Which book has had the most meaningful contribution in your life?

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When I was seven years old, my mom got ensnared by a door-to-door World Book encyclopedia sales pitch.

That set, in turn, ensnared me. It was the closest thing in the 1970s to today's internet. I could look up almost any topic that came to mind. I could research any topic we were learning in grade school. When I was bored, I could flip through any volume and learn about whatever subject happened to present itself. I still remember the acetate sheets separating the human body into skeletal, muscular, nervous, and digestive layers. I remember the beautiful drawings of sea creatures. I even remember article typefaces.

Maybe I'd have figured this out anyway, but those encyclopedia gave me the lifelong habit of assuming that answers were out there, if you had the ability and desire to go find them. They also sparked a love of reading for fun.

The Bible; I know people usually assume it means I'm religious, but that's simply not the case. It's an interesting book in its own right, and it has had the most meaningful contribution to my life because it's one of the most influential books of all time. Reading it grants one better insight into art, cinema, literature, music, etc. etc. etc. Even creations that disagree with it have been influenced by it - obviously, since they disagree with it - so reading it allows you to understand why someone disliked the book. You also expand your vocabulary by reading it. And the stories in it are generally very interesting; it has its dry parts obviously. I believe it's the most bang for your buck, or I guess bang per number of pages.

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Previously I was very pro government intervention, but this book is great at explaining basic economic principles while ignoring mathematics.

It might be called a little biased by mostly ignoring "market failures" yet basic physics also mostly ignore friction.

Also regarding "meaningful": I had tried to get an understanding of how society works for some time and had even tried reading Capital by Marx but in the end I found most I wanted in Basic Economics.

Probably not as profound as others here but ‘Allen Carr’s easy way to stop smoking’ - I quit 15 years ago and because the pub was a massive trigger for me I spent the evenings learning how to program which led to my career, saved enough money to go travelling around Asia for six months and discovered cycling.

This one is really hard tbh. I don't think I could name one. There was a period where I worked in a warehouse and listened to audio books and college lectures and all those together allowed me to make connections I don't think I would have made otherwise.

A very meaningful book I read was "A Short History of Nearly Everything" just because it showed me how much to the world there was to discover. It made me very optimistic.

I haven't finished "The Brothers Karamazov" and I don't think I would call it a "meaningful contribution" to my life _but_ I do think so far it is one of the only books that has made me say "wow." Every sentence seems to be crafted to perfection and connect with you on a deeper level. I can't personally relate to it too well but I would say everyone should get to experience a bit of it.

Besides those, I read a few auto/biographies which where interesting, I could relate to and gave me motivation and discipline.

A couple of books here.

1. Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy.

This is a biography of Julius Ceasar. There’s a story in here about a teenage Ceasar, with no institutional authority and effectively a student at this point, raising a navy to go capture pirates who had previously kidnapped him. I spent many years thinking about influence without any authority after reading this story and it’s probably had a significant shift in how I see the world and my role in it.

2. The WEIRDest people in the world by Joseph Henrich

I grew up in India. This book helped me understand so much of the cultural differences between American culture and what I grew up with that it is easily one of the most valuable books for any immigrant or anyone from America who has to work across cultures.

3. Debt - The first 5,000 years by David Greber.

The single most valuable thing I took away from this book came pretty early in the book - Buying stocks in a company is effectively loaning money to the company. This book shifted my perspective significantly- I use to see the world as a network of power relationships. Now I see the world as a network of debt relationships. I can not recommend it enough.

_Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals_ and _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!_. I always thought myself as a deeply ambitious person who wanted to do something significant. The mindset did help me grow, but it came at the cost of my mental health. Doubting every second if you're making good use of time isn't a great way to live. Both of those books helped me appreciate having a decent carefree life, where doing things matter without expecting (i.e, following your creative spirit).

The works of Alan Watts (starting with The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are) helped me see outside of Western religions and philosophies. It led me to explore many other perspectives on this amazing planet and its people, and to more completely trusting my intuitions.

Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

It gave me a toolkit to survive getting sick and dealing with a life changing event.

