Books

Reading and literature: book recommendations, novels, poetry, reactions to texts

A topic in the tpot Community Archive, drawn from 8,339 posts.

Trusted voices in Books

Ordered by the trust Books's own network concentrates on each poster, most first.

  1. visakanv — trusted by 170 posters here
  2. QiaochuYuan — trusted by 149 posters here
  3. the_wilderless — trusted by 130 posters here
  4. eigenrobot — trusted by 112 posters here
  5. goblinodds — trusted by 94 posters here
  6. michaelcurzi — trusted by 91 posters here
  7. PrinceVogel — trusted by 82 posters here
  8. TylerAlterman — trusted by 109 posters here
  9. eshear — trusted by 96 posters here
  10. tasshinfogleman — trusted by 88 posters here
  11. DefenderOfBasic — trusted by 80 posters here
  12. nosilverv — trusted by 89 posters here

Top posts in Books

Ordered by the recorded like count from the source corpus; a like is not an endorsement.

  1. in 2019, Scott Alexander wrote a review of The Body Keeps The Score, with an initial conclusion of "Overall, I was not too impressed with this book." A few weeks later, he updated the review with an… (visakanv) — 45 likes
  2. this book addresses pretty much every problem i’ve ever had with meditation, clearly and compassionately. wow. gonna use it to restart my practice after years of neglect. much thanks to @_awbery_ 🙏… (QiaochuYuan) — 39 likes
  3. My favorite poem is actually a spell written by the ancient Egyptians: "Becoming a Light in the Darkness" (trans. Normandi Ellis)---Out of nothing I return to the white sea foam. I have made an end… (TylerAlterman) — 27 likes
  4. diane duane's "so you want to be a wizard" is one of my favorite YA novels and i wish more people knew about it so i could reference it more easily. there are some beautiful ideas about magic in… (QiaochuYuan) — 27 likes
  5. we can remake the republic of letters. we have the technology. one of the most important things to do is to unlearn the fixation on “average reader”. you want to reach 0.1% of exceptional readers… (visakanv) — 26 likes
  6. 1) harry potter and the methods of rationality 2) acid https://t.co/5fKjxedQ8q (QiaochuYuan) — 25 likes
  7. reading Infinite Jest in a coffee shop, chuckling regularly so they know I get all the jests (the_wilderless) — 25 likes
  8. Scattered Minds by Gabor Mate is the most beautiful, empowering, impactful book about ADHD and approximately zero people with ADHD have managed to finish it (uberstuber) — 25 likes
  9. Jane Austen has a great bit in Emma where she demonstrates the importance of polite fictions there's this character called Miss Bates who was born into wealth and class but is now a poor spinster… (goblinodds) — 25 likes
  10. i am so excited (and nervous) to share my novella Theodicy with you, which I wrote last month for NaNoWriMo 💜 it's ~10,000 words, 34 pages, and it is exceedingly vulnerable 😅 https://t.co/lg7ElMs7MA (tasshinfogleman) — 22 likes
  11. almost done. scattered minds is a longer read than i expected, not just by raw wordcount but because it brings up a lot of stuff, but wow is it wild to read someone describe in vivid detail every… (QiaochuYuan) — 22 likes
  12. only on page 7 and I am crying already https://t.co/2UDCTkkfe2 (RichDecibels) — 22 likes
  13. I became a filmbro faster than expected. It literally just takes a year. Watch 4-8 movies a week for a year and you will eventually dig deep enough to discover something odd that really hits the… (michaelcurzi) — 22 likes
  14. the greatest thread in the history of forums, https://t.co/9Hr6dR6dr3 (eigenrobot) — 21 likes
  15. did u write it https://t.co/EaYdTQNzp9 (michelleakin) — 20 likes
  16. we deserve books that we can zoom in/out of (like google maps) the "zoomed out" text should be clearly different from the author's original words (I don't want to "read" LLM prose, I'm just using it… (DefenderOfBasic) — 20 likes
  17. I kinda wanna say, stop everything guys, stop everything and everybody go read a really old book from a different time, from a different place. You, over there. old russian novels. you. start… (visakanv) — 19 likes
  18. one thing ive learned as a serious-hobbyist media consumer is that if a movie like this is actually made, it will somehow end up being the most profound one with the actual richest understanding of… (visakanv) — 19 likes
  19. My potentially schizo take is Philip K Dick is a cautionary tale People say his work saw the future and the shape of the coming world-psyche,, But it looks to me (having read his exegesis) like he… (the_wilderless) — 19 likes
  20. Ok folks it's time for the annual Clavicleposting thread, drop your clavicle in the replies https://t.co/aNqys01GTW https://t.co/X5UeJStGwy (bashu_thanks) — 19 likes
  21. the first polite fiction is that Miss Bates isnt an incredible bore the second is that she's among equals. she isnt! these people are all that stand between her and abject poverty and everyone knows… (goblinodds) — 19 likes
  22. guys idk if you knew this but there are a lot of books about spirituality by a lot of people with a lot of different opinions about what to do in what order and how to make sense of everything and… (QiaochuYuan) — 19 likes
