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Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?

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51–60 of 199 posts

Re: Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?

#51

Count of Monte Cristo

I was going to say this – though I've only read it once, I'll certainly read it again. Loved how much it immersed you in the world. Recently I enjoyed Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr for similar reasons, if you're looking for recommendations!

That looks like it’s up my alley, I’ll check it out. Thanks!

Count of Monte Cristo is the best revenge story ever told which is why it appeals to me, but you’re right about the immersion aspect. Maybe I would choose the unabridged version for the full experience.

Re: Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?

#54
Maybe it's the nostalgia talking, but I finished season 4 of Stranger Things yesterday, and now I have a strong urge to pick up a copy of The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. A great book, it really captured the magic that King's Dark Tower series lost along the way.

Re: Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say this – though I've only read it once, I'll certainly read it again. Loved how much it immersed you in the world. Recently I enjoyed Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr for similar reasons, if you're looking for recommendations!

You might also enjoy The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

It’s on my bookshelf but I’ve been slacking. Too much HackerNews probably.

I really do love the 19th century magazine to novel genre though.

Re: Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?

#58
Not a book but the facilities to make one - access to either paper and pencils/pens/ink, glue, linen binding thread, leather for making covers and a book press to bind the thing. Given that I'd have the rest of my life I'd settle for access to the raw materials to make these.

I'd write the book myself, it'd probably end up like a cross between Robinson Crusoë, Baden Powell's "Scouting for Boys", Zindell's "Neverness", Tolkien's "Silmarillion", The Gulag Archipelago - for what twisted mind would keep people from reading new (to them) books other than the same mind which created the GULAG system - and more of such. It would take years to write but that'd be a good thing given that it would keep me busy.

Re: Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?

#59
post #6
post #3

Gravity's Rainbow

Interesting. Had to look it up. Wikipedia: Gravity's Rainbow is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. Can you put in words what makes you choose it as a book to re-read yearly?

Not OP but here's why I think it's a great choice: it's the kind of book you could read many times and still not understand every nuance. There's a joke in the literary world that nobody has ever read it in full. It's monstrously complex and I'm convinced intentionally confusing at points. But it's also beautifully written, and in a way that quietly appeals to technical people.

To give you an example of the type of metaphor you'll come across: a character navigates a pair of S-shaped train tracks in a V2 rocket bunker, which the author compares to both the SS double-lightning bolt and a double-integral. He later links that to the rockets' accelerometer-based integration over the force function to compute distance traveled, and ultimately trigger "brenschluss" (fuel cutoff). Here's a famous excerpt:

That is one meaning of the shape of the tunnels down here in the Mittelwerke. Another may be the ancient rune that stands for the yew tree, or Death. The double integral stood in Etzel Ölsch’s subconscious for the method of finding hidden centers, inertias unknown, as if monoliths had been left for him in the twilight, left behind by some corrupted idea of “Civilization,” in which eagles cast in concrete stand ten meters high at the corners of the stadiums where the people, a corrupted idea of “the People” are gathering, in which birds do not fly, in which imaginary centers far down inside the solid fatality of stone are thought of not as “heart,” “plexus,” “consciousness,” (the voice speaking here grows more ironic, closer to tears which are not all theatre, as the list goes on . . .) “Sanctuary,” “dream of motion,” “cyst of the eternal present,” or “Gravity’s gray eminence among the councils of the living stone.” No, as none of these, but instead a point in space, a point hung precise as the point where burning must end, never launched, never to fall. And what is the specific shape whose center of gravity is the Brennschluss Point? Don’t jump at an infinite number of possible shapes. There’s only one. It is most likely an interface between one order of things and another. There’s a Brennschluss point for every firing site. They still hang up there, all of them, a constellation waiting to have a 13th sign of the Zodiac named for it.

Re: Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?

#60
The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

In the Bible, Christ said he would visit his (maybe inexact, from memory) "...other sheep, which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." (In John, I think?) The Book of Mormon tells of Christ's visit to the ancient Americas, after his resurrection, where he taught them things like he taught in the Near East. It also contains teachings of ancient prophets, like the Bible does.

Along with the Bible, its teachings are amazing to me, in their ongoing ability to help me want to be a better person, and to bring peace and direction, amid hard events. (And its confirmation that Christ's resurrection is real, therefore we will all live again, with justice and the opportunity for honest mercy.)

(ps: thoughtful comments appreciated with any downvotes.)

(pps: fun note, I have read it in English, Spanish, Esperanto (such as there is), and over 1/2-way now in Russian. Something like 115 translations exist, per wikipedia, with more on the way. Looks like several chapters even in Klingon.)

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