Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Books Have Had a Significant Impact On Your Life?
gspec writes "A little background about me: 36-year-old computer engineer working in the Bay Area. While I bring in a comfortable salary, I consider myself an underachiever, and my career is stagnant (I have only been promoted four times in my 12-year career). I have led a couple projects, but I am not in any sort of leadership/management position. I realize I need to do something to enhance my career, and unfortunately, going back to school is not an option. One thing I can do is to read more quality books. My question: which books, of any type or genre, have had a significant impact on your life?"
Atlas Shrugged
fantastic book
Atlas Shrugged part 2 is in theaters today as luck would have it
I got first
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Great pointers for talking to people. Also I loved the art of war.
1984. First post beotches!
Please, that's the easy answer, and is playing to the crowd, not showing anything of actual import or meaning. Even if you read it every day, and swear by it, even if you read it in the original languages, you will not have much to offer if that's all you've got to say.
That said, you'll be better off than the people waxing eloquently over how Ayn Rand taught them how to live, and lightyears ahead of those who try to combine Jesus and John Galt.
I'm not sure if a book or school is going to do anything for you. You should choose a path (or different field) that you are passionate about and you will be driven to achieve.
That being said, Code Complete by Steve McConnell. Read it now.
There are three books that I found back in High School that shook my world view to its foundation.
First, Atlas Shrugged.
Second, The Illuminatus Trilogy.
Third, I received a little pamphlet in the mail from the Sub-Genius Foundation, informing me The World Ends Tomorrow, and You May Die!
"The Case For Mars" Robert Zubrin
When humanity stops looking towards a viable future of expansion, it always stagnates. This book puts humanity's future in perspective
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Everything I've read from Packt rates 8/10+ in my book.
I've read most all of his books, starting in high school. I doubt I would have half the imagination or curiosity about space as I do now without some of his ideas.
Notes from the Underground
Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
...and Atlas Shrugged.
internalize
Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets
Getting things done
Ender's game
Short history of nearly everything
The above mentioned How to win friends and influence people is also very good
Red queen
by Bowditch
I was looking to get into an epic fantasy, and I got a lot more than I asked for. Malazan is huge, and it touches on so many aspects of human nature. The series can be seen as a debate about everything, from poverty, to war, to politics... So much is touched by that book. It really gives a different viewpoint on what is really good and what is really evil. It's also jammed pack with action and intrigue. I personally hated GM's Song of Fire and Ice series (especially after book 3), and I found Malazan to be exactly what I wanted out of a fantasy epic.
But I would say the absolute biggest one was Sophie's World by Gaarder. I had already read a few philosophy books, or I should say books ABOUT philosophy or philosophers, but this one actually made me understand the intrinsic concept of what philosophy is.
One of the best introductory books (in all subjects in general) that I have ever read.
I dropped a phone book on my foot once.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov is and will always be my favorite series of books. Those are the first real science fiction books I read, they were welcome reprieve from those terrible books I had to read in high school.
Dune by Frank Herbert. The sheer scope of events which take place in this sage showed me how insignificant daily events really were. While it was fictional, the way the Shaddam, the Baron Harkonnen, and Muad'Dib feel about their subjects/followers/slaves gave me a hard dose of reality. There are a lot of people out there, and most of them have no idea that you just got picked on walking to class, dropped some spaghetti on your shirt, or had a really crappy day.
sudo make me a sandwich
As computer engineer, you're a little on your way there, this will give you idea how to apply it on other aspects of your life. Try Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.
Any of Isaac Asimov's books and/or short stories. The one with the most impact upon my life and personality was probably Foundation, along with the rest of the Foundation series.
"Violence is not the answer. Violence is the question. The answer is yes."
The life changer for me was George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Actually I like the HBO version better because of the nudity.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
And Libertarians everywhere rejoiced!
The Penthouse Letters. It was very informative.
I read 'How to Get Rich in 10 days" when I was 17 and I have never needed to work a single day.
...I love Black Art of 3D Game Programming: Writing Your Own High-Speed 3D Polygon Video Games in C http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571690042/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00
As a kid, I read many many Heinlein books, the Robot series and Foundations series by Asimov. Was a fan of Stephen King. Not much else.
is worth re-reading.
Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm are worth re-reading.
Austen, Jane. Chick can write.
Cervantes. Might want to read this in a reading group.
Conrad, The Secret Agent, why was it the Unabombers favorite book?
Tolstoy, War and Peace. Not long enough.
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Jack London
Twain
Skip Salinger. Re-reading Heller isn't as much fun as the first time.
It's amazing what billy beanne has done on a tiny budget and going against what all the experts said
In the end it's about using data rather than hunches and old wives' tales to make business decisions
(This is not my joke/story, just paraphrasing what I remember)
Two golfers had been meeting weekly for years - lets call them Joe and Bob. Joe started to notice one day that Bob was getting a lot better. So Joe asked Bob what he was doing, and Bob replied that he was taking some golf classes on the weekends.
Joe, not wanting to be outdone, bought a golf self-improvement book. And gave it to Bob, complimenting him on his desire to improve.
A few weeks later, Bob was back to his old self, and Joe was happily able to compete again.
Moral of the story: When Joe bought Bob the book, Bob stopped practicing and started reading. Don't substitute reading for doing.
Baver
Tips on how to deal with bad management.
What Books Have Had a Significant Impact On Your Life?
What about scientific and geographic magazines? They had a profound effect on my adolescent years. Particularly the picture essays on the Natives of the South Pacific.
Helps me avoid playing MMO's.
The C Programming Language - Kernighan and Ritchie
The Design of the Unix Operating System - Bach
Computer Networks - Tannenbaum
The Art Of Computer Programming - Knuth
Security Engineering - Anderson
Godel Escher and Bach - Hofstader
The Demon Haunted World - Sagan
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy - Adams
Adolph Hitler, My Part In His Downfall - Milligan
The Bible. Except for atheists and agnostics, most people should insert their favorite holy book here.
My college calculus book. Naturally.
Half a bookshelf full of Dr. Seuss books from my school library that I read as a kid.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The Kama Sutra
Most of Heinlein's work, although my personal favorite is Job:A Comedy of Justice (I'd swear the South Park guys got their idea of Heaven and Hell from their).
I'd add in Atlas Shrugged also, I didnt read until I was 35+.
Great book that teaches you that you have to live your life for yourself and not let rules or other people try to keep you down.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
Learn a Lisp.......
http://www.manning.com/suereth/
Learn something hard.......
You'll either prove that you are in fact an unaccomplished, unmotivated, underachiever....
or
You'll learn how much you don't know and do something about it......
In the end, a book isn't your problem.....
Your problem is that you lack passion. Great engineers are passionate about what they do. If your not, find something that gives you a reason to be what you are.
Loving what you do, IS the secret to life....
watch the movie: City Slickers:....here is a bit of the dialog
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shxx.
Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"
Curly: [smiles] That's what *you* have to find out.
HG Wells, Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HP Lovecraft, and Robert E Howard. Lovecraft and Howard had the biggest influence. I read a lot of scifi like A Mote In God's Eye and Robert Heinlein but Howard and Lovecraft had the biggest influence.
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I find this to be the greater work in the Philosophy of Science since Karl Popper's "the Logic of Scientific Discovery", and made a true Skeptic out of me. My scientific training taught me to be skeptic of theory but not to question the method as a whole. Besides being full of Wisdom, its also witty, practical, entertaining and passionate.
It's a lovely story about two friend who follow different paths in life. One scholastic, one bohemian. It contrasts the two fantastically. It helped me consider where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do, and ultimately was a factor in my deciding to not go work with computers and apply to medical school instead. I'm currently in my 5th year.
Have a read:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/0720612918/ref=sib_dp_kd#reader-link
Why Societies Need Dissent - Cass Sunstein
The Road to Reality - Roger Penrose
Liars and Outliers - Bruce Schneier
Diplomacy - Henry Kissenger
Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams
Free to Choose - Milton Friedman
Cosmos - Carl Sagan
Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
Bible
By Cliff Stoll. Read it early in high school. It got me really excited about computer security, and it pointed me towards the field I'm in now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
How to write your own fantasy games
how to write your own adventure program
computer battle games
computer space games
robotics (new technologies)
the usborne book of the furture.
the microadventures series.
etc.
all those books and more from the golden age of tech, the early 80's
alot of usborne books in there. on a bit of an old book jag.
and read Herman Hesse: Siddhartha
I did not know a crucifix could double as a dildo. Makes those impromtu nights over at my christian friends' all the more sexually gratifying,
The 48 Laws of Power
by Robert Greene
Lots of them. Here are a few pulled from my Goodreads list, in no particular order
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman - these are kids books, but when I reread them recently I realized that they had a profound effect on my adolescent mind.
Neal Stephenson - his science fiction gave me a taste of what the world could be.
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall - It's kind of silly, but a few years ago this book planted the seeds that got me running -- and not just running but running almost daily and LOVING it. Now I'm coming up on thirty with my fitness level tracking upwards. It's amazing.
Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
Porquoi?
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy had a major impact on my view of the world. His democratic corporation and gauging everything's environmental impact first before all other considerations really shook up how I thought about the world as it is now.
Na Han - "A Call to Arms" by Lu Xun. A Chinese revolutionary writer. Worth reading even in translation. Why do I get crushes on dead authors? ...that all having been said, I have probably beed deeply influenced by Heinlein, but perhaps in questionable ways. (And I'm female. Kind of sick and wrong.) And others I don't even want to admit to...
Cyteen by CJ Cherryh - seriously one of the best pieces of science fiction of the last century (and had some influence on my heading into biomed from the computer industry. Might have done it anyway...)
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Strogatz - which was probably a better reason to go into the mathy side of biomed, but I didn't run into it until I was already in research. (I was explicitly looking for dynamical systems theory, I just didn't know that's what it was called.)
Oh, and I must put in a word for Apostol's Calculus. The hundreds of hours of my life sucked up by these books... (Really, they're the most rigorous, in ever sense of the word, books on calculus.)
And let's throw in Before European Hegemony by Abu-Lughod just to balance things out a bit. (This cound easily become the poli-econ section...)
Reading these two novels by Conrad really shook me up and made me realise I was wasting my life as a chef. Now i'm doing a PhD after finishing my under with 1st class honours.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.- Shelley
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."
Not the books themselves, per se.
I remember reading it when I was a kid
All science fiction, but I've read quite a few of his books. Most of his novels are based around now or in the near future, and I often have some eye-opening experiences about how life & the world could be so much different if a few circumstances were changed.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander. This changed the way I experienced being in buildings, neighborhoods, and cities, where I spend most of my time. One idea I liked is that you can structure the environment to bring pleasure to people (see also "Thermal delight in architecture"). Another is that you can understand the problem by looked at the ways people have used to solve it. It was fun to see this idea played out a few years later in the software realm.
