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Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

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Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#101

Post by krschultz »

Work - The Hard Things about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. I'm not a startup founder, but I've been in a couple startups. It's really easy to say what the founders should have done (especially in hindsight). This book helped me understand the burden a bit more.

Not Work - River of Time by Jon Swain. It's about Vietnam & Cambodia, and really reminds me to put things in perspective. Change the location from those countries to Syria & Iraq, that's effectively whats going on today. It boggles my mind to think we're here debating container technology and js frameworks when people are dieing in droves around the world. It's cliche, but if you seriously think about it, it's hard to reconcile.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#102

Post by lordbusiness »

kethinov wrote: post #24

Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. The book hit me at a particularly receptive moment. I was on an airplane headed to a meeting that easily could have done remotely just as effectively without the excessive time and money cost. Ironically, I read the entire book on the plane. The book is great at illustrating what types of meetings need to be in person and what types don't, dispe…

I second this.

I've been a remote worker on and off for a long time, and have long sung the virtues (whilst objectively recognizing the drawbacks).

This book goes a long way to helping articulate my findings.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#104

Post by sumedh »

Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders. Its basically a collection of Buffett's annual reports from 1970 to 2012.

If you invest money directly in the stock market, you must read it. It will teach you investing, accounting, economics, human behavior in a simple words.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DUM1W3E/ref=kics_dp_shop...

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#105

Post by jplahn »

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

I've been negligent towards fiction lately, but I wanted to change that because it's always been my first love. So to do that, I started reading Flanagan's novel. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's the Man Booker Prize winner for 2014, which is more or less the British equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize.

I never thought I'd have any books that could crack into my top 3 or 5 for a while, but this one has done it.

The basis of the book is Australian POWs working on the Death Railway during WWII. The book isn't exclusively told in this setting, but much of the book stems from it.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#106

Post by bengali3 »

As a dev ultimately wanting to do bigger things:

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/...

As a human with a curiosity:

Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes by Charles Seife

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003441X

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#107

Post by agentultra »

Permutation City by Greg Egan takes the cake this year in fiction. Although a very close second would be the Hardcover Penguin Classic's edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley mainly for it's deftly abridged version and preface which gave a new dimension to the story for me.

Non-fiction would either be Mortality by the late Christopher Hitchens or "On Numbers and Games" by John H. Conway.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#108

Post by nt591 »

Evgeny wrote: post #72
Osmium wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine I read this, and have nothing bad to say about it per se. I think Stoicism in the classic sense is very under-appreciated these days, and it's good to have a book to serve as an introduction. But I personally found it to be very repetitive. The historical context part is worth reading in my opinion, but apart from that you'd be better off re…

you'd be better off reading something like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations instead, or some of the other classics. Incidentally, I'm trying to read Meditations now, but it's not an easy reading and it goes very slowly. Maybe I'll be able to put in on my 2015 list of influential books?

The first time I read Meditations I read the Gregory Hays translation. It's written with very colloquial language and makes for a great entrance to the book.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

#110

Post by ashark »

Osmium wrote: post #74
Evgeny wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'd be better off reading something like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations instead, or some of the other classics. Incidentally, I'm trying to read Meditations now, but it's not an easy reading and it goes very slowly. Maybe I'll be able to put in on my 2015 list of influential books?

I think the particular translation you have makes a big difference, as with a lot of these older texts. I found it very readable because the sections were so short and the language pretty clear, but I was reading the Martin Hammond translation. e.g. just compare the first few lines from the version on Project Gutenberg: "Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and p…

In the last year I replaced my copy of Meditations, which I didn't like very much, and surveyed most of the existing translations in the process, comparing them to each other and to the original Greek.

Maxwell Staniforth's was my favorite, being both faithful to the original and easy to read. Hammond plays too loosely with the material, IMO.

The only hardcover I know of:

http://www.foliosociety.com/book/MDS/meditations

A paperback:

http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Penguin-Great-Marcus-Aurel...

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