- 2011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2147034
- 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6975638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6413600
- 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10914079
- 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17168136
- 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22011867
- 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24361132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25356908
The series is incredibly inspirational since despite being a high fantasy novel. In fear of spoiling the plot, I'm being vague: it tracks the stories of (multiple) people who go through difficult life situations and learn to heal from depressive moments while having incredibly, intricate worldbuilding (which is excellent for taking your mind off of reality) and a twisty plot. If you go on the subreddit for this series, r/stormlight_archive, you'll see people talking about how this book (literally) saved their lives. I can tell you that in the most off-putting moments of life reading inspirational scenes from the Stormlight Archive has helped me stand up again. The messages and themes about life are simple, but also on-point. Overall, an excellent series. I recommend it.
Secondarily, this book saved my life in the sense that it helped me understand my depression, a clinical depression so deep that my psychologist had never seen such a thing previously:
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - Stephen C. Hayes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054M063A/
Its scientific approach to understanding our own thought patterns gave me control- coping mechanisms- for dealing with my own feelings instead of ignoring ("Burying") them and letting them slowly destroy me from the inside out.
Before this book I generally did not read, unless it was a Star Trek branded airport novel. I had just got an iPad and was rummaging around the Project Gutenberg texts they’d dumped into iBooks. I chose it impulsively.
This book set my brain and heart on fire and opened the world of literature for me. It’s very specific, though, and I can’t -recommend- it to anyone.
There is little spackle in this book, as if every sentence and scene is cropped a bit beyond the point of readability. But reading aloud it flows well. There is effectively no plot and a great deal of its merit is at the sentence level. Furthermore, this book in particular resonated with me emotionally.
I was thirsty for more and read other classics. My favorites; To the Lighthouse, Picture of Dorian Grey and Thus Spake Zarathustra (the translation they have on Gutenberg).
This hobby dominated my attention for years. What displaced it was I had to learn Polish. At first I tried to combine these; I read Charlotte’s Web, the Little Prince and Pulp (bukowski) in Polish. But it really wasn’t an effective way to continue and Polish was the priority. All other hobbies had to go.
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Showed all of the archaeological evidence for vast time periods where alternate governance models were put into practice, and how the history of progress that we are given is not the whole story. Useful for seeing that we are in a local minim, and can evolve into something better.
Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. Goes through the diaries and historical evidence of the early interactions with Australia's Aboriginals. Shows how over time their agricultural practices, towns and living environments were destroyed and replaced with a narrative that they were backwards and not using the land. Good example of how sustainable practices can look like unused natural spaces, and thus dismissed as poor uses of space.
Man's Search For Meaning. Again, overcoming the worst situations and finding joy anywhere.
How to Practice. Understanding what you are feeling and why you are feeling it.
Emotional Intelligence. How the amygdala sends signals to the brain, why it does that, and how to recognize your negative reactions.
And all the Discworld books, to find joy and humour in everything. GNU Terry Pratchett.
"The Game" - very immature and sophomoric book. I was given this book by an acquaintance who was also geeky like me. I was painfully shy of girls until grad school, and this book gave me much needed confidence to talk to the opposite gender. A lot of the content is garbage but this book was definitely a life changer.
"Hobbit" - Great story that got me into the LOTR. Shorter than LOTR and hence why I put that on this list. Also about being brave I suppose. I'm seeing a pattern here.
"Good Omens" - Not sure why but when I read this book, I was convinced it was the best book ever written (and I used to read a lot of books in youth). Just witty writing and the occult I suppose.
The book is very easy to read and quite enjoyable with everything that it includes. I definitely recommend to check it out.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenme...
Introduced me to the beauty of logic and its limits. Also gave me solid mathematical thinking foundations.
Pro tip: Try listening to Bach while you read about Bach.
More recently - I hesitate to recommend it because the trilogy is unfinished, but still - Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle books have redefined what is possible with fantasy fiction, with incredible depth and subtlety and literary flourishes. It has flaws for sure, but I can't think of anything that remotely compares to it, and I've read an enormous pile of genre fiction. A real eye opener if you're doing any kind of creative writing.
Think and grow rich - Napoleon Hill
That last one made something click in my head but I find it hard to describe what it is exactly. The key concepts that I learned from this book are in my thoughts and actions every single day.
