Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I'm surprised nobody mentioned it yet. It made me reconsider quite a few things.
Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
191–200 of 225 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#192Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse Never really been one to enjoy popular books on philosophy (Alchemist was overrated, Monk who sold his Ferrari cliched, The Secret just boring ...IMO) and picked this up at a used book store. The book truly put a new perspective on life for me. Perhaps it was a combination of the time when I read the book: Undue stress, massive imposter syndrome, that feeling of not moving ahead in life, a…
Hindu god Ganesha was created to curb Buddhism and thats why Buddhism is not famous in india.
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#193I am that, collected talks with nisargadatta maharaj.
Simple, instructional, profound in its ability to change me beyond words.
And fierce beyond imagination.
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#194Siddhartha
It is the one book I always re-read every couple of years.
I first read in high school - it is a fairly short book.
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#195Feeling Good by David Burns Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Quiet has been the one life-changing book for me. I read it at a time when I thought of myself as unsocial (because I didn't like parties) and was uncomfortable expressing myself even among a large group of friends. After reading that book and realizing how widespread introversion is, I became more and more comfortable in my own skin. Ironically I also started enjoying more at parties because I wasn't judging myself constantly, which helped me become more of a pseudo-extrovert when I needed to be.
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#196Rationality: from AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain a bit what the method is? If it is not mindfulness, what is it? Thanks
The method is just to realize that the pain isn't due to any structural abnormality but rather due to suppressed emotions. I think the easiest way to learn more about it is to watch Dr. John Sarno's lecture on YouTube (its about 50 mins long and quite easy to grasp at 2X speeds)
Do you mean this lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p20QhBz-Tik ?
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
The method is just to realize that the pain isn't due to any structural abnormality but rather due to suppressed emotions. I think the easiest way to learn more about it is to watch Dr. John Sarno's lecture on YouTube (its about 50 mins long and quite easy to grasp at 2X speeds)
Do you mean this lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p20QhBz-Tik ?
It's here (1). Starts around 10 min mark. It's the one he used to give to people who he attended to personally I think.
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#199As a handful of other people have said here, the Bible. It changed my life (although who knows what I would have become if I hadn't read it). Eventually, I decided that if it made such a difference in my life, I should be part of making it available to others. So I studied linguistics, and became a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators/ Summer Institute of Linguistics, who translate the Bible into minority languages (usually languages which were previously unwritten). That got me into computational linguistics. While I'm not a WBT/SIL member any more, I am still a Christian, and I do still work in computational linguistics, which I'm pretty sure I would not otherwise have gotten into. And it has been worth it all.
Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
#200As a handful of other people have said here, the Bible. It changed my life (although who knows what I would have become if I hadn't read it). Eventually, I decided that if it made such a difference in my life, I should be part of making it available to others. So I studied linguistics, and became a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators/ Summer Institute of Linguistics, who translate the Bible into minority languages (…
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