All of them have significantly shaped my worldview, and I'd love to know HN's favorite nonfiction books
Genesis specifically is packed with common references, can be read in a few hours, and is fairly engaging and accessible as a coherent piece of literature in its own right.
Ecclesiastes is like five pages and possibly the most quoted thing across european cultures. So many literary references and even common idioms come from there.
After that any one synoptic gospel + john + acts will set you up to catch a lot of christianity-specific cultural references. And then revelation imagery comes up a ton in pop culture, music, film & tv.
All of what I mentioned is about the length of a medium-short novel and would set you up to catch probably the majority of allusions to the bible. You'd be missing some major stuff like moses, david & solomon, plus a bunch of misc but influential stories like jonah & the whale, samson etc. But for bang for your buck it would get you pretty far.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adamlewisgreene/bibliot...
Reading Brian Shul's "Sled Driver" autobiography on the tablet. Shul was an SR-71 pilot, and the book is about 10% Shul and 90% SR-71. It reads fast and it's interesting, with unexpected bits of information.
Just finished David Goggins' "Can't Hurt Me." It's supposed to be a "motivational" autobiography. I can't say I felt motivated. Most of his problems were self-inflicted, and he treated his family and children like dirt.
Jocko Willink is a similar "Navy seal teaching you the secrets to becoming a badass" but his approach seems a lot more sane and useful, and has been more effective in his own life.
I read it shortly after buying the house that would be (and is) our 'family home', of a very similar vintage (early 80s, East Coast.) Certainly not every home from the past was artfully constructed (or even well-built), but something just feels different with the modern, Fortune-500 homebuilders that rush an army of interchangeable subcontractors through cookie-cutter plans to maximize interior square-footage and stack as many units as possible on a tract of land.
It's a simple book that can be summarized in an essay, but listening to it repeatedly while driving helps me keep my life on track.
In the same category, I also love the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, but also haven't gotten much real world traction from it.
e.g. To build a flossing habit, floss just one tooth a day. Once you've got into the habit of pulling out floss and flossing just one tooth, you can move onto flossing two teeth and so on.
If at any point you feel resistance to doing the bigger habit you're trying to build up, you can always revert back to doing the initial tiny habit of flossing just one tooth.
# Identity
There are only two possible foundations for long-term behavioural change: 1. a re-prioritisation of personal values 2. a substitution of an existing behavior $X$, which is based on a personal value $V$, with a different behavior $Y$, which is also based on $V$.
# Dealing with Existing Habits
Before we can effectively build new habits, we need to get a handle on our current ones. All habits serve you in some way—even the bad ones—which is why you repeat them.
# Implementation Intentions
Implementation intentions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implementation_intention) have been empirically shown to be effective. The idea behind implementation intentions is to eliminate ambiguity. Explicitly write down WHEN and WHERE you will do WHAT.
Write down a list of implementation intentions for all habits you wish to develop.
# Three Layers of Behavior Change
1. Identity 2. Process 3. Outcome
Identity is what you believe, process is what you do, outcome is what you get. Systems lead to outcomes.
# Four Steps of Habit Formation
1. Cue (triggers behavior) 2. Craving (desired change of state) 3. Response (behavior performed to achieve change of state) 4. Reward (outcome delivered by response)
Of these four, only cues can reliably be manipulated. Design your environment around the habits you wish to develop. The two most common cues are time and location.
## Breaking Habits
1. Remove the cues from the environment. 2. Expose how the bad habit inadequately addresses the underlying motive that caused its formation. Clearly describe the negative consequences of the habit in writing. 3. Replace the bad habit with a good one that more effectively addresses the underlying motive.
# Habit Scorecard
You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them. To create your scorecard, write down everything you do for an entire day. At the end of the day, mark each behavior as either bad, neutral, or good.
# Underlying Motives
* *Reducing uncertainty* * Conserve energy * Social bonding * Social approval
Cravings are arbitrary manifestations of underlying motives. Evolution hasn't set up our brain to reward e.g. playing video games in particular. But it did set up our brain to reward a reduction in uncertainty. Products and services don't create fundamentally new motives, they latch on to existing ones.
