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Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#41

Post by kidintech »

bsenftner wrote: post #6

The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, it probably one of the easiest Nobel Literature winners to read.

YMMV. I'm a big Hesse fan, and I tried reading The Glass Bead Game twice; couldn't get past 30-40% of it in either try, it was just too boring.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#44

Post by vector_spaces »

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

This book changed my life. I read this book when I was maybe 17? And read it again last year, a decade and a half later.

The most powerful lesson I learned here is what anthropologists call cultural relativism. This book also taught me that everyone is under the influence of Mother Culture and her stories. I think internalizing this can help a lot with understanding other people, building self awareness, understanding politics in general, and also history in general.

There's a narrative here about ecology and generally making the world a less shitty place which is nice too, but not the primary value-add IMO (although it's unique in proposing cultural transformation as the solution).

Nevada by Imogen Binnie was another. I read it when I was working through questions about my gender. It's dark, funny, beautiful, and brutally candid account of the (a) trans experience.

Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea series follows these closely.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#46

Post by hprotagonist »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #20
hprotagonist wrote: post #12

see my nick, but in addition to stephenson, the books i come back to over and over again for comfort and wisdom include: - Lord of the Rings: The other bible. Not even the very wise can see all ends; be of good cheer. - A Wrinkle In Time: 9 year old me, there is such a thing as a tesseract, and there is also Mrs. Beast. - The Master and Margarita: apocalyptic reading from someone who knew, and a cat who always pays h…

> Good Omens: Gaiman and Pratchett team up, what’s not to love? It's a good book, but aesthetically it suffers in my mind because it's a rewrite of Pratchett's earlier book Sourcery .

we do not speak of early discworld.

i like the gaiman/pratchett teamup. They balance each other out very nicely.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#48

Post by kidintech »

A lot of friends that I respect and people on HN recommended "Master and margarita". I have only got back into reading ~4 years ago, so I haven't gone through all the great literature, but this felt different right after its midway point (starting with Satan's ball). My advice is to look for a translation with plenty of footnotes, because historical context plays a big part.

It's different to anything I've ever read, and definitely stays with you.

Re: Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?

#50

Post by dreamer7 »

sdedovic wrote: post #21

- Anna Karenina: Tolstoy knows people better than they know themselves - Brave New World: Aldous Huxley is a genius and a wordsmith - Dune: a sci-fi masterpiece, highly recommended to anyone into sci-fi - Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: not purely fiction but an amazing book I will surely re-read during my lifetime

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is really a perspective expanding book. It just took a lot of persistence to get through as, at times, it was quite frustrating to read.

Perhaps I should read it again to get a deeper appreciation for it

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