
Surprisingly undervalued books - nqureshi
http://blog.nabeelqu.com/post/33557680375/surprisingly-undervalued-books
======
mjn
Undervaluing Wittgenstein isn't really consistent with what I've read in
American philosophy at least. If you go by objective metrics (which would be
the _Moneyball_ approach), he consistently tops the citation counts, and
beyond that, is considered central to many areas. Probably only Heidegger
gives him a run for most broadly influential 20th-century philosopher (though
it's hard to compare directly, because they've been influential on quite
different groups).

He's been particularly influential on analytic philosophy via Saul Kripke,
among other interpreters. In popularity contests, he routinely gets voted #1
most influential philosopher in polls of academic philosophers as well, e.g.
in a 1999 poll of mostly UK/US academic philosophers
([http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/Lac...](http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/Lackey-What-are-the-modern-classics.pdf)) and in a
Brian Leiter straw poll ([http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/so-
who-is-the-...](http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/so-who-is-the-
most-important-philosopher-of-the-past-200-years.html)). The former one
concludes that _Philosophical Investigations_ is "the one crossover
masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse
specializations and philosophical orientations".

An interesting question might be who is undervalued on those lists: is there
someone halfway down, or not on the list at all, who should be near the top?

~~~
dulse
I'd be interested to see a list of the best philosophy books for non-
philosophers. I'm not a philosopher or close to the field, but I always
thought Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions was a big hitter. Not so much for an
individual essay but the combination of essays - What Is it Like to be a Bat?
and The Absurd are both classics in my mind. Basically every essay in that
short book is great, completely understandable to the lay-person, has the
potential to be deeply influential to one's everyday beliefs, and is
philosophically rigorous.

Philosophical Investigations is beyond my ability to follow as is Heidegger (I
think it's a common complain against continental philosophy in general).
Kripke's Naming and Necessity is something I can understand, but I don't
really feel the 'oomph' to the insight that there can be a posteriori
necessary truths and apriori contingent truths. Obviously it's a deeply
important fact, and an astonishing breakthrough. But it doesn't hit me in the
same way as Nagel's Absurd, which attempts to break down and dismiss
existential dread. I don't think he succeeds, exactly, but it feels important
and deeply insightful.

~~~
anigbrowl
If you enjoyed Nagel, pick up 'The Mind's I', an anthology edited by Douglas
Hofstadter, which includes a few of Nagel's essays and many others of value.
If you're interested in things like crime and punishment, Leo Katz has written
several highly accessible books on moral philosophy and law, though his
arguments sometimes trike me as glib. Reading Plato, especially the dialogs of
Socrates, can be a little indigestible at first, because he takes a long time
to get to the point. but there's a reason that Whitehead said most philosophy
consists of 'footnotes to Plato'; once you get used to the style you'll find
the weighty matters leavened with a surprising amount of dry humor.

~~~
gnosis
Since you mention Hofstadter, I simply have to bring up _Godel, Escher, Bach_.
Especially for anyone who's interested in computers and artificial
intelligence, this is a must read. It is brimming over with philosophical
issues, and is very accessible even to someone without any previous exposure
to philosophy.

I'd also recommend "The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem. It's an anthology of
hilarious science fiction stories, many of which deal with deep philosophical
themes. Also, along those lines is Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy trilogy, which is also hilarious and very philosophical.

These aren't exactly the first books most people think of when asked for intro
to philosophy books, but I think books like these are quite perfect as very
easy, gentle, funny and fun intros to many philosophical themes. Their humor
and wit also put the vast majority of "real" philosophy books to shame.

~~~
mjn
A colleague of mine with a background in semiotics recently read _Godel,
Escher, Bach_ , and said it was, among other things, to his surprise a good
introduction to something very similar to semiotics, but independently derived
by Hofstadter from first principles.

------
gruseom
I'll pipe up for _Impro_. One of my favorite books. Well, the first half is –
it's a meditation on life and the universe as much as it is about theater, and
it changed my mind in some cool ways. It's useful for anyone doing creative
work, especially collaborative creative work, definitely including
programmers. It's also very funny. The second half is about mask work and
trance, which I was expecting to be fascinating, but it fell short of the
sparkling magic of the first half. The material isn't as generally accessible
and probably depends more on knowing how they use masks in production.
Johnstone says that the masks have their own personalities, which actors take
on when they wear them, and that's probably why he relies on them so much. His
tastes in theater run away from personal expression toward simple universals.
He's always telling actors to be more boring, and that the worst thing you can
do is try to be interesting or clever.

