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Mind-expanding books

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Re: Mind-expanding books

#41

Post by hooande »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #2

I’m not convinced of the utility of lists like this, or the multitude of other Awesome JavaScript Yeahhhh!!! lists. As one of the issues in the GitHub repository suggest, it seems all that is needed for a book to be considered “mind expanding” here is for it to have a Goodreads and/or Amazon rating higher than 4. But what does that prove? There are people who rate Netflix’s Red Notice 10/10. Relative to those people,…

This list is a great starting point. I have enough judgement to discern between books that are worth my time and books that aren't. Personally, I'm going to scan these titles and look up things that I don't recognize on Amazon and Wikipedia. At no point did I consider reading every book sequentially because of blind trust in a github list.

I take the same approach with any of the "Awesome" lists. They're meant to be used for overview and familiarization, not rote adoption.

Re: Mind-expanding books

#43

Post by cinntaile »

drawfloat wrote: post #36

Master and Margerita at the top of the classics list – fantastic book, definitely recommend people read, but would not in any way say it was "mind expanding".

I read this because it gets recommended a lot on HN. I don't get the hype. It was decent, but nothing special.

Re: Mind-expanding books

#45

Post by mox111 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #44
mox111 wrote: post #14

There is some GOLD on this list, that I had never even heard of until now. Well worth the effort to go through it. Thank you.

How do you know something is “GOLD” if you’ve never heard of it, let alone read it?

Umm because I looked it up didn’t I. Not that hard mate

Re: Mind-expanding books

#46

Post by kristiandupont »

Barrin92 wrote: post #24

I had to laugh a little bit when I looked at the philosophy section and it seems like with few exceptions it's books from the 2000s including such gems as > Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny! I'm not overly conservative or classically leaning when it comes to education but I think people who really want to expand their minds would benefit…

+1 for Scott McCloud. I follow this Twitter account that posts random images from the book and they often make me ponder: https://twitter.com/bot_mccloud

See for instance: https://twitter.com/bot_mccloud/status/1474575631778258950 -- I've used this image in slides for countless talks when I go into anything about abstraction in programming, by the way.

Re: Mind-expanding books

#47

Post by stared »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #2

I’m not convinced of the utility of lists like this, or the multitude of other Awesome JavaScript Yeahhhh!!! lists. As one of the issues in the GitHub repository suggest, it seems all that is needed for a book to be considered “mind expanding” here is for it to have a Goodreads and/or Amazon rating higher than 4. But what does that prove? There are people who rate Netflix’s Red Notice 10/10. Relative to those people,…

I agree. Most of the best non-fiction books I've read don't have a 4.5 Goodreads score. They spark some controversy (many people expect to agree on a book they read), or they are not for everyone (topic-wise, level-wise, etc). It works the same for everything (movies, food). E.g. the best average score for movies is for the best average movies. Unless it is so niched that it is only read by people deep into a subject (again, then a high score says little about general quality).

But even for the >4.0-rated books, I find the collection bizarre.

E.g. "Metaphors We Live By" is here somewhere in the middle (at least got 4.08), while for me, it is the single most insightful book about human language as a way of thinking. "Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research" by Stanislav Grof (4.34), a book that unifies & classifies psychedelic experiences (going beyond "good vs bad trip"), religious experiences, and CPTSD - is not even on the list. But sure - this book is not that popular. Yet, "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett (3.88) is not even on the list - just to name a few.

So instead of pretending that it is some collection of "mind-expanding books", let's make it "Favourite books of hackerkid", assuming they read them. If not, then "a random collection of vaguely mind-expanding books".

Re: Mind-expanding books

#48

Post by georgecalm »

vishnu_ks wrote: post #39

Author of the list here. When I started the list 6 years back, the idea was to have a small collection of books that will change your perspective if you read them. But over the years, the list got 350+ pull requests and the number of books increased significantly. I ask the pull requests author why they think the book is mind expanding in the pull request description. If they can write a convincing sentence I would m…

Thank you for putting the list together! If I may make a suggestion, what you wrote above would be an excellent first paragraph in the readme, as it explains the intent well and the criteria for how you add books to the list.

Re: Mind-expanding books

#49

Post by mnd999 »

vishnu_ks wrote: post #39

Author of the list here. When I started the list 6 years back, the idea was to have a small collection of books that will change your perspective if you read them. But over the years, the list got 350+ pull requests and the number of books increased significantly. I ask the pull requests author why they think the book is mind expanding in the pull request description. If they can write a convincing sentence I would m…

The whys seems to me like it would be a valuable addition to the list. It’s a shame they’re just in the pull requests.

Re: Mind-expanding books

#50

Post by smitty1e »

vishnu_ks wrote: post #39

Author of the list here. When I started the list 6 years back, the idea was to have a small collection of books that will change your perspective if you read them. But over the years, the list got 350+ pull requests and the number of books increased significantly. I ask the pull requests author why they think the book is mind expanding in the pull request description. If they can write a convincing sentence I would m…

Not seeing anything spiritual on there. That is aguably the most important, if not tendentious, topic.
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