Gravity’s Rainbow
Book of the New Sun
Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
111–120 of 234 posts
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#112A few have stood out: - "The Defining Decade: Why Your 20's Matter and How to Make The Most of Them Now": it motivated me to find a fulfilling a career in tech (among other things). - "On the Shortness of Life" (Seneca) - Really made me take a hard look at my life, for the better. - "Eat and Run" - Interesting read about an Ultramarathoner. Inspired me to find the motivation for doing "tough things" in general.
> "The Defining Decade: Why Your 20's Matter and How to Make The Most of Them Now":
Being 31, still feeling lost, this title stresses me out
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#113This is going to be an unusual answer for this forum, but... the Harry Potter series Firstly, I read it as a kid, in my formative years, when it was most likely to have an impression on me. But I remember reading the books and feeling completely enraptured by this magical world. I also remember feeling a a bit annoyed at what I perceived as Harry's laziness and ingratitude! I would think "if I was him, I would spend…
This is how I've explained programming to friends and family. It's like I got my letter to Hogwarts and I've been learning magic ever since. I get to make something real out of nothing, just by spending time learning how things work and working on the craft of using that knowledge. That's magic to both 11 year old me and and 32 year old me.
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#114I found a copy of 'Commodify Your Dissent' by Thomas Frank in a pile of free books when I was 17 and it had a significant and lasting impact on the way I viewed the world.
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#115Here are mine: - "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene - "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker - "Left of Bang" by Patrick van Horne and Jason Riley - "Influence" and its follow-up "Pre-suasion" by Robert Cialdini - "Courage is Calling" by Ryan Holiday (yes it was published this year but I found it helpful) - "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie - "No One Ever Told Us That" by John D. Spooner…
48 laws of power, influence, win friends, and to some degree rich dad, when put together in a list, could tell a story about someone. I’m curious in a non-attacking sort of way, do you consider yourself a sociopath, or to have more manipulative tendencies than those around you?
I bet one can predict better than random the gender of people based on their honest list of books that changed their life.
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#116Freedom from the Known
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#1171. The Bhagavad Gita
2. The One Thing
3. Insanely Simple
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#118"Getting Things Done" by David Allen
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#1191. Start with no - this is an awesome primer on negotiating 2. Never split the difference - ditto . IMO, "start with no" is a sub set of this but it is worth separately anyway 3. Fooled by randomness 4. The black swan 5. Books on intermittent fasting by Dr Jason Fung 6. All books by Noah Harari but start with Sapiens 7. Security Analysis by Ben Graham
> 7. Security Analysis by Ben Graham
Just don't try to implement the things outlined there. Graham, in the last published interview he gave (Financial Analysts Journal, 1976), said:
>> In selecting the common stock portfolio, do you advise careful study of and selectivity among different issues?
> In general, no. I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities. This was a rewarding activity, say, 40 years ago, when our textbook "Graham and Dodd" was first published; but the situation has changed a great deal since then. In the old days any well-trained security analyst could do a good professional job of selecting undervalued issues through detailed studies; but in the light of the enormous amount of research now being carried on, I doubt whether in most cases such extensive efforts will generate sufficiently superior selections to justify their cost. To that very limited extent I'm on the side of the "efficient market" school of thought now generally accepted by the professors.
* http://www.grahamanddoddsville.net/wordpress/Files/Gurus/Ben...
Re: Ask HN: Life Changing Books?
#120Here are mine: - "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene - "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker - "Left of Bang" by Patrick van Horne and Jason Riley - "Influence" and its follow-up "Pre-suasion" by Robert Cialdini - "Courage is Calling" by Ryan Holiday (yes it was published this year but I found it helpful) - "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie - "No One Ever Told Us That" by John D. Spooner…
48 laws of power, influence, win friends, and to some degree rich dad, when put together in a list, could tell a story about someone. I’m curious in a non-attacking sort of way, do you consider yourself a sociopath, or to have more manipulative tendencies than those around you?
The first two books are extremely useful for preventing people from taking advantage of you, if you are naive as to how manipulative people can be: that's what I got out of them when I read them early in life.