The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

What Hacker News says

1. bmmayer1Sep 2019
   Economics:

   - The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

   - Das Kapital, Karl Marx

   - That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, Frederic Bastiat

   Philosophy / Politics:

   - The Republic, Plato

   - Second Treatise on Government, John Locke

   - The Law, Frederic Bastiat

   - Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes

   - Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

   - Democracy in America, Alexis de Toqueville

   - On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

   Fiction:

   - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Mark Twain

   - The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin

   - Metamorphoses, Franz Kafka

   - Candide, Voltaire

   - The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

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2. willturmanAug 2026
   Mark Twain himself wrote a story about a sure thing, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County:

   https://readmeastoryink.com/wp-content/uploads/stories/the_c...

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3. the_afOct 2024
   Related to what you're saying, there's a whole essay by Mark Twain where he explains the difference between comedy (and comedic storytelling) and simply "telling a joke". He didn't think much of the "punchline" type of jokes, he was all about the storytelling... as you can tell by "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and his many other stories.
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4. analog31Jul 2018
   At the end of the day, a rich shopkeeper is still a shopkeeper. Nothing against shopkeepers, but I see no reason for any one of them to be more interesting than another.

   "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

   -- Mark Twain, "The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County"

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