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Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

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Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#111

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

I have 4:

-Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography - you can download it for free

- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell - A bit simplistic but it opens your eye to the fact that talent is a small part of being successful in whatever you want to achieve.

- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - You need people to succeed. Making enemies or just treating people indifferently is a bad move.

- 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen R. Covey. People put it down because the advice seems to be common sense but it's only common sense if you know it but not everyone knows it.

- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius- this is a lifelong guide. Read it until the pages fall apart and then get another and do the same.

All these books can be read multiple times and you'll learn something new so get hard copies if you can.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#112

Post by slip_shoe »

numbsafari wrote: post #23

I wish I hadn’t ever read Ayn Rand’s books. They were a waste of time and a distraction for too many years. I’ll say this though, I’m glad I grew up and I’m glad that when I got to the end of the Fountainhead I had already figured out what was wrong with her. If not for that, I wouldn’t have recovered.

Though I have never read Ayn Rand (and from now on I will be more cautious if I decide to read her books) I can't second more the point of your message about the existence of some books/theories that should be avoided at best. To add to your example, when I was about 16-17 I came in touch with the various strains and ideas of European nationalisms, I have read on topic extensively, rapidly abandoned the topic after two years of reading about it, but right now I clearly see how toxic and distortive the ideas of nationalism have been on my word view. I have abandoned them long ago consciously, but up until now a strain of thought most typical for the practitioners of nationalism may come to my reasoning from time to time, randomly and in most surprising places. It has so easily penetrated the whole corpus of knowledge I have got about this world, so that even now I need to carefully inspect my own thought on whether they are infiltrated by stereotypical nationalistic waste of any kind.

But, put it the other way round, I once thought that the toxic books containing easy-to-understand, sometimes appealing, but deeply-flawed or useless theories are a very good (but somewhat dangerous) way to exercise mind to check whether the mind is mature enough to stand the lure of a toxic book: if your world view withheld the pressure of the book to adopt its theory, then you passed the test, otherwise you are probably f*cked in a long term.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#113

Post by whatyoucantsay »

jrs95 wrote: post #39
ArslanAtajanov wrote: post #19

"Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins "Deep Work" by Cal Newport "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond

+1 for The Selfish Gene, one of the best books I've read. If you have any interest in the process of evolution/natural selection, I highly recommend it. It's not as "political" or explicitly atheistic as some of Dawkins' more recent work either, so people who have a negative opinion of that sort of thing shouldn't be turned off by his name being on it.

It really is sad how many people would use a man's political leanings in the 2010s to dismiss the scientific book that made him famous in the 1970s.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#114

Post by abtinf »

slip_shoe wrote: post #112
numbsafari wrote: post #23

I wish I hadn’t ever read Ayn Rand’s books. They were a waste of time and a distraction for too many years. I’ll say this though, I’m glad I grew up and I’m glad that when I got to the end of the Fountainhead I had already figured out what was wrong with her. If not for that, I wouldn’t have recovered.

Though I have never read Ayn Rand (and from now on I will be more cautious if I decide to read her books) I can't second more the point of your message about the existence of some books/theories that should be avoided at best. To add to your example, when I was about 16-17 I came in touch with the various strains and ideas of European nationalisms, I have read on topic extensively, rapidly abandoned the topic after t…

If you want to obliterate any last remnant of nationalist thinking from your mind, read Ayn Rand. Or read The Ominious Parallels by Leonard Peikoff, one of her students.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#115

Post by abtinf »

smaddox wrote: post #106
numbsafari wrote: post #23

I wish I hadn’t ever read Ayn Rand’s books. They were a waste of time and a distraction for too many years. I’ll say this though, I’m glad I grew up and I’m glad that when I got to the end of the Fountainhead I had already figured out what was wrong with her. If not for that, I wouldn’t have recovered.

She has a naive understanding of economics, but I find her commentary on cronyism and shallow thinking spot on. I also identify with the struggle of the heroes in Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and strive to maintain their resolve. Edit: Also, everyone should at least read Anthem. It's a quick ~6 hour read.

What do you find naive?

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#116

Post by graeme »

bengkoang wrote: post #80
graeme wrote: post #41

The Four Hour Workweek. It showed me: 1. How to make a business without "experience" 2. A model of how to make an automated business Changed my life and led me to create a mostly automated business that is still going seven years on. Note: this book often rubs people the wrong way, and requires caveats. The four hours refers to maintenance work, in my interpretation. I could maintain my business on four hours. But, i…

What it hit me the most is about what the worst thing that could happen if you try your venture, it blows my mind back then and it really boost my confidence. I'm guessing it's related to the author stoic perspective

I did the worst case scenario exercise he gave, exactly as described. Then I went on a long walk, decided to leave law school and try business.

I still have the paper I used.

Briefly, the exercise was:

1. What's the worst case outcome of trying 2. What steps can you take to mitigate it?

In my own case, it was taking a year off law school, and using up some savings + possibly needing to get a job before starting law school again. Not a giant risk. (Not zero, either, but having it quantified really helped)

The other part of the exercise was measuring the worst case against potential gain. In my case, it was permanent, long run freedom. Which, I got! So, well worth the risk.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#117

Post by monksy »

protoplant wrote: post #75
monksy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western civilization is based on merit and it is based on being very competitive. (It's true in your mates, your social standing, your financial situation, etc) That's the reason for the improvement books.

Is it merit based? I would say it's capital based.

Capital generally being a measure of how people evaluate you, yes.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#118

Post by monksy »

badpun wrote: post #102
monksy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western civilization is based on merit and it is based on being very competitive. (It's true in your mates, your social standing, your financial situation, etc) That's the reason for the improvement books.

Sadly, in most fields of employment, measure of merit is either hard or downright impossible. Hence, people have to invest a ton of time into creating an illusion of superior competence. Just look at developers - nerd-posturing discussions in the office, chasing latest frameworks, faking passion by doing open-source commits etc. It's a sad world we live in.

Never said that merit was purely based on work.

I'm just saying the West doesn't have positions that are based on how close you are to the king, family connections, caste, or other mystical reasons.

The funny thing that I've gotten in response is that people seem to believe that merit is only based on how your technical skills are. That's just one part of the job in the tech field.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#119

Post by jkmcf »

Here's a brand new one, from a famous history podcaster, Mike Duncan of The History of Rome fame.

The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

It would have been great if everyone had read this in the 80s, 90s, 2000s...

An under-analyzed period of Roman history.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?

#120

Post by filipoi »

neya wrote: post #5

Right off the bat, here you go: 1. The 7 habits of highly successful people (Stephen Covey) 2. The Miracle Morning (Hal Elrod) 3. Business Model Generation (Aelxander Osterwalder) 4. The Art Of War (Sun Tzu) 5. The E-myth, why most businesses don't work and what to do about it (Michel Gerber) 6. Made In Japan (Founder of Sony, Akio Morita) 7. How to win friends and influence people (Dale Carnegie) Probably I missed a…

Why "The Art Of War"? - I've read it with pleasure but tbh I've never known how to use those thought...
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