"Maus" by Art Spiegelman
"The Way Things Work" by David Macaulay
"Winnie the Pooh" by A.A. Milne
Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
331–340 of 529 posts
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#332"The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green,
"P.S. I Love You" by Cecelia Ahern,
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee,
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#333The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is one I've given adults. For kids, every year a local group called Book Harvest does a thing with Barnes & Noble where if you go in a B&N store, you can donate a book straight to Book Harvest which gives books to disadvantaged kids. For them, I usually grab a few books like A Wrinkle in Time or some Choose Your Own Adventure books or something. I also semi-frequently buy (by accident) a…
I'm still looking for the discontinued Dutch version of Atlas Shrugged (also Ayn Rand for those who don't know) to give to people around me (many don't regularly read in English). It changed me, I think it can do wonders for insecure people that tend to efface themselves for "the good of the group" and that may be less happy than they could be because of it. Also it may very well provide people with unbalanced marriages the motivation to speak up and teach them that lesson that if someone loves you, you can make them happy by stating what you want and doing it (together). I often tell people to read it, hardly anybodies does.
I find the ideas in the Fountainhead equally powerful. Find something that you love, do it the way you love to do it, stay true to yourself. I don't understand how Ayn Rand always seems to trigger down votes here.
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make an effort to pirate Ender's Game versus spending money on it; the author is a notorious bigot who uses his money to destroy equal human rights.
It's baffling that the same man who wrote the stories I loved can stand up and with a straight face tell everyone that gays aren't like us, and that gay marriage is destroying civilization. He literally said that, at a reading I attended. After telling us about the power of stories and humanity, he veered into that as a total non-sequitur.
> gay marriage is destroying civilization.
That's silly of him. Even if you're a fan of family-values theory, he's got cause-and-effect backwards here. Widespread acceptance of gay marriage is simply the ultimate realization in these times of the sexual revolution that firmly took hold in the nation in the 1960s; if something is "destroying civilization", it's that larger cultural shift.
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#335The 48 Laws of Power
Also: If you find the rules contradict themselves, that's ok. You must play it by ear and know when to apply each rule.
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#336I don't have any friends who haven't read it who would appreciate it, but Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg is both a highly entertaining thriller, a fascinating look at how computer security was, and is, viewed, and a highly personal story about a man trying to figure it all out. It's very funny, entirely true, and taught me a lot. Oddly, a lot of people hated the various more personal aspects of the book, as you se…
That's a really good book, indeed. Cliff in the book is much less annoying than Cliff in real life, though. I didn't expect him to be such a conservative anti-technology person. A good example is this[1] newspaper article of his. At times, he just seems like a typical attention-seeking contrarian.
[1] http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva...
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#337I gave my own book, "Zero Bugs and Program Faster."
I gave Randall Jarrell's version of Faust it is an excellent book.
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Exploitation of the public's fear, >promises to make the country great again, So any politician running for an election? > rejection by their own party once they figured out that they might come to power. You mean, the basic reason the democrats invented the super delegate to begin with? Not sure how old you are, but when Bush 2 was in power the same comments were made. I guess Bush didn't turn into Hitler so now it…
> Not sure how old you are, but when Bush 2 was in power the same comments were made. I'm sure there are some who complained of that, but nobody I know did. There is a categorical difference between merely having a different policy agenda (most Republicans) and outright rejecting basic Constitutional principles (ex. religious equality, free press, no torture). I didn't vote for Romney in 2012, but I certainly didn't…
I'm sure there are some who complained of that, but nobody I know did.
Look up "Bush Hitler" and you'll see plenty of images. It's the American national past-time to compare our president to either Hitler or the Antichrist, depending on your persuasion.
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#339Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?
#340"Ishmael, An Adventure of Mind and Spirit" by Daniel Quinn. The book that created and destroyed the Turner Tomorrow Foundation Fellowship Award. It will make you examine some of the most profound myths at the center of our civilization and how those myths will determine our destiny, for better or for worse. It's a book that changed the way I think fundamentally. I will never be the same because of it.
Also the book that inspired the name Animals as Leaders.