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Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

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Re: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

#141

Post by Izkata »

tetris11 wrote: post #98
edanm wrote: post #51

Depends on the age, but for age 9-14ish, one series is hands down the most influential thing I've ever read: The Animorphs series. It's both incredibly good entertainment, but also really digs into morality in a way that has shaped how I think of things even so many years later. Second to that is the "My Teacher is an Alien" series. They're fun books, pretty light, but the last book of the series, likewise, instilled…

K.A Applegate's letter to distressed fans after the series ended is worth a read > Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents. > If you're mad at me…

Semi-relevant: For anyone wondering about that domain name, "hirac delest" roughly translates as "final words". In-universe it's when a dying Andalite records their last thoughts and sends it back to their homeworld.

Re: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

#142

Post by xhkkffbf »

NathanielBaking wrote: post #91
mindcrime wrote: post #4

A few come to mind, over the course of my childhood up to and including high-school. The "Mad Scientist's Club" series The Great Brain Those "Encyclopedia Brown" stories The "The Three Investigators" series The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne The original Doyle "Sherlock Holmes" canon The Soul Of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien Nineteen Eighty Four

+1 for Mad Scientist Club

I've got to agree. All four of them. Or at least the first three.

That is: _The Mad Scientist Club_ _More Adventures of the Mad Scientist Club_ _The Big Kerplop_ _Big Chunk of Ice_

Re: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

#143

Post by em-bee »

the books that i remember reading are about a guy traveling the americas on horseback, some about traveling parts of the world on a bike. horatio hornblower, all books by karl may and several by rudyard kipling.

i don't know how much of an influence the books had. i started traveling around europe when i was a teenager. was it because of the books or did i read the books because i was already interested in exploring the world?

i know i started reading kipling because of the djunglebook and kim, which both have a significance in scouting.

what surprises me the most is that i didn't read any science fiction until much later, but now i am exclusively focused on that genre. this is worth noting because i wonder what would have happened if my dad had had any scifi books at home or if i had been exposed to them in some other way.

i believe the first scifi book was "brave new world", which was a book assignment in my exchange year in the US, but i didn't really pick up on the scifi aspect of that book either. it is significant because it is the second book i read in english but the first one that i enjoyed reading. the first book, which i hated, was "for whom the bell tolls", which i had picked because my teacher recommended hemmingway as an american author. it was a horrible book that took me almost a year to get through, and i always thought it was because english was my second language. but then i just flew through "brave new world" and realized that my english was not the problem, but hemmingway was. i wish my teacher had recommended someone like mark twain instead.

Re: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

#146

Post by tptacek »

As actual books, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which a BBS friend of mine gave me when he squatted for a few days in my parent's garage, and Eduardo Galleano's Memory of Fire trilogy, a narrative literary history of Latin America, which the Jesuits made me read. I'd still recommend both today. On the other hand, there's the BBS tfile "Anarchist's Cookbook" (there are dozens of different compilations) probably had a more profound influence on my career than anything else I've ever read, and is what shifted me out of computer games and into the work I do now, when I was in sophomore year of high school. I'm lucky I didn't blow a finger off, though.

Re: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

#147

Post by edrx »

hellojebus wrote: post #121

1. Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig 2. In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky I was a teen really into philosophy so maybe not applicable.

"Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is in my list!

I only read "In Search of the Miraculous" when I was 22 or 23, though...

Re: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

#148

Post by edrx »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #60
muddi900 wrote: post #58

Doestoyevsky's Crime and Punishment I read it 20 years ago once, and I still think about it everyday.

For other heavy reading: Ecclesiastes (Qohelet) As I became a teen my reading became varied thankfully and I came across this book at a time when nothing felt important. When all feels lost and nothing matters, Ecclesiastes is great for giving a view into what’s it’s like to grapple with the questions of happiness, life and humanity in a way that doesn’t end in your own depression and suicide. The author finds his re…

The translation by Augusto de Campos? That one is amazing!!!

Re: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

#149

Post by edrx »

"Cronopios and Famas", by Julio Cortázar - I read it for the first time when I was about 13 and for many years I reread at least once per year;

"Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (Robert M. Pirsig)

"The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea" (Yukio Mishima)

"The Yage Letters" (William Burroughs)

"The Old Ways" (Gary Snyder)

"Life and Death (Elementary Go Series #4)", by James Davies. Really - I studied that one very seriously.

Note: I answered just the "What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?" part, and I ignored that you are building a library for your children and asking for recommendations...

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