assign them. Western Philosophers Western universities understandably tend to focus on Western philosophers and thinkers. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Emerson was an influential figure in the first recognized American school of philosophical thought. Eastern Thinkers Eastern philosophies have proven influential on figures throughout history from Marco Polo to the Beatles.
Statesman Polls show few people trust politicians. Winston Churchill: In his nation’s darkest hour, Winston Churchill served as a beacon of inspiration and support. Writers and Artists. 10 Book Series So Addictive, You Never Want Them to End. Books that will induce a mindfuck. Here is the list of books that will officially induce mindfucks, sorted alphabetically by author. Those authors in bold have been recommended by one or more people as being generally mindfucking - any books listed under their names are particularly odd. You're welcome to /msg me to make an addition to this list. And finally, although he's way down at the bottom, my personal recommendation is definitely Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, as it turns the ultimate mindfuck: inverting the world-view of our entire culture, and it is non-fiction.
Science Fiction - A Nerd’s Guide to Reading. » 20 Amazing and Essential Non-fiction Books to Enrich Your Library. Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter. I’m an avid reader of fiction and just love a novel that transports me, that is so gripping that I can’t put it down. But I also enjoy a good non-fiction book, from self-help stuff to philosophy to biographies to just about anything that makes me think. After the warm reception of my post on novels (50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Library), a number of people asked for a list of non-fiction as well.
Well, here it is! I was hesitant to do this as there are so many classic non-fiction texts, from the Greeks to philosophers through the ages to biographies of amazing people to first-hand accounts of surviving wars and much more. But then I decided not to be comprehensive. So this list is far, far from being authoritative or comprehensive. This list is just a few of my favorites. Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robins. Bonus update — I forgot a few that I really want to add to this list. Classics - A Nerd’s Guide to Reading. The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit) Recently, someone asked Reddit for a list of the best science fiction books of all time. Being a fan of sci-fi, and wanting to expand my own reading list, I thought it would be helpful to tally the results and preserve them here for future reference.
I've also included selected quotes from the comments, as well as my own notes on the books I've already read. PS: All book images in this post are copyright Amazon, and were retrieved using my Big Book Search Engine. So, without further ado, here are the Greatest Sci-Fi Books of All Time, ordered by upvote count: Dune Frank Herbert - 1965 "There's a reason it's the global top selling science fiction book of all time. " - NibblyPig If you have a chance, track down the excellent full cast audiobook (unabridged!) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams - 1979 "I really love the cool combination of humor, philosophy, and sheer nuttiness of the entire series. " - Scarbrow Ender's Game Orson Scott Card - 1985 Foundation Trilogy Isaac Asimov - 1942.
Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge | It's Time to Read! - Book reviews and news. Thank you for all the comments on this page! This is a collection of books mentioned or read on Gilmore Girls! Some of them might have been films instead of the books themselves but I see no problem in reading them either! Here is the list of books (taken from THIS forum and your comments- thanks!). I have removed the travel and cooking booking. I have marked the ones I have read or started and not finished: Books about computer hackers and hacking. The Top 9½ Books In a Hacker's Bookshelf. Every hacker should have a good solid dead tree library to draw ideas from and use as reference material. This list has a bit of everything – textbooks you will encounter at top tier computer science universities, books giving insight into the industry, and references you shouldn’t be caught without. It is a list of hackers’ classics.
The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering – Anniversary Edition by Fredrick P. Brooks This is a classic on the human elements of software engineering first published in 1975. The Mythical Man-Month: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. No silver bullet: There is not a single strategy, technique, or trick that can exponentially raise the productivity of programmers.
I recommend this book not only for programmers, but for anyone managing a software project. The C Programming Language (2nd Edition) by Brian W. Commonly referred to as just K&R, this is the canonical C reference book. By Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman. 75 must-read geek books. These Are the Greatest Geek Books of All Time, Readers Say | Underwire. InShare0 We revealed our ultimate reading list in "9 Essential Geek Books You Must Read Right Now" last week.