Martin Gardner's Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions et al. I devoured them as a boy and made me want to be a mathematician, at which I failed. That failure turned into a 43 year career of puzzles with computers. Even now every day has a puzzle to be solved.

The Boy's Second Book of Radio and Electronics - by Alfred Morgan (1957).[1]

I had almost failed 4th grade, and it was strongly suggested (I don't know the details, but it happened quickly) that I should be set loose in the school library, and allowed to pick out any book and read it. This very book got me into electronics, and later when the personal computing revolution arrived, I was all set to join in.

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Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805.[2]

It was the love story wound into this quite fascinating look into the lives of young men in that time period, that inspired my decision to propose to my Wife.

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[1] https://worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/Technology/The-B...

[2] https://store.doverpublications.com/0486436667.html

In no particular order and off the top of my head;

The Sherlock Holmes canonical stories - The importance of logical reasoning and brain over brawn. Instrumental in teaching me to think.

Physics for Entertainment (and other books) by Ya. Perelman - Beauty and understanding of Science. Instrumental in giving me a lifelong interest in Science/Technology.

Structured Computer Organization by Andrew Tanenbaum - Instrumental in teaching me the layering of abstractions by which something complex can arise from more simpler and detailed components.

Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda and The Science of Yoga by Swami Sivananda - Instrumental in introducing me to Hindu philosophy.

Bruce lee's fighting method (3 vols) - Instrumental in introducing me to Martial Arts and physical culture.

The above books were the ones which sparked my interest in their respective domains decades ago (late 1980s/early 1990s in India) when books were hard to come by and money wasn't available either. When i look around today, books are so easily available and yet people have stopped reading and even seem to lack curiosity.

Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. It made me realize that I don't need much to be happy and live and that it's really possible that I can have complete financial control over my life at an early age.

America made no sense to me until I read Faulkners "Light In August". Its almost 100 years old but those themes persist.

Otherwise I would really recommend Moby Dick. Its a rollicking adventure, a wonderful technical description of bygone whaling and ultimately a starting point for introspection on some questions you may be asking yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_in_August#:~:text=Light%....

I'm not even sure if I would like it if I were to reread it today, but reading Of Human Bondage when I was 21 led me to rethink a lot of my life and make some pretty impactful changes (e.g., got out of an unhealthy relationship, decided to pick up a practical skill (programming) on the side while in a PhD program in comparative literature).

I guess you never really know what's going to speak to you at a given point in your life, so read widely!

The Art of Unix Programming had an outsized impact on my career. It laid out Unix as a sensible, simple, professional, and enjoyable way to approach computing, and chasing the hacker dream advanced my career as long as I kept that passion alive. I wouldn't really get along with esr as a person these days, but TAOUP gave me the audacity to start making money with Linux, and I'm grateful for that.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. An excellent primer on technology, security, abuse of power, and a fun coming-of-age story. I think it does a decent job of introducing folks to open source and, cryptography.

For me it's a book I am reading now: Outlive, the science and art of longevity, by Peter Attia MD. The book is a summary of the many podcasts which I have been listening to for a couple of years now, a result of which I am happier, healthier (by arguably the right metrics), fitter, and better able to navigate life and the prospect of getting older. If you are over 40 I highly recommend it, and if you're over 50 it's a must read.

If I could sum up, I would say that so much of health and fitness is just trying to figure out the right thing to do - this book applies an appropriate level of skepticism to say what we know and what we don't on this subject, and teaches you how to assess for yourself what you need to do to improve your odds of a long healthy life. Finding it is like finally finding the a great text book on subject that you haven't been able to wrap your head around.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of essays:

"Self-Reliance and Nature The Complete First and Second Series of Emerson's Essays"

Most meaningful is a hard measure, as there are a bunch within that grouping...

I'll share one from when I was in my 30s, Killer Of Men by Christian Cameron; the entire series is fantastic and came around just at the right time I needed it. It is the story of an older man telling the story of his life and looking back through those eyes (I really like that perspective and it helped me see some things). The entire series takes place in Ancient Greece and the Greco-Persian wars.

BusyBusy by Tony Crabbe changed my views on what really matters in jobs and in life!

