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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?

#501

Post by thorin »

p_l wrote: post #444

- Hobbit, followed by Lord of the Rings. The selection might seem trite, but I suspect that there wasn't a book with bigger impact on me than Hobbit, for very simple reason. It made me into voracious reader, put me on a path of reading, actually reading. All because my father prodded me to read out loud first few pages so that I could show off how well I read. That was enough to get me hooked and probably nothing com…

The Hobbit was important for me too. I wouldn't have read it without the C64 adventure game (same with Color of Magic). I was probably only around 7 years old so it was a big book and took me a while to get through and kicked off a love of reading. Around the same time I read the whole Narnia series. Then next came the Lord of the Rings which was a multi-year epic for me.

Strangely, the Fighting Fantasy series was also a big influence - a cousin gave me Citadel of Chaos just after it came out and it really pushed my interesting in books and a an only child I tracked down almost every solo roleplaying booking I could find.

I also loved Eric the Viking ( the Terry Jones version ), which I now read to my children and The Odysseus books that Tony Robinson wrote that kicked off an interest in mythology.

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

#502

Post by p_l »

thorin wrote: post #501
p_l wrote: post #444

- Hobbit, followed by Lord of the Rings. The selection might seem trite, but I suspect that there wasn't a book with bigger impact on me than Hobbit, for very simple reason. It made me into voracious reader, put me on a path of reading, actually reading. All because my father prodded me to read out loud first few pages so that I could show off how well I read. That was enough to get me hooked and probably nothing com…

The Hobbit was important for me too. I wouldn't have read it without the C64 adventure game (same with Color of Magic). I was probably only around 7 years old so it was a big book and took me a while to get through and kicked off a love of reading. Around the same time I read the whole Narnia series. Then next came the Lord of the Rings which was a multi-year epic for me. Strangely, the Fighting Fantasy series was al…

Heh, we were close in age when we read The Hobbit then :)

I don't remember exact age, but I think I was 6yo, and I think I was already in first year of primary school, very early into it.

The rest is history, Hobbit was a big book and now I devour million-word epics for light weekend reading.

I also encountered the 8bit game, but much, much later, during my first forays into retrocomputing as 12yo :)

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

#503

Post by torgian »

newen wrote: post #450
throwqwerty wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whenever someone mentions ender's game in a positive light i worry about that person https://web.archive.org/web/20070206121131/http://www4.ncsu.... tldr; orson scott card is a bigot and ender's game is nazi apologia. if you don't want to read the above it's been written about in numerous places (google "ender's game book fascism").

Can we as a society please stop ruining stuff just because the author had bad opinions or whatever?

Agreed. It’s a great story. I remember when the movie was coming out, that the fact that Orson is a bigot came out.

Changed my opinion about the man, but the books he wrote ar e still good.

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

#504

Post by erikbye »

bookworm3827482 wrote: post #312
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are thinking about it wrong. Suspend your disbelief about the practicalities of what he did (pretend he was tired and not thinking at all). The story is a metaphor about life, the struggle, and a cruel world. Every person will interpret it differently. Think about how his story is a metaphor for some part of your life, and you might get the emotional import of it.

The guy was a professional fisherman... but didn't know how to fish? I get the point of the story and what the author was trying to do. It just seems silly to have such a huge flaw in the plot. It's like Lord of the Rings - the eagles could have flown the ring over to Mordor. I just can't enjoy books (or films for that matter) which require a suspension of, I dunno, basic reasoning.

> I just can't enjoy books (or films for that matter) which require a suspension of, I dunno, basic reasoning.

I have found all fiction requires such suspension.

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

#505

Post by erikbye »

rtkaratekid wrote: post #147

“The Things They Carried” a haunting book about American soldiers in the Vietnam war. It’s helped me understand the horrors of war and life, the significance of a person’s perception of an event rather than pure facts, and appreciate life in general.

How does it compare to Dispatches?

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

#507

Post by jerzyt »

SamBoogieNYC wrote: post #456
jerzyt wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fantastic book, unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a good English translation. I've read it in Polish, which is close enough to Czech to stay much closer to the original. The English translation loses a lot of the cultural character.

Interesting - I read in Polish but not as well as English. I imagine there could be a lot of good wordplay that is missing. Maybe one day I’ll try and pick up the Polish version

I don't know if I can give justice to it but there are scenes, like the pub owner explaining that he had to remove the portrait of the emperor, because the flies were crapping on it. There's just something that's missing in the translation. Many jokes rely on language and cultural references. This book is like that.

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

#508

Post by petrosx »

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

It gives a glimpse in the mindset of how the Spartans viewed life and how disciplined they were. Its a really inspiring book in the sense that it gives you a view of how they (supposedly) viewed life while knowing they will probably die in battle.

edit: I should note that while the battle of Thermopylae is real the characters and the story is fictional hence this is categorised under historical fiction.

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

#509

Post by scandinavegan »

Dowwie wrote: post #264

I finally read Frank Herbert's "Dune" this year and I'm so happy about the decision to finish the book. In the book are several references to what is known as the "Litany Against Fear". You may have come across references to it in pop culture, where the beginning is often cited. For instance, Elon Musk references it often. The Litany in its entirety: > "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-dea…

Someone put the Litany Against Fear to the steps to wash your hands, in order to do all steps for 20-30 seconds in total:

https://i.imgur.com/TjjinE6.jpg

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

#510

Post by scandinavegan »

The first fiction that I remember really changed my outlook of life was The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. It's a fantasy novel that I read as a young teenager.

The king in the book has the head of a dragon mounted on his wall as a trophy, and one of his sons finds out that he can enter the wall and look out through the eyes into the throne room. I don't want to spoil the main thing that he sees, but before that he watches his father pick his nose and eat it when he thinks he is alone.

It made me realize that adults are people too, and that you shouldn't idolize anyone to the level of imagining them without any negative traits. It's a bit like realizing that even the most beautiful people in your life or in the media have to sit down and poop like everyone else, and that we all have sides that we don't want others to see. It made me feel more equal to everyone else, and made me feel sympathy with every other human.

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

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