I'm not an architect, if that matters.
Gormanghast, now there is a study of stagnation! Even to the point of decay.
It's also a study in architypal characters and motivations in an organization.
Doesn't every workplace have their Swelter vs Mr Flea (I mean Flay) conflicts?
Now, if you are looking to lead the revolution in your organization and demonstrate your management potential, try "The Toyota Way".
A marriage of heaven and hell - William Blake.
All of Blake's works are amazing and frankly transformative in my life; I don't know why but for some reason hearing points made that I had to unravel to understand just made them stick more and all of it is written with a beauty in language that really drives his values in passion and joy across as being significant for more reasons than just the words but because there is meaning in those words that can cause affect.
Just my strange and abnormal two cents, his stuff is *really* short to read (like 20 pages or so) so worth looking at just to see if it resonates anything in you.
Ismael was one of the books that made me question and change my world-view towards humanity.
Because it taught me it some books aren't worth reading all the way through.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It can help you to look at life in a different way...
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
John Rogers
Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
The book deals with the psychological aspects of people who survive life and death situations. One of the conclusions I took from it was that people who survive accept their reality. This allows them to more easily deal with the challenges they face. I've found this applies to much more than survival situations. The book changed my perspective on a neck injury I suffered a year ago.
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter is quite amazing. If you have some background in computer science and mathematics, it shouldn't be really hard for you.
By Chris Matthews. If you're at all interested in politics, and haven't been involved in it directly, it will completely alter your perception of how things are done.
by Richard Dawkins, a sure Eye Opener!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
...because I read Heart of Darkness and have seen Apocalypse Now a few times and it never inspired me to get a PhD.
Your Money or Your Life by Robin & Dominguez. This is one to read sooner rather than later. If I had read it years ago I would probably not now be living paycheck to paycheck & working in a job I hate.
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery
My impression is that only people who have read very few books are likely to say that any one book has had a "significant impact on their lives." No one book has all the answers, but people who read enough of them do tend to become wiser. Anyway, if you're looking for a good book, first find a good author.
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank. This combination of Tom Sawyer and Dr. Strangelove is a classic that taught me to be prepared to see the danger and opportunity in any situation.
Humbly suggest that you explore career options - WCYP? provides a good way in, there are plenty of other options too. When you find a career that inspires you, growing in your capabilities, responsibilities, rank, and salary will seem like the most natural thing in the world, and not the epic struggle it is when you're stuck in a place/career/situation you don't like.
Other suggestions: (1) Make sure you are dating, meeting people (or talking to your gf/bf/spouse if you are attached). The right partner can be a great inspiration. (2) Consider counseling. Just having someone who is paid to listen to your gripes and deep thoughts, a half hour at a time, once a week or so, can be worth a lot, and can often help us get unstuck.
Good luck, let us know how you work it out.
Cheers,
renard
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567
This book taught me more about coding (and recursion, and all sorts of other concepts) than any language-specific book I've read. I carried it around for a couple of years, making my way through as I could. Highly recommended.
"The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama.
I think the most important part is to figure what you want to achieve. Do you want to go to a management-postion because you really want to manage projects (or other people), or do you want it so you can call yourself an "achiever"? If it's the first, do what you need to do. If it's the second, you really need to evaluate your priorities in life. I work in IT for 10 years now, and I don't want to go to a management-postion ever, because I like the part of messing and playing with servers. If your passion lies in the technical domain, I doubt a promotion to management would make you happy.
Just think about it for a few days: what do you really want to do 8 hours a day? Figure that out, and adjust your career-plans to this goal.
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
Is Facebook the only book anybody reads anymore?
Bukowski short stories. Shakespeare Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Aeschylus Oresteia. Hippolytus (Murray transl.) Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (excerpts). The Stranger. Canterbury Tales (Wife of Bath). The Idiot. Chekov. The Jungle. Short Happy Life of Francis Maccomber.
Particularly the Idiot and Crime and Punishment.
I don't think any of them will help you with your career, though - unless you plan to kill someone with an axe and are looking for advise for or against it.
Don't skip Salinger.
Skip Raise High the Roofbeams and Seymour, an Introduction. Never, ever, ever read it. Ugh.
Skip Catcher.
Read Nine Stories, then read Franny and Zooey if you loved that.
If you loved both, maybe circle back and try Catcher after all.
If you loved all three of those... still don't read Raise High....
After reading Dune, I could no longer accept religion at face value.
Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise, 1960. http://www.amazon.com/Human-Side-Enterprise-Annotated-Edition/dp/0071462228/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350075633&sr=8-1&keywords=the+human+side+of+enterprise
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. A must read if you are interested in artificial intelligence and/or information theory.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
While there are other great books (Dune was mentioned earlier), I have found Time Enough for Love has had more long term affects on my thinking than any other. In large part because it is so darn quotable:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Time_Enough_for_Love_.281973.29
Also it is about the wisdom of a man who has lived for thousands of years, so I think the idea that it is a man's attempt to condense as much wisdom in one book as possible. Let me just reference my favorite quote:
Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please — this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time — and squawk for more!
So learn to say No — and to be rude about it when necessary.
Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.
(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.)
- TEfL
by Tracy Kidder
1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction and a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
Must read for anyone in Computer Engineering (Hardware design, Architecture, Low level software)
I'll never be able to poop properly again after wiping my ass with every page.
I highly recommend the Man Behind the Microchip. It is the biography/story about Bob Noyce. He and his team were the reason why Silicon Valley became Sillicon Valley. Nobody more important in my opinion, more so than Steve Jobs who lots of people think of an icon. While on the topic, I also highly recommend the movie thas was based on this book. It's called "The Real Revolutionaries."
The TI-994a Extended Basic manual and "Cosmos" when I was a kid.
No books really stick out from college, I'd say it was more of a cumulative effect from the individual books.
"UNIX in a Nutshell" in the early 90's - sure it's just a dump of man pages, but I think I memorized everything between the pages and it got me started in UNIX.
"Learning Perl" - perl has paid the bills and let me go home at a decent hour. Thanks Larry!
Read when I was about 8 and made we want to become a mad scientist, although I ended up becoming more of a "mad" computer scientist.
1. How the World Can Be the Way It Is: An Inquiry for the New Millennium into Science, Philosophy, and Perception
2. Buddhism Plain and Simple
3. Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs
... and it was not "for dummies". DirectDraw7 in C++
Well, except for the ones by Ayn Rand - those made me more stupid. So I had to read some Chomsky and Borges to fix that.
That is all.
Besides, there are so many to choose from.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
... authored by E.F. Schumacher
Dune
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
1984
Neuromancer
Atlas Shrugged
Three Pillars of Zen
The Bible
The Art of Happiness, The Art of Happiness at Work
Foundation
Most of Robert Heinlein's books and short stories. (man who sold the moon is still a favorite)
An introduction to microcomputers, Volume 1
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
It's a book about management, but told through the eyes of a software development manager via tales and stories. Very good book.
http://books.google.com/books?isbn=1430243147C
Reminds me of how I can identify with the situations in the movie Office Space. I can easily identify with the stories in this book.
Are we talking on a professional or personal level? The two overlap to some extent. You need to do a serious analysis on yourself (perhaps with the help of a trusted friend or colleague) and identify the areas where you need to improve your skills.
But, here's my own list:
On a personal level -- Buddhism Plain and Simple is a good read, even for non-Buddhists.
On a professional level --
Moving up to something like a tech lead means you need more feel for the business side, and your technical reading should be more abstract. You're a professional programmer, you should be able to go from an algorithm to the programming language of your choice with no trouble.
Quality Software Management, Vol. 1 by Gerald Weinberg is good for getting your head around the way technical organizations operate; for better and for worse. I wouldn't worry about the other three volumes for a while.
Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, et al. We talked some about algorithms and complexity when I was in college, but never in enough detail. I like this book for its rigor, not necessarily its readability.
Design Patterns by Gamma, et al. is another book to get you thinking about programming in more than just linguistic terms.
One other resource worth mentioning -- MIT, Stanford, and other universities have put their core Computer Science classes online. You should investigate those classes in light of where you need to improve.
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
Because it is slightly less painful than repeatedly hitting yourself with a hammer.
By James P. Carse
Although written by a religious scholar, this is not a book on religion, per se.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
the words used indicates he considered promotion to be enhancing career. Therefore he just needs to become the right kind of jerk.
The Prince -- Machiavelli
The Art of War -- Sun Tzu
Steve Jobs -- Dylan Baker
You know what, forget the last one, world doesn't need any more of those extreme over-the-top jerks
two books:
left brain — rudolf steiner — philosophy of freedom:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_index.html
right brain — george macDonald — phantastes:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/325/325-h/325-h.htm
desert island keepers
Asimov: foundation series. Heinlein : the moon is a harsh mistress. Or how to lead a revolution Rand: atlas shrugged. You may not agree with her philosophy, but it makes you think about the roles of people in your life. Neil Stephenson: any The Fish! Book... Www.charthouse.com Alan cooper: The inmates are running the asylum These all have had a profound affect on my life... Good luck to you!
You are unique, just like everyone else.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sirens of Titan
and colour arises from the interaction of light and dark..
goethe's theory of colours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours_(book)
And all the subsequent Robert Caro LBJ books, especially the third book on the Senate. Very well researched and written. Five book series (BIG books, too) that he started writing in the 1970's. The last one isn't even out yet.
Not specifically for the LBJ content, though it is interesting, but for showing how the US government (especially congress) REALLY works from the inside. And showing what types of people become politicians and how megalomaniacal they tend to be.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Soul of a New Machine
But one I'd suggest, which I pretty much never see anyone else mention, is The Day the Universe Changed (companion to the BBC miniseries, now available on YouTube.) It's sort of about the history of science, but more so it's about how our discoveries about the world changed (and continue to change) our perception of it.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
> which books, of any type or genre, have had a significant impact on your life?
I've gotta say the Bible, hands down, more than all other books combined. Indeed, it's had more impact on my *career* than any other book, nevermind about my life.
However, if you narrow it down to directly IT-related stuff, then I'd probably say Programming Perl, Effective Perl Programming, Beyond Fear, and the Inform Designer's Manual, not necessarily in that order.
HTH.HAND.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
On a more serious note, i did really like James P Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear." Before reading it i'd always had the impression that Communism sounded like a nice idea but had serious issues on a large scale. I felt the book put forward a completely believable scenario for a stable Anarcho-Libertarian-Communist society. All you need to achieve it is get some advanced tech, and then burn the current social system down to the ground and destroying the very roots of the culture itself.