I think I was about 9 when I read the Hobbit. It absolutely blew my mind, and gave me a very different sense of what was cool to my peers.

Carl Sagan's "Dragons of Eden"

Gödel Escher Bach, read over and over from age 10-16 (early 90s)

The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, attributed to Aśvaghoṣa but probably composed much later in China.

Gentleman in Moscow.

Despite being fiction, it sets the standard for elegance and charm.

Suffering from recency bias though, as I read it recently.

The 4-Hour Workweek - motivated me to start my own business and now I have a lot of flexibility in my life.

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson, surprised to be the first to mention him in this thread, but in high school his ideas changed how I think about everything from mysticism to subjectivity to how I engage with ideas and being wrong.

Life of Pi was very memorable in my childhood. The imagery in that book captured my young imagination. I thought about that book a lot. I feel like it contributed something meaningful, in that it’s ok to not take life too seriously.

Three Pillars of Zen, read when I was 16, it felt like "This is it. This is how I see it."

Few books by Ken Wilber, gave me a framework, a meta-frame of sorts when I was young.

Introduction to NLP (esp. chapter V on Meta Model, took me two years to process it)

Structure of Magic, vol. II - communication, incongruity

Mind and Nature by Gregory Bateson

And I could go on and on... but the winner is...

"Embracing Our Selves" by Sidra & Hal Stone.

This book and perspective changed my life completely. It was like a grenade bursting inside my mind and I've seen many people reacting to it this way (incl. people closest to my heart). It's a perspective shift, an insight. You've been warned. :)

Integral Life Practice by Wilber, Patten, et al. I’ve gone on to read more of Wilber, but this was the one that made Wilber’s approach finally click for me. AQAL provided a framework for understanding how various practices, disciplines, and interests I have can be mutually supportive. Career, family life, physical exercise, spiritual practice .. nothing need be left out. Similarly, the idea of the Three Faces of God/Spirit helped me see the same about the various spiritual traditions I’ve benefited from.

AMOS language reference book, when I was 12. It helped me to start my programming career, the best decision of my life.

Plato's Republic, which I came across in a public library when I was quite young.

Bertram Raphael’s book “Mind Inside Matter” in the 1970s, a precursor AI book that really fired my imagination. I didn’t start getting paid for AI related work until 1982, but that was the book that changed my professional life.

"Brother Karamazov", "Jean-Christophe" and "Athens and Jerusalem".

I come back to these books from time to time. All three give me some kind of inner peace or more mental strength.

"Waking Up" by Sam Harris. I tried meditation a few times before, but it was always boring and I didn't really think it was gonna be anything special. After reading this book, I started practicing daily, and it has changed my daily life and my outlook on life. Mindfulness training is for the mind, what exercise is for the body.

The rise and fall of the third reich. Nazi Germany history tends to be looked from a far and trivialized, with phrases like "oh he attacked russia in the winter, what a dumbass", "it was another totalitarian government that got out of hand".

This book gave me a proper example and details on how horrible things begin, continue and end.

"Outliers".

A good reminder that practical inteligence is way more important than the qualification you get in an intelligence test.

I am That - transcribed conversations with Nisargadatta Maharaj

It’s like speaking with … the absolute? beyond human. Cuts through time and space and brings me to it, instantly, always.

The way things work, I remember reading it as a kid, that is what kickstarted my drive to learn things from first principles.

For a few, this will be a book one actually wrote, rather than a single book one read. Writing is more powerful an experience than reading, or can be

As a white CIS male from a middle class family in Western Europe I've found it eye opening reading studies and articles based around global gender studies. For example the journal Gender, Place and Culture https://genderplaceandculture.wordpress.com/. It's an analytical window to a world that would otherwise pass me by and has helped me be more empathetic to the struggles that of those born in different situations.

Slaughterhouse 5.

It taught me a light hearted nihilism that I found useful to buoy up against the storms in my adolescent life.

To Have or to Be? by Erich Fromm

Helped me shape the way I look at relationships in my life.

Who Moved My Cheese?

LaVey

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

This is easy...Atlas Shrugged