# Miscellaneous
Without good health habits, you will always seem to be short on energy.
It is easier to associate a new habit with a new context, than to build a new habit in the face of competing cues.
You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. This means that trying to resist temptation is an ineffective strategy. In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run, environmental cues overpower you.
Every day has multiple decisive moments, where split-second decisions decide how you will spend the next one to three hours. It's easier to continue what you are doing than to start it.
In deliberate thoughts, as well as in speech, always use formulations of the form "I go for a run", not "I have to go for a run", regardless of how you feel about it.
Every habit is about overcoming obstacles to get what you want. You don't want the habit itself, you want what it delivers.
Every 2-3 years, particularly in the periods when I'm not actively in network engineering, I re-read this book from start-finish - and it just completely centers my mindset with regards to pretty much every fundamental topic in Network Engineering. There almost didn't need to be a 2nd Edition - most of the major topics were covered in 1st edition - the only major difference is the use of lots of protocol examples. The core material itself is timeless.
Here is just one gem from Chapter 5 - "Hubs, Switches, Virtual Lans and Fast Ethernet"
"I originally resisted adopting the term switch. Unlike thing, switch sounds like a word you'd apply to a well-defined concept, so it makes people assume that there is a crisp definition that everyone else knows. I thought the world was already confusing enough with the terms bridge and router. Unfortunately, people coined the word switch assuming they were inventing a new concept, somehow different from a bridge or a router. And there were various independent product concepts named switch. As "switch" vendors expanded the capabilities of their products, the products wound up being functionally the same as bridges and routers, usually a hybrid or superset. One cynical (and ungrammatical) definition I use for switch is "a marketing term that means fast." Almost all products these days are some hybrid or superset of bridges and routers. So maybe it's right for the industry to settle on a new word, switch, as a more generic term for a box that moves data."
After reading your comment I'm sorry I didn't keep the book!
It is a great book, though.
you'd call the operator to route (e.g. a router) your call to the right location, and then the switchboard operator inside said location. routing itself came from postal routing, IIRC
I’m not a network pro and these concepts could be totally wrong in my mind. Not sure why I’m spewing them out, other than to give myself something to solidify in the future.
Switches (specifically Layer 2 switches) will send broadcast frames to all ports*, but traffic that is unicast to a specific MAC address will only be sent to the port where that MAC address was learnt. To keep track of the MAC address to port mappings, a switch will have one or more "forwarding" or "MAC-address" tables.
Routers (and Layer 3 switches) are not necessarily Internet connected, but will mostly be seen in larger networks. Being mostly Ethernet-based these days, they maintain two tables - an ARP table (mapping IP Addresses to MAC Addresses) and a routing table (mapping IP prefixes/routes to destination IP addresses). When an IP packet comes into a port, the router will consult it's routing table and find the most specific route that matches the destination of the packet. From the destination IP of the route, it will then determine the egress interface that it should send the packet towards, then use the ARP table to work out the destination Ethernet MAC address for the Ethernet frame it will construct to transport the IP packet in on it's way to the next-hop router.
* During the early 00s there were "Dual-Speed Hubs", which were basically two hubs (one 10Mbps, one 100Mbps) joined together internally via a two-port Ethernet switch. Fortunately the price of 100Mbps Ethernet switches kept falling and they weren't around too long.
* Provided those ports are all members of the same broadcast domain/VLAN
the psychology of money
getting things done, first edition
How to Win Friends and Influence People (Unfortunate title for one of the best books on plain common sense when it comes to interacting with people)
getting things done, first edition
Many say the same of the infamous “the art of the deal” from Donald J Trump” in 1989.
He, (pretty much), defines a base framework he still follows himself vehemently, today.
The way he executes today becomes a little less exciting, imo, each time he takes over headlines.
