The Kite Runner
Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
31–40 of 50 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#32Emerson's Essays: First and Second Series
I read in it about a thousand things I'd experienced but I'd thought were impossible to describe. It was written to inspire people, and inspired me daily for many years—nay, eternally! It—and Emerson's other writings, e.g. Representative Men, Conduct of Life, Nature, Addresses and Lectures etc—gave all the drops of my blood eyes that look upwards.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#33Philip toshio sudo The art of zen guitar This is a book on how to learn anything and nothing really about guitar. It distills the zen approach to life in a very usable way. I made a major career shift to ML research using the lessons I learnt from this book The Gita It helped me develop depersonalised thinking and to some extent the ability to view people equanimously. I feel it has helped me accept and become a lot…
Can you please elaborate on the 'depersonalised thinking'?
Will look up the first book. Thanks.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#34Philip toshio sudo The art of zen guitar This is a book on how to learn anything and nothing really about guitar. It distills the zen approach to life in a very usable way. I made a major career shift to ML research using the lessons I learnt from this book The Gita It helped me develop depersonalised thinking and to some extent the ability to view people equanimously. I feel it has helped me accept and become a lot…
Want to hear more about your career shift.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#35I read Finite & Infinite Games by James P. Carse after coming across it in a comment on HN. It's one of those books that changes how you view interactions with others, and puts things into perspective. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is a close second. I read this when I was going through a particularly difficult time in life, and it has stuck with me since. David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity definit…
The first 2 are my first 2 too, although I read The Infinite Game - Simon Sinek instead.
Infinite Games taught me to control jealousy, Man's Search for Meaning gave me direction in me trying to find meaning in my life (still on that journey)
I am reading The Beginning of Infinity (slowly)
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#36Still working on it but I think 'Sometimes a Great Notion' by Ken Kesey will meet this criteria when I am finished with it.
I often envy people who get to read these great books for the first time - I promise you that you will not be disappointed. If you have not read Lonesome Dove I would recommend that in the near future. For some reason they remind me of one of another.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#37The Kite Runner
Its a shame he hasnt released any new books
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#38- The 4-hour work week- Tim Ferris
- How not to diet- Dr. Michael Greger
- The Iliad- Homer
- Norwegian Wood- Haruki Maurakami
- Kein - Jose Saramago
- Dark Matter and the dinosaurs- Lisa Randall
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#39Outwitting the devil by napoleon hill. Reading this book when I was 18-19 just made me realise so many things about how people just do what they have been doing and that people older are not necessarily worth listening too, and that I should be super conscious of what I am doing everyday so that I dont end up living life in auto pilot mode.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?
#40The Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. In my mid twenties, this book helped me pay off all my student loans and build an emergency fund with 4-6 months of runway. It changed the way I think about money. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. This built on top of Dave Ramsey’s by helping me create a system to build my wealth through investing and still continue to save towards future goals/emergencies.
Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover is my most life-changing book as well. My life is much more peaceful now. Often referenced in TTMM, is The Millionaire Next Door, which is also excellent. The common conception of millionaires completely wrong.
The findings in this book are a bit misleading because they don't account for base rates. Of course most millionaires live in suburbs and drive pickups. Most humans live in suburbs and pickups are the most common work vehicle in the US. Nassim Taleb did a good critique on this I believe.