Ask HN: What's one book that changed your life?

I read practical ethics by Peter Singer in a time of my life when I was struggling to justify my way of life. It pushed me down a path that I still follow today.

Gösta Berling's tale by Selma Lagerlöf was also very defining. It kept me away from the niilism that often strikes teenagers. Truly wonderful writing (Although I can't vouch for any translations).

This book [1], which after reading the first page (numbered page 6) will provide all the insight you need to understand the revolutionary changes of Vatican II. https://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/2nd_edition_final.pd...

Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler

The Road to Reality by Penrose

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

"For a long time, we have tried to understand the world in terms of some primary substance. Perhaps physics, more than any other discipline, has pursued this primary substance. But the more we have studied it, the less the world seems comprehensible in terms of something that is. It seems to be a lot more intelligible in terms of relations between events.

...

We therefore describe the world as it happens, not as it is. Newton's mechanics, Maxwell's equations, quantum mechanics, and so on, tell us how events happen, not how things are...we understand the world in its becoming, not in its being. Things in themselves are only events that for a while are monotonous. But only before returning to dust, everything returns to dust.

The absence of time does not mean, therefore, that everything is frozen and unmoving. It means that the incessant happening that wearies the world is not ordered along a time line, is not measured by a gigantic tick-tocking. It does not even form a four-dimensional geometry. It is a boundless and disorderly network of quantum events. The world is more like Naples than Singapore.

If by 'time' we mean nothing more than happening, then everything is time. There is only that which exists in time."

Very influential in my teens:

Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner

USA by John Dos Passos

Cache Lake Country by Rowlands

I'm amazed at all the "big names" mentioned here. Thinking about the quesion, I don't think I could pinpoint a book that drastically changed any "philosophical" views of mine.

I'll go with "Turbo Pascal für Kids" instead. It's the first programming book I've read as a kid and the topic has stuck with me so far :)