Hackers, by Steven Levy - Again, computing history, and especially relevant to me because I started personal computing in the mid-80s and like reading about the stuff I missed. Levy is always fun to read. There are a lot of good books on the microcomputer revolution, this one is just my favorite.
Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott - It's not just a book about writing, but a book about living. Lamott is a born storyteller, and every one of her non-fiction books is inspiring and highly readable.
On Writing, by Stephen King - I am not a King fan. The only fiction piece he's written I come back to is The Stand. But the story of how he became a writer, and his life as a writer, gives me hope for my own writing. And his advice is valuable; even if I don't like his books, I can't argue with his success.
Have you watched "Halt and Catch Fire?"
Clear actionable direction on how to negotiate.
Always makes me feel that I’m not ambitious enough. And that too many smart people are in the wrong industry (finance).
- The Dip, Seth Godin
Don’t give up. Unless you’re in a cul-de-sac.
- Obviously Awesome, April Dunford
Your competitor is often not who you think it is.
And Lean startup - far too ambitious for me at the moment, but I learned a lot from it.
4 hour work week - I would say it’s more like a fiction book, but still fun to read.
7 habits of highly effective people - it’s saved my life in high school, I knew some parts of it by heart.
Lean startup is a recent discovery for me - and boy do I wish I’d read it sooner!
Edit: also I highly recommend Stephen Covey’s audiobooks of 7 Habits and First Things First (read by him)
The first time I read it, I didn't love it and only engaged with it superficially. But gradually I began thinking about it more and came back to it, and I read it with more attention. After re-reading it several times I think it is one of the deepest and most important books I have ever read. It has changed how I see the world.
* Problems are inevitable, but problems are soluble
* All evils are the result of insufficient knowledge
* Knowledge being the result of trial and error, and there being no such thing as certain knowledge.
* The idea of 'wealth' being the set of all physical transformations you can bring about.
* The thing that distinguishes people from non-general intelligences is the ability to create an endless stream of explanatory knowledge; that is, to have unbounded creativity.
* People are universal explainers; anything that can be understood, we can understand
* If something is permitted by the laws of physics, then the only thing that can prevent it from being technologically possible is not knowing how
* How commitment to knowledge growth entails a commitment to particular moral values (tolerance, openness to being wrong, valuing the truth); objective morality
I love how the ideas support each other and have such tremendous reach (morality, politics, epistemolgy, computing). And it is written very cleanly and lucidly, which perhaps makes it easy to read quickly and miss how dense and deep the ideas actually are.
Much like GCC, and the Linux kernel, and the PostgreSQL query planner, the Bible is a battle-tested historical artifact. There may be a slew of yet-to-be-discovered "edge cases" in its interpretation (and perhaps Ehrman is the man to discover them). But in the main, it's an incredibly reliable witness to history.
So, while I wouldn't want to discourage people from starting their study of Biblical textual criticism with Bart Ehrman, I would definitely discourage them from concluding it with him.
The one who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and examines him.
Prov. 18:17
Of course there is historically accurate stuff in the Bible, but there's also a ton of supernatural claims that can't be proven or disproven (aka they are non-falsifiable). For that matter The Odyssey has survived a long time and has some accurate historical things in it, but we don't take the Odyssey's stories about supernatural things at face value.
It's also not hard to show that The Bible is not historically reliable just by comparing different sections of it that contradict each other.
For example, what were Jesus' last words on the cross? Mark, Luke, and John all disagree on this and have different words. They can't all be his last words.
What day did he actually die? Was it the day after passover as in Mark, or the day before as in John?[1]
We absolutely agree though on reading lots of perspectives on it. There is no shortage of PhDs who debate these things, so at the end of the day you'll have to either choose the stay agnostic on it, or go with what seems "most likely" to you.
[1]: https://ehrmanblog.org/why-have-i-stopped-explaining-how-i-l...
Crazy that historians don't seem to believe that right?
- Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker helped me process a number of assaults that happened to me as a child
- Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann helped me understand intuitively how databases work and how to use eventual consistency to handle workloads
- The Highly Sensitive Person: How To Thrive when the World Overwhelms You by Elaine Aron this helped me process my and my families neurodivergence.
- Structure And Interpretation of Computer Programs by Ableson and Sussman. Great book, it's how I learned to love Lisp. I felt like I grew 10x in skill from completing all the homework.
- Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe. This is the book that got me into powerlifting as a regular part of my fitness. I used this to heal my back, neck, and wrist pain. Changed my life.
- Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney. The GOAT of plein air painting himself teaches so much about how light works on complex forms. I've dog-eared this book.
- Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. A great look into how to build and run a self organizing team. Very insightful for when I was leading several teams and needed inspiration for something other than the typical chain of command.
- The Classroom Management Book by Harry Wong. This book taught me so much about how humans work. I still apply lessons from this book 20 years later.
- Real World Haskell by O'Sullivan, Goerzen, Stewart. This taught me a lot about Haskell, and got me into all the neat effects needed to make a function pure but still handle IO/async, etc.
- Peopleware by DeMarco, Lister. My go to book for people management and a philosophy of project management
- Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples by Gottman. I love this book for teaching me how to be a better spouse and friend.
- The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing by Larimore, Lindauer. A great guide to building a permanent portfolio that will return consistent gains with the market. Simple in hindsight, thanks to this book. Best book on investing I've ever read.
- How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens. Introduces the zettlekasten system for thinking and creativity. Very inspiring, got me to start a personal file that I keep going to this day, five years later.
- Twenty Small Sailboats to Take you Anywhere by Vigor. I read this book over and over, dreaming of buying a small boat and sailing around the world. Maybe this year...
Can you share a bit on why you love it
Running and writing code blended together with a connected REPL is like being jacked into the machine. Imaging how much of an improvement a connected debugger is over reading through logs. This is that much of an improvement over a connected debugger. The code is live running right in the editor all the time. More like magic than debugging.
And then macros, both anaphoric and hygenic, that let you write your own language inside the lisp itself. They should be used extremely sparingly, but when used at the right time it can literally change the language itself to better suit your need.
And then the code itself being a data structure, it all feels so connected, integrated, and unified.
I have never had as much fun as I do when working in Lisps. I haven't done it for money in a while, but maybe one day again.
Let Over Lambda and SICP are what really got me turned into a lifetime lisp lover. By the end of LoL you make a version of Forth inside of lisp! https://letoverlambda.com/
Agreed. They actually updated their stance in their second edition that was published in 2017 since Vicki acknowledges that their advice was only relevant when it was originally published. They lean more towards index funds now.
The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank
The Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema
Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky
Mastering the Complex Sale - Jeff Thull
How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
I read this book a long time ago ... 2006, I think? I should re-read it. And read the author's sequel books to it.
Out of curiosity, would you say your understanding changed or deepened upon re-reading it?
It's hard to do justice to that in a few words. I think I had a different reason for reading it the second time, as opposed to the first time.
The first time around, I think I was more reading it because I like to think of myself as an educated, scientific-minded person, and it was one of "those books" that any self-respecting "educated, scientific-minded person" was sort of "supposed to" have read. That and I was mentally already in a place somewhere in the nether regions between "agnostic" and "atheist" and I knew of Dawkins as a strong advocate for atheist thinking, and I guess I was looking for something that might convince me one way or the other. Or maybe that's just post-hoc rationalization on my part, but that's what I felt like I found. I felt much better about just calling myself an atheist after reading the book.
Anyway... one thing I was struck by though, was his discussion of things like kin altruism and reciprocal altruism and some of the game theoretical stuff, including mentions of Robert Axelrod and his research. So the second time I read the book, I was really looking to focus more on those sections, and take notes and do some further research. And all of that was really driven by my interest in evolutionary computing / genetic algorithms / etc. and a thought that I might find something there that I could apply to those areas. I wound up buying Axelrod's book The Evolution of Cooperation, but I sadly have not quite gotten around to reading it yet.