Johnstone lives in my town in Western Canada. I ran into him in Safeway once.
He's very tall and his eyes go in two different directions so he looks down at
you rather quizzically from two different angles with his head tilted like a
bird. I told him I loved his book, and he grunted "Good" and turned around and
walked away. A few paces later he yelled "I'm glad it's useful!" and then went
out of sight.

He's probably a genius. He was known in the London theatre scene of the 1950s,
but felt stifled because he couldn't try whatever ideas he wanted without
worrying what somebody famous would think. Then he went to teach at some
remote place on Vancouver Island and discovered that he could think and do
whatever he wanted. He liked that so much that he got a position in my town
and stayed there permanently, presumably because there was nobody there who
mattered!

~~~
nqureshi
This is awesome. Although such a shame he's in Canada, because now I can't
meet him. He sounds brilliant.

~~~
gruseom
You can meet people in Canada :)

I don't know if he's still doing it but a few years ago my wife took a
workshop with him called "Ten Days with Keith". She loved it, and him. But it
took a few days. He is an odd duck whose brilliance is not immediately
apparent. Pretty amazing to be around someone who can tell stories about
Beckett and Pinter though.

I think of Johnstone as in the spirit of Lao Tzu. He is all about the
unplanned and unthought. And about creating conditions favorable to its
arising.

------
msluyter
A lot of great books, but it's unclear to me that most of these are actually
"undervalued." Check out the blurb on the back cover of Philosophical
Investigations, for example:

 _Immediately upon its posthumous publication in 1953, Ludwig Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations was hailed as a masterpiece, and the ensuing
years have confirmed this initial assessment. Today it is widely acknowledged
to be the single most important philosophical work of the twentieth century._

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has had a huge impact. From Amazon: "
_Translated into more than seventeen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of
the Brain is the world's most widely used drawing instruction book._ "

Same with The Inner Game of Tennis -- it was groundbreaking when it came out
in 1972 and had a huge impact not just on tennis, or even sports generally,
but on musicians, artists, performers, or anything with a critical mental
game. Back when I was working on my music degree it was required reading.

Is it possible that the author thinks these books are undervalued simply
because many of them were released a while ago (when he was young or not yet
born) and thus they aren't currently being hyped and/or in the limelight?
That, or perhaps they're simply not that popular within the author's social
circle?

~~~
bennesvig
If it weren't for Hacker News, I would not have heard of Drawing on the Right
Side of the Brain, which I'm currently reading. I had also never heard of The
Inner Game of Tennis despite playing tennis for four years in high school.

To your point, some of the books were hugely successful when released, but
don't receive much attention today due to the newer books in the spotlight. We
all live in different worlds so some books will be wildly popular to some
groups and foreign to others.

------
nkoren
+1 for _Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_. It's superb.

I'd add _A Pattern Language_ to the list. It's actually been very
appropriately valued by the programming community, but _massively_ undervalued
by its intended audience of architects and urban planners. Should've been
_the_ architecture and planning book of the 20th century; instead most design
professionals have never heard of it. Their loss!

~~~
brudgers
_A Pattern Language_ is often a required text for at least one studio course
in US architectural schools. There are, however, practical issues with
Alexander's approach at a professional level. Some are perhaps subtle to a
layperson - most architectural projects are typically driven by the client's
commercial concerns, e.g. a firehouse apparatus bay is designed for trucks not
human habitation and a restaurant is designed to turn over customers not cause
them to linger for six hours. On the other hand, some are obvious - planners
do not have the ability to limit existing communities to a few thousand
people.

This isn't to say that Alexander cannot inform a design. In fact, many
architects look at his work during the process. But the kind of project which
will look like the images in his book is rare simply because many of these
patterns are best implemented "at run-time" by the user, rather than at
"compile time" by the architect or planner.