I probably read it in fourth or fifth grade, not too many years after it was published. It was definitely the first science fiction novel I ever read. It wasn't until many years later that I saw how foundational to my worldview it was that my first SF book had a female protagonist.
I was going to give a few other examples of truly life-changing works (LOTR, Dune, Neuromancer), but I'm not sure how I would have found them if A Wrinkle In Time hadn't opened by pre-adolescent eyes.
I read it while living in California, during a trying time after deciding to move far away from my parents, and it helped me see all of life in a calm new light.
It's a bunch of very straightforward advice that I would never have gotten to on my own and which is _really_ hard to put into practice, but so worth it when you do.
There’s one chapter about misunderstood words. The word “mother” was highly regarded by one character. They loved their mother, so to call someone a mother was a deep and powerful complement. The other character hated their mother, the word had a hypocritical meaning to her.
So when the first character complemented the second with the deepest most heart felt honor they could muster, the second character left them without a word.
I think the key is that you have to read it when you are trying to collaborate with someone and you can't seem to communicate. In that moment, the guidance is a serious level up. If read outside of that context you'll say "well, yeah, sure, duh." In situ, it will help you better communicate (speaking and listening).
Among lot of books i've read this was the one that pushed me towards questioning my beliefs. Although i can't say this book made me irreligious it certainly was a gateway to a whole new world.
* Calvin and Hobbes.
this is one of those things that completely changed my perspective on creativity, oh and not to mention all the things about life and philosophy in there, its in good spirit.
* Animal Farm
This is arguably the best piece of satire I've read that is also fun and easy on the brain. It flows like water.
* The Little Schemer.
I hold this book dear. I've tried reading SICP twice and given up. And thought LISP was not for me. The environment was horrible, all those parens it was just confusing. This book changed that, what it encouraged me to do is grab a pen and paper and try to work everything out myself[1]. It was such a fun read and i owe most of my understanding of functional programming to this book. Few days after finishing this book, i introduced this book to my friend and we spent all our days discussing life listening to sufjan stevens and working through this book, it was a sweet time.
====
[1] I wrote my actual scheme programs on computer long after i had worked through the book(i don't recall exactly but it was after 5th or 6th chapter). An online friend of mine recommended that i try DrRacket as i could execute scheme there. It was a much friendlier environment.
Published April 1987 by MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262200608.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cellular-automata-machines
http://books.google.com/books?id=HBlJzrBKUTEC&printsec=front...
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/44522568_Cellular_au...
https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...
His non-fiction books are easy to read and full of lots of wonderful turns-of-phrase. A lot of what he wrote back in the day sounds like it could be written today. There is a fair amount of his books that was very of-the-moment, making references to people from the time that I suppose were well known then that you need to read around.
I've only read two of his fiction books (Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man who was Thursday), both of which are really funny.
Update more info:
I'm a really fun at party guy and used to read adventurous fictions (text and audio), lots of entertaining, individual-help, business-help kind of books, they are all just opinions, not even statistical useful because you manually collect just one data point per book. Use science based knowledge and can get stuff done and be able to make money, that will make much more impact to life and family!
'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' by Mark Manson
The book is full of examples and while reading, you go "hey, that's a bit like my friend X", or "hey, that sounds like my Uncle Y". And then, when Mark describes certain personality traits, you think, "hole smoke, that's ME!"
I've been a follower of Eastern Philosophy for 20+ years and have also read most major religious and philosophical works, but during my reading of this book I experienced Satori, Englightenment, Awakening, Nirvana, 'Receiving The Gospel', whatever you want to call it.
Oddly enough, it happened to a friend after their reading it, too.
I haven't been the same, in the best way possible, ever since.
Anthony was well-read and traveled and his background as an Indian, Jesuit Priest and practicing psychologist put him at the perfect intersection of experience to deliver such a life-changing work that encompasses religion, science, relationships, your psyche, career, money, philosophy, spirituality, etc.
It's telling and (to me) validating of his mastery of life that, after his death, he was excommunicated from the church due to his 'blasphemous' works.
The ebook and audiobook are available for free here: https://archive.org/details/Awareness-AnthonyDeMello
Ecology? Check.
Emotional intelligence? Check.
Logical intelligence? Check.
Leadership? Check.
Power? Check.
Family? Check.
