Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 365 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?

#191

Post by quietbritishjim »

freeksanders wrote: post #178
olalonde wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-religious myself, I can't understand how you found the willpower to read the Bible and even want to read it again. I tried reading some chapters and was either bored to death or couldn't understand the text because of how badly it is translated/written.

Religious myself. Agree that having a modern translation can make a great difference in readability. I've read parts of the King James translation, and the language makes it a though read. Personally I enjoy this translation: https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/ I read it in Dutch, but it's available in multiple languages.

As a bit of an experiment (/procrastination) I randomly clicked through until I arrived at some text. I ended up Judges 19, which is a bizarre story of a concubine (*) that cheats, returns to her parents, then her husband (after a four month delay) goes and finds her there. There's an odd narrative detour where the father in law continues to pressure the husband to stay, but eventually he leaves. While stopped at a strangers home on the journey back, some bandits want to rape him but his host offers his own virgin daughter and the concubine instead, so they rape and kill the concubine. When the protagonist finally gets home he cuts up his dead concubine's body and sends the parts across the land.

This leads to a war (Judges 20) where tens of thousands of people were killed but I decided to stop at this point!

https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/judges...

Wikipedia article on the story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levite%27s_concubine

(*) Searching afterwards, I found this is a somewhat rough translation of a role that doesn't exist in today's society: a lower status wife that hasn't been paid for (!) by her husband.

Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?

#193

Post by guerrilla »

orange8 wrote: post #159
guerrilla wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a valid political complaint considering the role of the book in the world but I don't think it's a valid literary complaint because men (and groups of men) write some books and women (and groups of women) write other books and neither are bad for the reason that they are written by only one gender. If the latter were true, then all books written by groups of women are also bad, which is absurd.

My point exactly. I don't think politics has any place in this discussion. The request was for good book recommendations for everyone , not good book recommendations for republicans, christians, feminists etc

I wouldn't go that far. I think one could make an argument that one should not recommend the Bible because of these reasons. It doesn't have to be a bad book to be a bad recommendation.

Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?

#195

Post by sun_book_reader »

olalonde wrote: post #142
Brajeshwar wrote: post #133

I decided to learn/understand why Religion is the center-stage for almost every event that happens to humanity. This year, I’m planning to read the books, at least, of the top 5 religions of the world. Read Bhagavad Gita[1], had read the Bible[2] in hotel stays but will read it again, and the Quran[3] is waiting in the book-shelf. No, not religious at all; in fact, very far from it. Some time back, someone did a nice…

As a non-religious myself, I can't understand how you found the willpower to read the Bible and even want to read it again. I tried reading some chapters and was either bored to death or couldn't understand the text because of how badly it is translated/written.

For me, the Bible didn't become appealing until I aqcuired a fascination with ancient history. Being able to track the lineage of certain writings through the Bible is a massive thrill for me. Here's a few examples of what draws me in...

Famously, the story of Noah is also recorded in the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. One of the psalms in the new testament contains parts of the egyptian opening of the mouth ceremony, which I believe was also recorded in the book of coming forward by day (aka the egyptian book of the dead). The crazy thing about the book of coming forward by day is that parts of it were regarded by the ancient egyptians as being of immense antiquity, stemming from a pre-cataclysmic source thousands of years prior. If anyone is familiar with Plato's Crimeus and Timmeus, Atlantis was supposed to have founded Egypt as a colony, and if we're willing to humor this sole tenuous connection, we may consider that there are sections of the Bible containing quotes/memes/symbolism from Atlantian culture :)

This is all just food for thought, just one more way of approach the Bible as hypermedia (per se).

Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?

#197

Post by zalebz »

indiantinker wrote: post #92

I have gifted numerous copies of the book - “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse. I think the book changes the way you see the world.

It's been a couple of decades since I read Siddhartha and I am very curious how my take on the book will be different from my younger self.

Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?

#199

Post by shafyy »

bttger wrote: post #170
shafyy wrote: post #150

To have or to be - Erich Fromm Erich Fromm is a great author and in this book he looks at the difference of having (owning stuff) vs. being (enjoying experiences). He argues that too many people are focused on "having", and that our whole society and even language is built around that. For example, you would say "I have a relationship". He argues that it's a weird choice of words, since you don't own the relationship…

Is it really common to say "I have a relationship"? I would instinctively say "I am in a relationship". Maybe though it is also because my mother tongue is German and in Germany people say "Ich bin in einer Beziehung".

My mother tongue is also German, so maybe I picked a wrong example for this :D A better one would be "I have a partner" maybe? I've read it some time ago, so I don't remember the exact examples, but you get the idea.

Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?

#200

Post by shafyy »

t8y wrote: post #154
shafyy wrote: post #150

To have or to be - Erich Fromm Erich Fromm is a great author and in this book he looks at the difference of having (owning stuff) vs. being (enjoying experiences). He argues that too many people are focused on "having", and that our whole society and even language is built around that. For example, you would say "I have a relationship". He argues that it's a weird choice of words, since you don't own the relationship…

I think at the exact same time you posted this I also recommended an Erich Fromm book.

He's great!
Post reply on HN