Finally, I would say that what the programming community got from _A Pattern
Language_ is not Christopher Alexander, but Richard P. Gabriel.
[<http://www.dreamsongs.com/>]

~~~
1123581321
I've had this conversation with architects and city planners and they all say
this. Only a narrow band of the patterns are in the architect's area of
practice; as an obvious example, the architect does not organize the whole
world at once a la Pattern 1. Most of an architect's income depends on
perpetuating the poor design of modern communities with each individual
building. There is just no money in refusing to build anything but a useful
space except when being commissioned by an eccentric or some other rare
project. That leaves only the arrangement of the interiors which is hampered
by code and depends on the taste of the building's occupier in respect to the
uses of rooms and selection of furniture. Alexander's patterns must be adopted
by the occupiers of buildings so they can work their way backwards to the
architects and city planners that don't or won't consider them.

~~~
brudgers
" _I've had this conversation with architects and city planners and they all
say this."_

Now you are having a conversation with one who isn't.

The analogy between architectural patterns and software patterns is more akin
to the way in which software patterns are not relevant to an application
programmer in regards to the structure of black boxes such as third party
libraries or the OS kernel. Architectural design depends on OPM (other
people's money) to execute.

Urban planning not writing a web app. It's maintaining legacy spaghetti code
in within an institution with entrenched interests. Brasilias only come along
every hundred years or so, and your average joe doesn't get appointed. But
just about every one of the major urban planning patterns is standard
consideration in most contemporary municipal planning departments [in the US].
Politics and money of course tend to have an influence over outcomes, of
course.

On the architectural side, a lot of _A Pattern Language_ is not directly
applicable to most architectural commissions because it is focused on domestic
architecture rather than commercial. Banks don't offer a place to apply, "The
couple's realm."

Incidentally, complaining about the impact of building codes has probably been
going on for nearly FOUR millennia.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi>

~~~
1123581321
Yes, I agree with you. I actually didn't have software in mind when I wrote my
post, but the differences you note are important.

Planning is indeed a mess. However, there are 'breaks' between 100-year plans
and building-scale architecture such as neighborhood development, block-level
revitalization projects, etc., which don't offer a greenfield opportunity but
do allow a planner to make some important choices. Ideally, well-designed
rooms would create an opportunity for homes, clusters of homes, streets,
clusters of streets and business districts, and up and up. Obviously it is
unlikely.

The reason it's unlikely is the patterns are so opposed to how things are
done. You mention the bank. Commercial is actually addressed, but there is no
place in Alexander for an isolated, cold, commercial bank branch that requires
a commute for its employees. Alexander's vision for our work is too radical to
happen right now.

------
codewright
It's a good list for cherry-picking a couple reading ideas, but the amateur
comments about philosophy weren't well-received by this individual.

> I find that it’s thoroughly undervalued by philosophers

Doing okay so far...

>though, who see it as an arcane and eccentric work of little value

Not so sure about that...the timing for Wittgenstein's work might've been
unfortunate, given that people were starting to become infatuated with
existentialism around the same time. That was as more of a pop-culture
phenomenon than an academic fad though.

>it’s a difficult thing to read

Okay again...

>Ironically for a book ignored by most philosophers, it contains the answers
to a lot of their questions, and the method for answering all of them.

Hrm, no. A lot of the questions concerning philosophy and the method for
answering all of them?

I sincerely doubt any work that could described in such terms would be as
obscure as he proposes. This borders on the illogic of conspiracy theorists
believing they've found some secret truth.

A bizarre flash of irrationality in an otherwise great post.

~~~
nqureshi
Thanks.

You question whether it's really seen as that eccentric: I've actually
corresponded with a bunch of UK philosophers about Wittgenstein, all of whom
regard his earlier work as vaguely interesting if subsequently outmoded (a
more or less accurate assessment) and his later work as eccentric and mostly
irrelevant to serious philosophy (a totally wrong-headed assessment). I'm
happy to send you email extracts if you still doubt that.

I should note that I studied philosophy here in the UK (at Oxford), so perhaps
I'm biased towards the UK. But I think this applies to the US too:
Wittgenstein sort-of influenced the American tradition via Rorty and Kripke,
but he's still not central to modern American academic philosophy. Kripke got
him totally wrong anyway, and Wittgenstein's only a piece of Rorty's outlook.

