“Too loud a solitude” for yourself.
“Daemon” for the world.
“Godel Escher Bach” for everything else.
Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
111–120 of 365 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#112Not sure if it's the only book I'd recommend if I have to stick to the rules, I think others have already done that for me here but:
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
is very funny but also the back story to how it got published is both sad and interesting.
...and if I can pick a second book:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance by Robert M. Pirsig.
...and a third:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#113I've keep a record of my books read (and unfinished, and written up etc) over the last few years here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WSI8g_9BnNmfUM0ZupN1...
If they're 'Written Up', they're generally pretty good.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#114Okay at the risk of being offensive, all the comments before mine are made by overly intellectual fools.
I'm not usually so insulting--but as a father of two, if my 3 year old and 1.5 year old could only read one book, it would have to be "Oh, the places you'll go" by Dr. Suess.
Sorry to stomp on Das Kapital and its ilk, but if you get only one book, I can't imagine a better first message to convey than the endless possibilities inherent in each of us.
The world is your oyster! Even if you're old and have wasted most of what you were given. Especially today, in some of the most amazing times that have ever existed (even if you didn't draw the long straw). Today is SO much better than most of history.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#115https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news this website is pretty cool!
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#116Things nobody tells you about relationship dynamics when you are young. Whats a head of you emontionaly? I recommend these to my son. Erich Fromm The Art of Loving David schnarch Passionate Marriage: Sex, Love & Intimacy in emotionally committed relationships. And before you get married... Get some new perspective why ... Wolfgang gädecke, Sexuality, Partnership and Marriage : From a Spiritual Perspective
Fear of Freedom from Erich Fromm is also good. The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho is one of my favorites. Short but to the point.
Here is my virtual library link: https://vengrams.blogspot.com/p/books.html
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#117The best two books for engineers are 1) “How to win friends and influence people” 2) “Never split the difference” The first one will teach you how to work with people. The second will teach you how to negotiate salaries, raises, and promotions among other things. I don’t recommend many technical books because engineers can find all of that on the internet and are much more at risk of being bad at people stuff.
> The second will teach you how to negotiate salaries, raises, and promotions among other things.
“Never split the difference” is a really good book, but I'm really confused by this context. The book is 90 percent 'how to encourage rational thinking in your counterparty.' The author's experience is in suicide prevention and hostage negotiation, where all you really want is the counterparty to do whats already in their best interest. Hence the focus on emotional IQ advice, like slowing down, mirroring, building trust, etc.
In contrast, salary negotiation is a completely different beast. The book has a single chapter on "classic" MBA negotiations, but the counterparty is far more well informed than you are, and engineered the entire process to favor them -- multiple candidates, salary bands, structured interviews.
Where this book shines in the business world is project management and resolving priority conflicts, where you need to build cross functional relationships built on trust.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#118Influence by Robert Cialdini. We live in a commercialized world - Cialdini gives a very engineer friendly, pragmatic and empirical review of the psychological tricks used to make people comply.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#119Okay at the risk of being offensive, all the comments before mine are made by overly intellectual fools. I'm not usually so insulting--but as a father of two, if my 3 year old and 1.5 year old could only read one book, it would have to be "Oh, the places you'll go" by Dr. Suess. Sorry to stomp on Das Kapital and its ilk, but if you get only one book, I can't imagine a better first message to convey than the endless p…
Dr. Seuss is a great start for kids. Smart advice.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#120The Little Prince. Ages young and old will get something out of it.