6,332 books
—
8,174 voters
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(1846)
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read (1287)
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history (282)
environment-nature (217)
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fiction (177)
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“Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story.”
― If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
― If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
“Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,' Arkadian Porpirych says. 'What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks.”
― If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
― If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
“Well, in a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization—against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.”
― Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
― Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
“I felt a kind of vertigo, as if I were merely plunging from one world to another, and in each I arrived shortly after the end of the world had taken place.”
― If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
― If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
“Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: We're producers of one thing at work, consumers of a great many things all the rest of the time, and then, once a year or so, we take on the temporary role of citizen and cast a vote. Virtually all our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another - our meals to the food industry, our health to the medical profession, entertainment to Hollywood and the media, mental health to the therapist or the drug company, caring for nature to the environmentalist, political action to the politician, and on and on it goes. Before long it becomes hard to imagine doing much of anything for ourselves - anything, that is, except the work we do "to make a living." For everything else, we feel like we've lost the skills, or that there's someone who can do it better... it seems as though we can no longer imagine anyone but a professional or an institution or a product supplying our daily needs or solving our problems.”
― Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
― Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
Effective Altruists
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— last activity Apr 22, 2026 02:40PM
Recommend books, see what other people are reading, start a discussion, what have you. N.B. This group is not actively moderated and doesn't have any ...more
Political Philosophy and Ethics
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Study and discussion of the important questions of ethical and political philosophy from Confucius and Socrates to the present. Rules (see also the ...more
Philosophy
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— last activity Jul 08, 2026 02:53PM
What is Philosophy? Why is it important? How do you use it? This group looks at these questions and others: ethics, government, economics, skepticism, ...more
The History Book Club
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— last activity 5 hours, 24 min ago
"Interested in history - then you have found the right group". The History Book Club is the largest history and nonfiction group on Goodread ...more
Dystopias and Social Critiques
— 1007 members
— last activity Apr 01, 2026 12:51PM
This is a group for all the fans of Dystopias out there. Share your favorite dystopias, get new recommendations, and talk with other fans about this e ...more
Colin’s 2025 Year in Books
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