Now Wired.com readers have spoken, voting for their favorites from the list and submitting many awesome literary picks of their own. The must-read books listed in the gallery above didn't make the original roundup, but received the most attention from readers in our online voting. (The rules remain the same, namely no repeat authors on the list). The comments explaining what makes the books essential geek reading come from reader posts, unless otherwise credited.
DuneBy Frank Herbert (1965) "It's a work that thrusts you into a far-flung, truly, strangely realized future. We revealed our ultimate reading list in "9 Essential Geek Books You Must Read Right Now" last week. Photos: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.com [voting topic_id="4" css=" The Greatest Books of All Time, As Voted by 125 Famous Authors.
“Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work,” Jennifer Egan once said. This intersection of reading and writing is both a necessary bi-directional life skill for us mere mortals and a secret of iconic writers’ success, as bespoken by their personal libraries. The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books asks 125 of modernity’s greatest British and American writers — including Norman Mailer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates — “to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time– novels, story collections, plays, or poems.”
Of the 544 separate titles selected, each is assigned a reverse-order point value based on the number position at which it appears on any list — so, a book that tops a list at number one receives 10 points, and a book that graces the bottom, at number ten, receives 1 point. In introducing the lists, David Orr offers a litmus test for greatness: (Almost) Everything You Need to Know about Culture in 10 Books. By Maria Popova What the limits of the universe have to do with the history of jazz and the secret of happiness. Last week, I was reorganizing my library and realized that some of my favorite books are ones that introduced me to subjects I either admired but knew little about or was unaware of altogether. The kinds of reads that profoundly enrich one’s lens on the world. So I thought I’d put together a modest reading list of essential primers for, well, everything. Long before there was The Visual Miscellaneum or Data Flow, there was Graphis diagrams: The graphic visualization of abstract data — a seminal vision for the convergence of aesthetics and information value, originally published in 1974, which codified the conventions of contemporary data visualization and information design.
Images courtesy of insect54 The idea of a ragtime ballet or opera must have seemed an oxymoron to those on both sides of the great racial divide that characterized turn-of-the-century American society. 7 Must-Read Books on the Art & Science of Happiness. By Maria Popova From Plato to Buddha, or what imperfection has to do with the neuroscience of the good life.
If you, like me, are fascinated by the human quest to understand the underpinnings of happiness but break out in hives at the mere mention of self-help books, you’re in luck: I’ve sifted through my personal library, a decade’s worth of obsessive reading, to surface seven essential books on the art and science of happiness, rooted in solid science, contemporary philosophy and cross-disciplinary insight. From psychology and neuroscience to sociology and cultural anthropology to behavioral economics, these essential reads illuminate the most fundamental aspiration of all human existence: How to avoid suffering and foster lasting well-being.
The question of what makes us happy is likely as old as human cognition itself and has occupied the minds of philosophers, prophets and scientists for millennia. Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. Donating = Loving. 7 Essential Books on Optimism. By Maria Popova What the love of honey has to do with ancient wisdom, our capacity for hope, and the future of technology. Every once in a while, we all get burned out. Sometimes, charred. And while a healthy dose of cynicism and skepticism may help us get by, it’s in those times that we need nothing more than to embrace life’s promise of positivity with open arms. Here are seven wonderful books that help do just that with an arsenal ranging from the light visceral stimulation of optimistic design to the serious neuroscience findings about our proclivity for the positive. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, one of our must-read children’s books with philosophy for grown-ups, is among the most poetic and hopeful reflections on human existence ever penned.
Here is my secret. Published in 1943, translated into 180 languages since and adapted to just about every medium, Exupéry’s famous novella is one of the best-selling books of all time. Reviewed in full, with more images, here. Creative Cartography: 7 Must-Read Books about Maps. By Maria Popova From tattoos to Thomas More’s Utopia, or what Moby Dick has to do with the nature of time. We’re obsessed with maps — a fundamental sensemaking mechanism for the world, arguably the earliest form of standardized information design, and a relentless source of visual creativity. Today, we turn to seven fantastic books that explore the art and science of cartography from seven fascinating angles.