Love? Check.
Politics? Check.
Badass desert world and technology? Check.
> ... there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Gilgamesh--Stephen Mitchell's translation
Dear Author, you need to quit by Becca Syme-- a book for fiction writers, it opened my eyes to the fact that I dont need to follow the advice of "experts", thats its okay to write what I love and keep my writing a fun hobby. I only recently read this, and it allowed me to restart writing after a 2-3 year gap.
I had an extremely abusive childhood environment and mostly blocked it out through my adult years but had many obvious self-descructive, anti-social, self-sabotaging and socially untenable behaviour patterns that I couldn't understand or shake.
That book gave me the understanding of my own development and, furthermore, an idea of the tools that I could use to finally stand tall as a member of the human race.
Once I read that book, I could never look at a door the same way. Just this morning, I encountered a "Norman Door."
[0] https://jnd.org/the-design-of-everyday-things-revised-and-ex...
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
And
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
"Computer Lib/Dream Machines" Theodor Nelson - a vision of a better computing future that sticks with me.
"Courtship Rite", "The Moon Goddess and the Son", "Psychohistorical Crisis" Donald Kingsbury - sociologicaly based SF that forced me to think way outside of my cultural assumptions. TMGATS is particularly relevant given the events in Ukraine.
The most pivotal that springs to mind is The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, read as an early teen. I think this is what fully opened my eyes to the world of nerdishness out of which I have built a career and which has shaped my interests.
Tuchman often points out the critical mistake or mistakes that lead to the collapse of a crucial offensive that basically ends a country’s ability to succeed at war.
And an NPR podcast, "Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?", which explains why human are religious.
Those two changed my religious belief, so I can say that they changed my life.
It’s difficult for me to put in words the influence the book had and continues to have on me.
QED by Richard Feynman is a close second. It pulled a veil off from my eyes, made me really understand what science is all about.
Austin, who at the time he wrote this was an executive with Ford Motors Europe, was working on his Ph.D. in Organizational Research at (I dimly recall) Carnegie Mellon. He writes about "measurement dysfunction", when human resources etc. policies drive organizations sideways, based on his application of Agency Theory (an offshoot of Game Theory) to incentive programs. This book is based on his dissertation. Very short. Extremely readable. Completely changed my worldview.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucial_Conversations%3A_Tools...
I read this as part of course but it really stuck with me.
Mrityunjay is a story of a great warrior who by sheer chance of luck ends up being a lower-caste charioteer.
The book showed me that life is not black and white, talent is not all that’s needed to succeed and how luck and pragmatism plays a huge part in your life. It also helped me understand what Krishna stands for and what Dharma is. Fascinating theme that is still relevant today.
1. The power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Helped me stay present. Helped me overcome past regrets and future stresses
2. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns
Helped me understand how my thought process was impacting my mood and fueling anxiety
3. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
Saved my failing relationship
4. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Helped me overcome some of my compulsive behaviors
- Bio of a Space Tyrant series by Piers Anthony. I'm not sure I can put into words how it has impacted me, though, but it has. I guess it's more of a visceral reaction? I can't honestly say I can relate to the protagonist, since I've never been in his shoes (and I hope to never be; having every one in your family---save for one of your sisters---murdered, raped, or raped-then-murdered by pirates isn't exactly something to ascribe to). I love how Hope (the protagonist) can empathize with pretty much anyone, though---at least eventually; and I guess I relate to how deeply he feels things.
- Pretty much everything by Heinlein. It has once again become fashionable (I think it goes on in cycles) to shit on Heinlein's works, and I get where naysayers are coming from. Heinlein himself always maintained he wrote primarily to entertain, even though he can get kind of preachy at times.
The very first Heinlein I got my hands on was The Number of the Beast--, while I was a teenager. Flying cars, non-benevolent Other Beings, multiverses possibly made manifest through the sheer act of imagining it... For a kid who dreamt of one day becoming a nuclear physicist after having watched ST:TOS (Scotty is mah boy), that book was revelatory. Every Heinlein I've read after that has just gone on and contributed to who I am as person today: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land (both editions), To Sail Beyond the Sunset, et al.
It's almost literally impossible for me to overstate how much Heinlein's works has shaped who I am as a person, regardless of whatever flaws others might ascribe to his work.
