41–50 of 539 posts
'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' by Mark Manson
The book is full of examples and while reading, you go "hey, that's a bit like my friend X", or "hey, that sounds like my Uncle Y". And then, when Mark describes certain personality traits, you think, "hole smoke, that's ME!"
Isaac Asimov's Guide To The Bible. An agnostic atheist historian analyzes the history of every line of every book in the bible. Asimov is a good writer and he makes the bible a fun read.
Published April 1987 by MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262200608.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cellular-automata-machines
http://books.google.com/books?id=HBlJzrBKUTEC&printsec=front...
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/44522568_Cellular_au...
https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...
Isaac Asimov's Guide To The Bible. An agnostic atheist historian analyzes the history of every line of every book in the bible. Asimov is a good writer and he makes the bible a fun read.
Think and grow rich - Napoleon Hill
That last one made something click in my head but I find it hard to describe what it is exactly. The key concepts that I learned from this book are in my thoughts and actions every single day.
Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature" and the sequel "Enlightenment Now" briefly helped to restore my faith that humanity is not entirely an evil virus best gone the way of the dinosaurs. Don't get me wrong though, these books are not easy reads. In the first one Pinker does spend an inordinate amount of time cataloging humanity's centuries of evils against itself before he can make the case that we're doing…
Personally I'm depressingly cynical when it comes to Pinker's views, looking at, e.g., https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1496685550241292293 and then thinking about how now, given modern weaponry one man's decision could basically destroy all life on earth. A few billion dead in a single conflict would be all it'd take to really mess up Pinker's trend line.
It wasn't the book itself that changed my life, it was the exposure to all of the underlying ideas & philosophies that then significantly changed my life. I know many people can't stand the guy, but his book was really powerful for me at one point in my life. I got my shit together and started to understand the origins of many of the messages he promotes.
I like to think that there's a paradox of book reading in general in that you never remember what you read, but you change because of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucial_Conversations%3A_Tools...