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Ask HN: What book changed your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#431

The Stormlight Archive (series) by Brandon Sanderson has probably changed my life the most. I don't think I've enjoyed a book as much or have had one mean as much to me as I've have with this series. The series is incredibly inspirational since despite being a high fantasy novel. In fear of spoiling the plot, I'm being vague: it tracks the stories of (multiple) people who go through difficult life situations and lear…

I think I read the first 3 books of this series (didn't finish the 3rd book), and if you liked it I would also recommend his Mistborn book and the A Song of Ice and Fire (the books behind Game of Thrones). I actually drifted towards Sanderson after looking for more fantasy books like Game of Thrones. The Arcane Ascension series by Andrew Rowe is also top-tier.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I tried reading the bible, maybe some pages are to be skipped, I couldn't keep after 5 ... too many "don't have sex with your cousin's wife unless her father owned a goat" logic.

Yeah I'm also slightly confused by those comments. I tried reading it from start to end, and it wasn't that enjoyable. It was mostly lost listings of names about peoples grand grand parents... and things that didn't really fit what was say two sentences ago. Am I missing the "proper" way of reading it? But if there is, that would eventually just leave to cherry picking...

I tried the same, gave up after Lot's daughters got their father drunk and raped him.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#433
Thoreau, Walden - simplicity, rejection of societal expectations. The chapter on economy is delightfully technical.

Toffler, Future Shock - the danger to societal cohesion and human wellness caused by constant, rapid, paradigm-breaking change.

Kaczynski, Industrial Society and its Future - like the two above, but more modern, frighteningly prescient, and with some unfortunate baggage attached. Still, it's short, and worth a read.

While not originally books, solar.lowtechmagazine.com now offers POD versions of their essays. They routinely introduce dead-end technologies to the reader that are often simpler and easier for a person to create and maintain at home, and which often confer a greater degree of independence than their mass-market analogues.

I don't necessarily recommend wading through countless pages of psuedomythical waffling, but Crowley's Thelemic concept of True Will - that is, the real goal you want to achieve, rather than whatever pure hedonism happens to have caught your brain-corvid's attention at the moment - is a useful framework for prioritizing. Does it further the goal directly, or indirectly, or does it hinder the goal? In this way, you can avoid wasting time and effort.

I found good stuff in Heidegger, but I don't think it's worth your time to grind through it. Just look up the Cliff's Notes for 'Sein und Zeit.'

So what did I get out of all that?

-I started to question what it was I really wanted to get out of life.

-I decided I wanted more independence and liberty.

-I decided I didn't like the direction tech was going, and wanted out.

-I stopped being quite as materialistic. I'm still extremely materialistic, but I'm working on it.

-I refocused my effort on amassing something like "F-U money" (for about ten years).

-I spent a lot of time flailing for what to do next, but eventually became obsessed with small-scale, high-intensity regenerative agriculture, and decided that was it.

-I spent a bunch of the saved money to buy myself a farm in Ireland, and will eventually pivot to full-time farming and part-time anti-materialism-- and away from tech. (At the moment, I'm still milking my Swiss job to fund startup costs and avoid the need to bootstrap or raid my nest egg, but the pivot day is in sight.)

-I have something to look forward to that isn't just constant obsolecence of skills and an ever-accelerating race to the bottom.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#434
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I would also add continues to change my life. I read the Bible every day and am constantly amazed how relevant ancient wisdom is today. In recent years teaching from Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament taught me how to understand my work. There is such a lot of nonsense on HN and the net about success. So many are pursuing a pipe dream. Below helped me to work hard, enjoy what I have, and not be concerned abou…

Man, I tried reading the bible, maybe some pages are to be skipped, I couldn't keep after 5 ... too many "don't have sex with your cousin's wife unless her father owned a goat" logic.

Approach it as a collection of very different books. There is myths, history, genealogies, law, poetry, short stories, philosophy, deep wisdom and mad ramblings. The books are collected over a thousand years in different cultural environments.

If you just start from the beginning, expecting to read it as one book, you will probably lose interest when it gets into the mosaic law.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would invite you to re-evaluate your position on books like Leviticus not being "theological". For example, Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, shows you on so many levels what Christ accomplished. The reasons many of the rules and laws are put into place is to show how reality is structured ontologically. And to show you that mixing categories can be harmful, and that fringes are necessary to keep the rest of the…

I'm not saying the 'legal' books shouldn't be part of the bible because they have 'no theological value'. I'm saying that when a hollywood actor in a film makes fun of christians and says something like "oh go sacrifice a goat like it says in your bible", they are willfully misrepresenting those verses as "cherry-picking your beliefs and conveniently leaving out the goat stuff", when in fact typically they're quoting…

> typically they're quoting verses of legal/historical significance, rather than of a dogmatic/theological nature

This distinction dos not make sense. The laws in the Bible is literally given by God.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't gone too far into the stoicism rabbit hole yet, I really recommend "Life of the Stoics", by Ryan Holiday. It's a compilation of the history (and probably myths from their time) of all of the biggest minds of stoicism. Shows that they weren't always perfect, some of them were assholes, but others (notably Marcus Aurelius and Catho) lived the live they preached, and fought many battles (including literal…

I'm by no means down the rabbit hole if by that you mean a blind adherent. I find the philosophy interesting in and of itself but the people aren't any more than people being people, for better or worse.

Oh, I meant in the sense that this book will not bring you obscure information or something really new if you have read more than some books from Stoics.

Also, I don't think there's such a thing as a "stoic blind adherent", as self criticism is a big part of it. Examples would be Cicero, highly regarded by later Stoics as an egocentric asshole, or the early cinics, that molded stoicism for the future by criticizing it.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#437
In Search of Lost Time (Proust) -- the definitive portrait of life, memory and experience

Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty) -- groundbreaking analysis of "the thickness of things" implicit within perception

Labyrinths (Borges) -- masterful explorations of time, thought, infinity... certain passages of this collection surface in my mind on a weekly basis

Civilization and Capitalism (Braudel) -- telescopes seamlessly from the microscale to the macroscale, granting a synoptic view of the modern world

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#438
Personal Power - Robbins, How to win friends and influence people - Carnegie, Feeling Good - Burns, Godel Esher Bach - Hofstadter, Fundamentals of Physics - Halliday and Resnick, Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Bach, The Commodore 64 User Manual, "Stocks for the Long Run", The Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide - Gygax, Dune - Herbert

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#439

The Stormlight Archive (series) by Brandon Sanderson has probably changed my life the most. I don't think I've enjoyed a book as much or have had one mean as much to me as I've have with this series. The series is incredibly inspirational since despite being a high fantasy novel. In fear of spoiling the plot, I'm being vague: it tracks the stories of (multiple) people who go through difficult life situations and lear…

I have heard so much about Sanderson but never read anything. Where should I start?

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#440

The Stormlight Archive (series) by Brandon Sanderson has probably changed my life the most. I don't think I've enjoyed a book as much or have had one mean as much to me as I've have with this series. The series is incredibly inspirational since despite being a high fantasy novel. In fear of spoiling the plot, I'm being vague: it tracks the stories of (multiple) people who go through difficult life situations and lear…

+1 I loved Stormlight Archive so much that I read it twice and I would probably read some chapters over and over. The struggles of various characters with past failures and the way they overcome it gives me hope for myself. Not only the mental health angle is really meaningful, the whole storyline is super interesting. Anyway, I can keep going on and on about these books. You have to read them at least twice to appreciate the intricacies and subplots.
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