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

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

#431

Post by powerset » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

I saw Siddhartha recommended a couple times here. It's a good one. If you like Siddhartha, I highly recommend reading Hermann Hesse's other books as well. My favorites are The Glass Bead Game (Nobel-winner) and Narcissus and Goldmund.

What I love about HH's books is that I feel as if I've lived the lives of his characters vicariously, passing through their struggles with them and coming out with hard-won wisdom and character. I feel like a better, wiser person for those books, with the kind of perspective on life that otherwise would have taken me a lifetime to achieve.

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

#432

Post by juliemecca » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

pierremenard wrote: post #373

Calvino, Invisible Cities — human life is so rich in complexity and detail that an infinite number of projections can be constructed to study slices of it, that are each worthy of their own story Hesse, Steppenwolf — read this at an angst-filled time; the way this book builds and reconciles the conflict between two personalities that goes on within the main dude's head was extremely cathartic to my own life Adams, th…

+1 for Invisible Cities, and just about everything else by Calvino. Also, is your HN name a Borges reference?

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

#433

Post by p_l » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

throwqwerty wrote: post #391

TulliusCicero wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read > ender's game is nazi apologia in your comment, I was pretty sure that there would be a point in the quoted article where the author went from reasonable background/description, to instantly jumping to a completely nonsensical argument, and I was not disappointed. > The difference between Peter and Ender is not in what they do, but in what they are What? That's incredibly dumb. This like saying a serial…

>Maybe Ender went too far, but he did act in self-defense the book is literally about a kid committing genocide and the reasons why he should feel okay about it (ie a pretext). or did you not read it through to the end?

The final battle scene in the book, at least in the old polish release I had, stuck with me for a long time.

Because Ender did the suicide strike thinking it was simulation, and thus he would be finally released from the program as dangerous.

It's literally an attempt to get released from service on medical discharge. He was only told he was operating real world warships after the fact. Before that scene, he assumed (and while there were possible hints, at that point he is increasingly getting less mentally stable) that it was graduate school equivalent of Battle School - as that's what everyone excluding Bean (and that is AFAIK only in the retconny later novels) was told.

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

#434

Post by p_l » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

Gollapalli wrote: post #402

throwqwerty wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe Ender went too far, but he did act in self-defense the book is literally about a kid committing genocide and the reasons why he should feel okay about it (ie a pretext). or did you not read it through to the end?

Did you read the sequel? He literally spends the rest of his life making up for that mistake as speaker for the dead.

And he literally does the final genocide in hope that it would grant him expulsion on medical grounds - because he didn't know the battles were real.

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

#435

Post by DubiousPusher » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

tickerticker wrote: post #287

Brothers Karamotzov by Dostoevsky. Helped me see the relationship between suffering and happiness, between pain and pleasure. Made me realize that government is an exercise in making the best of a bad thing, given that so few people can handle power. Taught me ways that government can goad or torture people into submission. Confirmed my opinion that pseudointellectuals can fool quite a sizable audience. If this autho…

I think late imperial Russians had a special talent for understanding the power of mumbo jumbo intellectualism.

I think this stems from enduring the continued existence of a courtly intelligentsia that sought to philosophically justify feudalism. This while the feudal institution had long collapsed elsewhere laying bare the preposterousness.

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

#436

Post by pierremenard » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

juliemecca wrote: post #432

pierremenard wrote: post #373

Calvino, Invisible Cities — human life is so rich in complexity and detail that an infinite number of projections can be constructed to study slices of it, that are each worthy of their own story Hesse, Steppenwolf — read this at an angst-filled time; the way this book builds and reconciles the conflict between two personalities that goes on within the main dude's head was extremely cathartic to my own life Adams, th…

+1 for Invisible Cities, and just about everything else by Calvino. Also, is your HN name a Borges reference?

It certainly is! :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...

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

#437

Post by acrophiliac » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

"Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet" is a children's book I read when I was about ten years old that had a huge impact on me. It opened my eyes to the whole genre of science fiction and kindled a life-long love of space and science in general.

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

#438

Post by fdavison » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. Changed my eight year old life in 1962. I wanted to work with computers and electronics from that moment.

Oh, and all the Tom Swift Jr series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn_and_the_Homework_Ma...

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

#439

Post by frosted-flakes » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #415

marvion wrote: post #26

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy + all parts. It's a common recommendation for exactly that - but I'm amazed by how much it's in the back of my head and gives me support. Especially in the current time. I can't point to an exact quote.. but I'm listening to all audio books(as background noise) by Douglass Adam's for the last weeks and it just feels like there is a part in the books for almost every weird situatio…

Does “all parts” include “...And Another Thing”?

I would say no. Eoin Colfer has written some great books, but that is not one of them.

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

#440

Post by daxfohl » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

None really. I've tried to read all the "must reads" and classics, searching for something that added some meaning to life.

100 Years of Solitude is my favorite modern classic (had to read it twice to get it), and Middlemarch is my favorite classic. I'm happy to recommend reading them. But even these I cannot call life-impacting.

Interestingly the fiction books I'm reading to my first grader may ironically have more punch that anything written for grown-ups. But, they're all lessons grown-ups already generally know.