"East of Eden." Steinbeck draws beautiful vignettes of human life and emotion, and I think the book's main idea about human motivation is largely correct and explains a wide variety of behavior. It helped me see both myself and others with more clarity.
Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
151–160 of 599 posts
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#152Grendel by John Gardner - The epic of Beowulf from the perspective of the monster.
A Clockwork Orange - Dystopian novel following a twisted youth named Alex.
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#153Kallocain scared me shitless as a child. I'm sure it has influenced how I view technology.
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#154The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy + all parts. It's a common recommendation for exactly that - but I'm amazed by how much it's in the back of my head and gives me support. Especially in the current time. I can't point to an exact quote.. but I'm listening to all audio books(as background noise) by Douglass Adam's for the last weeks and it just feels like there is a part in the books for almost every weird situatio…
There are some pretty good challenges to one's perspective in there, but it gets monotonous after the second book. It was a chore to finish the third book; I don't know if I'll ever get around to reading the fourth book.
The fourth is actually the best, in my opinion. One of the most impactful statements I've ever read about being a scientist is delivered by Wonko the Sane.
I had no use for the foray into soft pornography mid-way through, but otherwise it was well worth the read.
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#155Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game
Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig: Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals
Eliezer Yudkowsky: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#156"The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann.
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#157Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath - really spoke to me about what 'poverty' means and how it affects people and perceptions of people.
Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea - a gorgeous tale that brings to life the beauty of struggle and suffering.
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#158Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig: Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals Eliezer Yudkowsky: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Pirsig has a way of writing that appeals to people of an engineering mind. Don't know much about the others.
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
So hitchhikers guide I can certainly agree with, but the rest of the series is pretty inconsistent. Restaurant was pretty terrible in my opinion, but then Life is almost as good as the original. I'd say the quality of the series is downhill from there. The follow up books didn't introduce many interesting situations or ideas that weren't already presented and so it just felt like it was dragging on.
I like So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, in part because of how sweet and optimistic it was. After finishing I then was shocked by how dark and depressing Mostly Harmless was.
One of the greater modern literary tragedies is the way Adam's said he wrote Mostly Harmless when he was in a very bad place mentally. He said he intended to write a followup to cap the series off in a lighter way but then died before he was able to.
Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
#160"East of Eden." Steinbeck draws beautiful vignettes of human life and emotion, and I think the book's main idea about human motivation is largely correct and explains a wide variety of behavior. It helped me see both myself and others with more clarity.
I consider Steinbeck's way of creating a multi-character narrative that so completely encompasses human nature in as many ways as he does one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had reading. I would compare the satirical cynicism of the multifaceted characters of Catch-22 (a recommendation) to the rich characters of EoE.