Map As Art, The: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography is the definitive overview of today’s bravest, boldest creative cartography, featuring 360 colorful creations by well-known artists and emerging visual experimenteurs alike, including Brain Pickings favorites Maira Kalman, Paula Scher and Olaful Eliasson. Insightful essays by Gayle Clemans complement the maps and overlay a richer sheath of insight onto the work and creative process of these cartographic artists. Matthew Cusick, 'Fiona’s Wave,' 2005 Qin Ga, 'Site 22: Mao Zedong Temple,' 2005 We reviewed it in full here. Why We Love: 5 Must-Read Books on the Psychology of Love. It’s often said that every song, every poem, every novel, every painting ever created is in some way “about” love.
What this really means is that love is a central theme, an underlying preoccupation, in humanity’s greatest works. But what exactly is love? How does its mechanism spur such poeticism, and how does it lodge itself in our minds, hearts and souls so completely, so stubbornly, as to permeate every aspect of the human imagination? Today, we turn to 5 essential books that are “about” love in a different way — they turn an inquisitive lens towards this grand phenomenon and try to understand where it comes from, how it works, and what it means for the human condition.
No superlative is an exaggeration of Alain de Botton‘s humble brilliance spanning everything from philosophy to architecture. Every fall into love involves [to adapt Oscar Wilde] the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. Sample her work with this fantastic TED talk on the brain in love: Is love really blind? 7 Essential Books on Music, Emotion, and the Brain.
By Maria Popova What Freud has to do with auditory cheesecake, European opera and world peace. Last year, Horizon’s fascinating documentary on how music works was one of our most-liked pickings of 2010. But perhaps even more fascinating than the subject of how music works is the question of why it makes us feel the way it does. Today, we try to answer it with seven essential books that bridge music, emotion and cognition, peeling away at that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins. We love the work of neuroscientist and prolific author Oliver Sacks, whose latest book, The Mind’s Eye, was one of our favorite brain books last year.
But some of his most compelling work has to do with the neuropscyhology of how music can transform our cognition, our behavior, and our very selves. Why music makes us feel the way it does is on par with questions about the nature of divinity or the origin of love. Patel also offers this beautiful definition of what music is: New Year's Resolution Reading List: 9 Essential Books on Reading and Writing.
By Maria Popova Dancing with the absurdity of life, or what symbolism has to do with the osmosis of trash and treasure. Hardly anything does one’s mental, spiritual, and creative health more good than resolving to read more and write better. Today’s reading list addresses these parallel aspirations. And since the number of books written about reading and writing likely far exceeds the reading capacity of a single human lifetime, this omnibus couldn’t be — shouldn’t be — an exhaustive list. It is, instead, a collection of timeless texts bound to radically improve your relationship with the written word, from whichever side of the equation you approach it. If anyone can make grammar fun, it’s Maira Kalman — The Elements of Style Illustrated marries Kalman’s signature whimsy with Strunk and White’s indispensable style guide to create an instant classic. On a related unmissable note, let the Elements of Style Rap make your day.
On the itch of writing, Lamott banters: On why we read and write: How to Create an Awesome Summer Reading List. Good Minds Suggest—Geoff Dyer's Favorite Books About Obsessions (Author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi) February, 2012. The Ultimate Self-Education Reading List. The Books That Changed Your Lives. The Top 10 Self-Help Books. 18 Great Reads That Changed My Life. 50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Library | zen habits.
75 Books Every Writer Should Read. Top 10 Best Novels of the Last 20 Years - Top 10 Lists | Listverse. 40 Modern Nonfiction Books Everyone Should Read. Best books to Help kids become an animator/ cartoonist.
Drawing books for kids, start learning now! Doodlers unite! how to doodle books. Ed Emberley's Drawing art books for kids/children. 50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years. The Feminist Summer Reading List. Top 10 Best Novels of the Last 20 Years. Full List - ALL TIME 100 Novels - TIME. Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. Soda Fountain and ice Cream Parlor list.