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Ask HN: What book impacted your life the most and how?

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Re: Ask HN: What book impacted your life the most and how?

#41

Post by umbs »

"Autobiography of a Yogi" [1] - If you grew up with people doing Yoga and Meditation, or at least were exposed to these topics for some time, this book is a great window in that world. It is from a person who brought Meditation and concept of Self-Reliazation to the West [2].

At the risk of being ridiculed, I'll venture to say this: There's a big part of us that we don't fully know. All of us are trying to different things to find happiness. Above book proposes that Meditation has answers to most of the questions and talks about various Yogi's. This triggered a deep desire for me to know more. I learnt Meditation from a different organization and am very happy at where I am. This book started that journey.

Warning: There will be a bit of mysticism in all this. Take what your gut says and leave the rest.

[1] https://www.ananda.org/autobiography/ [2] https://www.yogananda-srf.org/

Re: Ask HN: What book impacted your life the most and how?

#43

Post by Jasamba »

Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. This is easily the most moved I have been by a book that was equal parts a theory of intelligence and equal parts a realization of how important of an ingredient intelligence is to enable one to be aware of the fact of being 'alive', to have been given a variable amount of intelligence to process this fact for the next 80 years or so and that this variability in intelligence influences how that turns out.

Re: Ask HN: What book impacted your life the most and how?

#47

Post by eitland »

rimantas wrote: post #46
bjourne wrote: post #44

The Bible. Probably has impacted the society I live in more than any other book and society in turn has impacted me. It's well-worth reading for a lot of reasons.

Harry Potter has better story and better lessons.

The former has stood multiple tests of time and is my number one as well.

Also, FWIW, while Harry Potter is complete fiction, the former is at least partly a history lesson as well.

That said, I enjoyed both and I think some concepts are easier to grasp in Harry Potter.

Re: Ask HN: What book impacted your life the most and how?

#48

Post by lolive »

Different books for different ages:

- Discourse on the Method [1], to become a healthy criticist of everything (perfect for your 15's-20's development)

- Beyond Good and Evil [2], a definition of the 20th century craziness by the crazy genius Nietzsche (perfect for your 30's burnout)

- The Praise of Folly [3], to realize that life is just a game (perfect for your 40's post-burnout rehab)

- Propaganda [4], because you want to play the game too (perfect for your 50's meteoric rise to fame & success :).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_the_Method

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Praise_of_Folly

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)

Re: Ask HN: What book impacted your life the most and how?

#49

Post by cableshaft »

Jasamba wrote: post #43

Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. This is easily the most moved I have been by a book that was equal parts a theory of intelligence and equal parts a realization of how important of an ingredient intelligence is to enable one to be aware of the fact of being 'alive', to have been given a variable amount of intelligence to process this fact for the next 80 years or so and that this variability in intelligence inf…

Pretty much the only book that's made me cry uncontrollably.

It was the relationship between biology and intelligence that got me, too, not really on the disability and how he was treated, which was mainly what they focused on in school.

Really made me reflect afterwards. Totally worth it, one of my favorites, and I'm way overdue to reread it again.

Re: Ask HN: What book impacted your life the most and how?

#50

Post by cableshaft »

theaustinseven wrote: post #4

For programming, "Game Coding Complete" by Mike McShaffry and David Graham. The book gave a very nice intro to a number of design considerations and given that McShaffry did a decent amount of game programming in the early days of programming, there are discussions of how they dealt with incredible design constraints. The book served as a good introduction to thinking about performance and size of the software that I…

I was just about to take that to a book reseller today because I haven't read more than a few snippets in ten years....maybe I should hold off on that.
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