I'm not sure if it was more heartening for convincing me that something resembling utopia is actually possible, or disheartening for convincing me it's something we'll never achieve on this planet unless we go through an incredible amount of pain and suffering first.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
If you like it, be sure to check out the "sequel", I Am a Strange Loop; it summarizes his earlier work in GEB in about two chapters, and the exploration from there is illuminating.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
prometeus rising
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.
A touching story about focusing one what matters in life from the point of view of a nerdy geek with months to live.
Got me interested in concepts that made me want to go to the library at a young age to read science fiction.
How the book got in our house is a mystery to me, when I went back to try to recover it, its existence was denied by the caretakers of my youth.
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.
Flappity, Floppity, Flip!
The Mouse on the Möbius Strip
The Strip revolved
The Mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
I like microcars
50 shades of gray of course
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance -Robert M. Pirsig -may help some of the metaphysical issues. Neuromancer -William S Gibson -may wipe off some of the cyber-funk. Read an old Computer Technician's Handbook by Art Margolis -might bring you back to the fundamentals. Tao Te Ching - The Way of Life -revisit the metaphysical aspects again Then build a speaker box or repair a small engine. There's nothing like visceral experience to get you back in the groove. good luck...
Seriously, there's a lot of real information about the business world in the book, and it's funny.
Although very dated at this point, I came out of the closet after reading this book. Probably not what you had in mind career-wise but it did shape my career and 'the next thing' for me. You never know where that special book will grab you by the short and curlies, shake your brain, and tell you to WAKE THE F*K UP. I guess it's different for everyone.
Maybe working on YOU rather than your career might get you more mileage than a post for advice on Slashdot.
Personally I'd be tempted to consider subscriptions to some business magazines. Personally I quite like Fortune and Harvard Business Review. They won't give you the depth of books focused on specific subjects but they give you a broader understanding of what is happening and can help direct you towards subjects you think are important and wish to investigate further.
I would however also suggest reading Robert Cialdini: Influence and Bruce Patton: Difficult Conversations. Neither are about business strategy or leadership instead they both focus on how to consider other peoples positions, how to interact effectively and build productive relationships.
Ayn Rand was also my favorite author of children's books.
Both Les Miserable (Victor Hugo) and The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) are a couple of my favorite French literature books. Not necessarily life-changing but excellent books in my opinion. The Count of Monte Cristo was much easier for me to read cover to cover. Also Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert).
My friends used to call it the Weird Man's Bible, and carried it everywhere.
Excellent choice.
If enhancing your career is your goal, I'm not entirely sure reading books is going to do it for ya. It's not like you can leave a copy of "The Question Behind the Question" on your desk and your boss is suddenly going to think, 'Hey, I need to promote that guy.' Ain't gonna happen. So here's some specific career enhancing techniques:
1. Quit your job and get a different one. Oh, I know that's easier said than done, and you probably have some nice benefits you've accumulated by now. The sad fact is, that is the quickest way to a management level and on to a C-level if that's your goal. If you look around and you rarely see people promoted within your company, guess what - you're not going to get promoted. That means it's time to pad your resume (yes, stretch the truth to the breaking point so it's obvious you've managed people) and apply for management jobs elsewhere. If you get offered a job, negotiate a higher salary and better benefits.
2. Learn accounting and marketing. Try to get on the job experience in both of those areas working with those individuals. Accounting is important to understand if you want to become a manager because budgeting comes into play and you can do some creative GL accounting within your department to get what you need accomplished. Marketing is important to get experience in because that's where all the Cool Kids work. Knowing the Cool Kids and hanging out with them will get you bonus points with management.
3. Kiss people's asses. Or, at least grace your boss's desk with a decent bottle wine or a six pack if he did something you appreciate. In an earlier time this was a concept called "courtesy".
4. Take some classes outside of work. On a basic level, look for one of those seminars held on weekends at hotels in your area, specifically a class in negotiation. We all negotiate every day of our lives and it is immensely helpful to understand when and how to do it properly. If anything, it'll help your marriage. Maybe it's worth taking a management class as well. Here's some Fred Pryor seminars in your area: http://www.fredpryor.com/site/default.aspx
5. See the above about learning accounting and marketing. Maybe you could take a class at a local community college.
6. Ask your boss for a promotion. Surprisingly enough, it could be that simple. Don't wait for an opening to appear, just go directly to your manager or his manager (if you know him well) and ask. Maybe your company never knew you were interested in a promotion. Maybe they just thought you're happy doing what you're doing. If there isn't a job open, it's completely possible they've been thinking of creating a new job and just didn't have the right person available to do it, nor did they think they could hire the person externally. Maybe that guy is you.
7. Finally, if you just want to read some books, I liked Jack Welch's autobiography. I also liked "Good to Great". I'm reading Keith Richard's biography right now, "Life"; pretty much a textbook for what not to do to your body.
----- obSig
History of Philosophy by William S. Sahakian. He has other books as well.
I'm not sure if it really addresses the asker's needs but Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein had a profound effect on me when I read it the first time as a young teenager.
Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot
Creating, Robert Fisk. No Country for Old Men, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Shikasta, Managing Humans, Code Complete. Go figure (that last isn't a book)
In my opinion, you can't have a decent quality of life without large doses of humour on a regular basis.
I have never found a better writer than Sir Terry Pratchett for dry, engaging wit, and the occasional turn of phrase that will still leave you chuckling days later. His Discworld series also provides concise and often cutting criticisms of society and some of our more inane foibles, camouflaged behind the general fantasy setting (the Campaign for Equal Heights movement for Dwarves, for example). His characters are engaging and his situational comedy is absolutely stellar!
Please don't be thrown just because it is situated in a world that is shaped like a disc, perched atop four elephants who in turn are standing on a giant turtle swimming through the deeps of space :) Yes, it's set in a 'silly' world, and populated with fantastic creatures, but the challenges and triumphs his characters face are usually very applicable to this here modern, mundane world. I heartily recommend all of his works, but the Discworld books in particular.
Happy hunting!
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Frankenstein (Mary Shelly) really impacted me this year when I read it for the first time. Its the first *true* science fiction novel, but really had implications for personal responsibility, societal acceptance and the dangers of science/technology out of the lab. Not long, and well worth it.
I'll caulk one up for Dune and HG Wells (the Star, for example). They do really point out how human existence (especially daily problems) are trivial in the grander scheme of things. Starship Troopers (Heinlein).
Works by Arthur C Clarke also influenced my thinking quite a bit, regarding the role of human existence and expansion beyond our basket (Earth).
Atlas Shrugged, though it is a tough, long read at times. But I thought well worth it. Preachy, for sure. Look for the abridged version, if there is one. ;-)
It's a rather surprising one, but the one I keep going back to, and which has influenced my career quite a bit is Journey of the Software Professional: The Sociology of Software Development by Luke Hohmann.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I'm sure a lot of self-help books emphasize the same points, but demonstrating them with anecdotes from history with famous historical figures makes it much more entertaining and memorable.
Some of which are:
- Winners think like winners. Columbus was a commoner and didn't have a drop of nobility in his blood. But he thoroughly convinced himself that he was powerful, influential, a winner. Everybody assumed he was a nobleman because he acted like one. His poise and self-confidence won him an audience with the Queen and eventually his voyage.
- Be bold. Timidity is for losers. Do, or do not. But if you decide to do, then do it boldly. Applies to everything from historic battles to asking your boss for a raise.
- Pay no heed to belittlers, and act as though your enemies' criticisms are beneath you. By not engaging with your detractors tit-for-tat and by dismissing them as if they are of little consequence, you make yourself seem more powerful in the eyes of the public. This might not work when arguing on the internet, but it does in real life.
Also, I realize it was the culture at the time, but godDAMN that man was sexist. I was going to read Anna Karenina after W&P, but after the treatment Natasha and Mary got, I don't even want to know how the man would handle a novel whose entire focus is on a woman. An entire book where the author thinks of the main character as subhuman? It'd be like Forrest Gump, only not endearing.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Joseph Campbell's Masks of God series and the Hero with a Thousand Faces and Marshall McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy were life-changers for me. Campbell showed how all cultures use the same basic myth structures and the same elements can be found in all stories ever told. He also helped me understand a point my religious studies prof in uni told me; myths are stories where it doesn't matter whether it is true or not. Their value are as frameworks and models through which to see the world and help life make sense. McLuhan helped me to see how the tools and technologies that we invent and use change the very way that we think. You cannot separate our culture from the medium needed to transmit and sustain it. And it's the unspoken constraints and limitations of those technologies that limit and define what our civilization can become.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
(reserving the option to remember and add to this list after I hit "Submit")
Oooh, one of the better Ask Slashdot's in a while IMHO.
To the OP:
The Elements of Style - Makes you a better writer after reading in one sitting
How to Win Friends and Influence People" - Previously mentioned, but essential. Still, it is mostly "don't be an asshole".
The Selfish Gene - Realize the REAL power and strength of Darwin's arguments. This shows how Natural Selection 'magically' creates order in a chaotic universe.
Flatland - Also previously mentioned but really essential for breaking your brain in a good way.
War and Peace - The first big "historical fiction" I'm aware of and yet rooted in reality with a great setting to boot (the Napoleonic invasions of Russia). It would be like me writing a book on WWII. The last 100 pgs or so are good but mostly a rant though.
Madame Bovary - This book is hysterical when you realize it is just an antiquated moral justification for why woman should not read books (especially romance novels). The story's still entertaining as I recall.
1984 and Animal Farm - The usual suspects and see the next to see I'm clearly an Orwell fan.
Down and Out in Paris and London - This is where I learned that the more you pay for food at a restaurant, the more hands have touched the food (among many other things). Also, working in a Parisian kitchen in the early 20th century is like working in fast food now.
Crime and Punishment"Crime and Punishment - Get inside the mind of a thrill killer and realize even crazy people think very rationally. This is helpful when you read the latest crazy doing something inconceivable in the news and now know it seemed very logical to them at the time.
The Doors of Perception and really anything by Aldous Huxley including Brave New World - The Doors of Perception is of course where the band "The Doors" got their name and it, and the collection of associated essays I read at the time, really bring together why people like shiny things -- i.e., they associate them with god or a higher-being intuitively. I love essentially everything Huxley wrote (with Brave New World my least favorite), but his essays are fucking great!
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" - Great story, sci-fi, and allegory, a la "Star Wars", wrt to the American Revolution.
in contrast though, don't read: Stranger in a Strange Land - Total shit, beyond the initial premise, which is good, the book is just gratuitous New Age bullshit and will rot your brain. The only value in this book is defining the term "grok" -- I know I'll get flamed for this but it's true...
I've got a few more, but I need to think about them more...
