Books That Changed My Life
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"Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution" (Steven Levy). I bet this book is quite familiar to many news.yc readers. For me, it was the first book I read that introduced me to the idea that software could be written by ordinary people and not just big companies (I was pretty young and didn't have much experience using a computer at the time). After reading this, I went out and found Linux & then stopped using windows.
"The Backpacker" (John Harris - pseudonym). It's a big world out there with plenty of adventures to be had. I read this a few years ago and have wanted to travel ever since. (next week I'm going to France to spend a few months cycling. I'll probably get to go to Spain/Italy a little too)
"Neuromancer" (William Gibson). I can't remember when I first read this but I've come back to it a dozen times over the years. Gibson is my favourite fiction author (though his books seems to get closer to reality over time as technology catches up with him). This book really inspired me to drink lots of coffee and sit in front of a computer 20 hours straight. The insomnia and caffeine addiction were worth it considering what fun I've had in the process.
"startup: a silicon valley adventure" (Jerry Kaplan). This is Kaplans book about his experience with building Go corporation (early PDA's). I saw how intense his experience was and decided that I was going to have my own company one day.
Other news.yc readers: please post your own books too - knowing what people have read is a great way to get inside their head and see what they are like and you guys are an interesting bunch of people.
The Hyperion novels, by Dan Simmons
Retire Young, Retire Rich by Kiyosaki and Letcher (and other books of theirs as well)
Principles of Effortless Power by Peter Ralston (martial artist)
A lot of stuff by John-Roger (spiritual author) - helped me decide that I'm here to serve the people around me, as best I can
Intro to the Theory of Computation, by Mike Sipser
Many of the physics books I've read over the years (though now a hacker I be, I started as a scientist... still am at heart). Not one in particular, except maybe Modern Quantum Mechanics by Sakurai, and Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics by Sussman & Wisdom
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Role-playing game manuals, especially D&D 2nd edition (just the current edition at the time, when I was a kid)
You know, just making this list reminds me of how grateful I am to be here in this time and place. My life has been so uplifted by reading. I cannot imagine what it would be like without.
Fundamentally it works just like any fiction: it starts by capturing your imagination, perhaps moving into your mind and emotions. If it's really good, it can touch even deeper than that.
Hyperion did that to me. And I don't know the mechanism. After reading it, my world was just bigger. Tremendously so. And I mean the real life world, not just the world of imagination and emotion we all go in to when reading great fiction. [ed: nonfiction too.] Something about it forever changed how I move through the world, how I treat myself and others, even my goals for this lifetime. Call it inspiration.
It's the same with all the other books on my list. That's why I put them there.
The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Gandhi didn't outsource the pursuit of truth. He thought it was too important. It was a job that would be poorly done if left to the authorities religious, political, or scientific. Just like good hackers know software is too important to leave to someone else.
Gandhi also made it obvious that I could apply a rigid filter to books. Read authors who, 1. Reason soundly with the reader, and 2. Have led significantly, uncommonly, fruitful lives. The sample size of humanity seems to have gotten large enough to where you can find someone who meets both criteria so I'm done settling for less.
I like the brand of epistemology that says, variously, that the more true things you believe, the better you can harmonize with, hack, pwn, reality. So I perk up now when I find someone peacefully liberating a country or figuring out how to do a startup while 'being good,' and hope that they've written about it.
So if you'd like to read a book by a social, physical, and metaphysical scientist, who (judging from what he accomplished) collected a lot of knowledge and hacked the system good, read this book.
But don't take my word for it.
Mein Kampf - never has fascism looked so reasonable (if a little repitious). A portrait of a dangerous idea.
120 Day's of Sodom - Freedom as most people will never experience it.
1984 - the first book that, as a child, told me that every adult had lied to me and I was walking in to a trap.
Bible, Quaran, 2600 - showed me that social engineering can get you a long way.
The Eighteenth Emergency, Betsy Byars. Re-read this when I was an adult and realised how brilliantly Byars does dialogue, and how she builds the whole millieu around it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eighteenth-Emergency-Betsy-Byars/dp/...
Goodbye To Berlin, Christopher Isherwood. A memoir of Isherwood's time in pre-Nazi Germany. The most beautiful prose I have ever read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_to_Berlin
"Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" (Paul Reps) Short zen stories that drive home a point per story. Suggest thinking about one of the stories for a whole day each and every day. Helped me relax and be okay with who I am and what I am accomplishing.
"Kim" (Rudyard Kipling) Great introduction into indian culture as well as the to relations between Britain and Russia during the end of the 19th century. What really stood out to me was the spiritual search Kim's mentor takes as well as the significance attached to it. Also worth the read is the thinking and training around Kim becoming a self-reliant spy.
