Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

881–890 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#881

Post by hutzlibu »

andy_boot wrote: post #877
scrumper wrote: post #162

Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Rus…

I highly recommend Homage to Catalonia if you liked Animal Farm. It really explains how Orwell became disillusioned with communism (while fighting for it).

Thats a quite simplistic way of interpreting.

He fought for socialism and he stayed a socialist - but he became a enemy of Stalinism.

The brotherhood and spirit of the socialist militia he was in, he praised as real and something he never experienced before or after.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#882

Post by Theodores »

Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire.

There are plenty of good reads here already but for posterity I am going to add Edward Abbey to the list. His work is a primer on what freedom is really about rather than this 'freedom' word bandied about by politicians. His work was also important to the environmental movement.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#883

Post by spaceknarf »

There are lots of books that changed the way I think. An example that may be of special interest to the HN community is "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport (http://calnewport.com/books/so-good/). I have spent lots of time finding the perfect career, until I learned from this book that you must stop finding the perfect career. Just do something that you like enough to spend lots of time on it. Everything else will come. It was very liberating.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#884

Post by nameless_wicked »

Charles Duhigg "The Power of Habit" and Kelly McGonigal "The Willpower Instinct" both greatly impacted my perception of people's actions and ways of life. Currently reading "Thinking Fast And Slow" and it has the same effect on me.

Jordan B. Peterson "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" made me more proactive and helped to summarize some past experience.

Richard Feynman "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" awesome book, about awesome life of awesome person.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#885

Post by Anthony-G »

news_hacker wrote: post #327
scrumper wrote: post #162

Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Rus…

Does anyone have any recommendations for reading up on the Russian Revolution? Books, videos, or otherwise.

I found Sheila Fitzpatrick’s The Russian Revolution 1917-1932 to be a well-written and fairly balanced account of the period. In her first chapter she goes as far back as the emancipation of the serfs to describe the societal context that led to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. The book is easy to read, not too long but is well referenced if you want to further explore.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#886

Post by dev_north_east »

bashwizard wrote: post #801
putzdown wrote: post #615

Maybe trite, but the Bible. For a mind-blowing experience, read Matthew chapters 5–7, and have in mind that the topic is: “what it means for a person to be righteous, or good.” The analysis of the role of moral rules, the place of worry and anxiety in driving us to short-sighted compromise, the tension between “secret” good-doing versus good-doing for public recognition, are all potent, helpful, and life-changing.

The bible is a great book for anyone in doubt about their beliefs. It made me turn from an doubtful agnostic theist into an agnostic atheist 1/4 through it. Amazing read. Will definitely not read it again!

Yeah, good lad pats head

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#887

Post by sobani »

casion wrote: post #692
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #308

OK, it might be a bit embarrassing to post this, but I'm going to say Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up." Not so much for the tidying part (though I did find that extremely helpful), but the whole idea of only keeping things in your life that "spark joy" (not an exact translation by the way - "spark excitement" or "spark meaning" are other ways I like to think about it) has had a profound impact on…

This has a very different impact on me, since I enjoy experiencing taking apart and putting back and restoring and playing etc... vintage musical instruments in my spare time. It never gets old. There is no real reason to sell one because each instrument is almost childlike in some incorporeal manner. I ended up purchasing more things, but just being more tidy.

It sounds like those instruments "spark joy" for you.

Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

#890

Post by brownbat »

Foucault's Pendulum can be a bear to get through, though lots of delightful language.

People could get different takeaways, but it made me think very deeply about falsifiability, the limits of persuasion, and the thin lines between plausible, reasonable, and likely theories about the world.

Post reply on HN