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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I read the book years ago but wasn't mature enough to appreciate the its value. But as I've gained in years and as my children have grown older I've thought a lot about quality and its significance. I'll be revisiting the book in the near future.
I wonder if The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander would be similarly interesting. It's not trying to be a novel, but explores similar concepts.
Before I read it, I thought capitalism was the only way to organize people and resources on a broad scale. I couldn't imagine anything else working particularly well, and I thought anarchists were people who want to break things and cause chaos.
The Disposessed showed me how anarcho-syndicalism actually works, and gave me a framework for understanding its benefits and challenges and why it hasn't taken off broadly yet. My whole life is more or less oriented around those ideas now.
Infinite Jest - it's just such an absurd book, and arguably way too long, but it's the funniest/saddest thing I've ever read. There are some passages that absolutely shook me. This section is one of my favorites, about things he learned in a halfway home: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/966304-if-by-the-virtue-of-...
Infinite Jest destroyed me, in various places. It has picked up a stigma nowadays for being pretentious (well, sure, it is) and unfinishable, but it is if anything a work of genius, and if you give it a chance, it may destroy you as well. Have yet to find a piece of fiction to top it.
Shibumi - Trevanian; I've read the book three of four times now and I'm not sure why but the characters and the characterizations just resonate with me.
Read that years ago. Some good lessons in it. Another one on similar lines is Taipan by James Clavell. Also King Rat by Clavell.
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. While it's also a tale of travel and self-exploration (the rediscovery of identity after a nervous breakdown and shock therapy), mostly the book is about thinking. I was a different person after identifying with the narrator who also lived in the mind, and asked questions about basic concepts like 'quality', or qualia of events, objects, roles, and the sub…
I thought the first third of the book was absolutely fantastic. But then it quickly decayed into philosophical drivel, IMO. Perhaps I'm not wise enough to understand the end of the book but I truly thought it was garbage and believe this is one of the most overrated books of all time. Anybody else feel this way?
The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) tldr; our bodies are just a side effect of the gene's greater plan
Atlas Shrugged A book I revisit every few years. It's taught me to be honest with myself even if the social norms aren't in alignment with I'm doing. It's also gave me a deeper understanding of my fellow man and why some are fine with handouts from others. It's also where I learned the $ symbol is made from the U and S from United States.
It more likely comes from a handwritten 'ps', an abbreviation for 'peso' in old Spanish-American books.
You can also see http://www.shmoop.com/atlas-shrugged/dollar-signs-symbol.htm... which discuesses this.
"The dollar sign? [It stands] for a great deal. It stands on the vest of every fat, piglike figure in every cartoon, for the purpose of denoting a crook.... It stands – as the money of a free country – for achievement, for success, for ability, for man's creative power – and, precisely for these reasons, it is used as a brand of infamy....It stands for the United States."
it gave me the idea that you could start something on the side while doing your day job. The productivity tips have been super useful in all aspects of my life.
The YC partners surprisingly recommend a lot of non-tech books on Twitter. You can see their recommendations here: http://parrotread.com/bookshelf/y-combinator-partners . You can filter by genre, too.