August 2012 Media Thread

RobertLumley

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. I find that exposure to LW ideas makes me less likely to enjoy some entertainment media that is otherwise quite popular, and finding media recommended by LWers is a good way to mitigate this. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you have a thread to add, such as a video game thread or an Anime thread, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you have a thread to add, such as a video game thread or an Anime thread, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

"Labyrinths" by Borges is a good read. And it's only, y'know, 50 years old. Not LW-related even a little, except by analogy in the vocabulary department. It's fun, interesting, and "culturally uplifting."

Labyrinths is THE best "idea book" I know, where the author has interesting, important ideas, and presents them both quickly and artistically. I confuse this book with Ficciones a lot, but that doesn't matter, as you should read them both.

6pragmatist14y

Upvoted so hard. Borges is pretty much my favorite writer of fiction. When I first read him, I frequently experienced a genuine sense of wonder that fiction hadn't ever evoked in me before (and hasn't really since, although Blindsight, Italo Calvino, The Book of the New Sun and some of Nabokov came close). I recommend picking up his Collected Fictions. All his short stories, very well translated. Beautiful beautiful stuff.

2Alejandro114y

Seconded. All of Borges is a good read, but "Labyrinths" is the best place to start for non-Spanish speakers. And while there is nothing in Borges about concrete LW-topics like cognitive biases, or futurism, it is full of the geeky fun, the play of abstract concepts and ideas, that I think most LW-ers enjoy. Think of it as Hofstadter, but with math and AI replaced by philosophy and literature.

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