HACKER Q&A
📣 abhayhegde

What do you read to quench your thirst for meaning or curiosity?


I have been reading a lot of Paul Graham's essays. They make me think. I learn and adopt to the wise ideas he lays out in a lot of influential articles. They almost always elicit a sense of wonder.

I also came across Paul Buchheit's piece called 'The Technology' (http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.html). It was a fascinating read too and when I finished reading it, I left with a sense of having learnt something meaningful.

I am curious to know if that resonates with HN crowd too. What else do you all read that imprints a deep sense of purpose, meaning or value. I really do not mean 'self-help' category.


  👤 MilnerRoute Accepted Answer ✓
History.

The grandson of John Quincy Adams wrote a four-volume history of Thomas Jefferson's administration. I find there's something breath-taking about far-reaching decisions being made by a young nation with only early 19th-century technology.

You might also enjoy the sardonic memoir he wrote just before he died in 1918: "The Education of Henry Adams."


👤 beauHD
Esoteric texts. Rare books. Knowledge which isn't mainstream. This way I have an unfair advantage over the general population.

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them"

Mark Twain


👤 graycat
Birds of a feather!

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