Books

/books71540

Book discussions and recommendations

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue



—Rainer Maria Rilke


Reading letters to a young poet by Maria rilke and loving it.
just finished Neuromancer, can highly recommend to ride the cyberspace.
one of the earliest and most influential books in the cyberpunk genre published in 1984 =pre-Internet wtf

my favorite quote
> His mouth filled with an aching taste of blue. His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sounds of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine spines. The spines split, bisected, split again, exponential growth under the dome of the Tessier-Ashpool ice
What are you reading this weekend?
/Books
If you or anyone else you love is concerned about AI taking jobs, I would recommend reading the History of Fortran
/Books
Just read this book over the past couple of days as Trump and Musk begin implementing their own sick vision of authoritarianism in parallel. Terrifying stuff.
The most profound paragraph in all of C. S. Lewis, at least to me
/Books
I just stumbled upon my teenage books, the ones that shaped my life as an artist a little.
I can’t be the only one having access to these,dive in.
reading auto/biographies makes you feel like you're playing an RPG.
Just finished the glass cage by Nicholas carr and can't get over how relevant this is.

Plus he quotes Hannah Arendt which validates me further as someone who read her mammoth book as a project recently. 🫡

Also Shoutout @chukwukaosakwe who's a big advocate of this book.
In case you missed my fave books of the year and want to help me get that Warpcast Reward UBI to put toward reading and sharing more books ;-)
It's a book club on Base! Read that again. A book club. On @base. At the risk of being reactionary, that is, how do you say? Based? Mint now if you really love books.

https://pods.media/thinking-on-paper/dreams-songs-and-fantasies-how-documents-took-over-the-world-nexus-yuval-noah-harari-chapter-3
I might have to send them a copy of "Number Go Up"
peak guy-spends-a-year-doing-something book but ACTUALLY delivers

starts as an investigation into memory champions then morphs into a quest to become one

especially interesting take on how Fitts' three stages of learning (cognitive → associative → autonomous) apply to literally everything from typing to remembering shakespeare
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
1. Suffering exists in everyone’s life.
2. The causes of suffering are greed, anger, and ignorance.
3. Nirvana, the extinction of suffering, is possible for everyone.
4. Nirvana is achieved by following the Noble Eightfold Path.

四聖諦
苦﹐集﹐滅﹐道。

THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH
Right Understanding, Right Thought,
Right Speech, Right Action,
Right Livelihood, Right Effort,
Right Mindfulness, and Right Samadhi.

八正道
正見﹐正思惟﹐正語﹐正業﹐
正命﹐正精進﹐正念﹐正定。
Right before Christmas, finally finished my reading of <Diamond Sutra>:

“Subhuti, if a person amasses enough of the seven jewels to fill
countless worlds and gives them away in charity, and if a good
man or good woman with the bodhisattva resolve takes as few
as a four-line verse of this sutra, recites, remembers, follows,
and expounds it to others, the latter’s merit would far exceed
that of the former. How should one teach it to others? Without
attachment, abiding in stillness and suchness. Why?

All conditioned phenomena
Are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow,
Like dew or a flash of lightning;
Thus we shall perceive them.”

With this the Buddha concluded the sutra. The elder Subhuti, other
bhiksus, bhiksunis, upasakas, upasikas, heavenly and human
beings, asuras, and other beings of the world, having heard the
Buddha, were all filled with immense joy; they accepted and
followed the teaching faithfully.
Initial drawings for a bookplate I’m designing for my favorite books.
Nietzsche, this is everything
Here are a few of the books the a16z crypto team is reading and recommending this winter.

This list has something for everyone, from spherical geometry to celebrity autobiographies, and from the science of supervolcanoes to science fiction.

Repeat recommendations reveal our longstanding interests. This season’s repeats included Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight on the making and running of an iconic shoe brand, and James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, a favorite resource for kicking off new habits and mindsets in the new year.

📚 https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/winter-reading-list-2024/
Audiobook recommendations to help pass a 14 hour drive?

Qualities I'm looking for:
•Fiction
•Female author
•Either a long books or a series of shorter books that I can finish on the drive (will listen at 2-3x speed)
•Thought provoking but not too information dense
•Great performance from narrator(s)
“…This form of soft dictatorship does not require mass violence to stay in power. Instead, it relies upon a cadre of elites to run the bureaucracy, the state media, the courts, and, in some places, state companies. These modern day clercs understand their role, which is to defend the leaders, however dishonest their statements, however great their corruption, and however disastrous their impact on ordinary people and institutions. In exchange, they know that they will be rewarded and advanced.”
@phil you recently asked about life-changing books.
i then wrote a whole list.

and then I read “Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius” by Lucius Seneca

highly recommended! i think everyone one should read it.
Re-reading Ægypt Cycle book 1 “The Solitudes” and good grief if this is not the most perfect book for me I don’t know what else is
Anyway, back to the stack to pop off the next book I've been waiting to get to