> And read the author's sequel books to it.
I've also read The Blind Watchmaker twice, although that was sort of by accident. I forgot I'd already read it, and I was moderately deep into the second read before I realized I'd read it before. It was worth it though.
I still have Climbing Mount Improbable, The God Delusion, The Ancestor's Tale, and a couple of other Dawkins books queued up to read as well.
Algorithns to live by - Brian Christian
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel khaneman
The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom - James Burnham
I think it would have been very difficult for Brian Christian alone to produce Algorithms to Live by: Tom Griffiths must have had a very strong presence in it.
It was Tom to give the "appetizer" presentation at TED: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_griffiths_3_ways_to_make_bette...
--
By the way, I see that Brian Christian has published a The Alignment Problem - Machine Learning and Human Values, https://brianchristian.org/the-alignment-problem/
Has anyone read it?
All Things Considered - G. K. Chesterton
Some others I daren't mention.
Category Theory for Programmers - Bartosz Milewski
The Design of Relational Databases - Heikki Mannila, Kari-Jouko Raiha
Without that information, I assume that the books that are mentioned more than once are the ones that I should look into.
- On the shortness of life - Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Growth - Show your work and Steal like an artist - Domain modeling made functional
Henry David Thoreau was part of the Transcendentalist movement, so the book reflects a lot of that philosophy. I am revisiting it after first reading it a decade ago and am finding it really fascinating now that I’m older and have spent a bit of time in the workforce and in society.
- Masters of Doom
- Atomic Habits
- How to Read a Book
- Books by Austin Kleon
I'm sure i'll remember more, but these were the ones that popped into my head. I'm trying to switch it up a little and start reading older books and get hooked so that I'm can reread those.
I can't reply to the emails you've been sending because the replies keep bouncing. Can you try emailing hn@ycombinator.com from a different address?
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 by Hunter S. Thompson: gives a better understanding of the political contexts that led to our current politics. Somehow, we keep re-living this election over and over again.
At least from what I've read from Ligotti, he has such a hauntingly poetic way to touch on the horrors of the mundane.
Thanks for sharing :)
https://medium.com/hyperlinked/john-siracusa-tells-us-what-i...
- Jonah: for its description of God's desire to have compassion on a group of people who don't know him, by leaving Jonah with no other option than telling those people about Him.
- Ecclesiastes: For "The Teacher's" many vignettes about how life is a quickly-dissipating vapor, and his pointing to ways to find satisfaction in it.
- Mark: Mark tells the story of Jesus' life and ministry in a no-nonsense, get-to-the-point kind of way.
- Romans: Paul gives a treatise on: the main problem of mankind, the inability of men to live up to any standard of behavior, the source of any confidence that anyone can have that God might be pleased with them, the way the Christian church relates to the people of Israel, and how to live in unity with people with whom you have disagreements.
- 1 John: John never got over the fact that he was loved by Jesus, and this letter is his recapitulation of that same love toward others.
[Jonah]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jonah%201&versi...
[Ecclesiastes]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1&...
[Mark]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1&version=...
[Romans]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1&versio...
[1 John]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+1&versio...
If the stars fall down on me
And the sun refused to shine
Then may the shackles be undone
May all the old words cease to rhyme
If the sky turned into stone
It will matter not at all
For there is no Heaven in the sky
Hell does not wait for our downfall"The Emperor of All Maladies". A haunting, personal, and intimate biography of cancer. Having been on the peripherals of several cancer patients, I find the book an incredible overview of the disease, and how to deal with its physical, mental, and societal consequences.
"In Force and Freedom, Burckhardt reduced the main elements of history to the state, religion, and culture, discussing the hypothetical and actual supremacy of each over the other two. “Culture” comes out best, religion worst in his value system, but the state has its dangers too..."
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/historians-europ...