And not a book, but a documentary – The War by Ken Burns.
Pretty much the sole reason I've been told over and over again for the past decade that ours was "the best sex [they've] ever had".
If you have sex with women, you need to read it.
Cosmos was such a departure from anything else I read for school or for pleasure. It transformed my love of reading into a love of learning.
On the Road gave me wanderlust and made me want to move beyond my bubble and see the world.
Not perfect today by any means but far, far better. And no, I'm not a "practicing" zen buddhist or anything close - the book just sort of reset my mind and outlook on life and dealings with others.
It's not overly spiritual, but there's a relaxing, reassuring, thoughtful, and un-judging sense of peace that permeates this books. Brought me out of a really dark place when I was looking for reasons to keep existing.
Found it in an airbnb I rented during a lockdown and made me buy a kindle and restart reading books.
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
The Economic History of the Jewish People
more devastating than inspirational.
at least, at first.
I picked it up as I was becoming interested in Buddhism and felt it would give me insight into from a “western convert” perspective (it did).
But it also opened my mind to environmentalism—not that I had been closed to it as such, just less interested.
More unexpectedly, it opened my mind to unconventional romantic relationships. I remain, in principle if not actively in practice, polyamorous to this day. Even since, I’ve realized that I’m demisexual (which is on the asexuality spectrum), and the same part of the book which helped me embrace poly also helped me embrace demi and reconcile the two.
Imagines Galileo Galilei dealing with the fact that he recanted his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun.
A wonderful meditation on truth and love.
https://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Defence-Octavian-Paler/dp/97...
It wasn't the book itself that changed my life, it was the exposure to all of the underlying ideas & philosophies that then significantly changed my life. I know many people can't stand the guy, but his book was really powerful for me at one point in my life. I got my shit together and started to understand the origins of many of the messages he promotes.
I like to think that there's a paradox of book reading in general in that you never remember what you read, but you change because of it.
I've nothing practical to say that the book taught me but the consequences in real life of what dostoevsky has taught me are innumerable and at the same time too subtle to talk about them. I learnt the meaning of love (a romantic and deep one) but also the meaning of hate, self destruction. What nihilism is and what are its consequences. Human spirit is complex and I feel that today's society tend to simplify it in a very rough way.
Time and time again I made up my mind to focus, but it wasn't until I read this book that I actually did it.
Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty) -- groundbreaking analysis of "the thickness of things" implicit within perception
Labyrinths (Borges) -- masterful explorations of time, thought, infinity... certain passages of this collection surface in my mind on a weekly basis
Civilization and Capitalism (Braudel) -- telescopes seamlessly from the microscale to the macroscale, granting a synoptic view of the modern world
This book helped me handle introductions, small talk, and getting to know people better at a deeper level with so much less anxiety than I ever had before.
The biggest lesson I learned was to try and give the “spotlight” of who’s talking and what the subject is back to others frequently. It’s a simple concept, but the book is helpful in clarifying why it’s important and how to do it.
I’ve never even been an “executive” but have found that nuggets from this book have helped me navigate the working world for 25 years.
Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman. It inspired me to be curious for the sake of curiosity, and not just in my field. It made me a little more adventurous. What gripped me wasn’t the science, it was the ants and the bongos.
Grapes of wrath. It’s poverty explained to those who never experienced it. This book just sticks with me. I can see why they make students read it. It’s also a damn good book.
No more Mr Nice Guy. Plot twist: you’re not nice, you’re insincere and manipulative. Don’t shame people into giving back. If you want your needs met, ask for things. Be nice when you mean it, not as a tool to earn approval.
Wages of Destruction. This book doesn’t explain what happened from 1933 to 1945, but why. It added contextual clarity to a topic I’ve been reading about for years. It changed how I perceive other historical events too. It’s not a casual read though.
The first half of the first book is about the political causes of hunger in the world and advocates for vegetarianism as an antidote to such. The intro to the followup book states that protein complementarity is easier than she made it out to be and she regretted making it sound harder than it is.
It's one of the reasons I eat a semi vegetarian diet. Changing my diet has had a big impact on my health and feeling like how I live makes a difference helps protect me from the sense of doom about climate change and what not that many people seem to have.
