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Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?

#121

Post by moubarak »

Sven7 wrote: post #120
moubarak wrote: post #115

It's a religious scripture. Unfortunately you need to learn Arabic first. Translations don't do it justice to say the least. The book is called The Quran. It talks about parallel universes, "aliens", super heroes, travelling through space and time, how ants communicate, and even modern superpower alliances. It's a hard read even if you know Arabic. For instance, reading a phrase from the first chapter will not make s…

It's nonsense written 1500 years ago which is why it's hard to read. There are interesting themes. Great poetry but nothing too "mind blowing" when compared with similar texts of the period from other religions and cultures.

Your opinion of the book is interesting. is it safe to say that you haven't read it? i'm assuming that because there is no poetry in there. Just assuming. Otherwise your opinion is interesting because there is a large group of people who share the same. i personally found it mind blowing.

Edit: Typo

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?

#125

Post by eveningcoffee »

dikaiosune wrote: post #39

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The core story is one of stalinist Faust but the whole arc is much better.

This is "a little" off topic but I wanted to share experience. I have been lucky to have been seen Simon McBurney's interpretation of The Master and Margarita in the theatre. The tram scene with Pontius Pilate just blew me away.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?

#126

Post by eveningcoffee »

Symmetry wrote: post #47

I'm just going to answer with the books that rearranged my understanding of the world the most. In no particular order. "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. "Quantum Computing since Democritus" by Scott Aaronson. "The Strategy of Conflict" by Thomas Schelling. "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "The World until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond. "The Retreat To Commitment" by W. W. Bartley. "The Myth of the Rational Vote…

> "The Strategy of Conflict" by Thomas Schelling.

"Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace" by Edward N. Luttwak

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?

#127

Post by ludicast »

davidy123 wrote: post #79

(Trouble on) Triton, by Samuel Delaney. I read a lot of sf in my early teens (in the late 70s), all the classic space-ship stuff, this was one of the first that in a very real way brushed all that aside and exposed more about individual values, by following a protagonist who really wasn't admirable. If you aren't just looking to excite yourself about the amazing possibilities of science and advantage, it's highly rec…

Cool seeing his name. I grew up about 3 blocks from him and his daughter Iva (he was gay and had Iva with a lesbian poet (actually think they were married, not sure if it was just an arrangement though)). Iva was my best friend when I was pre-school age, fwiw :).

Have a lot of great memories of him and his daughter. Now that I have young kids of my own, every so often something reminds me of those days.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?

#128

Post by hoers »

tptacek wrote: post #100
hoers wrote: post #55

Crazy to Grasp: - Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game - Hofstädter - Gödel, Escher, Bach - Bulgakov - Master and Margherita - Melville - Moby Dick - Joyce - Ulysses - Everything by Baudrillard (esp. 'Agony of Power') - Everything by William Burroughs (The ticket that exploded, Place of dead roads, Discipline of DE) Not that crazy to grasp, but still amazing: - Everything by Egon Friedell (mostly Historical, unbelieva…

Love that Bulgakov book (apparently the translation you pick matters a lot, but I wouldn't know, since my sister gave it to me as a gift). I like the Hesse book a lot, although the metaphor is more powerful to me than the book, which is probably not the first Hesse book I'd suggest.

Yeah sadly a lot of books from the former soviet union are still circulating with horrible translations (if any). I can't really give a recommendation either because I read it in german.

And truth to what you say about the glass bead game, the first 200 pages are a torture, but I still cherish it even for the metaphor alone. Do you know of any book that does a better job bringing that across? That'd be very interesting.

+ Edit to my post: Meant to put Finnegan's wake to Joyce, not Ulysses! (even thought that's a pretty decent mindbender in itself)

+ Some I forgot:

- C G Jung - The Red Book (get the readers edition)

- Nobody mentioned McKenna! 'True Hallucinations' for example. Skip everything to do with I Ching and Timewave.

- Illuminatus! trilogy was only mentioned once for some reason (but then horrible to read)

- Toffler - Third Wave

- Gibson - Neuromancer

- Hesse - Demian

- P K Dick - Electric Sheep

- J A West - Serpent in the sky

- R A Wilson - Prometheus Rising

and some awesomely trippy, mindbending 'children's books':

- Preußler - Krabat

- Lindgreen - Brothers Lionheart

- Ende - Momo

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