Eye, Brain, Vision by David Hubel, IMO an excellent introduction to visual neuroscience for the layperson and a really, really nice example of good scientific writing
Huygens and Barrow, Newton and Hooke by VI Arnold, for the density of ideas
Perceptrons by Minsky and Papert, mainly as an example of clear mathematical exposition
I was originally pointed to this book as an answer to my persistent question "I love manufacturing, but it seems like the US economy hates manufacturing, why?" and while it did give me a satisfactory grasp of the macroeconomics involved, it also became my reference for a handful of trade policy / macroeconomic points that are, shall we say, less frequently bubbled up by The Submarine (in reference to the Paul Graham essay).
More about the book here: https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/11/gary_willss_nix.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...
"Never In Anger" by Jean Briggs. About her living 17 months among Inuit in the 1970ies, documenting how the Inuit see emotions and raise their children without any shouting or violence.
"Shots in the Dark - Japan, Zen, and the West" by Shōji Yamada. About the culture exchange between Japan and the West in the early 20th century and how several perceptions of Zen got constructed in the process.
"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstaedter. About core ideas in logic, music and art, and their connections. I always find something new there.
"In Praise of Mastery" / "芸談" by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. An essay about the japanese pursuit of mastery. It's a fascinating window into the arts perception in late 19th century Japan.
Webster's Dictionary of 1913. A great resource for looking up original meanings of words. I find it very useful for naming stuff in programming.
"Woe Is I" by Patricia O'Conner. A witty grammar book. O'Conner's entertaining style makes it easy to grasp the grammar topics and come back for more.
An esoteric book that summarises everything as a direction which moves away from quality and towards quantity. Here is an excerpt that uses this system to analyse modern workplace anonymity:
"[...] tendency to uniformity demands that individuals shall be treated as mere numerical 'units', thus realizing equality by a leveling down, for that is the only direction in which equality can be reached 'in the limit' [...] Anyone who wonders what happens to the individual in such conditions will find that [...] he is so to speak reduced to his substantial aspect, and this amounts to saying that he becomes scarcely more than [...] 'a body without a soul'. From such an individual the qualitative or essential aspect has indeed almost disappeared ('almost', because the limit can never actually be reached); and [...] the individual really no longer has any 'name' that belongs to him, because he is emptied of the qualities which that name should express; he is thus really 'anonymous', but in the inferior sense of the word. This is the anonymity of the 'masses' of which the individual is part and in which he loses himself, those 'masses' that are no more than a collection of similar individuals, regarded purely and simply as so many arithmetical 'units'. 'Units' of that sort can be counted, and the collectivity they make up can thus be numerically evaluated, the result being by definition only a quantity; but in no way can each one of them be given a denomination indicating that he is distinguished from the others by some qualitative difference."
"Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco. It's a book every manager should read about how, maybe, you can create a team that jells.
"The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker. Examines the necessities of knowledge work. What every manager and employee should read.
I used to look at dictionaries and a few reference books fairly often, but these days I use dictd and chop up the electronic versions of the reference books and pull up the page I'm looking for from the command line when I can.
Honorable mention to _How to Win Friends and Influence People_ (I agree with other comments that earlier editions are better) and _Getting Things Done_.
Thanks for starting this thread! Lots of good recommendations here.
Weizenbaum wrote the first AI chat program, Eliza, sixty years ago. I read his book shortly after it came out in 1976, and several times since, most recently last year after ChatGPT etc. arrived. I was impressed again how pertinent and prescient it is.
A fifty year old book about AI is still relevant because it is mostly about peoples' motivations for building and using AI, their expectations for it, and their responses to it. These haven't changed in fifty years and don't depend on the technology in the AI, or what it can actually do.
Weizenbaum recognizes that making and using computer technology has moral and ethical consequences and isn't afraid to say so. He argues that computers should not be used for some purposes, whether or not they can be made to work.
I am very interested in figuring out how to reduce the cost of energy and given my background is only in CS and Economics, I frequently have to reference texts like this until I have a better understanding to move beyond
Letting Go - David R Hawkins
Both books provide amazing reminders for the best ways to approach life and handle stress.
