Ask HN: Books That Should Be Read
I realize that I was not the only one who have a favorite book that I think everybody should read.
So, what books do you think that everyone should read, or at least should know about?
So, what books do you think that everyone should read, or at least should know about?
Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D. (http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised-Updated/d...)
This is the best popular treatment of cognitive therapy (nowadays cognitive behavioral therapy, I haven't read this newer edition). Anyone who's depressed really needs to try this out, with or without the aid of anti-depressants.
The thesis is that you, at least in part, make yourself depressed by telling yourself depressing things that are largely false, about yourself, about what others are saying and doing to/about to you, etc.; in general, incorrect filtering of what you perceive.
So you identify those things and do you best to correct your mis-perceptions. Since I read an earlier edition in the '80s, behavioral therapy has been added to the mix, and that's supposed to help (I can't vouch for it either way).
Anyway, after I read this (and a few other cognitive psychology works) talking therapy became absolutely useless ... I'd "fixed" myself as much as possible in this way.
(Knowledge of this is also really useful to understanding the end of the Evangelion anime TV series (seriously, the creator was coming out of a multi-year bad period, "living by not dying").)
Burns wrote a book in the 80s about how to meet people. It was the best book I ever read on how to meet girls. No gimmicks, just advice that works.
http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Connections-David-D-Burns/dp/...
Which, in turn, included links to these previous suggestions - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176710, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110899, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85840
'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson - Awesome cyberpunk novel that anyone with an interest in programming.
'The Night's Dawn Trilogy' by Peter F. Hamilton - Fantastically engrossing series of books that are so good you will finish them wishing they were longer. The portrait painted in the books is so vivid that you will remember it for years to come.
(In case you can't tell, I like Sci-Fi :-p)
"The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship" [a Bukowski book about getting high on making good work]
Just off the top of my head without any ordering.
my recent favorite: Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner
Anything by Haruki Murakami