Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

For the mind:

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg - A great book on how to communcate more effectively with others.

Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman -He is the only psychologist ever to recieve the Nobel Prize if I remember correctly. This book scientifically digests human biases and errors and how they influence our every day lives and decision making. Sometimes it a bit too technical for my taste and I like mostly the first part. (its not an easy read) I rarely had so many Aha-moments.

A random walk down on wall street - For investing your income in stocks. What to do and what no to do. Simple, with facts.

Sapiens by Harari -Interesting, I remember it was a great read and fun read. Connecting a lot of dots :)

On programming:

Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann - I am failry a junior web dev, so any material that is clear and explains well is a great source of information and inspiration. This is such a book.

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective by Randal E. Bryant and David R. O'Hallaron - Teaches CS from the basics, which for me is a great source since I don't have a CS degree. I complement it with other materials from the internet (such as Harvard's CS50) for learning the fundamentals paralell working in my daily web dev job. Its a long book, so It will take a couple of months, years to go thorugh, but definitely worth the effort.

Fictions I love, without much introduction: Lord of the Rings Dune (first book) Game of thrones books For me JRRs storytelling is outstanding, the books are better than the serires IMO.

Spiritual Books:

(I am not a religous person by any means and I do not follow traditions) Spirituality for me means a deeper connection with the universe. If I really want to dig deeper than everyday work-life stuff I listen/read these books. Usually when there is a great emotional upheaval in my life or when I feel my daily distractions failed on me.

Power of now by Eckhart Tolle - This book gives me the occasional goosebumps, a great summary of all spiritual teachings (before becoming religions) in a really simple way. If you are interested in such, I highly recommend it.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - I see it mentioned here already, no intro needed.

Letters by Seneca - This book is a proof for me that the essential human experience, the core of what makes us human does not change over time. Seneca was a great stoic thinker, who is very relatable by anyone even today (and probably will be for many millenia)

Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Suzuki Roshi - All true spiritual teaching have the same source, but all are expressed differently. This is a great, simple powerful book to read if you lean towards buddhism.

A Course in Miracles (no official author) -Now this is a heavy read. It has a textbook with daily practices also. This is definitely not a book for everyone.

The political philosophy underpinning the stories in Genesis (much older than the Torah), is very different from that of the Babylon era when the Pentateuch was compiled. The Second Temple Era is very different from both of these. The historical context, and the political content of Christianity in Christ's era (or in the era of the early Gospels) is yet again different, and the context of the later, Pauline Christian books yet again another thing. Modern (post-Lutheran) scholarship sees each of these eras as a development or a refinement moving towards a better fulfilment of God's word, however the contemporary view was that many of these developments were revolutionary, iconoclastic, or heretical.

The Bible is undoubtedly an extremely rich historical document. However, the work of understanding its meaning and its legacy on some modern cultural and ethnic groups is not straightforward. Someone who reads widely through the Bible from the Pentateuch to the New Testament and believes to discern a single unifying philosophical theme or a coherent message to humanity either has not really understood most of it, or is schizophrenic. (Note that reading the Book of Genesis and the New Testament is a very different thing to reading the entire Bible. Many people who think they are able to comment on 'The Bible' really only know the Gospels + Genesis + Exodus, or some other subset such as the Gideon 'Bible'.)

Of course, 'Western Civilization' is somewhat synonymous with a culture that takes the Bible seriously and attributes a sort of mystical energy to it, while not necessarily honouring the stated precepts of Christianity (or Judaism). This makes the fact that the Bible is widely read and referred to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, sometimes combined with jingoistic innuendo that people without a Christian-inspired culture are not capable of democracy, or tolerance or creative thought, or some other shiboleth of 'Western Civilization'.

There are much less obscure texts, roughly contemporary with the Bible, which discuss humanistic values such as might be associated with 'Western Civilization'. Some of these have been treated as holy by various religious groups including Early Christians, or as of a quasi-religious importance in the organization of society and its institutions. Many of these were widely read throughout the Christian era and are much easier to see as having influenced 'Enlightenment' and 'Modern Secular' values. For example, Plato's Republic. Any suggestion that the Bible is more important than that or similar works to gain "an understanding of the process of how Western Civilization is formed as it is today" just seems to me to be a hangover from Christian apologetics and bigotry.

tl;dr Placing an importance on the Bible because it's a founding text of 'equality of all man and inherent dignity of human' is no different than condemning it as a founding text of the transatlantic slave trade, or of Nazism.

This does not invalidate what the GP said: [paraphrasing] that the Bible is difficult to understand and mostly of questionable value to a modern reader.