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Ask HN: What book changed your life?
21–30 of 539 posts
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#22Martin Gardner’s “The Whys of a philosophical scrivener” influenced my 20s & 30s. Looking back, should have been exposed to it much earlier, perhaps in my early teens.
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#23Blood Meridian.
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#24I think it is a combination of the book and where you were in your life when you read it. For me:
Cosmos was such a departure from anything else I read for school or for pleasure. It transformed my love of reading into a love of learning.
On the Road gave me wanderlust and made me want to move beyond my bubble and see the world.
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#25My book is in context of changing career over to software engineer... "SOFT SKILLS" by John Somnez. Not sure if there's any alternative today for self taught people, but this book released right when I had started obtaining real work. Obviously just my personal experience.
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#26"The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching" - Thich Nhat Hanh
It's not overly spiritual, but there's a relaxing, reassuring, thoughtful, and un-judging sense of peace that permeates this books. Brought me out of a really dark place when I was looking for reasons to keep existing.
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#27Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#28Aion - Carl Jung
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#29Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid Introduced me to the beauty of logic and its limits. Also gave me solid mathematical thinking foundations. Pro tip: Try listening to Bach while you read about Bach.
Honestly don’t get the hype about this one.
Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?
#30Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid Introduced me to the beauty of logic and its limits. Also gave me solid mathematical thinking foundations. Pro tip: Try listening to Bach while you read about Bach.
As a high school student, I had all sorts of interests: Math, science, electronics, music, computers. GEB reinforced my interest in math as being more than just useful (for physics and electronics), and led me to choose math as my college major. Not surprisingly, getting interested in math as an end unto itself was what got me good enough at it, to actually make it useful for those other things, and I ended up doing my graduate work in physics.