It also made me feel like there is no need for this to be such a polarizing us-vs-them topic. She talks about how "eating one less (grain fed) hamburger " makes a difference , so we can change the world with relatively small changes to our own behavior. It doesn't require extremist positions.
Gave me a new perspective.
It made me want to become a biologist, and a computer programmer, and it confirmed childhood suspicions about religious belief.
While technically many people will consider this as a child's book, the lessons and teachings on this book will be timeless and be relevant in whatever stage you are in your life. This has profoundly impacted my life in more ways than I can imagine and I am going to pass this book to my kids as they up.
This book probably launched my career in programming. When the book wore out, I carefully cut off the spine, hole punched it, and moved it into a 3-ring binder. I still have it.
It’s a complete reference to the language I cut my teeth on as a teenager. The appendix was particularly useful.
https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-...
Anyway, my top candidate. Surely has been mentioned already:
- Peter Thiel, Zero to One. Has been worth literally millions to me. I wish I had read it sooner. Then again, “The student is ready, the teacher appears”. When you read something might be just as important as what you read.
Thanks for the thread.
[0] https://www.worldcat.org/title/parable-of-the-sower/oclc/125...
It’s surprisingly insightful/original/authentic.
But in the interest of variety in this thread, I’ll throw out Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It inspired me to go deeper in my beloved cooking practice towards growing food and hunting, and through all that I’ve found much gratitude for and understanding of life and what humanity has gone through to get us to this point.
Over a decade later and I’m still working towards a simpler and more fulfilling lifestyle.
The Upanishads - Eknath Easwaran translation
Season in Hell - Arthur Rimbaud
Modern Man in Search of a Soul - Carl Jung
Abandoned Fragments - Franz Kafka
Philosophical Grammar - Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Gay Science - Friedrich Nietzsche
Hapworth 16, 1924 - JD Salinger
The Dream Machine - M. Mitchell Waldrop
It's an amazing non programming related book that teaches a working concept of swarm intelligence and their communication algorithms and behaviours. In the networked computers world this has so many potential applications, especially when you have to think outside the box to be able to scale and analyze network traffic patterns.
It's written in the same concise format as The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and it's just as dense with insights. I would encourage anyone to spend just 5 min reading the first few pages of Book Two here: https://aimeeknight.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/the-war-of-a...
- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
- Crime and Punishment
- The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
- The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
- Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
- Franny and Zooey
- Master of the Senate
- Atlas Shrugged
- Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
- Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
- The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
- Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
- Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
- Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
- Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
- Ethics in the Real World: 86 Brief Essays on Things that Matter
- A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
- Humankind: A Hopeful History
- The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think
If you're gonna ask what's my current religion well I've been asking myself that ever since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb
If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter (@maxharris9).
- A Conferedancy of Dunces, Peter O'Toole: tragic, hilarious and absurd
- Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb: this was my first exposure to a lot of biases and other interesting phenomena
- The Design of Everything Things: eye-opener!
Harry Potter, Tolkien, Dune and a lot of other sci-fi has also affected me, although I find it hard to point out one in particular. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein stands out a bit.
Never Split the Difference - Chriss Voss
Three Laws of Performance - Steve Zaffron
Peak - Anders Ericsson
All of these books fall into the category of rounding out my world view. I’m an engineer, and spent nearly 100% of 10-12 years of my life (school plus early career) focused solely on engineering topics. These books have made me drastically more effective at achieving personal and professional goals, especially ones that require cooperation of other people.
* A confession and other religious stories by Leo Tolstoy * Happiness by Matthieu Ricard (a counter argument against French philosophers who believe happiness doesn't exist) * The Diary of Anne Frank * A Life Interrupted by Etty Hillesum (the most beautiful book I will ever read)
As someone who got caught up in a lot of "spiritual materialism" in dharma practice, over-fixation on techniques and theory, this book reached me in a way that nothing else did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can_Heal_Your_Life
"by 2008, over 35 million copies worldwide had been sold in over 30 languages, becoming the best-selling non-fiction book of all time"
You can listen to some quotes from the book here: https://web.archive.org/web/2oe_/http://wayback-fakeurl.arch...
Atomic Habits by James Clear: Read a lot about habits before but this really kickstarted my focus on living healthy and staying consistent.
This book explained me concepts of - material - time - and quality
in chess and business life.
"The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size" by Tor Norretranders
from Victor Frankl, Auschwitz survivor and founder of Logotherapy.