As to your last comment - what you seem to be saying is that this is highly
improbable based on 'well if it's that good why doesn't everyone believe that'
considerations. To which I'd respond: (a) it's not a totally obscure work. In
fact, it's regarded as the main late Wittgenstein work. But (b) late
Wittgenstein is totally undervalued by the mainstream of academic philosophy,
mostly because (I think) he renders it irrelevant; and (c) you're better off
actually reading the thing and deciding for yourself. Otherwise you become a
sort of 'efficient market theorist' w.r.t. academia/books. Not a position I'd
want to hold, personally.

~~~
codewright
>As far as I know, Wittgenstein sort-of influenced the American tradition via
Rorty, but he's still not central to modern American academic philosophy.

Ahhh, you're coming from the perspective of an analytic philosopher. The part
about the UK I can't really incorporate except to take your word for it. I've
assumed they were independent of the "continental" zeitgeist.

I don't come from the analytic family of philosophy. I could never really get
past Frege. OTOH, I don't care for the hippies on the other side of the fence
either.

I'd be happy to peruse material/readings if you have any. I'll add my email
address to my profile now.

Thank you for replying!

~~~
nqureshi
Ah interesting - are you a philosopher? What family of philosophy do you tend
to focus on?

~~~
codewright
I let philosophy consume my life for a few years to the detriment of
everything else.

I'm a values/ethics/aesthetic/desert/metaphysics nihilist with a keen interest
in epistemology. Most recent relevant read I've enjoyed of late has been
Popper and his work on falsifiability.

I've been trying to work through Marx recently too, but I find reading him to
be a lot like reading Ayn Rand.

Insufferable and they expect you to swallow the bitter pill of their
ridiculous foundations they use to prop up the philosophy they work backwards
from their personal preferences to justify. I'm going to continue for the sake
of trying to extract some sense of analysis with respect to Capitalism, but
it's slow-going.

~~~
rotw
> I've been trying to work through Marx recently too, but I find reading him
> to be a lot like reading Ayn Rand. > Insufferable and they expect you to
> swallow the bitter pill of their ridiculous foundations they use to prop up
> the philosophy they work backwards from their personal preferences to
> justify. I'm going to continue for the sake of trying to extract some sense
> of analysis with respect to Capitalism, but it's slow-going.

I'm sorry, but what on earth are you reading? Ayn Rand was a rambling
novelist, while Marx' Capital is a brilliant work of economic analysis. Parts
of it are completely outdated, and some predictions proved drastically false,
but it's nonetheless got some brilliant insights at its core. If you happen to
be reading The Communist Manifesto, it's a political pamphlet for agitation
and not a work of philosophy.

~~~
codewright
I'm reading Das Kapital, not a pamphlet. Try to lend other people a little
more intellectual credit than _that_.

With regards to Ayn Rand, in a similar spirit, I'm not talking about her
crappy fiction work (which is similar in purpose to the Communist Manifesto),
but rather her more deliberate and directly philosophical tracts.

Interestingly, as a result, I can only assume you committed the mistake you
_thought_ I did, judging the philosopher on the basis of their secondary
output rather than the core subject matter.

I don't adhere to objectivism and I think they're fucking cultists, but I do
know their philosophy well and the basis for it bears a _lot_ of resemblance
to how Marxism is grounded and justified philosophically speaking. Marxism is
somewhat more empirical but not by much.

My perspective on the similarity of the bases of each may be colored by the
fact that I come from a strongly skeptical and deconstructionist background.

In general, I'm willing to entertain a priori suggestions for the sake of
exploring an interesting thought. An example would be that I'm willing to
suspend disbelief long enough to discuss the subject of "desert" with a
philosopher who isn't a nihilist if it leads to interesting conversation.

What I am not willing to do is suspend disbelief long enough to swallow an
overarching socio-political theory on how the whole world should be run
regardless of social context (Marxism and Objectivism) based on some
ridiculous presumptions about truth and human nature.

------
wickedchicken
_Operators and Things_ , a (supposed) first-person account of a schizophrenic
who recovered from the condition and wrote about her experience. The second
half of the book is where it really shines, since the author attempts to
analyze her experience as a window into the inner workings of her cognition:
how it broke down, what she experienced when it did, how it recovered itself,
and what led to it. Since the author is anonymous, and talking about one's
mind is very introspective, it's hard to take away real science from the book
but I found it fascinating nonetheless. While I really dislike
pseudoscientific explanations of brain functioning, after reading this I took
up the idea that the conscious mind is more of a time-slice scheduler and
message-passer than where the actual computation is done. So concentration is
about controlling your unconscious indirectly, like training a puppy how to
play fetch: you give it suggestions of what to do, and ignore it when it
doesn't do that :).

I'm linking to the Amazon page, but IIRC the book is old enough to be in the
public domain and there is a free text version somewhere.

[http://www.amazon.com/Operators-Things-Inner-Life-
Schizophre...](http://www.amazon.com/Operators-Things-Inner-Life-
Schizophrenic/dp/0615509282/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350244808&sr=8-1&keywords=operators+and+things)

------
mck-
For me, the most undervalued book is The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar
Gracian y Morales.

It's a small book of very condensed and timeless wisdom in the form of maxims,
written very poetically. It's not a self-help book, the kind you might
picture. (any book is self-help in some way).

Perusing 5-10 maxims a day about 5 years ago heavily influenced the way I live
my life, and still defines my character today.

