Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?

Getting More - Stuart Diamond. I still think this is the best book on the art of negotiation.

Getting Things Done - David Allen. If you have adult ADHD like me, and you haven't read this, it's the first system that's really worked for productivity for me.

Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl.

Living Buddha, Living Christ - Thich Nhat Hanh.

Cosmos - Carl Sagan.

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin.

The One who Walks Away from Omelas - U.K. LeGuin.

Wild Seed - Octavia Butler.

The Heike Monogatari - (tr. Helen Craig McCullough) “The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.” If you need a comparison. this is the Japanese historical equivalent of Game of Thrones combined with a bit of MacBeth. The rise and fall of two shogunate families, and an analysis of the tragic flaws of character that brought their fall about.

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo.

Small Gods - Terry Pratchett.

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad.

The Guide - R. K. Narayan.

Evidence - Mary Oliver.

All of Us - The Collected Poetry of Raymond Carver.

Silence - Shusaku Endo.

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami Haruki. This and the next four are odd choices, perhaps, since it's a surrealist book, but IMO books that force your imagination to work hard do as much for creativity and fresh ideas as any of the more popular methods.

The Well-Built City (The Physiognomy / Memoranda / The Beyond) Jeffery Ford - Surrealist novellas best described as about the protagonist living and achieving agency within the constructs, dreams, and nightmares of a "Great Man's" mind.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson.

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon.

Dhalgren - Samuel L. "Chip" Delany.

Have been reading and researching for my postgrad and in some cases "Perspective" & "Mental models" are used interchangeably.

However i like to think of it in this way:

Perspective: The point of view from which something is looked at

Mental Model: A mechanism or thought pattern to make sense of something or understand something about some situation

You can never break out of your perspective of looking at the world. So a mental model is always confined within a specific perspective.

Example:

Supply&Demand is a model that helps you understand pricing in markets. The point of view/perspective is that of an economics/economist perspective. You could just as easily look at the same situation from a different perspective such as sociology or even psychology.

In other words, mental models are like a short cut to look at situations, solve problems and understand the world from different perspectives.

I am That by Nisargdatta Maharaj. Shifted my perception of who/what I am.

Not a book but Marshall Rosenberg's many lectures, audiobooks and workshops on nonviolent communication. I am now able to set boundaries in a peaceful way, and see myself and everyone, no matter what their actions, through eyes of effortless compassion.

What's the gist of the premise? 370 pages for a list of six items seems a bit inflated (forgive my judgment but am a slow reader and love efficiency)

Poor Charlie's Almanack is a fine book, but as it's just a collection of speeches and short stories the content is somewhat unstructured. I prefer "Seeking Wisdom from Darwin To Munger" by Peter Bevelin: https://www.amazon.com/Seeking-Wisdom-Darwin-Munger-3rd/dp/1...