Helped me reduce bad habits, get useful things done, and have more fun.
Opening the Heart of Compassion
Both very high in the calling me out on my bullshit metric
There is no innate talent - it takes practice and repetition to build those capabilities
Scary
Toffler, Future Shock - the danger to societal cohesion and human wellness caused by constant, rapid, paradigm-breaking change.
Kaczynski, Industrial Society and its Future - like the two above, but more modern, frighteningly prescient, and with some unfortunate baggage attached. Still, it's short, and worth a read.
While not originally books, solar.lowtechmagazine.com now offers POD versions of their essays. They routinely introduce dead-end technologies to the reader that are often simpler and easier for a person to create and maintain at home, and which often confer a greater degree of independence than their mass-market analogues.
I don't necessarily recommend wading through countless pages of psuedomythical waffling, but Crowley's Thelemic concept of True Will - that is, the real goal you want to achieve, rather than whatever pure hedonism happens to have caught your brain-corvid's attention at the moment - is a useful framework for prioritizing. Does it further the goal directly, or indirectly, or does it hinder the goal? In this way, you can avoid wasting time and effort.
I found good stuff in Heidegger, but I don't think it's worth your time to grind through it. Just look up the Cliff's Notes for 'Sein und Zeit.'
So what did I get out of all that?
-I started to question what it was I really wanted to get out of life.
-I decided I wanted more independence and liberty.
-I decided I didn't like the direction tech was going, and wanted out.
-I stopped being quite as materialistic. I'm still extremely materialistic, but I'm working on it.
-I refocused my effort on amassing something like "F-U money" (for about ten years).
-I spent a lot of time flailing for what to do next, but eventually became obsessed with small-scale, high-intensity regenerative agriculture, and decided that was it.
-I spent a bunch of the saved money to buy myself a farm in Ireland, and will eventually pivot to full-time farming and part-time anti-materialism-- and away from tech. (At the moment, I'm still milking my Swiss job to fund startup costs and avoid the need to bootstrap or raid my nest egg, but the pivot day is in sight.)
-I have something to look forward to that isn't just constant obsolecence of skills and an ever-accelerating race to the bottom.
It isn't just medieval fantasy, there is a lot to take from his views on politics, human interaction and freedom.
Very good at putting into words my introspection efforts and try to devise action plans for both personal and professional growth.
"Play" with the purpose of continuing play rather than ending by winning.
The Design of Everyday Things – by Don Norman
See the details of the ways we interact with the world around.
Initially this came across as shallow truths masquerading as profundity, especially with his unwillingness/inability to explain himself during discussions. Finally I read enough that some things just 'clicked' into place and my perspectives shifted along with my outlook on life.
- Letters from the Desert by Carlo Carretto (first half).
I was brought up a protestant so was never really exposed to catholic thought in my formative years. When I finally started exploring the classics for myself I found them often overly wordy and mystical, so I moved on to more modern (relatively speaking) works like this and the Way of the Pilgrim too. The simplicity of the writing and the clarity of the thoughts in the first few chapters of Letters from the Desert hit me hard.
- The Quran
A wonderfully phrased book that captures its times very well. Ideally to be read alongside something like Islam: A Short History or Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, both by Karen Armstrong, to provide the context.
As an aside the Qu'ran is available for free online in audio format both as interlinear English/Arabic but also as Arabic only, and as a non-speaker of Arabic I often find listening to it being chanted a very calming and uplifting experience despite having no clue what is being said.
- Getting Real by 37 Signals.
As a programmer/developer/engineer since the late 1980s this was a revelation, bringing a clarity to my own thoughts and feelings about much of the world of enterprise software development. Very obvious points in retrospect that nobody ever (including me) seemed to have realised during my entire career before then.
- Web Copy that Sells by Maria Veloso.
A strange choice, given that there is nothing 'profound' in here. What it is, though, is a very well written book on persuasion which finally got me to see that I'd spent years avoiding 'sales' as something that wasn't for me whereas in reality it's for everyone and we do it all the time.
- The Body by Charles Colson.
Colson was jailed for his part in the Nixon stuff, then became a Christian. It's an incredibly moving book which is not his autobiography but an analysis of what is going wrong with the church. The impact comes from the stories he relates at the start of the chapters (especially the opening ones about 9/11). Those tales gave me an understanding of the potential 'greatness' in people.
