For as long as i can remember ideas have "Struck Me", and the more i read the more "Intellectually Uneasy" i become. I realise faulty assumptions about "What a thing represents" can lead me down a dead "Branch"; Whether in formal systems like math, tech architecture or social matters.
Sometimes as you say, "cynically written" books like 1984 can be have that bite, and thats true, but some books that have "Bite" because makes me go "Whoa!" or a slight panic when my world-view gets changed.
Godel, escher, bach was one of the first books that did that for me. It struck me on the head and i could not put the book down. Concepts of infinity and strange loops dominated my underlying intellectual uneasyness for some time afterwards.
Blood Meridian was also a book that shook my understanding of pre-1800 life. How close to savagery humanity still was only 200 years ago fundamentally shook my understanding of where i stand in relation to my ancestors.
"The Quants" showed me how shaky our financial infrastructure really is.
The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments blew my mind. Spending 20 years to create a masterpeice that would certainly fall into both of your categories at once... a brilliant, cynical book, hopeless and callous in the eyes of a population with the attention span of a tik tok.
Sometimes as you say, "cynically written" books like 1984 can be have that bite, and thats true, but some books that have "Bite" because makes me go "Whoa!" or a slight panic when my world-view gets changed.
Godel, escher, bach was one of the first books that did that for me. It struck me on the head and i could not put the book down. Concepts of infinity and strange loops dominated my underlying intellectual uneasyness for some time afterwards.
Blood Meridian was also a book that shook my understanding of pre-1800 life. How close to savagery humanity still was only 200 years ago fundamentally shook my understanding of where i stand in relation to my ancestors.
"The Quants" showed me how shaky our financial infrastructure really is.
The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments blew my mind. Spending 20 years to create a masterpeice that would certainly fall into both of your categories at once... a brilliant, cynical book, hopeless and callous in the eyes of a population with the attention span of a tik tok.