My summer reading list (not that I get to read both every year):
- The Songs of Distant Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke
- The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
The first is about what we never prepared for, but could try to thrive through. (Mike Oldfield made a cool concept album about this. One of the songs is called “Only time will tell”)
The second is a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. But wait! Is it actually a multilayered examination of our notions about information? Oh hell yeah.
Umberto Eco has beautiful prose, I wish I knew enough Italian to read it in the original text
Love that Oldfield album. Had it for decades, and was thrilled to find out it was based on a book I’d read quite a long time before discovering the album.
1984
As they say, Orwell didn’t stop it from happening, he just postponed it by 30-40 years.
Was going to say this, many people cite it but never read. It is readable well, do it.
Also, I think Fahrenheit 451 translates far better to our situation, as I see media and social media in there long before it was even thinkable.
1984/farenheit 451/Brave New World are the adolescent trilogy for me that anyone who wants to understand the nature of people and mechanics of power would do well to read.
I’d add Animal Farm to that as well.
It’s good to add the other two too but I never could read brave new world, I struggled page by page and gave up. Can not name a specific reason other than I could not get into it.
From a story perspective it should be perfect for me.
Aldos Huxley is not a great writer. I think he had a better understanding of humanity than Orwell… Or at least, I feel like his books are more insightful, but he is not as good of a writer.
One of the few times reading a translated book is better tgan the original, I read it in Spanish and I guess the translator made it more tolerable because I’m not much of a reader at all (I’ve read at most five books on my own, less if we don’t count unfinished)
A pixie book or equivalent. Pixie books are short children’s books (maybe 12 DinA6 pages with very little text and lots of pictures). They are dirt cheap and there is a big bowl full of them in many books stores in Germany. They are meant to get kids into reading and that’s why I ‘nominated’ them here xD
The Crying of Lot 49 — it’s pretty short.
A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn.
There is so, so much that Americans don’t know that they don’t know.
Got some random highlights? I’m curious how many I’ve seen mentioned on Lemmy.
The first that I usually mention is the Coal Wars / Battle of Blair Mountain or the Sand Creek Massacre, but there are many events that American students are made to be ignorant if on purpose.
It also got me to learn that after meeting the natives for the first time, Columbus literally wrote in his diary about how easy it would be to steal from them because they were so peaceful.
Cool, I knew about those! The ones that threw me for a loop were Seneca Village (Black community bulldozed for Central Park) and the bombing by police in Philly in 1983.
Oh yeah. Thank you for sharing.
I’ve heard of those two as well, but even so, there’s a lot written about in the book that I never learned, even through the earning of my bachelors degree, which is why I’m always quick to recommend that people read it.
Reading that right now. Definitely changing my perspective that America was once a good place.
I’m curious; Would you mind to give some highlights?
Follow it up with Settlers, a history of settler-colonialism and the slave trade in the US. No matter how much you think you know about the history of indigenous genocide and chattel slavery in the US, reality is likely far worse than you think.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.
the only thing about this is the first book is great and then the series overall is kinda a letdown.
I don’t agree at all. The first book was great, no argument there - but the series matures with Le Guin as it goes. It’s a truly magnificent breakdown of the fantasy genre.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Same message, two vastly different methods of communicating it
I’m not sure hhgttg recommends incest with large breasted red heads as much as stranger in a strange land.
I guess I’ll bite, what’s the message?
recommends incest with large breasted red heads as much as stranger in a strange land.
Whut?
I guess I’ll bite, what’s the message?
That life is inexplicable and overly complicated because people are hung up on others perceptions instead of what makes them happy. And if everyone just chilled out and tried to make shit a lot better, we’d all be better off
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Absolutely beautiful book
A lot of fiction here so I’ll go the other way and suggest “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich–and Cheat Everybody Else” by David Cay Johnston.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291700/perfectly-legal-by-david-cay-johnston/
If people aren’t outraged, they aren’t paying attention.