Murder in the Cathedral - T. S. Eliot
Our Town - Thornton Wilder
All Quiet really shows the suffering of war.
Mind-bending explanations of modern physics and how our Newtonian intuition is far from reality.
I looked up my name, as one is wont to do as a child, and saw next to “Don,” an entry which read “Don Quixote, see Quixote, Don.” Wow! There was something with my name in it and it had a Q and an X! I, of course, turned to the Qs, read the entry, not only for “Quixote, Don” but also for “quixotic” and “quixotism” and thought, “I like the idea of being quixotic.”
I then, read the bowdlerized children's version of Don Quixote that they had in the children's section and returned to the book many times over the years that followed.
One day in high school, a friend who had graduated came by to visit the band teacher and had a book in his hand that he was reading, Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene. He described it as “Don Quixote is a Catholic priest and Sancho Panza is the communist ex-mayor of El Toboso.” I went to the library the next day and checked out their copy of the book and loved it. I proceeded to read every book that the library had by Graham Greene and became imbued with his world view (it probably helped that I was inclined in that direction already) and it gradually led to my becoming Catholic 7 years later. My love of Greene also influenced me in becoming a writer (something to which I was already inclined) and he and J. D. Salinger are the two most obvious influences in my writing to this day.
Meditations - Aurelius
Simply existing can be exhilarating.
It got me into reading about history and taught me to be more critical of media.
I read it in my mid 20s and it helped me stop worrying.
2. The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Written by someone who might an atheist, but it also demonstrates both theoretically and empirically how humble we and our planet are. He uses genius analogies to simplify complex concepts. Reading the book is very mind-expanding.
The power of your subconscious mind.
1. "Sei Somoy" (Those Times) by Sunil Ganguly. It is a novel about the past of Bengalis. The Bengali Reneissance, its central characters, progress, the conflict- all are beautifully depicted. I had no collective identity as a person before. And disliked whatever I had. This book made me feel really good about my identity. Suddenly, I was more confident in a conscious way, and did things better.
2. "Maitreya Jatak" by Bani Basu. Buddha is a human character in this novel. And so is the time and place of India. The pre-big-Empire India is beautifully depicted. I got deeply interested in Buddha and that opened a new path of life for me, which transformed my life.
3. "Godel, Escher, Bach"- learned deeply about logic and its limitations. How human constructs such as mathematical symbols and human languages- all are so limited. Completely changed me as a person and gave me a new outlook.
There are other books that did not change my life completely, but added layers to my perception and thinking.
1. "The Black Swan" by N. Nicholas Taleb. It has added a filter to my entire thought process. I call it the Nicholas filter.
2. "Innovators" by Walter Isaacson. Learned about computer history, collaboration. The idea of " collaboration through time" got really etched into me.
3. "The Little Schemer", 4e and Graham Hutton's Haskell book made me a better programmer in ways I did not expect.
4. Strangly, Neal Stephenson's " Cryptonomicon" has taught me to never waste my time on entertainment or learning that is not fully ideal. The idea that something so profoundly good can exist for people like us, convinced me to read only very high quality literature of all kinds and sci-fi of only the highest kind. Also made me give up watching TV/web series to a large degree. I don’t compromise with the quality of entertainment that I consume anymore. I consume only the best and most desired things.
5. "Mastery" by Leonard Gordon has, above all, taught me that a boring life should be desired where the brain's desire for novelty is not awarded, and instead, time is spent on honing much fewer number of skills.
6. "Deep Work" by Cal Newport has really helped me with my productivity and happiness, and made me give up social media. Same goes for "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning" by Andy Hunt.
7. "Atomic Habits" by James Clear has been effective in many ways of my life.
8. "Mindfulness in Plain English", "The Mind Illuminated", and " What the Buddha Taught" have made me a better human- in all aspects. As if my character's level has been upped in the video game of the world.
9. "Fundamentals of Physics" by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker and my whole familiarity with Feynman through Feynman Lactures and recorded lectures made me intolerant towards dry learning materials. Now, I use learning material that are not marely useful, but also overly entertaining.
It show me there is another world if you go outside socialism and that socialism has a lot of bad consequence that are never talked about