A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

It’s on my to-read list, but starting is daunting. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (the essay collection) was amazing. I think about it often.

The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart Any of David Foster Wallace's books of essays such as A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster

A Supposedly fun thing is great. DFW is so insightful and hilarious that I think some of his skepticism seeped into my own thinking. If only I could have his wit...

These are a few of the ones I read this year and that the average HN reader would also probably enjoy (links are to my blog): * Why We Sleep: https://j11g.com/2019/05/31/why-we-sleep-matthew-walker/ * The Effective Executive: https://j11g.com/2019/03/18/the-effective-executive-peter-dr... (https://j11g.com/2019/03/18/the-effective-executive-peter-drucker/) * High Output Management: https://j11g.com/2019/01/29/high-output-management-andrew-s-... (https://j11g.com/2019/01/29/high-output-management-andrew-s-grove/) * Bad Blood: https://j11g.com/2019/01/21/bad-blood-john-carreyrou/ * The 7 Habits (I reread this after a long time and it still holds up!) https://j11g.com/2019/09/30/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective... (https://j11g.com/2019/09/30/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective-people-stephen-covey/) * A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace (This is just an amazing book and became one of my all time favorites) https://j11g.com/2019/08/08/a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never... (https://j11g.com/2019/08/08/a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never-do-again-david-foster-wallace/)

Gödel, Escher, Bach awakened my intellectual curiosity about formal systems and other autistic modes of beauty as a teenager. After "The Selfish Gene" it was the first book I bought and read on my own volition, so I have to credit it as a major influence. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs for showing that you can think rigorously and compose beautiful programs out of simple pieces. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty for showing that it's possible to think and feel about politics while maintaining a profoundly ironic and groundless mind. The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry for its beautiful view of civilization as materialized caring and of the inflicting of pain as metaphysically destructive. Being-in-the-world by Dreyfus for introducing me to Heidegger and showing how continental philosophy inspired by Heidegger was a major force in the evolution of AI and how AI researchers tended to be influenced by rationalist philosophy in the vein of Descartes which leads to huge misunderstandings of the nature of being.…

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace. This is a book of magazine articles he wrote for various publications on a range of topics. His powers of observation are unlike any other. the articles are hilarious, sad, thought provoking, and insightful all at once.

I really, really love David Foster Wallace and I've also never gotten through Infinite Jest. If anyone is interested in reading DWF I'd recommend checking out his shorter fiction (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) or non-fiction (A Supposedly Fun Thing) if Infinite Jest (rightfully) seems intimidating :)

East of Eden is my favorite book I've read in the last several years. Beautiful end to end and very moral. If you've read it it's totally worth reading Journal of a Novel: a collection of letters Steinbeck wrote to his editor every day as he was writing East of Eden. It's a fascinating window into the mind of a master deliberately creating a masterpiece. Other favorites: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, In Our Time by Hemingway, The Magus by John Fowles, 100 years of solitude, Moby Dick (perhaps a precursor to all modern fantasy?) Stranger in a Strange Land, and Infinite Jest. I've also loved both of DFW's big essay collections: Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll never Do Again.

Reading IJ on the iPad is the right move. My advice: make sure you look up words that you don't get, instead of following your normal reading instinct to pick up meanings from context. You have a dictionary a touch away. I agree, read (at least some) of his essays first; not because the story will make more sense to you, but because you'll appreciate the writing more after seeing it deployed in a comprehensible linear narrative. Strongly, strongly recommend _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again_. Once you've done that, even at its gnarliest, you can look at IJ like a collection of essays that just happen to be unmoored from reality, and kind of surf the text until it starts making sense again. Someone reduced IJ to a diagram a few weeks ago, which I translated to Graphviz and re-rendered; this has "spoilers", though: http://yfrog.com/juxo0p

Yes! My mind was blown when I read this. Here are some others: "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace, pretty sure this book has changed how a generation writes. At least it convinced a generation they'll never be as good as DFW. "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami, which I like to think of as a Japanese C.i.t.R. G.E.B. - power through it, soldier! "Making Certain it Goes On", by Richard Hugo. An instructional book on how to write poetry, or to basically do just about anything. I highly recommend it to all programmers.

Things you can easily read on the beach: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain (but read Kitchen Confidential first if you haven't already). Also recommend FiveBooks.com, which does interviews with various academics and "thinkers" each recommending 5 books on a particular subject. It's a bit slanted towards politics but has a fair bit of hard science as well.

Cormac McCarthy is a depressing motherfucker. I'm halfway through Blood Meridian and ready to slit my wrists. Good programmer read: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace.