+1000 For mentioning Feynman. The pure and humble genius of this man, called "The Great Teacher", is in my view only rivaled by Professor Einstein himself.
When I want to introduce someone to Feynman, I often show them this video, "Why?".
The clip is a 7 minute outtake of an interview Feynman gave in his later years which focuses on what happens when the interviewer asks the question "Why do magnets work?". To answer this, Feynman meta-explains how explanations can be given in the first place, setting up the reason why the magnet so hard to directly answer. In this, he tells me more than I heard in my 5 years of studying physics.
(In short, about the magnet question: we are used to explaining/describing things by analogy to other, known, things. But you can't say "magnets attract when separated in the same way that rubber bands try to constrict if you pull them apart" because that's cheating, since the reason rubber bands act like that is because of the magnetic action of their atoms.
So how can I answer a "Why?" when there is no other shared experience we have that I can analogize it to?)
<3
PS: If anyone reading is interested in electricity, and perhaps is like me — very disappointed in the teaching of it, disappointed because it seems like magic to me, but is treated like "math" to the professors, I HIGHLY recommend reading a few pages of Feynmans work (which covers all of known physics) that deals specifically with Electricity: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_01.html
I enjoy the way how he simplifies complicated things. For example, I used to find physics scary and something far away with so many big words, but it could actually be so practical and fun from Feynman.
And my favourite quote from him: once you teach people's names about something, that is the moment they stop learning! Knowing the name of something doesn't mean they actually understand it.
The one I gave previously is also about electricity, but it is a link to the more advanced chapter in the second volume of his works.
This link I just gave is the one which tells you everything about electricity and how magic it is. It was what made me feel about Feynman that there are still highly trained ("educated") people who have curiosity about the strangeness of our incredible world. A feeling my years in university unfortunately had crushed.
Patrick Rothfuss! Don't even care that he'll never complete the story
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher!! Freakin detective wizard
Steve King! Fuck, the Stand was one of the most immersive things I've read, not to mention the Dark Tower saga
The lord of the rings.
The never-ending story!
These are books I've read several times. I've also seen the entire Dragonball saga at least once per year for the past decade (I'm in my mid-30ies..). HunterxHunter every other year. We're nerds right? Don't gotta be the annointed intelligentia all the time (just when vitalik enters the room....)
I don't read manga, literally only because my kindle can't display the color, but are they any good? As for the animes, I love Death Note and loved Berserk (until they suddenly made it a computer animated mess).
But yeah DragonBall.. It's just comfort food to me. I love it. When I was younger I loved Jack London, though wildly different the stories share the sense of entrepreneurship, of "becoming stronger for the sake of becoming stronger".
These days my favorite animes are Jujutsu Kaisen and Overlord. If anyone has recommendations, let me know! (anime or non-anime; ive also watched the wire 5 times, I love film in general:))
Not hating on OP for posting a book thread, but there have been a bunch of these. Anyone who wants more recs, use the search function, past book threads from posters here had a lot of good suggestions!
I used search to find non-btc authors, didn't find anything on authors, not books, specifically, and didn't feel like sifting through a bunch of separate posts
Asking stackers and rewarding them is much more fun anyway, and lets newcomers speak up
When I was in dive school I had at that point only read what ever books were mandated by junior years but a fellow classmate was always reading something in every second of spare time. I just randomly asked if he had anything extra I could read and he did. Mistborn. It changed my life forever and I have never stopped reading since.
A few favorites (with my favorite by them in parens)
Walter Isaacson’s biographies (Steve Jobs)
Ryan Holiday (Ego Is The Enemy)
Robert Greene (48 Laws of Power)
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership)
Brené Brown (Rising Strong)
Dan Heath (Upstream)
I really enjoy Murray the book "Betrayal of the American Right" is really good. He basically outs National Review as a CIA rag even though he worked there as the token libertarian lol
Dan Brown is one of the Autors I have read the most. I like his writing composition and his novels are real thrillers for me. I believe some people have found or might find lots of value on his works
One of my favorites is Nevil Shute. Just really great stories, mostly with a proto-libertarian bent. Start with A Town Like Alice, which is the one that got me into him. I found A Town Like Alice on a webpage I found somewhere of neglected books.
Fiction
Non-Fiction