"Foundations of Financial Economics" (Chi-Fu Huang and Robert Litzenberger) Fantastic introduction into financial economics and derivations of key ideas in the theory and practice. Authors were also involved in LTMC Hedge Fund and subsequent blow up. (Chi-Fu in LTCM and Litzenberger in Goldman). Liked seeing how Chi-Fu Huang went from mba student to phd student to professor to hedge master of the universe. Very interesting.
"SICP" (Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman) Besides the obvious excellence of the book as an introduction into computer science. It also showed me how human and approchable the "stars" of CS were as I had Sussman as a freshman advisor and Abelson responded to emails I wrote him before I went to college.
A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony. It was the first of my mom and dad's sf books that I chose to read for myself. It started a lifelong love affair. I outgrew the Xanth, but not the sf.
Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy. An unassailable Mount Everest in the peaks of high literature. It's a spiritual journey I've taken repeatedly over the years.
The Mind of the Maker, by Dorothy L Sayers. A meditation on the intersection between art, creativity, free will, and the Trinity. My copy is getting worn out.
The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, by David Tracy. This book was the cap to my spiritual journey in college. It is about finding authentic experience in classics, whether they are from your own tradition or not. It is a synthesis of modern Christian (also Catholic) thought, but also about how Christianity should be mediated through lived beliefs and culture, and how people should be open to real experiences from a culture not their own.
Miller's 'Sexus' changed the way I see the world.
and Mencken's 'Chrestomathy' changed the way I comment on the world.
Hmm, actually, all three are just about due for a good re-read
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (R. P. Feynman)
What do you care what other people think? Further adventures of a curious character. (R. P. Feynman)
I serendipitously found the Feynman books right after I dropped out of college while I was flying around interviewing for jobs. It was a stressful time and I was feeling pretty dejected, but then I found these amazing books: this Feynman guy was running around having fun and enjoying life, rejecting the notion of convention for the sake of convention, but the amazing thing was that he did it while being a completely real and serious scientist.
Godel, Escher, Bach was pretty good too, but it wasn't a transformative experience for me. It probably would've been great if I had read it when I was 14 or 15 when my dad first gave me his copy... but I read the first few pages and decided I didn't want to read 1000 pages of flowery literary/historical junk.
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem
The Society of the Spectacle by Debord
Nihilist Communism by Monsieur Dupont
The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
And other classics: 1984, brave new world, planet of the apes, huckleberry fin, slaughter house five (anything by vonnegut actually!). Anything I have managed to get by Stafford Beer has been incredible as well not only as a work of relating to systems analysis but on a philisophical and political level at the same time. Too bad most of his books are in the hundreds of dollars. If you get the chance download Designing Freedom. I will see if I can find a link again.
Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide (tipped my decision to study mathematics)
Alice Miller - most of her books (makes me view other people in an entirely different light - maybe these books should be way on top of my list)
Richard Dawkins - Blind Watchmaker (Evolution shows everywhere)
Albert Camus - Myth of Sisyphus (although I only read the first couple of pages, still seems the only approach to the "meaning of life" possible. Helped me against depression)
Walt Disney (or actually Carl Barks) - Donald Duck stories, a very good encouragement for wild imagination. Read those a lot as a kid.
Jules Verne - science and adventure...
...
In that spirit, apart from Gandhi's autobiography the other book that changed my life and millions of others is "Thirukkural" which was originally written in Tamil a few thousand years back. I don't have a specific English translation to recommend but here is one (from a wikipedia reference entry actually),
The Moral Animal
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Language in Thought and Action
Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
The Adapted Mind
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
The Tao is Silent
Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition
Read it for free here. http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/
The plot of the book, in short, is what happens if a benevolent AI bound to Asimov's Three Laws gains absolute control over matter and energy.
The Fountainhead,
Stranger in a Strange Land,
The Rules of Life,
Catch-22,
1984,
Brave New World, and
An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning (by Peter Eccles)
In the real world everyone rates themselves in comparison to other people too, but most of the time the process is not very open. In the workplace people are prevented from saying what they think about other people by office politics, employment law, and HR policies against this and that. Probably the only place it is really transparent is in school (If memory servers correct there is a PG essay about this).
Stranger in a strange land is definitely a great book and Heinlein has to be one of the greats of SF writing. Read 'the moon is a harsh mistress' too if you get the chance.
Walden, Civil Disobedience, Letters to a Stoic
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
http://lifehacker.com/397142/what-books-have-changed-your-li...
The Age of Reason - Thomas Paine
The first ignited my love for reading the the second changed how I look at life.