Ask HN: What are your non-technical non-fiction recommended reads? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are your non-technical non-fiction recommended reads?

9 pointsjwdunne10 comments

Interested in seeing what books have helped people improve their lives or learn useful skills.

For me, 'Driven to Distraction' was a helpful book, though limited to ADHD. 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman has been helpful too. Logging three things I'm grateful for each day led to one of the happiest months of my life.

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Critique of Pure Reason, Immanual Kant. It provided the solution which abstracted away the issues with empirical reasoning as the basis for fact and made possible modern scientific enquiry. The abstraction is so powerful that science can ignore the fact that it is a distraction and rebrand itself as independent science rather than the natural philosophy branch of philosophy.

Think and grow rich by napolean hill (read his golden rules as well), psycho cybernetics by maxwell maltz, Tao Teching by Lao Tsu (written centuries ago, it will give you deep insights on leadership), power of now by eckhart tolle, jonathan livingston seagull by richard bach, and of course the alchemist by paulo coelho!

How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Do people really like this book?? I thought it was cliche, dated and infomercially. Truly am perplexed when i see it recommended.

Thought the same thing too, saw a tl;dr somewhere once and it seemed like common sense

It only seems cliche because all the other books written on the same topic regurgitate it.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. It's a universal story, with the major features of every major world mythology catalogued and included within.

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman.

Feynman's curiosity and drive to learn new things is inspiring to me.

Business Adventures by John Brooks The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike

My suggestion is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. It's a very, very quick read.

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