Sample:
"Once, Blattmachr devised a way that Bill Gates, the richest man in America, could reap $200 million in profits on Microsoft stock without paying the $56 million of capital gains taxes that federal law required at the time. The plan was so lucrative that Gates would not have to pay a single dollar in tax and would even be entitled to an income tax deduction of $6 million or so. And that was just the initial plan. The concept could be applied endlessly, allowing Gates to convert billions of dollars in Microsoft stock gains into cash over the years. So long as the Internal Revenue Service did not challenge the deals, then Gates could realize unlimited capital gains without the pain of taxes.
The trick was in manipulating charitable trusts, a common enough device used by generous people who own an asset, such as stock or a building that has appreciated in value. Instead of selling the asset and investing the after-tax proceeds, an individual or a married couple can donate the asset to a charitable trust that they control. The trust sells the asset tax-free and invests the proceeds, giving the donating individual or couple a lifetime income, typically 6 percent per year. When the donors die, what remains in the trust, typically half its value, goes to charity.
Blattmachr’s plan was to take back not 6 percent annually for life, but 80 percent per year for two years. Gates could have pocketed at least $192 million without paying any tax. Then the trust would fold and a charity would get the remaining sum, less than $8 million. Under the plan Gates could have converted into cash more than 96 percent of gains on the Microsoft shares he donated, not the 72 percent he was entitled to after federal capital gains taxes. The charity would get less than four cents on each donated dollar. The government would collect nothing.
The scheme even created a tax deduction that was enough to reduce Gates’s income taxes by about $2 million.
Whether Gates took advantage of such a plan is not known for sure because the law makes individual income tax records confidential. What is known is that when Blattmachr made this route available to others, it sold like a treasure map where X marks the tax-free spot. Billions of dollars of assets poured into these short-term charitable trusts and their super-rich owners took many millions of dollars of income tax deductions that further cut into the flow of revenue to the government.
The technique was so outlandish that when some other tax lawyers got their hands on the map in March 1994, they sent it to the Department of the Treasury in a plain brown envelope. That July, Treasury blocked the route to newcomers and said that it would pursue those who used the device. However, the Internal Revenue Service never announced whether it collected any of the taxes. One hint that the IRS may not have acted against those who used the technique can be found in the records of United States Tax Court, which is where taxpayers challenge the IRS. There are no Tax Court cases in which taxpayers fought for a court blessing on the device, known in taxspeak as an “accelerated charitable remainder trust.”
The Treasury rules shutting down this route to tax-free investment profits were not the end of stretching charitable trusts in ways never anticipated by Congress. So facile is Blattmachr’s mind that from those 1994 rules he divined a new route to tax-free gains. He started selling a new treasure map and billions of dollars more in capital gains passed untaxed into the bank accounts of his clients before the government blocked that second path, known in taxspeak as “son of accelerated charitable remainder trust.”
There’s been a lot of abuse of Trusts in finance for a while. This seems like a good recommendation.
One thing I don’t follow; if someone puts their money into a charitable trust, achieving those lighter tax rules, wouldn’t the obvious rule be that the trust could only then be spent on communal benefit, NOT withdrawn as a personal piggy bank?
It’s fine if someone wants to make an account that is given to charity in case of their death, but then pro-charity tax rules shouldn’t take effect until they die. I’m confused as to why it wouldn’t work that way.
Sounds like a loophole that was either accidentally or intentionally inserted. This book is full of them.
For Americans I think “slavery by another name” and “bury my heart at wounded knee” should be required reading.
Don’t really know one book that everyone should read, maybe everyone should read more than one book
A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson
Feels pretty cliche to say them, but
1984, the handmaid’s tale and brave new world
Should probably be on anyone’s list that hasn’t managed to get to them yet
Dont forget the graphic novel version of 1984. Awesome und a downer.
Oh I’ve never actually read that one, thanks for the rec, I’ve not read 1984 in a good decade or so now, so that seems a good way refresh my mind
The Bible. No just kidding, but reading the God Delusion is a pretty good way to get rid of wanting to read that one.
The Maxims of Ptahhotep. First book we know of & filled with practical advice.
The section dealing with domestic demons by applying crocodile urine to your underwear is worth living by.
What number maxim is that?
