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Looking for a book that will challenge you think.


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Like the title says, I'm looking for a book to read that will challenge one to think. It can range anywhere from psychology, philosophy, history, politics or anything similar. Anything really that will get you to actually stop and reflect and debate with yourself if you agree or not or maybe even perhaps open you up to a new way of thinking.

 

Thank you

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If you're particularly religious, or even not, Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion is an excellent one to get you thinking. It's interesting, while at the same time there is bits of humour maintained throughout.

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Subtle thought provoking books I could recommend include Phillip Pullman's 'Dark Materials Trilogy', Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451', Margaret Atwood's 'A Handmaid's Tale', Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go', and finally a recent Book Circle read on the forum here, Bernhard Schlink's 'The Reader'.

 

All of them will make you think about your own position of a range of matters. Are these the type of books you were thinking of?

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The book that has most ever got me thinking (is that grammer right, I don't know how else to put it) is actually written for teenagers. It's called Eva and is by Peter Dickson. It's about a girl whose life is changed when her body is transplanted with a monkey body. It sounds strange but it really does get you thinking about animal rights and medical ethics.

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Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha got me thinking about different cultures and levels of acceptability within society. It's also a really touching story. My Mother is reading it for the third time in about 4 months as she just loves it! :smile2:

Edited by Nicola
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The first that spring to mind are:

 

The fictional

 

* Mary Shelly, Frankenstein (God-complex, parental responsibility, alienation, criminal psychology)

* Carl-Johan Vallgren, The Horrific Sufferings of Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred (alienation, the workings of power-systems such as asylums/the inquisition, the psychology of revenge and forgiveness)

* Keith Miller, The Book of Flying (innocence and loss thereof, self-knowledge, interaction with other entities)

* Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (rejection of the preordained, freedom, power, nature of reality)

* Lucy Eyre, if Minds Had Toes (a bit similar to Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, except it's shorter, snappier, funnier and easier to take in)

* Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (the morality of curbing free-will to reduce crime)

 

The Philosophical

 

* Renee Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (The man wrote the immortal line "I think therefore I am", he writes brilliantly yet there's a lot of holes to pick in his arguments)

* Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (talks about the tricky relationship between man, God and faith - like Descartes, brilliant writer but debatable philosophy)

* Friederich Nietzche, Ecce Homo (another brilliantly debatable guy; his ideas can be quite scary yet he brings you scarily close to agreeing with him on all counts as he writes so convincingly. Interesting to look into because his theories, duly warped into something they weren't, were used by the Nazis as philosophical justification for their crimes)

* A.D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker (incredible stuff, he interprets the progression of Shakespeare's career in terms of philosophical progression; he makes a fairly good case for Shakespeare having anticipated nigh on every philosophical current there is)

 

The Poetic and Dramatic

 

* Kahil Gibran, The Prophet (precepts for life, both practical and spiritual)

* John Milton, Paradise Lost (good vs. evil, told from Lucifer's POV but still within a Christian perspective)

* Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus (ultimate knowledge vs. soul)

* Lord Byron, Manfred (see Dr Faustus)

Edited by BookJumper
can't spell...
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Don't just read them Dragon! Come back and tell us what you think of them! :smile2:

 

I'm actually trying to find my boyfriend some books for his birthday that he can read. Right now he is into reading historical fiction and some of the books that he has recently read for fun, that I know of are:

 

The Prodigal Mage

War and peace

The Lost Symbol

The Da Vinci Code

 

There are more but I just don't remember them all. So I'm thinking of finding a historical fiction book but I would also like to get him one that makes him think. He always likes to express and defend his opinion on politics, theories and such. However, he is also every open minded to new ideas.

 

Anyways, I figured a good challenging book would be a good read.

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  • 5 weeks later...
Like the title says, I'm looking for a book to read that will challenge one to think. It can range anywhere from psychology, philosophy, history, politics or anything similar. Anything really that will get you to actually stop and reflect and debate with yourself if you agree or not or maybe even perhaps open you up to a new way of thinking.

 

Thank you

 

Outliers by Malcom Gladwell!!!!!

 

You'll like it. :17:

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The following books left a mark on my way of thinking about social issues such as poverty, equality of the sexes, racism and bigotry, and religious hypocrisy.

 

Night by Elie Wiesel

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Madame Bovary by by Gustave Flaubert

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shire

A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster

Washington Square by Henry James

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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The Menace of the Herd was written by Austrian political writer Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

 

It can be downloaded for free here:

 

http://mises.org/books/herd.pdf

 

He wrote it under a pseudonym (Francis Campbell) since at the time of its publication (the middle of WW II) his very Germanic name would have prevented many sales.

 

Why read it? He shows the links between Communism and Fascism (they are not really all that different, arriving at totalitarianism by different routes), and he also offers a pungent criticism of democracy and its dangers, especially the trend toward egalitarian democracy, where mediocrity is raised to a national goal and purpose.

 

A challenge to the belief that "the will of the people" is somehow mystically unerring!

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The Menace of the Herd was written by Austrian political writer Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

 

It can be downloaded for free here:

 

http://mises.org/books/herd.pdf

 

He wrote it under a pseudonym (Francis Campbell) since at the time of its publication (the middle of WW II) his very Germanic name would have prevented many sales.

 

Why read it? He shows the links between Communism and Fascism (they are not really all that different, arriving at totalitarianism by different routes), and he also offers a pungent criticism of democracy and its dangers, especially the trend toward egalitarian democracy, where mediocrity is raised to a national goal and purpose.

 

A challenge to the belief that "the will of the people" is somehow mystically unerring!

 

From a short review:

 

It is an all-out attack on mob rule as the key to democratic totalitarianism. It is surely one of the most thorough-going anti-Nazi works ever written, especially because he understands the relationship between social and economic control (socialism) and the Nazi state. The book is not especially friendly to market economics, but it has other virtues: essentially the author does not believe that the state should make law, and he explains why. To read him is to experience something of an intellectual liberation from every sort of conventional wisdom, and yes there are some very un-PC parts of this book, but the reader should try to be as liberally minded as its author, and then we can all learn. I'm just so happy--we all are--that this book is back to life.

 

http://blog.mises.org/archives/006264.asp

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