~~~
kqr2
<http://archive.org/details/artofworldlywisd00gracuoft>

------
endymi0n
I had a very similar thought one year ago - for me one of the undervalued
books back then was "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale
Carnegie. The title was so smarmy and offputting for me (yeah, it's 70 years
old...) that I skipped this gem for way too long, when it's basically
everything you will ever need to deal with and manage people in a few hundred
pages...

------
ubershmekel
The interesting thing about Money Ball was that Billy Beane pioneered an
analytic model for evaluating the true value vs subjectively perceived value
of players.

This list was purely an opinion piece. It was the result of a subjective
appraisal of both books, and the public opinion of them.

I'm quite disappointed.

~~~
andreasvc
I'm really curious how you would suggest to measure the "true value" of books.

I think there may be no such thing. Base ball is a clearly defined game with
conditions for winning and losing, which gives you objective information on
these true values.

But aesthetics (here book appreciation) simply isn't objective to begin with.

~~~
dllthomas
You can analyze the "true value" of books relative to whatever particular aims
you have in mind. Just because there's nothing intrinsic to the books that
specifies what those aims should be does not mean the effect of the books
isn't in-principle measurable, and couldn't be judged for effectiveness once
you _have_ specified your goals.

~~~
andreasvc
You write "true value" and "whatever particular aims" in the same sentence.
That seems like a contradiction to me.

I agree that you can define things to measure objectively about books.
However, I submit that in the end judgment of quality will always remain a
subjective matter.

~~~
dllthomas
It's not a contradiction at all. Remember that the original context was
"Moneyball" - sussing out the "true value" of baseball players using
statistics as opposed to basing decisions on less accurate gut (or social)
assessments of value.

This use of "true" merely means "accurate" - corresponding with reality. The
aims, in the case of baseball, are implicit, of course - the aim of any
manager is to win games. In the case of books, people's aims will differ more.
This means there's no _single_ "true value" but for any given aim there will
be some amount that book will contribute to it. This is usually hard to
determine, but that doesn't make it subjective; it makes it that much more
interesting if you _are_ able to get at it.

------
JoeAltmaier
6\. ‘Principles‘ (pdf) by Ray Dalio.

Tried reading it. His life storey reads like an entrepreneur who started by
trying to fit in (held several corporate jobs), failed (fired for
insubordination) then started his own company.

The rest reads like a self-help book written by an amateur. Some gushing about
physics and natural history (which a HBS graduate probably finds unfathomable
and mysterious). Then some deep discussion of his own inner psyche; why do
successful people assume its their own uniquness that made them succeed and
not, for instance, market conditions or good advice?

Then I gave up. Is very wordy, very very wordy, and not many of the words
worth slogging through. At least the part I saw.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_Some gushing about physics and natural history (which a HBS graduate probably
finds unfathomable and mysterious)._

Yeah, cause all those HBS grads are just idiots, right? They could never
fathom something as complex as _physics_ or _natural history_. That's probably
just black magic to them, even though a big chunk of them got their undergrad
degrees in science or engineering.

