Bitcoin Forum

I thought a thread like this was lacking here :)

If anybody's interested, I'd recommend Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's a great work of fiction litterature spaning many genres, and it deals with economic and political themes that might appeal to my fellow bitcoiners.

What are yours?

Not sure many bitcoiners spend much time reading ;) my favorite all time book is "The Castle" by Kafka. All about confusion and paranoia and authority, he was well ahead of his time.

I am reading Bram Stoker's Dracula. I like how the book is written like a journal and letters.

http://funfive.net/images/Ayn%20Rand%20-%20TL%3BDR.jpg


Didn't like it much. Found it tedious, but I'm not a fan of epistolary novels.

That's quite a shame! I had naïvely assumed bitcoiners where enlightened libertarians who read as much as a man of the Renaissance :P
Thanks for your suggestion, I had greatly enjoyed Metamorphosis by Kafka and will look into that one.
Also, +1 for Dracula. Still is the best vampire story written.

Then you can't've read Twilight  ;D, I prefer Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, but I've only read the first three. I'd like to read the full set at some point in the future, but so much to read and so little time :(.

The creature from jekyll island


an amazing book about the creation of the FED and the way central banks work, its not as boring as it sounds, honestly.


a real eye opener!  ;D

Also love "Unbearable Lightness of Being" (not the movie obviously), by milan kundera. Really shows you how we all view the world through a different prism, in particular the chapter "A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words". But all the chapters are good :)

Recommended reading:

Naomi Klein's: The Shock Doctrine
http://realsociology.edublogs.org/files/2010/07/shock-doctrine-195x300.jpg

Noam Chomsky: Understanding Power
https://cache0.bookdepository.co.uk/assets/images/book/medium/9780/0994/9780099466062.jpg

John Pilger: Freedom Next Time
http://newint.org/columns/media/books/2006/11/01/freedom.jpg

I've read this one and maybe five more novels + some sci-fi. It's only for the past two-three years I've found joy in reading anything else but fact related literature.

I recommend a lot of Chomsky's stuff. Manufacturing Consent, Profit Over People, Hegemony or Survival amongst others.

Here are some books which I have read or are in the process of reading which I think deserve a mention:

 Anathem - Neal Stephenson  (http://www.amazon.com/Anathem-Neal-Stephenson/dp/B003B3NW7G)
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson  (http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0380788624)
 Design Everyday Things  (http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107/)
 Concrete Mathematics  (http://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Mathematics-Foundation-Computer-Science/dp/0201558025)



Most of these are learning resources and not the story telling books although some do involved stories related to the subject, I'll continue updating this when I remember what I have in that old book case of mine. The books I have mentioned are a variety of different difficulties and you may find some not challenging enough or indeed the opposite. Also, if any one has any other learning resources involving Computer science and mathematics which you think is worth mentioning let me know.



I'm not sure I agree I would say the majority read some sort of book doesn't have to be fictional or autobiographies it could be learning resources which their university supplies to them for their course or the university might recommended certain books.

Pirates of Somalia. It is a really interesting book about, well, piracy in Somalia (Captain Obvious strikes again). I've read it like 5 times or something and it's so well written and explanatory. I totally recommend it to anyone who is generally interested in the world and the differences (and similarities) between countries!

Sounds like something for me, I'll might check it out.

You might be right there I haven't touched a book in years but I'll check out some of the recommendations here if they interest me it would be cool to know what other bitcoiners are reading.

The best books I've read recently are 'The lord of the flies', 'The satanic verses' & 'Do androids dream of electric sheep'.

I would recommend "The hobbit" and "The alchemist"(if you like a little philosophy)!

I recommend Autobiography of a yogi by yoganandha. It is a spiritual book.

I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett's work. I also enjoyed Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time."

I used to love Terry Pratchett a few years ago but I don't think I would enjoy reading them any more.

I like everything by Sheckley, my fav sci fi author.

I had to read that book in english when I still was in High School. I myself got an A on the test we did afterward, however a friend of mine didn't even get a grade, just the question "Did you actually read the book?".
Anyway, it is a good book.

I agree with the Philip K Dick, Do androids dream of electric sheep. I saw it second hand in a charity shop and picked it up just because of the title. Quite futuristic to say I recall it was the late 60's when it was published.