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Well, I guess you need to find out what's important to you and then take it from there. I would recommend "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. Before you run away in terror, it's not really a business book. Sure, it covers some business topics, but not in great detail. The idea behind this book is to briefly outline most concepts and principles that you'll encounter in a business setting. Each "topic" is about 1 page long, covering principles ranging from sales, marketing and finance through to leadership, management, psychology and personal development. The end result is a basic overview of just about topic you may encounter in your career. Each topic has a number of references which can be followed if you desire. I found this book quite interesting because it gave me some insight into the what the psychopaths running the company I work for are trying to achieve. It also gave me a starting point to further investigate a number of other topics.
Read this book to find out what other books you need to read.
Apart from that, I would also recommend:
Team Geek - Fitzpatrick, Collins-Sussman (really good book!)
Rework - 37 Signals
Being Geek - Michael Lopp (a lot of fluff in this one though)
Lean Startup - Eric Ries (if you're thinking of going it alone)
this post is now diamonds!
After reading the preface and fanning through the introduction, I flogged myself tattered, immediately took a vow of silence, and haven't dared utter another word since. Even hearing other people speak afterwards, my ears could not tolerate their vulgar effluence. And so I locked myself in my mother's basement and have been there since, diligently working on some kind of reasonable syntax for ESP.
On a serious note, I suspect that if read with a little caution, it could have an impact. Maybe I'll soon dust it off and proceed.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
If I had been promoted four times while working at Amazon, I would have been a Director. Another four times and I would have been CEO.
Software Development Engineer I (SDE) -> SDE II -> Manager -> Senior Manager -> Director
-> Senior Director -> Vice President -> Senior Vice President -> President & CEO
or if I had stayed an SDE, four promotions would have maxed me out at SDE V. A better plan would have been to switch to Principal Engineer after SDE III. Then the fourth promotion would have left me at Senior Principal Engineer. A fifth promotion could have taken me either to Fellow or into management at the Senior Director level.
Four promotions is a lot in a twelve year career. Why do you feel unsatisfied with that rate?
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It can help you to look at life in a different way...
Read it once .. read it twice .. then read The Tao Of Poo and realized that this small book managed to capture and impart all of the same concepts in something that could be easily read in an afternoon.
Zen in the Art of Archery.
Of all the books on Zen and Taoism I have read - including the ones mentioned in all the posts above, "Zen in the Art of Archery" captures the soul and meaning of Zen the best - in 81 pages. The size of the book is even Zen.
Even books by the Asian Zen masters - like DT.Suzuki - haven't achieved what that little book was able to do.
I grew up in a secular house, and it was my personal 'bible' before I even knew what the Bible was to religious people.
How to win friends and influence people. Flat out 900X better and more important than ANY other book out there, and should be required reading for most people yearly.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
More likely your second because most men have their first one in their 20s, when adulthood turns out to be not at all like what you expected.
Rather than fish for books, I'd recommend having a look around at your friends, workmates, and acquaintances about your age or a little older and identify three things:
1. Who is having the most fun?
2. Who has reasonable job security, to the extent that exists today?
3. What skills do they have that you don't?
Use these things to guide your choices for skills to develop- maybe they are technical, or maybe they are people skills, but you'll be working towards filling a deficit that can open new/better opportunities for you.
Personally, I think there is limited benefit to enhancing coding skills, such as learning a new language or framework- they are a dime a dozen and the industry always has a new fad. On the other hand I think there's a lot of value in learning new analytical skills. Everyone and their dog wants to mine actionable intelligence from their customer data and the ability to scrub, synthesize and model is a key asset. Plus when the data is sufficiently rich it can be a lot of fun compared to setting up yet another web site. If you want to take it all the way to home plate, pick up some machine learning skills, eg by taking one of the Stanford or Udacity online courses and dazzle your employers with your ability to predict that your customer is pregnant... ;-)
btw, IMO a promo every three years seems about par for the course- not fantastic but nothing to complain about. The real difficulty is that promotion velocity tends to slow over time, since there can only be so many head chefs.
$0.02
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
If you like it, be sure to check out the "sequel", I Am a Strange Loop; it summarizes his earlier work in GEB in about two chapters, and the exploration from there is illuminating.
Since we're summarizing: Obligatory.
...technically not a book, but as a child, I was given a box full of Mad Magazines containing almost every issue from around the mid-late 1950's thru the 1970's.
What a treasure that was to read... and yes it had a serious impact on my childhood development and sense of humour.
by Simon Sinek. Excellent insight into human motivation. Also, it's unofficial companion book, Drive by Daniel M. Pink.
Those are very intelligent books. Anything that causes you to think critically is a great boon in my mind. Anything hard-science sci-fi, or sci-fi political will at least make you think more while enjoying it.
On the non-fiction end, Hacking: The Art of Exploitation has been a mainstay on my bookshelf for years. Most of the information is dated, but I've lent it to kids who show an aptitude for computers and are interested in security, and that was their launching pad into serious study.
Hmmm.. Dennis Ritchie. If you have any interest in programming, you have to pick up The C Programming Language. That man is was a savior for many of us geeks when it came to programming.
"A Book on C" and "C by Dissection"
The book has a lot of detail the movie version missed.
Diesel Traction - A Manual for Enginemen
My late father found a copy of this in an old railway workshop he was converting into a heavy goods vehicle workshop and brought it home, when I was about six or seven years old. I picked it up and read it, fascinated by the cutaway diagrams of the engines and gearboxes that went into the different styles of locomotive, and the circuit diagrams of all the control gear. There were detailed explanations of how the automatic gearboxes in diesel-mechanical locomotives worked, and how the injector pump, fuel rack and injectors worked in a diesel engine.
At that point, I realised that while I would probably never work on a 1962 diesel railcar, I held in my hand the key to knowing *everything*. All I needed to understand absolutely anything I ever encountered was the right diagram, and the mental toolkit to look at what was in front of me and understand how different parts work together as part of a whole system. From that moment onwards everything else was easy.
You've just got to look at things and see the exploded diagram in your mind's eye.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
John Irving. Read them all, starting with the oldest. They teach life.
This book caused me to pick up engineering, and has had a dramatic effect on my approach and understanding to life and computers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
Yes, science fiction books, which my high school English teacher declared were unfit to be described as literature and refused to allow book reports that relied upon one. Not any one specific science fiction book, though, but rather many of them collectively; considered together as a whole they have a truly profound impact on a person who reads many of them, as I did. I dare not play favorites except to single out science fiction in general; the only other book that was perhaps transformative was the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, which I acquired my sophomore year in high school, but the damage had already been done long before by all the SF books I had already consumed.
I was also deeply affected by the movies Swiss Family Robinson and Silent Running, the latter which while still science fiction was obviously not a book.
Oh... and I suppose I was influenced by the inconsistencies and weirdness in the Christian Bible to be an early non-theist and naturalist. The SF books certainly helped guide me to that conclusion, too.
I LOVED 1984. that one really shook me and I had to read it again as soon as I finished it. Friday by Heinlein, was another that I devoured and introduced me to open thinking. Slaughterhouse five was another one that made me Adore Vonnegut, until I found out he was a turd-head. He can write, but he is a waste of a human being.
After that I devoured everything From Heinlein, and went on a Sci-Fi Bender that is still raging to this day. one of my favorite 3 book series by Alan Dean Foster.... Icerigger, Mission to Moulikin, and the Deluge divers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you don't have the personality to be a manager, I don't see why you would care about any other promotion aside from Junior to Senior and job satisfaction.
That being said, I think Dawkin's The Selfish Gene and Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid had the largest impact on me.
Often seen as an anti-vietnam war book, it was written well before that. It's much more about people in large nonsensical organizations.
4 times in 12 years? Underachiver?
You, my friend, have a serious problem. A self-esteem problem. Being promoted at an avarage of every 3 years is what the large majority dream of. If that (and your low self-esteem, which appears to derive itself from amounts of promotion/year) is what's troubling you, these books, all of which have had life-changing impact on mine, are the type you should be reading and looking for:
Seneca "Letters from a Stoic" - its roughly 2000 years old iirc and thus public domain (downloads all over the web). .... The best things in life are free. ... It's all there and all started here. A must read for any educated citizen. And, btw., at the same time more comforting than any of the religios scripts can ever be imho. Whenever you're in a jam, take out seneca, read a few pages and you feel like someones breathed new life into you. If you think philosophy is for nutcases, you haven't been looking further back enough. The last 300 years have mostly been shit, but this guy is for real. No intelectual masturbating and no bullshit from this guy. Promise.
Seneca was a bizarly rich and very powerfull man in Rome back in the day and is one of the more popular members of the 'Stoic' school of philosophy. Stoicisim is basically the western variant of zen buddism, without the weird stuff. Cult of Less, Lean living, focussing on the spiritual and mental, etc.
Marie 'Shakti' Gawain "Creative Visualisation"
Your standard 101 new age positive thinking book. A classic. Cheap, short, to the point. Where Joseph J. Murphy, Norman Vincent Peale, Rhonda Byrne and all the rest go on babbling for endless pages (and sometimes many books) Shakti Gawain cuts straight to the chase. A must for every bookshelf. Read this one and you'll know all there is to know about positive thinking and you'll get a neat stomachable dose of uplifting new age along with it. As with seneca I always go back to Gawain when in trouble and looking for advice on how to condition myself for the next trials. This little book has been with me for 25 years and it never grows old.
Tim Ferriss - "The four hour workweek"
This guy deserves some credit, if only for tipping me of on stoicism and seneca. The four hour workweek is basically a modern lifestyle design guide, a kind of 'Stoicism implementation plan'. I ran into this one a few years ago (when it was in the lists) and had quite a few usefull inspirations from it. His blog can be worth a read aswell, he also does (i)regular web chatshows with Kevin Rose of digg.com fame. Very funny and entertaining. Currently the latest article on his blog is on another stoic of ancient Rome, Cato.
Chris Guillebeau "The Art of Non-Conformity"
Guillebeau is sort of the less boastfull Tim Ferriss. If Ferris is to much haming and dick-waving for your taste, do at least try this guy. The book has similarities with FHWW, but also its own approach to the subject matter. Also very inspiring and well worth the money and time.
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson "Rework"
Result oriented working in the brave new digital age. If there is a book that will lift your spirits and change your habits and workstyle for the better right away, in your current line of work, then it is this one. A must read for you and your co-workers once your done with it. The HR Chief of a large software corporation I once worked for came in one day carrying a stack of copies of "Rework" and just put them into the companies library. Didn't even bother registrating them with codes and tags first. Very smart move.