EDIT: Some examples of those idiot HBS grads:
<http://www.hbs.edu/news/releases/kaplanfellows2010.html>

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sorry; painted all business school grads from my experiences. You have some
good examples there; I've never met those guys.

I'll repaint it: this guy (who wrote the book) was a high-school failure and
not in your list. Just read his stuff if you can, to see his level of physics
understanding.

~~~
meric
So, you judge a book about management principles by the CEO of a company not
by how well he articulates those management principles or how true you think
they are but by his level of physics and biological understanding.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No, because it reads like a self-help book written like an amateur.

------
blindhippo
"Ironically for a book ignored by most philosophers, it contains the answers
to a lot of their questions, and the method for answering all of them."

I find this illuminating - philosopher's aren't concerned with answers. They
are concerned with the questions. An interesting contrast between the
scientific/engineering mindset and the philosophical mindset.

~~~
pav3l
Very true, once you start understanding how to approach the _right questions_
, the problem moves to the scientific domain, e.g. natural philosophy-->
physics, philosophy of mind (partly) -->psychology/neuroscience/cognitive
science, etc

------
gnosis
Also see:

"Ask Slashdot: Most Underappreciated Sci-Fi Writer?"

[http://www.ask.slashdot.org/story/12/08/08/2135246/ask-
slash...](http://www.ask.slashdot.org/story/12/08/08/2135246/ask-slashdot-
most-underappreciated-sci-fi-writer)

Slashdot has many problems, but this was actually a pretty interesting and
informative thread.

~~~
bravoyankee
Not sure where that "Slashdot has many problems" statement came from, but I
enjoy Slashdot every bit as much as HN. Actually, I like /. more because
there's a lot less shilling and gaming votes there.

~~~
icebraining
There is? What about all those lengthy "first posts" published in the same
minute as the story, which are curiously always advocating the same companies
against others?

Though, I'm still not sure if it's shilling or subtle trolling.

------
cvursache
Happily read your blog post but the assertions about Wittgenstein rang alarm
bells. It may be that his works are ignored in the UK right now, but
paraphrasing Brian Magee: "Philosophy is subject to fashion". So it may just
be a question of trend in philosophy.

> it contains the answers to a lot of their questions, and the method for
> answering all of them.

For me that sounds like "Node.js contains the method to solving all
programming problems.".

~~~
nqureshi
"I would say that this has been, unfortunately for philosophy, the central
fact of philosophy. Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but
driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean
by "free." Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by "exist."

Wittgenstein is popularly credited with the idea that most philosophical
controversies are due to confusions over language. I'm not sure how much
credit to give him. I suspect a lot of people realized this, but reacted
simply by not studying philosophy, rather than becoming philosophy professors.

How did things get this way? Can something people have spent thousands of
years studying really be a waste of time? Those are interesting questions. In
fact, some of the most interesting questions you can ask about philosophy. The
most valuable way to approach the current philosophical tradition may be
neither to get lost in pointless speculations like Berkeley, nor to shut them
down like Wittgenstein, but to study it as an example of reason gone wrong." -
PG

Not an appeal to authority, mind you, just a way of saving myself time.

~~~
brudgers
It's a bit of a mistake to classify Wittgenstein as a philosophy professor.

He studied aeronautics originally - bleeding edge in 1908 just after the
Wright brothers flight - to the point of starting a Phd as well as holding a
patent, and only then became interested mathematics and logic. It was as a
soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army that he wrote _Tractatus_ not cloistered
in Cambridge. He then worked as a rural elementary school teacher and
architect (he was friends with Adolf Loos, and his family had been patrons of
the Secessionist movement).

He only began teaching at Cambridge when he was 40, and was not a professor
until he was 50.

------
acmiller
+1 for Stephen Booth. I was fortunate enough to take his 17th century English
poetry class at Cal. He's the only lecturer who could make poetry resonate
with my geek brain.

It's funny how some classes stay with you over the years.

~~~
nqureshi
Wow, you took his class - that's incredible!

Do you have any class notes / resources you could share? I love the guy.

What was he like as a teacher / in person?

~~~
acmiller
He was very smart, and his lectures were a lot of fun. What made him a great
poetry teacher was that he didn't care about what poems "mean"; what mattered
was the effect they had on the reader.

