Which book(s) left a lasting impression on you?
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
The Selfish Gene.
As soon as the concept clicked halfway through the book my days as an evangelical were over.
It was interesting to me to hear years later that Wall Street types found it influential, because the thing I found most compelling was the explanation of why altruism and social generosity were rational traits. -
Survivor by Chuck "Fight Club" Palahniuk.
After Fight Club I went on a spree of reading this guys work. Survivor was the last of his written before the Fight Club movie made it big. It was also released a couple of years before 9/11 which killed its chance of being made into a movie.
I think it highlights how being passive in the world isn't enough to avoid doing bad things. You have to make your own choices to avoid a bad result. Interesting story structure and has some dark comedic moments too.
Welp, I know what I'm reading next. Thanks!
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Two books that made me cry at the end and helped me shape my idea of war and what really is for the common men are "Il sergente nella neve" (the sargent in the snow) by Mario Rigoni Stern, which is about the retreat of the Armir (italian army in Russia) after the second Don offensive by the Red Army from the point of view of Stern, as they started the endless march back to Italy on foot, with the Red Army biting their asses. Almost 80.000 between dead and missing. Amazing piece of literature and yet another reason to despise fascism; and All quiet on the western front, which doesnt need many explanations.
Absolute chills everytime i think about those books and the images of tragedy and hopelessness they shaped so vividly in my mind.
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in no particular order:
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Swallows and Amazons
- How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People
- The Wizard of Earthsea
in no particular order
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Not sure if intentional but made me chuckle.
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There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm and Sam Hughes.
Neat, looks like the author got a publishing deal and has a new version of it coming out later this year:
Here's the author's blurb about it, if it piques anyone else's interest that hasn't read it yet:
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.
Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams...
But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?
Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.
No, this is not your first day.
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Flowers for Algernon
Blackshirts and Reds - Parenti
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Flowers for Algernon
Blackshirts and Reds - Parenti
She's Come Undone and The Hour I First Believed both by Wally Lamb have made a immersion on me. They are both wonderful and hesrtwreathing novels. Also The Long Walk by Stephen King is frightening book that makes me wonder, what would happen if we allowed that in American.
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Whale Done by Ken Blanchard
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Time enough for love - Heinlein
Nor crystal tears - Foster
A world out of time - Niven
Ringworld - Niven
Sassinak - McCaffrey
The Martian - Weir
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Played bloody knuckles with hard copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire once in grade school, and still have a lil mark from it.
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in no particular order
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Not sure if intentional but made me chuckle.
It's worth a read.
I think it's often frowned upon for being somewhat of a naive juvenile pocket philosophical rambling, or the dairy of a madman, but I'd say that it introduces some valid points about the concept of quality that you can then think about yourself.
It's definitely on my top 10 list of books. Not because it's great, but because I can often relate to it in miscellaneous situations even 30 years after reading it.
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Neat, looks like the author got a publishing deal and has a new version of it coming out later this year:
Here's the author's blurb about it, if it piques anyone else's interest that hasn't read it yet:
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.
Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams...
But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?
Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.
No, this is not your first day.
Thank you for putting the blurb. I was in a waiting room and I got called as I posted. I hope someone enjoys this book as much as I do.
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The first book I read was "Guards, Guards" and it's still one of my favourites. I own the series and every few years I read through it again.
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It's worth a read.
I think it's often frowned upon for being somewhat of a naive juvenile pocket philosophical rambling, or the dairy of a madman, but I'd say that it introduces some valid points about the concept of quality that you can then think about yourself.
It's definitely on my top 10 list of books. Not because it's great, but because I can often relate to it in miscellaneous situations even 30 years after reading it.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Same here, top 10 but lower half. I used to re-read it every 4 or 5 years, but I reached an apex point where it held up less and less well, and even abandoned the last read.
That might also be a result of having kids and realising that, while he went through something horrifying in the end, his behaviour before that was rather obnoxious. That said, he could have chosen not to have painted himself in that light, I just never figured out whether he realised it himself or was oblivious / felt it was justified.
Still, some magnificent prose pieces about quality and perception that are highly quotable, and broadly useful as tools to interact with the world around you.
Lila I never quite got to grips with, but my old man said I should try it "when you're older, much older"
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
John Darnielle's Devil House is a GREAT novel. All of his books are but it's particularly great
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Manufacturing Consent. Chomsky.
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
When I saw that book in the elementary school library it was a revelation: There are books explaining the cool mysterious stuff like that! And written for kids to understand!
I think that one book is a big part of what sent me on the path to geekdom.
It wasn't technically my first nonfiction science book, which would be "Our Friend the Atom" but I wasn't old enough to actually read that when I had it (probably got destroyed before I could). I liked the pictures though.
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
Can I say the entire Discworld series? Sure they're funny fantasy stories, but I reckon Pterry's view on humanity formed a lot of how I think about the world.
Also Dark Money by Jane Mayer.
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Edit: thank you for sharing your suggestions, everyone. I’ll try to check out the ones I haven’t read. Hopefully the responses in this thread were helpful for you too.
The technological society by Jacques Ellul.
This book introduces a new way of looking at the world.
