What book has inspired you the most?
I just wanted to see what book everyone has read that has inspired them the most. Looking to find some great books to add to my reading list.
In middle-school, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers started a fairly strong libertarian bend as well as a somewhat antiauthortarian
In high-school, Atlas Shrugged gave me a clear vision of how important it was to create things with the skills I'd learned, and how naked self-interest could shape a society.
In college, Pump Six illustrated the failings of "In the future, it's going to be even more awesome to be rich and white".
After college, The Jungle showed me both the importance of social safety nets and how easily people who say "I'll just work harder" get screwed by the system--any system. Makers gave me a better appreciation for taking care of my self and my body.
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It's important, I think, to constantly be reading new things and taking in new ideas; had I stopped with Atlas Shrugged, for example, I'd probably be a lot different (and more naive) than I am today.
Also, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. How does one find meaning in life in a meaningless world?
www.goodreads.com has a lot of great reviews/suggestions as well
So much of who I am is a direct result of the experiences I had living on the road for several years. (I spent several summers, and one full year living on a bike.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form
- The notion that form (more generally, structure) is not something in itself, but the manifestation of the forces (constraints) acting on it. An example of that is how a water droplet not only has a particular form, but can only have that particular form, because that is a manifestation of the constraints (molecular structure of water) and forces (gravity, surface tension) acting on it.
- The notion of problem vs. context, and how you can find a solution by just moving the boundaries;
- Definition of good solutions as a function of "fitness";
- Development of the concept of "fitness", as a process of reaching balance between interdependent, positive and negative features;
- A critic on the current design process (he calls it the "conscious" process), in which features are proposed/changed indiscriminately, as opposed to forms that arise from feedback loops ("unconscious" process). He gives the comparison between a consciously architected building that fails to meet the requirements vs. an indigenous village in which the buildings already evolved, already meet the criteria given the constraints, and basically don't change anymore between generations
While the author's discusses all these from the PoV of architecture, I've found his insights have surprising parallels with other things, from darwinism to machine learning to data structures and algorithms.
"The Power of Now" is a great book about spiritual enlightenment. It opens up your mind to a different way of thought related to no stress, no pain, no anxiety, no past, no future, etc...
Everything in life is negotiable.
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