  23. The courage to be disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Heard good things, let’s dig in https://t.co/yriXyV6LMn (visakanv) — 18 likes
  24. anyway it's almost 4am and i am still not done, really, but my back hurts from the position i've been using to type and i should get some sleep. for now, this concludes my book report on diane… (QiaochuYuan) — 18 likes
  25. dodging book recommendations like https://t.co/MCY2VpHHDy (strangestloop) — 18 likes
  26. occasional reminder that lord of the flies was written because Golding read about boys being marooned and having a good time and this made him angry because he hated children so he wrote a book… (eigenrobot) — 18 likes
  27. i'm now in the weird position where the CEO of OpenAI mailed me the entirety of the Stormlight Archive which feels like the simulation is fucking w me somehow (the_wilderless) — 18 likes
  28. There are a lot of really great meditation books. But chances are only people really into it will read a bunch of them. So there's value in saying "ok, if you read only 1 book, make it this one".… (algekalipso) — 18 likes
  29. i did it. i finished scattered minds. all i needed was someone telling me i couldn’t do it. classic. hopefully more notes and/or a longer review to follow https://t.co/2Jl1W5KXSG (QiaochuYuan) — 18 likes
  30. This is Douglas Hofstadter, professor of Cognitive & Computer Science at Indiana University Bloomington Best known for his book Goedel, Escher, Bach (1980) this is nerd 🧵 about his influence on… (forthrighter) — 18 likes
  31. Silly but realising now: in a time when most people could not read most people would LISTEN someone read. Usually religious texts. So less like our individual solitary reading and more like a group… (nosilverv) — 18 likes
  32. Mr. Knightley, the novel's aptly named exemplary gentleman (and, spoilers, love interest), gives Emma a crushing (and warranted) earful for this "Badly done, Emma" https://t.co/v2Odp77Duk (goblinodds) — 18 likes
  33. I published my book! Now I just need to finish it... https://t.co/Hh83QNHd5w (RichDecibels) — 18 likes
  34. TIL about the "star gauge" poem, a legendary non-linear love poem (or perhaps more appropriately, poem-matrix) which Su Hui used to win her husband back. https://t.co/91kxf32yIC (PrinceVogel) — 17 likes
  35. reviews and social proof for my book Introspect, the thread (buy it here: https://t.co/pWry0F4w7I) (visakanv) — 17 likes
  36. Mindpunk: a fiction genre incl things like brain-computer interfaces, nootropics, new mental abilities, etcExamples: Dune's Bene Gesserit & Mentats, Asimov's Second Foundation, Bakker's Dûnyain,… (TylerAlterman) — 17 likes
  37. So many fiction writers seem eager to have us connect with their despair, listlessness, rage, or cynicism. Who are the ones who seem to be saying, “Connect with my joy?” (TylerAlterman) — 17 likes
  38. @simpolism @qorporate i had a great time during the pandemic ngl. lived w my parents for 6mo. bonded with my dad over a shared activity for basically the first time ever (cycling). wrote almost… (qorprate) — 17 likes
  39. how to recommend that every person seeing this reads The Courage to Be Disliked but in like a cool and chill way (strangestloop) — 17 likes
  40. I think it's bad for us that our fiction rarely depicts planning and even less planning with uncertainty. Even eg The Martian, if read closely, mostly skips it in favor of jumping into the execution… (RomeoStevens76) — 17 likes
  41. I love how after these pair of tweets in 2019, I went on to publish Friendly Ambitious Nerd in 2020 and @p_millerd went on to publish The Pathless Path in 2022. Both of our books were already… (visakanv) — 17 likes
  42. holy shit i found a pre-lesswrong book where @ESYudkowsky is mentioned: The Spike, by Damien Broderick. he's mentioned in the 2001 edition; I wonder if he's in the 1997 edition https://t.co/4oNbgRapZK (pachabelcanon) — 17 likes
  43. This book is wild. Y’all should check it out. https://t.co/LTwARLzdVC https://t.co/jbs8bgaDOe (danallison) — 17 likes
  44. Unsong is just so good https://t.co/H9bBgxic8u (eshear) — 17 likes
  45. Best of all time fictional depictions of leadership in a book (any genre)?Ender's Game/Shadow would be great examples if I hadn't read them multiple timesRed Rising is continually greatTrying The… (michaelcurzi) — 17 likes
  46. I finally finished my novel, Psychofauna, after 5yrs of writing. Lmk if you want to be a beta reader and I will send you the manuscript!The synopsis: the whole world turns telepathic. Huge psychic… (TylerAlterman) — 17 likes
  47. I'm only 15 pages into Seeing That Frees and it's already been the most psychoactive dharma book I've read (nopranablem) — 16 likes
  48. I just learned that in Korea, a lot of folk tales start with the line "when tigers used to smoke pipes," sort of equivalent to "once upon a time." https://t.co/P66WappXq7 (vividvoid) — 16 likes
  49. when I find something that is a lovely arrangement of words I put it in this thread regardless of context or content (bashu_thanks) — 16 likes
  50. if you’ve got a heavily normie-materialist friend who seems to be looking for an excuse to open up to a more holistic or just less depressing worldview, you could probably do worse than giving them… (the_wilderless) — 16 likes

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