The books The Sparrow and Children of God, by Mary Doria Russell. Way too spiritual for my tastes, but great Sci Fi reads nonetheless.
Although I have no interest in owning (or being) a slave or engaging in bondage-oriented sex, I still thoroughly enjoy John Norman’s *Gor *novels.
And I love Star Trek in all its incarnations, but really can’t stomach their anti-capitalistic philosophy.
The Shakespeare canon.
Shakespeare clearly liked the “lower classes” the way some people like animals, and showed that he believed they needed a strong ruler to keep them properly in line. I have more respect for the poor than that (hey, I are one), and am an anarcho-libertarian.
Aside from that, Damn! the fellow could turn a phrase!
The works of HP Lovecraft. There are jaw-dropping levels of racism in some of his stories. I totally disagree with those ideas, but like his stories.
Tom Clancy. I don’t agree with his politics but I like his books. At least until they started getting sloppy.
Not a fan of Orson Scott Card’s world view but like several of his books.
Probably inevitable someone would bring it up, but Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I think the overbearing philosophy and stilted prose (in places) of Atlas Shrugged, and of course the fact that it’s Ayn Rand, causes people to overlook some of the merits of her earlier novel. There are a few scenes in there I found rather moving, or chilling, at turns. But I don’t agree with her world view.
Regarding the OP, not gonna name names, but I have two particular far left and atheistic Dopers in mind: wondering whether they would be able to answer the OP or even acknowledge such a thing is at all possible.
Till We Have Faces is the one I was going to mention too. If you can’t guess, I’m an atheist. Isn’t everything by C.S. Lewis somehow tied to his Christianity?
Barry Goldwater’s views on economics and labor are far from mine, so I like to read them.
I love William S. Burroughs’ writing, although I found his misogyny repulsive. (And if I didn’t know he was a queer fella I would have thought he was a terrible homophobe, as well.) Misanthropic son-of-a-bitch, when you get right down to it.
Bukowski is a also pleasure to read, though perverse pride in not having one’s shit together is a quality that I have no tolerance for in the day-to-day. (Maybe a little too close to home.)
I also came in to mention O’Rourke, especially “Parliament of Whores” which I think would make a great reading for a civics class.
Nickeled and Dimed. Fascinating human interest and personal research (not to mention sacrifice) by the author. And I sympathize (and empathize) with the people in the case studies, having been there myself. A few times. But I completely disagree with her take on the issues, causes and possible solutions.
Reading a work of fiction despite the author’s racism, misogyny, elitism, etc., doesn’t really seem to meet the OP’s criteria of “Read articles and books with entirely different points of view from your own and try to learn something” since it’s something you try to ignore, not learn from.
It’s not the best match either (since it’s not a book at all), but what first popped into my head was The Daily Show. Beyond that, there are some books on my dissertation topic that I find to be of value because they make interesting arguments, even though I feel their conclusions are completely wrong.
I can answer the question, but I don’t know how helpful it would be.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The Emperor’s New Mind.
I remember yelling at the book a lot, but I did enjoy reading it, and I think I learned quite a bit.
I also want to mention P.J. O’Rourke - specifically Eat the Rich.
Also, Christopher Hitchens. Pretty much everything.
Life of Pi, maybe. Also the Narnia books, for the same reason.
–Cliffy
Well, the TWHF link is as subtextual as the Lord of the Rings’ link to Tolkien’s Christianity.
I’ve got a few.
I think Michael Crichton was a shitty guy with a shitty personality who wrote shitty books using shitty science and his own shitty viewpoints on things he didn’t know shit about, such as business, politics, and . . . well, other shit. That said, I can’t pick up a book of his without reading it all the way through. The man wrote shit, but he wrote it very well.
Stephen King seems to be a much better person than Michael, but in a lot of his books, he gets hung up on the evil influences of technology. He also relies a lot on his characters solving problems or at least progressing through them through faith alone (hardly surprising considering his genre, but still . . . I happen to think that many more problems have been solved through skepticism than faith.). But really, is there any bookworm alive who can pick up a Stephen King book and put it back down before finishing every word eight hours later?
I went through a German lit phase waaayyyyyyy back in the day, and while I despise Bertold Brecht’s communism, I really–and I mean really–enjoy reading his plays. The man was a fucking master.
J.R.R. Tolkein seemed to think that little people who want to good will get a lot of help from the world at large and perhaps the world above in their quest against evil, which is somewhat at odds with my often pessimistic worldview . . . yet I love The Lord of the Rings.
I’m not much of an existentialist, but I really like some of Albert Camus’s work.
As far as religion goes, well, I’m not a Christian but I think everybody should read Saint Augustine. And for that matter, The Holy Bible.
Others already mentioned in this thread include Milton and H.P. Lovecraft (whose worldview I kind of agree with, save for the racism mentioned by Anne Neville).