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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?

#511

Post by Zanni »

newen wrote: post #449
Gollapalli wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the sequel? He literally spends the rest of his life making up for that mistake as speaker for the dead.

Speaker for the Dead is the book that the author originally wanted to write. Ender's Game was written as a prequel for it.

To clarify, yes, Speaker for the Dead is the book Card wanted to write, but he found he had to write Ender's Game first to lay the groundwork. And he did. He wrote them in that order (Ender, Speaker). A prequel usually refers to a work produced later that comes chronologically before.

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

#512

Post by scandinavegan »

petrosx wrote: post #508

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 unde…

I already knew a lot about the Spartan philosophy and outlook on life before I started reading it (both from 300, comics and movie, and non-fiction books), but I was really surprised how well he described the combat scenes, with all the feet churning in the dirt of shield wall, and so on. It had the risk of becoming repetitive due to the static nature of the combat situation, but the book always felt like it was moving forward quickly. I really liked it!

I've read both good and bad things about The War of Art by Pressfield, but I'm at least very curious to some day read it.

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

#513

Post by violetgarden »

reddog wrote: post #452

I've been striking out with my fiction lately with one dud after another. Thanks for these excellent suggestions. I'm ready to dive back in. Three books that I haven't seen listed, but were impactful on my life: Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita -- Incredible writing, maybe the best ever. And english was Nabokov's second language. Don't miss this just because of the creepy subject matter or because you saw one of the movies.…

I read Lolita because I was really curious about the unreliable narrator aspect. The writing was incredible. I tried to get my friends to read it, but the subject matter really put them off.

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

#514

Post by saheb37 »

All the fiction books that have left a lasting impact on me have been long...

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22822858-a-little-life)

It is emotionally intense, beautifully written, and is a hypnotic read. Larger than life characters centered around one enigmatic protagonist, Jude. It's about pain, friendship, love, and the brutality of memory and experience.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33600.Shantaram)

An Australian gangster escaping his home country and falling in love with India (Mumbai). Lots of philosophy. A moral tale. Plenty of drama. And a love story with deep, dark characters.

Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2122.The_Fountainhead)

A novel on idealism for the irrational, real world we live in. Centered around an ideal man, Roark, who struggles to survive despite being a brilliant architect; he doesn't give up on his principles and never conforms. Not a typical novel, disliked by many.

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

#515

Post by tlear »

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.

How many could face the Eye of Sauron and be themselves still..

Aragorn? Some of the council maybe. Great Eagle, quite likely not.

They come to save ringbearer once Sauron is overthrown. If they tried to do it when he was bending his whole being on finding the ring and possessing it they would fail and deliver it straight to him.

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

#516

Post by elorm »

The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Eriksen

The entire series is an amazing meld of epic fantasy and philosophy that delves deep into topics surrounding human nature and human existence. We had a similar discussion on reddit[0] a few months ago and i'll summarize it here. You'll find topics like violence and its relation to power,civilization as violence against nature, phenomenology, existentialism versus essentialism. Arguments for anarcho-primitivism, arguments against anarcho-primitivism. Mutualism versus individualism versus collectivism. Class struggle and class consciousness.

The entire series is a piece of art. It also happens have a myriad of badass characters appearing and disappearing throughout the novels, so there's always something to look forward to in the next book.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/d1vfs3/philosophy_...

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

#517

Post by tlear »

Lord of the Rings. My mother bought first two books(translated into Russian) randomly because she heard it was good(it was one of the books that Party did not approve of before the Perestroika). I saw it lying around when I was 14. I proceeded to read both first and second basically non-stop skipping school next day. Then figured out that we could not find the third as it was not printed in Russian yet(at least could not find it where we lived), had to wait couple month to read Return of the King. I read it in English about 7-8 times since and as I became fluent the book only became better.

Besy/Demons, Dostoevsky. I read it after I finished Archipelago Gulag I was 15. It is potent stuff, the most powerful thing I ever read by far. Highly recommended. The more you know and read about Russian revolution and what followed the better.

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

#518

Post by teekert »

gatorek wrote: post #493
newen wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaker for the Dead is the book that the author originally wanted to write. Ender's Game was written as a prequel for it.

Seriously? I have read them in exactly that order. In comparison with Speaker for the Dead, the Ender's Game seems little childish...

Maye because Ender is a child there and the other books are him growing up and being wise.

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

#519

Post by d2161 »

metroholografix wrote: post #224
Jkol wrote: post #103

Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, aka Three Body Problem. Explored existential topics in a way I've never encountered anywhere else. I truly believe that decades from now this series will be viewed as the LOTR of our time. I've recently been reading the Foundation series, and have found the concept of The Mule character to be incredibly eye opening. I can't say directly it's had a positive impact on my life but it…

I found all 3 books to be vastly overrated and mediocre at best. I would bet money that in 10 years, few will even remember them. The translation doesn't help, but the issues with the books go beyond it. It's obvious that Cixin Liu is not a good writer. The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts and his pacing and framing of ideas awful. I feel that there is merit in his imagination but it'd be better presented in a…

Dune is soft sci fi. TBP is hard sci fi. They're very different formats of stories. Good hard SF generally doesn't have character development. In fact character development is a kind of subgenre called bildungsroman. I don't know why ppl these days expect characters to change as though it's some inherent part of a book. Some books are thought experiments or about world building. Part of reading for me is to try experiencing something novel. But on your hate for TBP, I'd say the huge fanbase, the Hugo committee and Obama would disagree with you on that one.

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

#520

Post by throwqwerty »

betageek wrote: post #497
adaisadais wrote: post #251

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. My best friend in 7th grade had older siblings and they had all read Ender’s Game. He read it and told me I had to read it. Being the impressionable 7th grader (2006-7) that I was I gladly obliged. I found the book to be deeply fascinating. It opened my eyes to ‘new’ technology like ‘ansible’ (can communicate anywhere in the universe instantaneously) and really opened up my imaginati…

It is one of the great mysteries of life how an author can write a couple of books (this and Speaker for the Dead) that are literally all about loving the 'other' and still be homophobic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Homosexuality

>In an August 2013 essay Card presented as an experiment in fiction-writing called "The Game of Unlikely Events",[173] Card described an alternative future in which President Barack Obama ruled as a "Hitler- or Stalin-style dictator" with his own national police force of young unemployed men; Obama and his wife Michelle would have amended the U.S. Constitution to allow presidents to remain in power for life, as in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Hitler's Germany.[174][175] Card's essay drew extensive criticism, especially for its allusions to Obama's race and its reference to "urban gangs

Further down in this comment chain I posted a link to a literary essay that enders game is about fascism. I got heavy downvotes. I'm sure that by quoting this paragraph from wiki I will get more downvotes. People are in denial about their heroes.

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