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Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#131

Post by Poems »

elorant wrote: post #80
drclau wrote: post #78

Kurt Vonnegut's works: The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, Player Piano, Jailbird, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater... Find the time to read Vonnegut.

I read Galapagos and it was freaking awful. One of the worst books I've ever read.

I am a huge Vonnegut fan and just read Galápagos last month. It wasn’t one of his best, but I still really enjoyed it.

Part of my enjoyment of Vonnegut comes from his writing style. I just love how he writes, no matter the story.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#137

Post by Fnoord »

vector_spaces wrote: post #44

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. This book changed my life. I read this book when I was maybe 17? And read it again last year, a decade and a half later. The most powerful lesson I learned here is what anthropologists call cultural relativism. This book also taught me that everyone is under the influence of Mother Culture and her stories. I think internalizing this can help a lot with understanding other people, building sel…

> The most powerful lesson I learned here is what anthropologists call cultural relativism. This book also taught me that everyone is under the influence of Mother Culture and her stories. I think internalizing this can help a lot with understanding other people, building self awareness, understanding politics in general, and also history in general.

Apart from that this appears to be the purpose of history, Sapiens contributed to that for me. However, it is clearly non-fiction.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#138

Post by heavyset_go »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #133

Some Heinlein book mentioned a minor medical procedure that helped me resolve a very painful minor medical issue when medical staff sort of shrugged and moved on. I'm sure there's lots more, but that's particularly memorable.

If you don't mind sharing, what was the procedure?

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#139

Post by adamredwoods »

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2500/2500-h/2500-h.htm

This book resonated at a perfect time for me, opened my eyes to what peace in human mind could be, peace through acceptance, and above all the rejection of strict god-judging religions. This was important because instead of chasing "happiness" I began to work towards "contentness" which has lead to minor emotional improvements in my life.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#140

Post by caconym_ »

dahdum wrote: post #121
rsync wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don't put it on-par with Dune, but there are definitely concepts in the TBP trilogy that are simultaneously difficult and mind-opening. Some of them are quite haunting, actually. Most of the deeper exploration of these ideas takes place in the third book.

Dune was my favorite series until TBP. Dune degrades quickly after the first book while I thought each TBP was better than the last.

Dune holds up way better if you pretend it's just one book (the first one). It stands alone very well and IMO is completely worthy of its status in the classic sci-fi pantheon.

On the other hand, I finished TBP, but I disliked it enough that I didn't go back to the other two volumes. What makes them better than the first, in your opinion? (purely for my own curiosity re: whether I should go back and read them)

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