/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14840206]

Been reading fiction for years but people keep saying non-fiction is where it's at. What non-fiction books do you guys recommend?

Pic not really related, just one of my favorites

[Anonymous No.14840229]

Whatever you find interesting obviously. Science, History, Philosophy are the main tools for success. I like to recommend some basic neuroscience and biology so you start learning about yourself, and for Philo, start with the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.14840248]

>>14840229
Am studying medicine at university atm, so that might be enough from biology. What history/social science books do you recommend?

[Anonymous No.14840257]

Am not usually into the charts getting posted here, but are there any "Non-fiction essentials" chart worth checking out? except the obvious starting with the greeks.

[THE PROBLEM SOLVER No.14840259]

>>14840206
Philosophy is where the most and least powerful books are contained.
>>14840229
Do not start with the post-Socratics. Plato and Aristotle aren't even philosophers. The pre-Socratics are both more scientific, and more artistic, while still having the want and greed intrinsic to the best philosophers. Their works only exist in fragments, and so serve as more of a proper intro to philosophy.

[Anonymous No.14840301]

>>14840206
Frank Kermode - The Sense of an Ending
E. J. Hobsbawm - The Invention of Tradition
E. P. Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class
Immanuel Wallerstein - The Modern World-System
Quentin Skinner - The Foundations of Modern Political Thought
Fernand Braudel - The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
J. G. A. Pocock - The Machiavellian Moment
Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism
Karl Polanyi - The Great Transformation
Joseph A. Schumpeter - Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
Thorstein Veblen - The Theory of the Leisure Class
Thomas Piketty - Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities
LS Vygotsky - Mind in Society
Michel Foucault - Discipline and Punish
Albert Bandura - Social Foundations of Thought and Action
Clifford Geertz - The Interpretation of Cultures
Erving Goffman - The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life
Ernest Becker - The Denial of Death
Pierre Bourdieu - Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson - Metaphors We Live By
Derek Parfit - Reasons and Persons

[Anonymous No.14841118]

>>14840206
just chiming in to give some love to this book, one of my favorites as well

[Anonymous No.14842743]

>>14840206
The best.

[Anonymous No.14843797]

>>14840206
I mean doesn't Rings of Saturn prove that it's stupid to make such a distinction in the first place? How could anything fictional avoid having traces of the real? And how could anything "non-fictional" completely avoid subjective limitations?

The real distinction that I would make is between narrative, poetics, and non-narrative. This is far from being a perfect diagram, but I think it's a bit more rigorous. Something like a biography can be research-based and still be narrative, while something entirely abstract like metaphysics is obviously non-narrative.

Ok nobody cares, anyways, suggestions:

Gombrowicz -- Diaries
Yates -- The Art of Memory
Lingis -- Dangerous Emotions
Wittkower -- Born Under Saturn
Dyer -- But Beautiful
Adorno -- Minima Moralia
Levi Strauss -- Tristes Tropiques

[Anonymous No.14843800]

the peregrine

[Anonymous No.14844302]

>>14840206
Libido Dominandi
A History of Central Banking
On Power: Its Nature and the History of its Growth
Political Parties
Imperium
All These Things
Decline of the West
Educability and Group Differences
The Bell Curve
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition
The Essential Difference
Human Diversity
The Communist Manifesto
Mein Kampf
Born in Blood
Culture of Critique

Please ignore all philisophical autism like Kant, etc. Libido Dominandi gives a good overview of the history of ideas, although it does place too much of an emphasis on their importance. There's a lot of intellectual masturbation and time wasters out there. Very smart people waste their whole lives on shit that never mattered, never will, and isn't real. If you read the above list and understand, you will be a new man with true insight to the workings of society and people. Meanwhile pseuds on here sit and babble about discursive book-objects that fractionate and spin 270 degrees in 5 dimensions.
Good luck :^)

[Anonymous No.14844406]

[Anonymous No.14844428]

>>14841118
>>14840206
amazing book. best one I read in 2019

[Anonymous No.14845386]

>>14840206
>>14841118
Why should I read Rings of Saturn? I had a professor rec it to me. What's it about? Big ideas?

[Anonymous No.14845450]

>>14845386
Nah, not a big ideas book.
More a feels book with odd bits of personal stories and history stories. And some out and out fiction.
Charming melancholia.

[Anonymous No.14845469]

>>14840206

[Anonymous No.14845492]

>>14844302
>Imperium
Do you mean this one?
Bought it last month in a 2nd hand bookstore because it was one of the better preserved / better quality books they had, and the introduction seemed cool.
Worth reading?

[Anonymous No.14845503]

>>14845450
Hmm interesting. I;ll give it a look. Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.14845505]

>>14845492
>>14844302
Forgot pic..

[Anonymous No.14845515]

Ancient City - Fustel de coulanges

[Anonymous No.14845567]

>>14844302
>Fruits of Graft -- Wayne Jett
>The Creature from Jekyll Island
>Blood Passover -- Ariel Toaff

[Anonymous No.14845596]

>>14845386
It's a melancholic rumination on decay. Has some extremely dry humor every once in a while. Mixes facts and actual history with completely made up stories, with no real indication as to what is real and what isn't.

No real big ideas, more big feels, but nevertheless a great book. Best I read all last year.

[Anonymous No.14845850]

>>14840206
no

fiction is the patrician way
non fiction is for plebs and pedophiles

[Anonymous No.14846124]

>>14845450
Haven't read RoS yet, but that does sound a lot like Austerlitz.

[Anonymous No.14846221]

>>14846124
it should. it's by the same author

[Anonymous No.14846807]

>>14844406
Tasteful

[Anonymous No.14846906]

>>14845505
No, Yockey's Imperium