Anything from Alan Watts
The western zen buddhist. He changed me from a kid scared of life and death into a human being by introducing me to non-confessional, free zen buddhism. His explainations and lectures are top notch, very comforting and carry lots of weight. I can't tell if you'll still be as inspired once you've read Seneca, but I ran
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The Road to Serfdom
Now, I am not saying that it will change your life or anything like that, but it is a very good book for people stuck in the modern era of government worshiping.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Getting Things Done by David Allen.
Meetings with remarkable men, by Gurdjieff
really had a big impact on me. Apart from being the most 'readable' of all his works by a factor of about 10000000, it opened my mind to the possibilities of life like no other book has.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
by Peter van der Linden
A profound influence that made me aware of the depth of programming expertise.
Unfortunately PvdL's recent books doesn't live up to this awesome tome.
TCAP-Abort
So I know you mentioned that school is not an option, but I strongly suggest you think again about that. Just go to WGU and get your Bachelor's. It's a lot easier to do and the degree is actually worth something. I have a friend who is in his masters program at Harvard after having finished his Bachelor's at WGU. Either way, I work for a great tech company here in the Bay Area and we are literally ALWAYS hiring and promoting people as we are growing faster than most companies. Maybe contact me somehow and I can look at your resume. It's for IT Consulting jobs, so if that's up your alley, then it may work out.
Adios
mcconti @ gmail.com
1. The Blind Watchmaker - Dawkin's - permanently fixed in my mind how life on earth works.
2. How the Mind Works - Steven Pinker - still among the best, easiest to read and most comprehensive view of cognitive science.
3. Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman - though a life of clever experiments he discovered many bugs in human cognitive process - so you know what mistakes to look out for in your own mind.
4. I am a Strange Loop - Douglas Hofstadter - deal with the sadness of nothingness after death.
5. Daring Greatly - Brene Brown - how and why to live authentically and not let fear/embarrassment/shame/guilt/etc. get in your way.
6. Getting Things Done - how to get organized so you can make progress toward your goals.
7. Profit!
If you think there is that one book that will turn your life around I fear you're in for a disappointment.
Yes, there are straight-up self-help-books [non-fiction] that claim to do so (or people who claim those books work that way). Then there are some [fictional] books that are often claimed to have a guaranteed, immediate impact on you life (eg Atlas Shrugged, The Hitchhiker's Guide, various religious books).
I fear that none of those books will do anything for you if you're not ready to take from books what they can actually offer: insights into different ways of thinking, of storytelling, glimpses into different realities. I'd say it doesn't matter much what you read... the point is: you should read a lot.
I'm trying not to give any kind of general advice here, just telling how it worked/works for me. I read everything: The back of cereal boxes, novels, blogs, wikipedia, fiction (well, that was covered by "novels", wasn't it?), non-fiction, you name it. The thing is: I enjoy it. It's not some kind of plan I set up one day: "Read Everything!" Rather it's a pastime I developed over many years that has given me thousands of hours of fun, procrastination -- and the occasional very, very good insight.
Try it... but don't be too disappointed if it doesn't work out for you (*). You say you "need to do something to enhance [your] career"... well, maybe it's not in books. What (I believe) you crave is more insight into life, yours, others, the worlds. You may get to books on a more circuitious route -- find/remember something you really care about, do it, experience it, maybe later start reading about it -- and go off on tangents -- that's what "reading" really is all about. Did I mention you have to give it (yourself) a lot of time? [Oh bother, there I go, making "self-help"-statements...]
Well, while I'm at it I might ad this little nugget: whatever books the other people in this thread suggest: you may confidently skip those. Unless something actually intrigues you. But as long as you feel you have to read a particular book probably not much good will come from it.
ac
(*) I, at one point, realized computer games were a legitimate and culturally significant form of art. I find them utterly fascinating, love to read about them... yet for the life of me I can't get the hang of them. So far I've found every "game" I've played tedious grinding.
sig? Oh, that sig...
A very short while ago I was stagnating as well. Hadn't picked up any new skills in a while, been in the same job for over ten years and getting into a comfort zone that would make it very hard for me to be hired if anything were to happen. I even considered changing jobs to shake things up a little, but that's not really feasible at this point. So here's what I've done:
1 - Bought a condo, that has given me a new lease of life and I feel a whole lot better from that alone
2 - Drew up a high-school style schedule. Each day I have a program of a few hours worth of things that I work my way through (time permitting, assuming work isn't busy) subject by subject. I have a binder organized into sections just like I had in school. I've picked a language that I want to learn and downloaded a self-teaching book on it. There's a handful of topics that I'm learning through DVDs from The Teaching Company. I'm brushing up on my knowledge of web technologies that I need to know better by working through some Manning books. Another subject I'm brushing up on is math since I didn't fully grasp it in college, so I've resurrected my old trustee textbook (Engineering Mathematics by KA Stroud) and I've gone back to basics and I'm working through the book and making sure I fully understand each topic. I've got a Teaching Company DVD on Calculus too, so I'm incorporating that into my course. I give myself homework to do as well. Just treat it like school.
3 - Want to a few Kaizen Dance events last weekend, which was a spiritually invigorating experience. The guy who was teaching has left the bay area now, but you might want to look into yoga for a renewing experience.
Despite the fact that moving house has interrupted my exercise routine, I'm feeling a lot better about myself and my career even though I'm only a few weeks into my self-imposed course. There's something refreshing about being in the process of picking up new knowledge.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Saw what you will about the hype surrounding the cult of David Foster Wallace, but reading Infinite Jest reinvigorated my love of literature. Since I read it, my home library has grown easily by 1000% and I've been introduced to the likes of Borges, Perec, Joyce et al. Re-reading it always sets my mind alight.
Read the original versions in Pali and Sanskrit. Soon you will learn that you don't need things such as "jobs", "money", "careers"... Leave the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth, pain and suffering behind.
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II, by Fernand Braudel.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Written a while ago and a little tough to read at times but the lessons in that book are priceless.
n/t
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
At first I thought of some of my favorite books like Discworld series, Dune, Mark Twain, Refactoring, things like that. But I think for a book that really had a significant impact on my life I would have to go back much further, to when I first started to enjoy reading. So here is my list: The very hungry caterpillar. My parents would read it to me every night when I was young. Een motorboot voor een drijvend flesje. (A motorboat for a floating bottle) This is the first book that I remember reading and not wanting to stop reading even when it was finished. In a way I think that this book is the one that really got me into reading. Before this the only reading I did was for school. The caves of steel. My first real introduction to science fiction, and pretty much convinced me what my favorite category of books is. Probably not very special books on their own, but I feel like they influenced my reading significantly.
by Eckhart Tolle
That book had a profound impact on my life. Totally worth the $10!
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808
The C Programming Language
Dragon of the Lost Sea
The Science of Language
The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation
Good Germs, Bad Germs
Food of the Gods
Brave New World
1984
Fahrenheit 451
The Wheel of Time
The C++ Programming Language
The Jungle
The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System
Cryptonomicon
Childhood's End
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
I alway felt very comfortable with his writings when I was a little Jerry. Century-old excitement, what's not to love! :) Before him I read Paul d' Ivoy, after him H. G. Wells.
Everything else forks from there. Clarke, Asimov, Vroon, Heinlein, Ellison, they made me see what I wanted, and left me pining for the future. And now in a teaching job, and trying to find little Jerry's, the same dreamers, knowing to dream, not wanting to wake up.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
All the other books are in there.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The combination of satire, politics and sheer humanity in post WW-2 Italy has truly shaped my world view. While not considered one of the great works of literature and not being SF, Giovannino Guareschi struck a chord there. No matter how much you oppose someone, they are _still_ human. The global village and it's combined political leaders could learn a thing or two from Peppone, Don Camillo and the little world that is Boscaccio.
G.R.U.N.C.H. of Giants, Critical Path and Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth are my faves
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
I like how you say your an underachieving person and then go on to say you won't do anything but do what you do currently. Maybe that Is the issue? maybe you could read a book about trying something different? seriously don't complain about being an underachiever and then tell us how you're not going to change
"You ever read a book that changed your life? Me neither." - Jim Gaffigan
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Accept responsibility for your actions. No excuses. For example, if you break an unjust law, accept your punishment, do not become cry-baby because it is an unfair unjust law. Be a man.
The book that most significantly impacted my life, as well as being the best book I've ever read, is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.
I do not advise others to read it though, as it will suck out your soul and leave an empty shell of a person.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Citizen of the Galaxy
To understand the richness and power of the English language you need to know both Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
Re-discover American pulp fiction.
Here are three mammoth, affordable, 1,000+ page paperback anthologies to get you started, all edited by Otto Penzler:
The Big Book of Adventure Stories
The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
History as narrative.
Francis Parkman : France and England in North America {2 vols)
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
The Guns of August and The Proud Tower
A.J. Liebling: World War II Writings
Adler
How To Read A Book
How To Speak and How To Listen
Books that were influential to me (not just ones that were fun to read), and why.
-- Basic Economics, by Sowell (A book that everyone should read, and if they did, the world would be a better place, as people wouldn't fall for all of the bogus economic arguments and beliefs that are commonly held.)
-- How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Carnegie (A great book on how to interact with people -- useful not just for sales people, not even just for workers, --but useful for everyone.)
-- You Can Negotiate Anything, by Cohen (Exellent book on how to negotiate, including many practical, useful techniques. Very, very useful in business and everyday life.)
-- Why Government Doesn't Work, by Brown (This is the book that made me a libertarian, but even if you aren't, gives a good perspective on why folks should have a healthy amount of skepticism about large centralized governments.)
-- This Time is Different, by Reinhart and Rogoff (Financial analysis of booms and busts over the past 800 years. Outstanding -- will clearly show the trouble we are in today that most people don't fully recognize -- but scholarly. For a book that draws from its material and is more readable, though not at all as scholarly, see Endgame, by Mauldin and Tepper.)
-- With the Old Breed, by Sledge (A thorough, masterfully written, first-hand account of what war was really like. If you read one book about war ever, this should be it.)
-- The Billion Dollar Molecule, by Werth (Gives an accurate view of how startup business really works, including all of the seedy stuff that goes on, at least the segment of it that travels the path from VC funding to IPO. Centered around biotech, but many aspects described are not specific to that business segment.)
-- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Gibbon (Read at least volume 1. Many of our governmental follies are the same ones experienced 2000 years ago. Reading this is to learn from the past.)
-- No Simple Victory, by Davies (A history of WWII that includes lots of perspective lacking from most western accounts. 80% of the war in Europe was fought between the Soviet Union and Germany -- this book puts things into perspective.)
-- The History of the English Speaking Peoples, Vol 1, by Churchill (History of Britain prior to founding of America. Good to know what happened, what life was like, and how nations were formed in the old days.)
Reading as a substitute for living is pretty lame.
Don't waste your life reading. Take up sports.
If you train for life like you train for a sport, you won't be in a rut at age 40.
