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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?

#461

Post by kabacha »

Naoki Urasawa's work if we are allowed to include japanese comics. Monster being probably my favorite work of his with Pluto being close second. I especially recommend Pluto if you like Asimov's robot series.

Urusawa is quite famous for character development and most of his characters are _good_ - sometimes even the villains. It kinda helped me appreciate human contact more even if it's something completely simple or fleeting. You don't need to be best friends with someone to appreciate them or go on an adventure.

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

#463

Post by c-smile »

"Hard to be a God" of Strugatsky Brothers.

"Monday Begins on Saturday", circa 1965, of the same authors. That is a satiric story full of brilliant humor about programmer (main hero) in Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry. This book is literally the reason why I am a programmer now.

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

#464

Post by muzani »

The original short stories of Conan the Barbarian. First, I liked the high energy way they were written. I was raised to write long and eloquent in school, and Conan proved how short writing can be fun to read.

They're a little philosophical - the author hated civilization and possibly committed suicide over it. I wouldn't say I agree entirely with it, but there is a point that civilized society is unhappier because people can no longer be beheaded for being rude. It made me question whether order and civilization are great end points and whether we might just be happiest somewhere with a mix of chaos and order, like Thailand.

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

#465

Post by mitchellst »

matt_morgan wrote: post #333

White Noise, by Don Delillo. It's a great story in general and reading it helped me acknowledge my fear of death and how it affected me. Edit: oh, and since I don't think anyone else has mentioned them yet ... Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, and Grendel by John Gardner. Their impact on me was less specific so harder to explain, but they're great books that get mentioned on HN now and then. Another one that kind of b…

It’s interesting— I would say white noise had a positive effect on my life, but I’m not sure i would recommend the book. Part of the reason it was good for me was how powerfully I disliked it— and needing to question the reasons for that dislike at the time.

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

#466

Post by sien »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #201
SamBoogieNYC wrote: post #128

The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hašek - this book is pee-in-your-pants funny. A Czech satire about WWI. Definitely shines a light on the absurdity of war and various institutions - a lot still applies today. There is profundity in the dark humor, and at the same time it is a great mood-lifter. The character Svejk stays with you as a sort of idiot-genius-rebel, a cool archetype

Along the same lines, Catch-22 had a huge influence on me, growing up. (Not necessarily entirely positive, though.)

Me too.

It really does capture the absurdity of big organisations brilliantly.

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

#467

Post by trm42 »

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’ve been a scifi and fantasy nerd for my whole life but Dostoevsky’s and Mika Waltari’s books have been more influential in understanding humans, their motivations and emotions than most of the fiction. Wish I could find more of something similar.

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

#468

Post by perl4ever »

The novel that imprinted itself on me the most when I was a teenager was described by Publisher's Weekly as follows: (though I didn't run across this until recently)

"Writing with a pretentious, almost adolescent sensibility and a bad case of logorrhea, --- whines unremittingly in a single-pitched, overwrought stream of consciousness that will probably alienate most readers...

...premise is interesting enough, her characters are one-dimensional monomaniacs engaged in a disturbingly simple-minded, voyeuristic search for altered states in bona fide pathology"

Or, as some reviewer on Amazon said, this book sucks because the characters are all losers.

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

#469

Post by irjustin »

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?

> or did you not read it through to the end?

Have you asked why he should feel okay about it?

The parent comment explicitly says context was ignored. He committed genocide/xenocide because he was literally being deceived and then spends the next 2 books regretting and making up for a move he wasn't responsible for.

The literal example here would be playing any video game but instead of it just being a game you were literally killing whatever the game is about.

In that case, wouldn't you feel that you were wrongly deceived? That you're not truly a killer? But in your eyes and the article's... you absolutely are a killer. 100% responsible and the book is wrong for teaching otherwise.

Pretty obtuse to think hold such a belief.

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