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy - You get what you've put your soul into
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - I love the storytelling by the author, you can hear Phil telling this story himself.
When I say no, I feel guilty by Manuel J. Smith - a book on assertive and non-manipulative communication. This has been incredibly valuable for improving my personal relationships and work. It's also allowed me to recognize and defend myself against emotional manipulation, which is more common than I realized. For many people that is the main way they communicate- by trying to control others with guilt through manipulation.. and I used to be both unaware and extremely vulnerable to it. It is useful to re-read and practice frequently, as these are skills that require practice.
The lean startup
The 4-hour workweek
The subtle art of not giving a f*ck
--
What I've found out, biographies are the best thing for me because I always want to know what happens next, but I also learn invaluable lessons from the biographee (just googled this term now and it exists!), so it's a nice mix of story and self-help
I go back to the section on Daniel Webster and the compromise of 1850 a lot. It always stuck with me how much courage it took to advocate for compromise and peace rather than head into a civil war.
Holiday, in most of his books, makes stoic philosophy relatable and gives examples of we'd be familiar with in modern day. It's a fairly easy read, and I gift it the most as well.
As a software engineer, I found his less popular book Perennial Seller to also be very good. It describes his writing style, which honestly is very similar to coding, but also talks about his approach to marketing his books, which drives the content.
Play Bigger by Al Ramadan (and a few others) which talks about category design. I haven't tried their newer books, but I'm somewhat tempted.
0. Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony, by Akio Morita, Edwin M. Reingold, Mitsuko Shimomura
1. The Practice of Programming (TPOP) , by Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike
2. Wings of Fire, by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Arun Tiwari
* 6 Meditations - Rene Descartes
I find it strange when people recommend censorship and somehow equate that to advancing democratic norms. Most recently I saw such perverted absurdities here on HN when Israelis users were justifying the expulsion of unfriendly news media. I cannot help but go back to Mills.
The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1864)
Intellectuals By Paul Johnson
Daniel J. Boorstin - The Discoverers
The Great Courses - The Industrial Revolution (audiobook/lectures)
Decline of the West - Spengler
This is the most powerful spiritual text I’ve encountered to date. Instantly places me in a state of deep understanding. I open it on a weekly basis.
- The Extended Circle - an Anthology of Humane Thought by Jon Wynne Tyson
- Letters from the Desert by Carlo Carretto
2. The subtle art of not giving a f*ck - Mark Manson
There are a few more but these are the actual killers.
Growing up in a sheltered middle-class home, it was my first awakening to 'the real world'
Like it or not, we enter into "adversarial" situations every day.
James Rhodes' (pianist) books 'Instrumental' and 'Fire on All Sides' (both memoirs) are, well, I hesitate to call them 'comfort reads' because they are harrowing. They're comforting in the sense that he brings to light some extremely confronting things (take the content warnings seriously!) and does it with earnestness, a deep desire to educate, a brilliant sense of humour, and despite never having gone through any of the things he has, the books are somehow extremely relatable. His passion for music is contagious as well.
As for general things I keep coming back to? Pretty much everything Bertrand Russell wrote. Mark Fisher, Judith Butler, too. Lots of Ancient Greek chaps, of course. Lots of philosophy.
I do sometimes read 'idiomatic <programming language>' type books for languages I'll probably never use. It's not all that impactful when not actually trying to program in the language but they're usually well written, interesting, and the ideas/philosophies/approaches to programming for the language can be valuable.
Timeless advice on money and life management
If you know you know.
The first is, despite its name, a manual for countries on how to win at capitalism. A must read to understand what works and what doesn't in macroeconomics.
About Nick Lane, he's an English biochemist working on cutting-edge investigation regarding the cell and origin of life. His work is very deep and leaves me with a sense of awe, of what nature and natural selection has 'built' and why life is the way it is.
Bhagavatam
Bhagavad Gita
Chaitanya Caritamrta
Mahabharata
Cicero's "How to Grow Old"
John Derbyshire's "Prime Obsession"