I recommend Atonement by Ian Mcewan. One of my favourite books. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami is also a really bizarre read.

Atonement is great and so is the film, but I'm not a big fan of McEwans other books, though I haven't read any of his earlier stuff which is apparently more macabre. Wasn't a big fan of Kafka, but I'm not a big fan of magical realism stuff.

A book I recommend is Kill Your Friends by John Niven. It's like American Psycho set in the 90s music industry and it's laugh out loud funny. They're making a film of it soon.

siddharta hermann hesse

I did not read it, but shall soon. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick was great. The movie was good, but the book even better, showing the damages of heavy drug usage but from an insider's totaly unjudgemental perspective.

I read that one during my time as a buddhist. It was good actually.

This made me lol for some reason. Are you no longer a Buddhist?

Das Kommunistische Manifest

I still am to a certain degree. But I had a period of being a hardcore buddhist, and honestly, I have never been as calm as I were back then. And that is what me and my friends refer to as "The Buddhist Period". I maybe should have written that post in another way haha :D

Lovely to see the Chomsky and Pilger reccy's here :)

It'd be helpful if everyone said why they recommend each book

Go for old schoool. Asimov is cool.

I'm a fan of the classics, I highly recommend Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote as it is actually a rather good comedy in the modern sense of the term, it made me laugh quite a bit despite being 400 years old. Its a book that I would consider light reading and very important to catch a huge amount of modern references. I remember sitting in a QED (physics) class reading it, and then bursting out laughing, everyone looked and imediately understood when I said, "d00d got knighted by a hoe" or at least they gave me an even stranger look that I assume meant that they understood.

Inferno, Purgatorio, y Paradisio by Dante Aligiheri. I haven't got around to reading Paradisio yet, but they are an interesting look into untampered with religion, not diluted by today's agenda told in a way that isn't dry and pedantic.

if we are going historical here, I had a buddy who had an original 1926 English edition of Mien Kampf that allowed me to borrow it. While it is not a light read, its essentially just a political campaign/propoganda, if you like psychology or history it has a lot of interesting things that allow you to draw connections to how the whole WW2/holocaust thing came to be.

And more modern, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. I feel a lot of Bitcoiners who are involved in the business side of Bitcoin will draw a lot of connections to the book. It worried me at first, but then I stopped worrying about myself and found the book rather enjoyable. If you are interested in the world's financial system as effected by large corporations, or have conspiracy theories about such, you will like this book.

To mock a hummingbird is an all-time favourite

+1

Normally I don't really read fiction, but this one is really good!

"451 degrees fahrenheit" is my personal top1. "Atlas shrugged" is probably somewhere nearby with a "One flew over the cuckoo's nest". Can recommend them all as a very interesting, educational and fascinating books.   

Also I would like to recommend The Kite Runner.Its one of my favorite read.

Inferno - Dan Brown was pretty decent in my opinion.

Is Robert Langdon still the main character?

Yep, he is. Decent book I must say.

Where does it rank compared to his others? It's the only one I haven't read of his.

Atlas shrugged is definitely the best  8)

http://sedition.com/img/a/t/d/as-tl-dr.jpg

I've not read it but it's definitely on my reading list. It's just finding the time to read nowadays, which is a shame.

It seems that nobody has mentioned George Orwell so far :)  1984 or Animal Farm sometimes seem to be describing problems we are experiencing now (or might experience in not so distant future), although they were written a few decades ago. I like his Homage to Catalonia too. In it, he recounts his experience from Spanish Civil War (another famous piece about the conflict is Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls).

And I like classics too. One of my favourites is Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy with all its mind-blowing imagery, especially in Inferno   ;)

I recommend to you The Book Thief by Mark Zusak. Other then that read serial A song of Ice and Fire by R.R. Martin.

I love reading Shakespeare just finished Henry part IV . Iam totally into literature don't about rest of us but i know not lot of people love to read literature the max amount of reader's  interest is either in fiction, romantic or biographies .

Who is John Galt?

I'll agree with the OP... this is a great book.

I tend to read by author, find a great author that you like, and chances are good that you'll like everything they put out.

WEB Griffin is probably my favorite author, but I also like Robert Asprin, Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, James Clavell, and any number of others... but those are the ones that I recall instantly.