Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm. Dillard has a way with words that is both eloquent and a little violent, and she influenced how I write just as much as Strunk and White's Elements of Style.

Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach for its captivating presentation of some very complicated ideas (at least to the 17 year old kid who read this for the first time). This book was published around the time that I was growing from hobby programming to writing software as a career, and it exposed me to non-trivial proofs, LISP, and recursion in general.

Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. It's a bit stupid, but . . . I want to make the tech in this book become reality :-) Bobbles are sheer fantasy, of course, but the Tinker tech stack would be a lot of fun.

I suggested Toni Morrison and held without a doubt that she was the greatest living writer until her passing last year. She'll likely always hold that top spot in my mind, no one can compare. Go read "Sula" or "Song of Solomon" or "Beloved" or "The Bluest Eye". Her work will make you a better human.

Feel Pat Cadigan's work might be a candidate, but agree

I guess I’ll add to the female authors being suggested under this comment.

Wilding - Isabella Tree. Changed how I think about what nature needs, away from the simplistic “more forests! Less agriculture!” viewpoint.

The Female Man - Joanna Russ. Forget all the ‘makeup is empowering!’ Twitter feminism. Russ has a different idea. “For years I have been saying Let me in, Love me, Approve me, Define me, Regulate me, Validate me, Support me. Now I say Move over. If we are all Mankind, it follows to my interested and righteous and right now very bright and beady little eyes, that I too am a Man and not at all a Woman... I think I am a Man; I think you had better call me a Man; I think you will write about me as a Man from now on and speak of me as a Man and employ me as a Man and recognize child-rearing as a Man's business; you will think of me as a Man and treat me as a Man”

Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg (if we count Feinberg as, at least, a female-at-birth author). A complex exploration of what gender and transgenderism and sexuality mean to people depending on their class, subculture, etc. What should we call Jess? Trans, a man, a lesbian, non-binary, something else?

I also want to say Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, but I can’t easily explain why.

Always take information with a grain of salt. Kaczynski was not all there and is a murderer.

The first half of the manifesto is a fairly piercing critique of industrial society. Most of the ideas are not really original. Interesting questions are raised, the call to violence is nonsense.