... so I thought I'd mention it: The Soul of a New Machine. This supported my feeling that one CAN do what you set out to do as long as you're willing to work and no care where the credit goes. To me, it also showcased the importance of the individual.
Ironic captcha: action
Jesus Interrupted as well as Misquoting Jesus by Bart D Ehrman. He is a biblical scholar that looks at the bible in a different way (the way it should be viewed). As a conglomerate of many books written at different times by different people with different agendas.
Take the time to read the complete Bible.
I have only been promoted four times in my 12-year career
It's quite an achievement ! I have never been promoted in my 30-year career, I'm still a programmer.
From what you wrote, "meaning" has been lost in your life.
Finding meaning is not as simple as one might think.
Anyway, here are a few more books not mentioned above, sorted by decreasing order of which will probably help you most.
"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl (a powerful book about finding meaning in your life)
"Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth" by Brad Blanton (honesty is hard, but so liberating)
"Constructive Thinking" by Seymour Epstein (the most interesting approach to change your beliefs)
"How To Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie (very practical book)
"Aha!" by Martin Gardner (it will help you realize what is Aha in logic, it's similar to Eureka)
But the most important things cannot be found in books.
I would recommend that you experiment stopping your thoughts, in order to discover who you are.
I strongly encourage you to practice this:
http://www.sriramanamaharshi.org/downloads/who_am_I.pdf by Sri Ramana Maharshi
my life has deeply changed since I practiced the technique, the first side-effect is that I'm feeling more connected to others.
Start with "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition" by Peter Boxall.
Tao Te Ching
The Once and Future King/Book of Merlin
Murder in the Cathedral
Morte D'Arthur
Foundation Trilogy
It may seem crude and irrelevant today but had I not read that book sometime in the late 70s / early 80s I would not be:
Typing this post on slashdot
Sitting in front of this computer
Living in this country
(It remains to be seen if any of the above are good things...)
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-BASIC-Donald-G-Alcock/dp/0521217032
A lot of the books I was thinking about have already been mentioned but a series that has not is the Ender Series by Orson Scott Card. A simple misunderstanding could lead the demise of a entire civilization. Another point that really still to this day has me thinking is the Ansible. That universe that exists outside the universe that is nothing but creativity. The thought of it is fascinating.
I don't believe in miracles -- I believe in science and consider myself a skeptic, but regardless I'm obsessed with spiritual texts and meditate for many hours each week and have for years now. Although I frankly still don't entirely understand what it is, I've come to believe the this spiritual development is more important than almost anything else. Probably not for everyone, but these are the books that have been the most important to me so far:
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
the Tao Te Ching
Be Here Now by Ram Dass
the four gospels
The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda
by Kurt Wonnegut
As an older computer engineer, I would bet that your schooling is obsolete and that you haven't been keeping up on current information theory. I found The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick utterly fascinating. It is long-winded at times, but it changed the way I perceive the world and changed how I approach programming and developing systems. We are on the cusp of a revolution in computer science/information theory towards semantic systems and this book gives a great glimpse into current philosophy and theory.
http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-NLP-Psychological-Understanding-Influencing/dp/1855383446
I found it less useful for influencing people and more useful for understanding how the mind functions. Language is a very powerful tool once you understand how to leverage it for your benefit. Of course once you know how the mind functions, you can begin to tailor your communications for maximum impact.
Two recommendations that aren't going to help your mind, directly, but will help your overall life:
The Primal Blueprint, by Mark Sisson
The Paleo Diet, by Loren Cordain
"life changing" doesn't have to be about "making yourself smarter or giving yourself more skills on the job market" - life changing can be about being healthier, and frankly, lots of us geeks are pretty sedentary, unhealthy sorts. Eat better, exercise more, de-stress. Your mind will be sharper, clearer, more focused, and more capable of both learning and productivity.
And you'll live longer, and enjoy the life you have.
Also, a few books on writing, since written communication is usually not a strong point of geeks:
Writing Down The Bones, by Natalie Goldberg;
On Writing Well, by William Zinsser
On Writing, by Stephen King
Writing for your Readers, by Don Murray
Learn how to communicate with people who don't speak the same jargon you do. Your career and your social life will flourish.
Was OP like "OH well, my career is fucked, at least I can read more."
My favorite reading so far: Vaults By Charles Babcock
http://books.google.com/books?id=q48OAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Vaults&source=bl&ots=ORFVKQuieK&sig=x-NvIR9NmvCH1iKjq67uXHnJ6k8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1qF4UIvICMXE0QHF7YH4Ag&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA
The ones with useful "arts and recipes" in them. How else did I learn not to spray a Carbon TetraChloride fire extinguisher on hot metal? Or to silver mirrors? or learn that air breaks down at 71 kV/inch, but a third of that with a needle gap.
I suppose John Strong's book on making laboratory equipment was useful too. While I've not used a whole lot of the material directly (other than the sections on how do machining), it definitely inspires you and is a good stop to whiners at work who complain about not having equipment: it's from the days when you BUILT your Geiger-Muller tube or spectrophotometer or seismograph, with none of this "order it from Amazon for next day delivery nonsense".
As a child? "The Way Things Work" (the version translated from German, in two volumes). Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments (on the web, out of copyright via lucky happenstance, because it's out of print as being too dangerous)
As an adult? Everyone should read an Ayn Rand novel. Once when you are young and idealistic, and again 10-15 years later when you realize how silly it was that you thought it was great when you were 19 years old.
2001- A Space Odyssey... here we are 11 years later, and we're not very close to where Clarke thought we would be when he wrote it in 1968.
Heart of Darkness, by Conrad.. read it, then watch Apocalypse Now, then read some H.Rider Haggard or other colonial era stuff.
The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers - so you know how a good mystery novel is written.
Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis - Better than Tolkien, in 1/10th the pages, but of the same era. Yeah, the religious metaphors slap you in the face, they're so obvious, but it's more interesting read than the Narnia septology.
When I look at the books people are posting here, I read most of them when I was a teenager, with some in my early 20's. They are not adult books. You can go down the route of Hofstader, Dennet, Searle and all those cog.sci guys, or get into literary fiction like Proust, Maughm or Waugh, or even classics, but in terms of what is going to improve your life at 36, you need something different.
Get off slashdot. Get a subscription to the Economist and the Financial Times and be able to understand them from cover to cover.
You have ruled out school, perhaps a bit prematurely. You are 36. What are you going to do for the next 40 years you are going to have to work? IT?
Your career so far has been what, 15, 20 years tops?
40 years of work are ahead of you.
There are no books that will truly change your life. I really have read a lot of them, but they all point back to doing the same thing. I can tell you this and if this comment doesn't get promoted to where you get to read it, you can see what the problem with people who read slashdot is.
Here it is:
- You can't do it yourself.
- Knowledge and performance are never more than %60 of anything. The rest is credentials and relationships.
- No matter how far you take it, the alternate path may lead to some success, but does not lead back to the mainstream.
- You may have chosen the Long Fail. If you have, accept this and move on.
If you are truly seeking change, you may have to admit failure first. Your success has been empty, the trappings unsatisfying, and the seeming stability is false.
Congratulations, you've got nothing. It's scary at first, but when you realize how truly free you are, it's really quite awesome.
Good luck, dude. :)
In high school I read all the Sherlock Holmes books. Later I found the charactor was based on a real person, Dr. John Bell.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein was an indirect study in how society is affected by resources.
Stranger in a Strange Land also by Heinlein also about choices society makes that they aren't always aware of.
Dyslexics Untie!
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, has subtly but surely made me who I am today. Why? I can't really say, but I suspect that if you understand Ender's motivations, then you're not far from understanding me.
-- My Sig is a P228.
For martial arts and philosophy this one is required reading. I had quotes from this stuck to my walls for years.
From Asimov, mainly Nightfall and The Last Question, but there's quite a lot of his stuff that influenced me.
The Book of Five Rings, cant read it just once and every time you do you learn something else.
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition)
Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat: How to Win in the Information Age
- When I read this one in my twenties I thought it was cynical and funny.
Now I think it is cynical and accurate.
more cowbell
Just read, find topics that interest you and expand your horizons. For me, I like reading books about how mathematics and physics have developed over the years, and these lead me to investigate certain areas in more detail, and I learn a new technique and/or gain a new perspective. I also like reading about military history, space exploration, computer science and literary fiction. The more I read, the more voracious my appetite becomes. A few books I've read this year that left a deep mark:
All Quiet On The Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter
Carrying The Fire - Michael Collins
The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom - Graham Farmelo
e: The Story Of A Number - Eli Maor
The Poincare Conjecture - Donal O'Shea
You may find your inspiration anywhere! =)
Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner struck a huge chord with me. There's a certain amount of cruft and drama that seems to have come along with the sequels (especially the wandering through Sex.) But it distills down *very* nicely and has opened me up to some interesting changes in my thinking.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
The Theory of the Leisure Class
You don't need a promotion. You need a broker with a highspeed trading connection and some good insider information to trade on, preferably from someone who understands what a bubble is and when one is about to be reset. Read Nassir Taleb and George Soros most recent books and get to work crafting your own strategy for taking advantage of short selling.
I recommend the book "Modesty: How Not to Bore Others with Inconsequential Details of Your Life in the Guise of a Request for Significant Books"
First, stop calling yourself a Computer Engineer unless you are actually designing computers. People who write software are called programmers. I loath the term software engineer for the same reason I don't call the janitor a sanitation engineer. Promoted every three years at the same company isn't all that bad, but you don't say how the salary is progressing. If you really want to move up quickly you probably need to move to a different company.
I'm will to bet that you are not "in any sort of leadership/management" because you lack either good personnel, business, or project management skills. Work on improving those areas rather than technical skills, because technical skills rarely get you promoted up to higher paying management positions. Being the most technically savvy guy on the floor usually just gets you extra work. Having seniority isn't a guarantee of getting the managers job when he retires either.
Definitely: Bible To a lesser extent: The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth More Effective C++ by Meyer C++ Standard Library by Josuttis To even lesser extent but still significant: Ender series by Orson Scott Card
I would highly recommend:
Illusions bu Richard Bach
At the risk of sounding pretentious the next two should be read in the original Russian / Ukrainian, in fact I would say that the Bard is not worth reading in English translation - it loses all depth and meaning.
The Bard by Taras Shevchenko and
Notes from the Underground by Feodor Dostoevsky.
Please note I tried to give the last two titles and authors in the original, but the Cyrillic was not supported.
All of my financial records.