I can't tell you how liberating this was. For years I had felt that I just
didn't understand poetry, but Prof. Booth told us that poems are just candy
for the mind. All the rest is just pretense. And he meant it too.

The final paper was a eight-page analysis of the last four lines of Paradise
Lost. So you'd take the phrase, "The world was all before them," and you'd see
that this line suggests several meaning to the reader. E.g., the world (God's
creation) was complete before Adam and Eve; or that the world (the entirety of
human history) was in front of Adam and Eve; etc.

More than anything, he taught poetry as a kind of game. It was so much fun.

The last class was truly great--he did a close reading of the children's book
_Go, Dog. Go!_. So entertaining. Sadly I don't have my notes anymore, but you
should search for other people's write-ups of the _Go, Dog. Go!_ lecture
online. It's honestly one of the top five lectures I've ever seen.

------
graeme
This post made me happily spend ~$100.

Quick tip for anyone trying to get older editions of some of these books: use
Abebooks

For example, some of the drawing on the right reviews mention that the 1989
edition is better. I find this happens with many new editions of older books.

You can find near good as new editions of older books on Abebooks, at very
reasonable prices. I used it to get a great copy of SICP, and just now ordered
a version of How To Win Friends And Influence People published during Dale
Carnegie's life, as Paul Graham recommended.

~~~
nqureshi
I'm glad - hope you enjoy them!

------
lhnz
I've read Impro and it's a great book.

There is another book that I want to recommend to other Hacker News readers
and that is 'Language in Thought and Action' by S.I. Hiyakawa[0]. Honestly,
reading that changed my life.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth-
Edition/...](http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth-
Edition/dp/0156482401)

------
jberryman
The Inner Game of Tennis is very widely read among classical musicians.
Probably other types of performers as well.

------
_feda_
I don't think a typical sampling of the HN crowd would be familiar with the
work of J.D Salinger outside of Catcher and the Rye, but as someone who's
loved these stories intensely since my mid-teens, I can't recommend them
enough. In fact the mere mention of Seymour: An Introduction in the article
sent shivers down my spine, reminding me of the amazing originality and
artistry of this writer that I haven't experienced for several years now (I
very rarely read fiction now). I won't bother summarizing the stories here,
but if you have even a passing interest in zen, religion, literature or (at
the risk of sounding pretentious) life itself then this is required reading in
my book.

~~~
nqureshi
Yeah, this is exactly how I feel about the book. It's a shame you've stopped
reading fiction - why is that?

------
dlevine
The book "Mastery" by George Leonard is a distilled version of "The Inner Game
of Tennis." Highly recommended, and it can be had for a few bucks shipped on
Amazon.

------
andreyon
I have read Impro and found it quite good yet can't remember anything related
to newtonian mechanics... but I wanted to read it again anyway :)

~~~
Simucal
I think he was saying that there are certain things that once you learn them,
they change how you view the world. For him, Newtonian Mechanics and Calculus
both did this as well as the knowledge he gained from Impro. Not that Impro
had anything to do with Newtonian Mechanics.

~~~
andreyon
oh, that makes sense :)

------
ivankirigin
Baseball is largely zero sum. Reading isn't. Finding good books regardless of
reputation is the way to go. But knowing what is good is hard, so you should
trust persona recommendations first and ten reputation.

~~~
andrewcooke
why is baseball zero sum? it's like rounders isn't it? so how does one side
getting round (or whatever it's called in baseball) mean that the other team
cannot? does the sum of the scores of the two sides always sum to the same
value? i imagine not. so what an odd thing to assert. why?

~~~
Retric
For a team the score for a single game in meaningless it's simply win/loss.

Think of it like this. If simply increasing the score was of value teams could
simply walk the first 3 batters each inning. I mean it's within the rules and
just think how much more exciting the game would be if each inning started
with bases loaded.

~~~
andrewcooke
oh, ok, sure (sorry).

------
Codhisattva
2 thoughts - "under appreciated" is a better way of thinking of it. And,
there's no accounting for taste.

------
atas
'The Olduvai imperative'. Especially the introduction and the first couple of
chapters.

------
lr--rw-rwx
I will add:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M.
Pirsig

~~~
rimantas
This book is pretty well known. However the sequel to it "Lila" is IMHO better
and really undervalued.

------
windu
+1 for Wittgenstein

