realitygrill comments on Book Recommendations - Less Wrong

25 Post author: NancyLebovitz 09 August 2010 08:03PM

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Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 10 August 2010 06:17:33AM *  3 points [-]

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - psychological stress damages human health - tedious but important (and well sourced)

Probability Theory - the Logic of Science (Jaynes) - only halfway through it. I can't justify its length unless I were really willing to work through all the computation shown (I'm not). The text is still somewhat meaningful if you merely read it.

Long, unexplained list:

  • The Wasp Factory, The Player of Games, Matter (Iain Banks)
  • Return from the Stars
  • Lilith's Brood
  • Cyteen
  • Godel, Escher, and Bach (EGB)
  • His Dark materials (juvenille, mediocre movie, but fun)
  • Black Company
  • Malazan Book of the Fallen
  • The Glass Bead Game
  • Jane Eyre
  • The Dispossessed
  • The Feynman Lectures on Physics
  • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
  • The Gods Themselves
  • The Ugly Little Boy
  • Permutation City
  • A Fire Upon the Deep
  • Neuromancer
  • Diamond Age
  • Anathem
  • Lovelock
  • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
  • Songmaster
  • Enchantment
  • Kushiel's Dart
  • The Shadow of the Torturer (Book of the New Sun)
  • The Deed of Paksenarrion
  • Flatland
  • White Light
  • The Eyre Affair
  • Pronoun Music
  • The Ground Beneath Her Feet
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
  • Air: Or, Have Not Have
  • Never Let Me Go
Comment author: NaN 10 August 2010 09:43:22PM 3 points [-]

| Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

But stomach ulcers aren't caused by stress, they're caused by Helicobacter pylori -- although it seems like stress might slightly increase your risk of getting them.

Seeing how the book appears to have been first published long AFTER that discovery, I'm a little suspicious regarding the quality of the research.

Comment author: realitygrill 11 August 2010 01:25:10AM 0 points [-]

I hadn't made that connection, but I do still endorse any of Robert Sapolsky's books. They're pretty much the only ones that I've liked in biology.

I also second Iain M. Banks.