Upanishads
The Disputers of the Tao (a.c. graham)
The Wisdom of the Zohar (Tishby 3 vol set)
I Ching
E Dickinson
William Blake
Dawkins is fantastic, and also his book 'The Greatest Show On Earth' should put to rest the thoughts of anyone questioning evolution...but in this area, i think Sam Harris' book really takes the cake. He didn't even write it for an atheist audience (doesn't even like the term, questions our use of it, we don't have a name for people who don't believe in Santa Claus, so why should we identify ourselves for other fictional characters?), but it's a slam dunk home run. The writing style is also fantastic...i swear my IQ temporarily goes up 10pts when i read a chapter.
To answer the OP, this is the most influential book i've come across, and really shook up the way i think about things. Harris isn't perfect of course, and certainly some holes in some of his positions, but on the whole it's very good stuff.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Atlas Shrugged
The Selfish Gene
Guns, Germs and Steel
A lot of people are recommend great books, lots of classics and fascinating subjects. However, since the original poster is talking about a stagnant career, I recommend a book which is definitely not a classic and few have probably read all the way through: My Boring Ass Life by Kevin Smith.
Much of the first half is pretty slow going, little jokes and comments on day-to-day life. Boring, as the title suggests. However, the second half has some amazing inspirational stuff. His movie career, his friend's fight in his addiction against heroin I finished reading that book, with all its talks of creativity and struggle and trying new things and decided to branch out, start new projects. It really helped me turn my career around.
Nobody has said this yet and I really mean it when I say the Book of Mormon has had a significant impact on my life. It has for any person who grew up in an LDS family by virtue of being a significant part of that culture. But it also has for me because I've read it many times and I know it's true. I've personally felt the power of the Holy Ghost testify to me it's true. The Bible is also the word of God and I love reading the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. I can definitely say that I'm a better person as a result.
You can get a free copy of the Book of Mormon, too, or read it online.
skip salinger? skip salinger?!? why, you're nothing but a big phony!
nobody's perfect
Every* semi-smart sci-fi nerd cites "Ender's Game" as a formative and influential work because it struck a chord with them when they were 14, 'going through shit,' and discovering angst for the first time, but the book doesn't hold up that well when reading it as an adult except in a similar way to... say... Harry Potter... Fun read. Interesting premise. Definitely geared towards teens.
Now Card's followup trilogy: "Speaker For the Dead," "Xenocide," and "Children of the Mind," on the other hand... There is some seriously deep philosophical stuff going on in those books.
*Yeah it's hyperbole. Who the fuck cares.
"The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman.
Shockingly useful treatise on what makes good design and why, with abundant and extremely easy-to-understand examples.
Reading this was a Eureka Moment in understanding how interfaces of all sorts should be designed.
Erich Boleyn
For fun: The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. All five volumes of the trilogy :-)
For self-improvement (and a fabulous, easy & profound read): Getting Things Done (a.k.a. GTD) by David Allen.
GTD, if you have not already read it, and its sequel, "Making it all work", have had a profound effect on the way I organise myself. In fact so profound an effect, that I do not see the end of a string of changes that these books have triggered in me. All changes that lead to more efficiency in how I deal with personal and business projects. I use whatever I can grasp from it and whatever I am able to put into practice, every day, at work and at home. No other book has done this for me.
I hope you choose to pick GTD & I hope that you will enjoy.
Splinter of the Mind's Eye, I think by Alan Dean Foster, was the first book I ever read, which lead to a life long love of reading.
The Bible, largely responsible for converting me to atheism.
Snow Crash lead to me reading all of Stephenson's books. I have about 2.5 shelf-feet of his books and I've read them all about 5 times each (except the Big-U and Diamond Age) so that accounts for about 12.5 shelf-feet of reading in my life.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, was the only self-help book worth a damn that I've read.
I read the entire Harry Potter series, out loud, to my son, over the course of a year when he was about 5-6. I think when I am old and dying that will still be one of my favorite memories. Reading a book out loud is a profoundly different experience than reading it to yourself. It engages totally different parts of your brain.
-- QED
A Guide To Rational Living By Dr. Albert Ellis
http://beforewisdom.com/blog/books/book-review-a-guide-to-rational-living/
Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns
The Now Habit by Dr. Neil Fiore
Almost all of the books I have ever read have been a good influence on me. May I remark, Mr. 36 year old, that looking to improve yourself by reading books is a *good* idea? May I recommend almost any of the Iris Murdoch novels? She is extremely sexy, can look at both a man's as well as the woman's perspective, and while totally non-technical, broadens your mind. Any of her novels would be good, but thinking of my slimmest one amongst them, I think, is "The Italian Girl".
"Ender's game" by Orson Scott Card (science-fiction): the others are different and there's a distinction to be made between antagonism and complementarity.
The lessons of physics by professor Feynman (mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics): there is more than one way to view things.
"Ubik" by P. K. Dick (science-fiction): only what is real continues to exist when you cease to believe in it.
"Meno" by Plato (philosophy): everyone can reach knowledge.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Especially the appendices. It's lurid trash but it's also a delivery system for some very interesting ideas about thinking.
Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud. Note: I spend a significant amount of my waking hours drawing comics. If you care in the least about comics, as a creator or a consumer, this book will give you a lot to chew on.
d'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, by Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire. I credit this and their book on the Norse myths with my being what I call a "polyagnostic"; I knew from a very early age that there are religions that have come and gone, that their adherents believed as intensely as the ones we have now. With these as a foundation it was very easy to see Christian myths as, well, myths.
And some stuff I've simply enjoyed a lot:
The Stress Of Her Regard, by Tim Powers. Vampires, the tendency of Romantic poets to die of consumption, and a secret history of the world. I've read a lot of his stuff but I keep on coming back to this one every few years.
Against A Dark Background, by Iain M. Banks. As a SF writer he's most well-known for his "Culture" books; this one is outside that continuity. It's both comedic and tragic, as well as endlessly inventive.
egypt urnash minimal art.
I think you are asking the wrong questions. There are a lot of people who enjoy doing tech work ( computer repair, netowrking, programming, etc ) and who would consider management to be a step down..........doing something they do not want to do while being pulled away from what they enjoy.
Are those people underachievers too?
Only if that is what they WANTED.
All these years where you haven't become a manager, is that you wanted? Did you try HARD to become manager? If not, maybe you didn't want it or want it more than other things. How can you have failed at something you haven't tried or never wanted?
Even if you wanted to be a manager and tried hard, that only means you underachieved at one thing, it doesn't mean all of you and all of your life is a failure. Look at Hillary Clinton, all her life she wanted to be President. She didn't make it. She did become Secretary Of State. Is she an underacheiver.
Before you go off and read every self help book that the Slash Dot community suggest mayber you want to talk to a professional..........spend the extra money and find a GOOD one that comes highly recommended. Work these thoughts out.
Most of the human race doesn't get everything they want or achieve big things. They are happy and don't think of themselves as underachievers.
Most of the human race is poor, doesn't have everything it needs, lives without freedome, etc.
Take some time to appreciate the good things you already have in your life.
Brave New World (Huxley, 1932) & We (Zamiatin, 1921)
I have found that the Book of Mormon has been the most influential book in my life. As a companion to the Bible, which has been well discussed, this book has brought me closer to God. Also as was mentioned above with the Bible by reading the Book of Mormon I have become more familiar with other literary works and better able to understand them.
Had it all: impenetrable plot, end-of-world drama, quintuple agents, and the ability to climax in the mouth of a skilled prostitute in a few minutes. Plus the game spawned by it consumed untold nights and following days when I was a younger man. A good friend of mine tells me it destroyed his life.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
Getting Things Done, by David Allen
The best $10 you can spend on yourself as a knowledge worker.
This book changed my life, both professionally and personally.
It doesn't matter if it's a valid basis for morality. The question was if it had an impact and it's had a major one on you as seen in the very phrasing of what you said. The FSM is a riposte to it. "fuck god" is said as an example of a disagreement with it. It's embedded in many of the very idioms of the language you happen to use (obviously it would be different if you spoke Chinese rather than English).
No matter whether it is a valid basis or not, it's been used to define much of culture in many countries and the ideas in it shaped history. Sometimes it did so in pretty bad ways, such as the Crusades. Sometimes it led to better things.
You could say the same about the Koran for those in Islamic countries. Regardless of whether someone had read it or agreed with it, it had tremendous impact on the society around them.
Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler.
I was already highly interested in science, but Engines focused my attention on the idea of manipulating matter at nanometer scales. It led me to change my major to physics from aero/astro engineering.
1. Out of The Inner Circle, Landreth. Read this in 1986 or so when it originally came out. Holy shit, did that change my life. It put me on the vector that, among other things, has me reading Slashdot today.
2. M*A*S*H- Hooker. Besides being ripping funny, introduced me to the concept that if you're really good at what you do, you can get away with a lot. A whole lot.
3. 1980 Signetics Linear IC Databook. Never underestimate the learning capability of a curious kid on a remote farm with no internet access ('cause it didn't exist. Well, not as we know it.)
4. War Games. Yeah, so it's a movie, but life-changing nonetheless. See items 1-3.
Promoted "only" four times in 12 years?! Yikes! In my industry (biotech) that would be extremely rare. I am jealous.
The War of Art. This book deals with why we hold back on our inner creativity. Why are you holding back on yours? Don't limit yourself by defining yourself by the number of promotions you have or haven't received. Read the book then get creative and get inspired and promote yourself!
If only because it inspire Gutenberg to invent the printing press and a usable alphabetic movable type, which was then used to print almost everything else I've ever read.
But for the original poster: a book won't magically make you a more productive, desirable person, or reprogram your brain to work better; you are looking in the wrong place for your inspiration.
I'd second that recommendation, and his other books too:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
Maybe we'll get to a better society eventually as more and more people realize the irony of using the technologies of abundance to fight over misperceptions of scarcity. Bucky Fuller said much the same thing. Ursula K. Le Guin says something similar in some ways in her books too (like "Always Coming Home"), about balance and community and appropriate use of technology.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
a short story that inspired Ted Nelson and so the hypertext web: http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51&lpg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This book kicked off my game development career 18 years ago.
Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus
http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Game-Programming-Gurus-Andre-Lamothe/dp/0672305070/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350093954&sr=8-2&keywords=tips+tricks+of+the+game+programming+gurus
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.
It's not only insightful, it's also got a good beat that you can dance to.
Be Here Now by Ram Dass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book)
It turns out that you can be great. You can be great at anything you want. You don't have to be born with talent. This totally inspired me to try new things. I only wish I'd read it as a teenager!
by Chip and Dan Heath
Full of excellent insights into how to undertake change processes.
At the age of 15, my mother brought me an old copy of Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. It was the first novel I'd ever read cover to cover in one sitting.
It was complete paradigm shift for me, it changed how I thought of myself as a member of the human race. I immediately changed my elective subjects for the final two years of high school, from shop style classes to physics, chemistry and math. It totally change the course of my life.
