1. Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid
2. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
3. Siddhartha
4. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
5. The Blind Watchmaker
Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
41–50 of 389 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#42Goedel, Escher, Bach - an eternal golden braid. This book is so rich with philosophical content it will change you.
Seconded. Parts of it are kind of impenetrable, or seem like it, but you can feel the love in it and it's so personal while also being so astonishingly wide-ranging… it's like taking your brain on a world tour to see things it never imagined were possible.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#43Well if you've read Frankl then I think you should read Primo Levi. The Drowned and The Saved and also If This Is A Man. One could say he came to less easily swallowed conclusions, but I think it is essential reading. For me personally however I think Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment more or less informed my world-view from a very young age and continues to do so.
Bookmarked. I picked up Crime and Punishment a few years ago, but had to put it down, due to both foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstances. How would you introduce it if you were to recommend it to someone?
I think introductions can take away from the direct experience of a great book. I think what's important is that since it is a work of literature it has the privilege of not even trying to deal with absolutes. It is an examination of what it might mean to be a moral human being. A kind of huge, entertaining thought experiment.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#44Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#45Goedel, Escher, Bach - an eternal golden braid. This book is so rich with philosophical content it will change you.
I really struggled to read this. It's so dense, in an almost impenetrable way. Am I the only one? I did some skimming, but never seemed to catch on.
It's not just you. I often see it cited in must-read lists, but also found it rambling and impenetrable.
In the 20th anniversary edition I have, the author spends the full preface admitting as much by explaining that people who've reviewed the book don't seem to understand its message:
“Needless to say, this widespread confusion has been quite frustrating to me over the years, since I felt sure I had spelled out my aims over and over in the text itself. Clearly, however, I didn't do it sufficiently often, or sufficiently clearly.”
He then attempts to outline the principle thesis:
“…GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter.”
“Very personal” is right — the book reads like a fever dream of tangential scribbled notes compiled into an ~800 page tome, only loosely coupled to the notion of how animate things come to be.
It is still interesting and brilliant and challenging and worth skimming if not reading in its entirety, but do not expect it to be instantly enlightening or full of take-aways.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#46"On Becoming a Person" by Carl Rogers, not so much the content, but because the concept is foundational. And "Hidden Order" by John Holland provides a lens for our social existence. They changed how I see myself and how I see my place in the world.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#47Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#48Goedel, Escher, Bach - an eternal golden braid. This book is so rich with philosophical content it will change you.
I really struggled to read this. It's so dense, in an almost impenetrable way. Am I the only one? I did some skimming, but never seemed to catch on.
That'll be why you found it so hard. It's not really a book you can 'skim through' at all, but if you pay attention, maybe take some notes and reread the sections you may be having trouble with, you'll start to get the idea.
The great thing about GEB is that Hofstadter basically assumes no prior knowledge from the beginning of the book - he just asks that you pay close attention and exercise your analytical mind. You'll then soon start to notice the patterns, jokes and puzzles in the writing, and how they all relate very closely to the ideas presented in the book.
Note: the book isn't necessarily out to prove anything, and if you're looking for a massive 'aha!' moment towards the end of the book, you'll probably be disappointed. It's just an incredible journey down the recursive rabbit-hole that ties together mathematics, formal logic, linguistics, biology, computer science and loads more all through the extremely deliberate use of language throughout.
It still blows my mind, but requires a good amount of concentration, re-reading and note-taking - which seems fair enough as I can't even imagine how long it took Hofstadter to write!
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#491) All of Robin Sharma's books - especially The Monk who sold his Ferrari
2) The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell
3) Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
4) The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
5) Barking up the wrong tree by Eric Barker
6) This might be strange - but Harry Potter series also teach us a lot, especially about Courage and Conviction.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
#50Goedel, Escher, Bach - an eternal golden braid. This book is so rich with philosophical content it will change you.
I really struggled to read this. It's so dense, in an almost impenetrable way. Am I the only one? I did some skimming, but never seemed to catch on.
It took me about five years of slog, but was at the same time a constant joy and absolutely worth it.