101–110 of 1001 posts
I recently read that one and it made me see my profession as a software engineer in a new light.
At work, I catch myself using possessive pronouns about code a lot for example. It really shone a nice light on the human element and how we reason and think about code and programming.
Really recommend reading that one!
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan Walden by Emerson Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter
“The Design of Everyday Things” changed the way I see literally everything. You’ll never look at doors the same way again, and prepare to forever be frustrated by poorly designed objects, and delighted by incredibly well designed ones. There is no better book on the philosophy of UX, imho.
I read Freakonomics and Guns, Germs and Steel in college and was initially 'amazed' by it. Now, I see it as mass market rubbish used to influence a particular demographic. But that goes for pretty much everything really. Catcher in the Rye in high school. Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People". I think books can "change the way you think about almost everything" when you are younger, naive and idealisti…
Through good books, I could have access to mentors who would would never know me, but I knew them through their writing, and I acquired the tools to add value to the world.
Yes there are many mass marketed B.S books, that's why I tend to read older books that are battle tested and still relevant today(Lindy effect).
Yes, some books have more impact or less depending on what period in our lives we read them, our personal motivations or what prior knowledge and the context that makes the book relevant to us.
Of the hundreds of millions of books in the world, we may only get to read maybe a thousand or so if we try. Someone could invest years of their life into something that takes 8 hours or so to read. I think there's a high chance that their experience reveals to us something which we wouldn't have imagined and amazes us about the world we share.
Access to scarce resources induces a particular scarcity mindset, which the authors -- both behavioural economists at Harvard and MIT respectively -- show with a large variety of well-chosen examples.
The kicker is that time is one of those resources. In other words, I may be economically well-off, but if I'm short of time, I adopt the same scarce mindset that poor people (poor in money terms). I fritter away my time, I don't save it and so on. This book really showed me to deal with my time as carefully as I deal with my money. Great read, of the Freakonomics kind.
- *The Selfish Gene* by Richard Dawkins
- *The Righteous Mind* by Jonathan Haidt
- *Thinking, Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman
- *The Art of Not Being Governed* by James C. Scott
- *The Unwinding* by George Packer
- *People's History of the United States* by Howard Zinn
- *East of Eden* by John Steinbeck
- *Sometimes a Great Notion* by Ken Kesey
- *The Brothers Karamazov* by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Non-Fiction (Science) - *The Selfish Gene* by Richard Dawkins - *The Righteous Mind* by Jonathan Haidt - *Thinking, Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman Non-Fiction (Social) - *The Art of Not Being Governed* by James C. Scott - *The Unwinding* by George Packer - *People's History of the United States* by Howard Zinn Fiction - *East of Eden* by John Steinbeck - *Sometimes a Great Notion* by Ken Kesey - *The Brothers Kara…
Atlas Shrugged
Me too, but The Fountainhead struck me more. Reading Rand’s essays both made me appreciate her views more and made me cautious to accept her epistemology as a whole. I don’t consider myself an Objectivist, but I still consider her work to be a strong influence on my life.
Likewise. In addition, The Fountainhead was, IMO, better written... and it has the additional perk of being shorter than Atlas Shrugged. If anyone was thinking of sampling Rand, I'd almost always suggest starting with The Fountainhead.