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[NT] The ultimate NT books

onemoretime

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All opinions, of course.

List what book you think best represents your personality type and its view of the world. While many of these can be your favorite book, they don't all have to be. Personally, I see this list skewing more toward the fiction side, but I'm having trouble seeing how it could be anything but a scientific treatise for an INTP. To start:

ENTP: The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway - A group of friends constantly traveling with one another around Europe, with the only rationale often being "well that sounds like fun!". Near-constant consumption of alcohol with the intention of boosting the experience. The two main characters are highly impulsive in nature, with Brett constantly seeking new relationships with other men because of the inability to consummate her relationship with Jake, even though for all intents and purposes they have consummated already. It is the emasculation and thus prevention of climax that creates the longing, not necessarily the need to be totally with one another. Jake's gregarious nature is tempered by a need to retreat and process information. By the end of the novel, the characters grow unnerved by their inability to see any of their great long-term ideas through, which is a reflection of Western society's inability to save the promise of the turn-of-the-century from the self-destruction of World War I.

Your thoughts?
 

entropie

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Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf:

This novel is supposedly the writings of Harry Haller, a lonely intellectual who feels isolated from the rest of the world. The story is the account of his existential transformation. Beyond the plot, it is an exploration, a painful one, on the hollowness, emptiness and meaninglessness of life. It talks about how lonely we really are, in the confusing and unexplainable world in which we live. It also talks about the desperation routine brings on, the fakeness of love, the necessity of death. But, in the final analysis, it also shows a probably undeserved love for life. This is not a simple "grunge" book: it's thoughtful philosophy expressed in a fine literary piece of work, which shows vividly some concepts that sometimes formal philosophy renders in abstract and obscure ways.
Harry Haller, the steppenwolf, will meet a simple woman who takes him into the life of the flesh and the simplicity of people. This is very important: Haller comes to realize, in an intuitive more than analytical way, how we all humans feel the same loneliness and confusion, but how most of us manage to live and somehow enjoy many aspects of being alive.

This is an intelligent, deep and moving novel. It is not always pleasant, but then again life is not always pleasant either. Steppenwolf is perhaps the novel in which Hesse best sums up many of the points made in his other novels, previous or subsequent. It is the round-up of a clear and interesting philosophy of life. No wonder people, especially young people, keep finding inspiration, advice and healing in his works. Maybe I shouldn't give it five stars, for it can't be compared with top-level literary masterpieces; but I think literature's importance is not only and not always stylistical. The content is important too, and at least for me, this is one of the most inspiring and memorable novels I've ever read.
 

nozflubber

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hmmm, did you only mean fiction books? because my copy of the basic works of Aristotle has become my fucking bible for scientific guidance
 

onemoretime

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hmmm, did you only mean fiction books? because my copy of the basic works of Aristotle has become my fucking bible for scientific guidance

Nope, I figured INTPers would most likely be non-fiction: no time for flights of fancy when there's so much to learn from objective reality!
 

Willfrey

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I enjoyed reading 'The Elegant Universe'

It was reccomended to me on here by a fellow INTP.
 

Galusha

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World War Z for the perspective, Candide for the schadenfreude, The Power of One for success and ambition, The Trial for reality
 

Shimmy

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Recommended for shy INTPs: Neill Strauss' - The Game.

As for NT fiction I would recommend: Umberto Eco's - Foucault's Pendulum, Tolstoy's - War and Peace, Assimov's - Foundation. Joyce's Ulysses is the only book I've never been able to finish.

I also like short stories by the hand of Asimov and Roald Dahl. They both usually write very witty short stories with a dark twist at the end.
 

Sarcasticus

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"Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy. It appeals to me because it's very dark-- probably the most violent book I've ever read. But also because it turns the morality tale on it's head; the "bad guy" (and he is unbelievably evil) lives by a moral code of sorts (however twisted it may be), and the good guys (only marginally less evil) are caught in moral ambivalence at best, turpitude at worst. It's sort of a theme throughout McCarthy's work (fwiw he's an NT, probably INTJ).
 

ring the bell

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Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenence really appealed to me. A lot of people read it and then never look back, but I've found it to be really intensive and deep. It essentially delves into what quality really is.
 

thisGuy

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the importance of being earnest - oscar wilde

and excellent 4 act play that reminds me of me in simpler times

wilde does a good job of displaying morality in a mirror. the book highlights the obvious notions of the modern world that are expected of everyone but aren't taught by anyone. the useless norms that only cause the pretentious to be happy...written in a very typical entp fashion...excellent read
 

Verfremdungseffekt

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It has become hard for me to read a novel, unless the author's voice really leaps out at me -- and there are only so many voices that do this.

Joseph Heller is one. Catch-22. Just about anything by Nabokov or Wodehouse. They all express themselves as I would hope to.

Rather like Stephen King, Asimov's short stories are far preferable to his novels. Sort of wish I'd known him better when he was alive.
 

bluebell

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For me, it's Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I read it for the first time about 4 or 5 years ago. It blew me away, best novel ever. I'm glad I didn't read it when younger, I would missed a lot of the psychological depth and multitude of layers in the novel. It hits both the feeling and thinking parts of the mind.


Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenence really appealed to me. A lot of people read it and then never look back, but I've found it to be really intensive and deep. It essentially delves into what quality really is.

I read that when I was 18. It was one of several books that changed my thinking around that age. Chaos by James Gleick and The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra where another two books I read in my late teens that changed how I viewed the world.
 

Verfremdungseffekt

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I think I have Good Omens drifting around somewhere, unread...

I admit I haven't really given him a chance, and haven't tried to read him in years on years, so I may be working off of weird teenager thinking, but Terry Pratchett always struck me as a poor man's Douglas Adams.
 

Tallulah

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I think I have Good Omens drifting around somewhere, unread...

I admit I haven't really given him a chance, and haven't tried to read him in years on years, so I may be working off of weird teenager thinking, but Terry Pratchett always struck me as a poor man's Douglas Adams.

And see, I tried reading the Hitchhiker's Guide series because I liked Good Omens, and thought they might be similar, and I just couldn't get into Adams.
 

bluebell

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I was utterly obsessed with Douglas Adams in my mid-teens. I reread Hitchhikers enough that I could quote large chunks of it. :blush:

Terry Pratchett has more depth. I love Good Omens (reread that a gazillion times) and I have all of his books, most of which have also been reread a gazillion times. But with the exception of the Nightwatchmen series, none have affected me at a particularly deep level, unlike Ender's Game. Although, the Discworld is part of my mental landscape and I occasionally wander round in there.
 

Shimmy

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I was utterly obsessed with Douglas Adams in my mid-teens. I reread Hitchhikers enough that I could quote large chunks of it. :blush:

Terry Pratchett has more depth. I love Good Omens (reread that a gazillion times) and I have all of his books, most of which have also been reread a gazillion times. But with the exception of the Nightwatchmen series, none have affected me at a particularly deep level, unlike Ender's Game. Although, the Discworld is part of my mental landscape and I occasionally wander round in there.

I read it, didn't particularly like it.
 

Sarcasticus

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For me, it's Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I read it for the first time about 4 or 5 years ago. It blew me away, best novel ever. I'm glad I didn't read it when younger, I would missed a lot of the psychological depth and multitude of layers in the novel. It hits both the feeling and thinking parts of the mind.

This book keeps coming up in conversation over and over again. I'll have to check it out.

About to start on Moby Dick again. Not exactly an NT yarn but it's a classic.
 
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