I think (re-)reading 1984 probably counts a lot more than reading a great amount of business/self-help books.
However, if you're tired of 1984 but are still on an Orwell kick, his non-fiction is equally fantastic.
Hmmm, I thought the point was you're wasting time on a book a) you've already read and b) everyone else you know has already read. Regardless of how good the book is, you're unlikely to gain any unique insight.
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I promise that book is going to be nothing less than 42x better. It also has doodles! e.g., http://instagram.com/p/Zn32KlmEq7/
I'm going to mail out stickers for my next project.
(Can I has free book? Why do we have to wait till October, so far away.)
I also have a mascot and a little backstory. His name is Gary and he lives in the circuits of your computer. Born in 1987 with the .gif format, he works tirelessly to compile the user's images frame by frame. He almost quit in the 90s though, after people criticized gifs as being tacky and overused. But then came the gif renaissance as users began to purposely use gifs as expressive, emotional works of art. Gary handles all the heavy lifting in our software and he loves to make people happy. Thank goodness for Gary.
Is this really the case? I can't recall this attitude being that widespread.
It'll probably cost you next to nothing on Amazon Used Books, and if it's the sort of book you don't like you'll probably know after a chapter.
But I promise I wouldn't waste your time. It's about the runup to the first World War, and it's chock-full of amazing digressions and vivid characters. It's absolutely captivating, and for years you'll be able to open it completely at random and be surprised.
"Dreadnought" is the book that made me track down "Grey of Fallodon" and "Dorothy Grey", and read "Castles of Steel," and read every single one of Churchill's books about the world wars, and his (now public-domain) book "From London to Ladysmith by Way of Pretoria."
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Alternatively, if you don't want a grand, sprawling epic with a cast of hundreds, please consider "Storm of Steel", by Ernst Junger, the Best First-Person Account of the First World War -- a good english translation has only been available quite recently, 2000 or 2004 if I recall correctly.
I'm on the last chapter of Atlas Shrugged. Does that count?
This is such a refreshing thing to read in a tech community that seems to so unfairly decry literature. (And, no, rereading 1984 doesn't count.)
I also recommend people check out Alexis's short eBook, Make Something People Love: (http://www.hyperink.com/Make-Something-People-Love-Lessons-F...). It's ten bucks and something like seventy pages: easy to cruise through on a lazy afternoon, and has a very pleasant perspective on the philosophy behind creation. Alexis is a gifted writer, and you certainly feel his personality on the pages.