Mum later told me that my grandmother had bought this novel for her and her siblings around the same age, and I definitely will do the same for my children.
+1
... not so much for the business plan of how to make money doing very little, but I happened to read it at a point in my life when I was really working a ton, and some of the central themes in the book are centered around "Why are you killing yourself working so you can save up a bunch of money that you might never even get to spend in retirement. Enjoy your life now" Really made me rethink my life and completely changed my attitude on traveling and vacations.
You have to write down your pluses and minuses. Next, you need to learn new skills and thinking by taking evening classes at community college or
some private tutor. You need three things - academic smartness, creative smartness and street smartness. The last two you have to develop by associating with
successful friends and teachers and find a good mentor. Then, think about integrating as much knowledge as you gain to start a new project such as
writing a text book on mathematics or programming or something that you are passionate about. If making money is your goal, find a niche market for a product or service people need such as, interesting places to visit with all historical details, places to stay and food for a reasonable amount for the whole family. You have to find your inner call and just reading some books that was inspiring to some one else may not be suitable to you. You need to have continuous curiosity about every thing - your company, its products, customers, how the top bosses invest their money, and all related areas which will force to learn more about real estate, legal assistant profession, nursing and so on. it is a never ending self improvement process and discovering what makes you happy most of the time and stop at the level and enjoy your life. I have done and I am extremely happy.
If the original poster has read this far, I am sure you have received at least one book recommendation phrased in a way that speaks to your personal condition.
Your original post question asked about books. My comment is: The commonplace American university book store, the previous best source for any self-education program is paralysed and undergoing price inflation and culling of all books on the shelf for more than 2 years.
The entire mechanism of knowledge on paper organized into journals, magazines, books, reference books and textbooks is caught between the dirt cheap publishing and indexing capabilities of the Internet (with a huge contribution from the big name in search engine) and the always unrealistically expensive terms of copyright permission. Caught means the printed material can't be republished on the Internet for reading at file transfer prices per megabyte and books over three years old are leaving commercial book stores due to taxes and rents.
Suppose I told you that Science Magazine, 1974, page 1118 had a discussion of systems engineering and chaos theory you really should read. Thanks to the insane over pricing of everything under any copyright, you could read this article in 15 seconds for a cost of $.0019 ... oh wait... no after satisfying the publisher's idea of what it is worth, you will pay $30 for Internet access or you must burn $20 in gas and parking driving to a University library.
The whole scheme of going and getting a printed paper book for learning is freezing. The large organizations are cannibalizing the business of the smaller book organizations. I call this "freezing". The order of freezing is: Book stores, university book stores, Internet book stores, public libraries, university libraries.
When you do set out to acquire the books recommended, watch how well the printed paper information system works. What are the forces pushing the books you want out of reach? That is the American way: figure out what is going on with the system that is supposed to help you figure out what is going on.
The best book i have ever read in my entire life, but im just 25.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Really helped me figure out how to make a positive future for myself and those around me.
Voltaire's Bastards taught me how control of information both up and down the chain is where real power lay. This is why opening up government to complete scrutiny would place power back in the hands of the people. Open government plus democracy has such potential as opposed to our present system of half truths and rarely revealed whole truths swamped by lies and then we are supposed to go to the polling booth and make an informed decision.
The passionate programmer by Chad Fowler. Recently read it, good advice on how to take your career to the next level.
http://artofmanliness.com/2008/05/14/100-must-read-books-the-essential-mans-library/#more-183
Add to this Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. And to be non-partisan, you might as well read Rules for Radicals so you understand both sides.
1st Decade: The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins by Dr Suess
2nd Decade: Dune by Frank Herbert
3rd Decade: A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
4th Decade: To be determined..
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. for its scope and books by Ursula LeGuin like Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile for their scope I suppose as well. I enjoy stories that explore interpretations of human nature. I've also read lots of classic stuff by Voltaire, Scarron, and other French authors while taking literature classes and they gave me a sense of how people have viewed humanity over the years as well. I am currently slogging through the Iliad but it is not really my cup of tea but seems to have stood the test of time for others. Fun question!
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That book affected me in a very profound way. It won't help you get a better job in the same way that a philosophy degree doesn't prepare you to fix air conditioners. But I have found through my purely anecdotal and in no way scientific studies that the first step to improving your life is to understand and appreciate fully who you have been and how you got wherever you now find yourself. Once you understand who got you here, you can become the person who gets you somewhere else. And that is my Cliff's Notes version of just about every self-help book ever written. Especially Think and Grow Rich. Now that's a real stinker of a book. Horrible pacing, forgettable characters, and it just goes nowhere. No, fuck that shit. So what have I taken away from The Guide? Lots of useless funny stuff. How does that help me succeed? I'll try to break down a couple of the main teachings of this holy book: 0) Everything can and will change fundamentally from time to time without warning. 1) The world ending is not necessarily the end of the world. 2) Computers are just as breathtakingly stupid as their creators. 3) You can have as many second chances as you like. 4) Impulsiveness is more frequently rewarded than punished. 5) Total commitment to a course of action often results in minor injuries. 6) Radical change is necessary for growth and shouldn't be avoided. 7) Panic is rarely a productive strategy. 8) Assistance can come from very unlikely and improbable sources. 9) If you are very very good at something, you can make a living at it, even if it is silly. I would have to say that this book has overall improved my general outlook and perspective on life and enabled me to be the hoopy frood you all see before you today. A)
...by Lillian Lieber. T. C. Mits standing for The Celebrated Man in the Street.
It's a quaint read today, but when my junior high math teacher recommended it to me, I got a first look at the academic hierarchy of the day. I still find it relevant, but I'm probably an outlier.
The premise was that that mathematics rules over the other 'hard' sciences - physics and chemistry - and that pure versions of each, without apparent practical application, are more noble than the applied varieties. Lieber was pushing a pre- Rodney King flavor of "Can't we all just get along?", but what I internalized was the superiority of pursuits untainted by general utility.
Somehow, I still manage to make a living...
Surely you must be jonking that no one has yet mention "Surely You Must Be Joking Mr Feynman". An amazing set anecdotes. There is a lot in there about winging it and taking risks. Also some lessons in paying attention to what is going on around you.
For Coding: Head First Design Patterns. I didn't really get patterns until I read this. This may be because of my general coding level at the time, but understanding patterns was an import step for me.
For User Interface Design: About Face by Cooper and Spolsky on Software. About Face was dated even when I read it many years ago. It also way too much on details. Spolsky has to be tempered somewhat. However both books get straight to the heart of user interface design and they don't read like textbooks like most user experience books I see these days.
For Life: As much different fiction as I could get. Hemingway may be one the top for me. I learned a lot about integrity and perseverance. In non ficition I got a lot of out of GK Chesterton and the importance of attitude and perspective, even though I was never, and never will be, a Catholic
"Best of" book lists are always popular, but they are answering the wrong question. I have read thousands of books over my life. And written a few. I started with science fiction such as Wasp, Foundation, Dune, Avram Davidson, City, Slan, the science fiction books club collections (Galaxy Readers), you name it. That was pretty much it until I reached college. I branched a little ways out to Herman Hesse and Kurt Vonnegut, but really, stayed right in my comfort zone of SF. The breakout for me was when I read Gravity's Rainbow. I kept mumbling to myself: "can a writer do that?" I struggled with the characters and the subplots. When I finished, my mind had been stretched. And it stayed stretched. I resolved to read outside of SF no matter how hard or how boring. I compiled best of lists of all kinds of literature. I collected university course lists in literature from places like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, MIT. BBC, Times Literary Supplement lists. I worked through them all. It didn't take too many years. I filled notebooks with thoughts that arose as I read. Then I was ready to start writing. I still enjoy my SF even though I understand its limitations; now I can enjoy comparing that experience to the experience of reading Maya Angelou or Mary Gaitskill. I can enjoy the quality writing in the New Yorker. I enjoy the reviews I used to find opaque in the Times Literary Supplement. And I can participate in looking at life around me and figuring out how to express it, even though never expressed before. And I know when an expression is likely fresh and because I have never read it before. So my advice is--rather than looking for the magic set of books that is like a literary vitamin supplement, instead constantly choose books outside of your comfort zone. Yes, don't forget to reread your favorites lest you begin to fear difficulty, but try to understand why other educated people consider books great that you do not understand now. My current reading list is Wolf Hall, Marquez, The Hydrogen Sonata, Ian Fleming, Gone Girl, Churchill's History, Redwall, Murakami, Eco, incest porn, Nabokov, Joyce... in other words, the gamut of human literature in English. As Tom Wolfe said "Let's not mince words: literary lists are basically an obscenity. Literature is the realm of the ineffable and the unquantifiable; lists are the realm of menus and laundry and rotisserie baseball. There's something unseemly and promiscuous about all those letters and numbers jumbled together. Take it from me, a critic who has committed this particular sin many times over." So, the best book to read next s the one just an epsilon out of your current reach. One that takes a little struggle to release all its pleasure.
Samson Agonsistes - John Milton
Coriolanus - William Shakespeare
1984, Animal Farm - George Orwell
Philosophy of History - Hegel
18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte - Marx
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
My First Goose - Isaac Babel
Lives - Plutarch
Origins of Rome - Polybius
The Alternative in Eastern Europe - Rudolf Bahro
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter Thompson
Requiem for a Dream - Hubert Selby
The Book of Tea - Kakuzo Ukahura
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Economic Consequences of the Peace - JM Keyenes
Eminent Victorians - Lytton Strachey
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Many too many to list
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was my first trilogy. - Stirred my imagination. ...
John Carter, Warlord of Mars. - Got me designing spacecraft and rocket engines and building model rockets.
Stan Lee Comics. - Got me involveed in chemistry, (and using that knowledge to make my model rockets into fireworks.
Sherlock Holmes. - Critical thinking skills.
The collection of encyclopias my parents bought.
and many, many more!
"Getting things done".
It will make you more efficient and will help you enjoy your life more.
You'll be able to focus on important things and yet, never miss any detail.
It'll also drop a big amount of the stress i'm sure you're experiencing from time to time.
Applies to both professional and private environment.
Really, it's cheap, so, you're not likely to loose a lot by giving it a chance.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. I read this when I was 33. I was surprised to learn that I didn't know how to read a book.
Play Command HQ online
led me to a second job as a pizza deliverator.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury forces me to never take the printed word for granted, and fight government that does not fear it's people.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. By far this is the most profound book I've had the pleasure to read in my life. It doesn't contain answers, but it sure provokes a lot of thought...
11*43+456^2
To have a significant impact on your life, write your own book. That's what I did.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
Best book I ever read about software. One of the best books I ever read, period. It's to CS what the Feynman Lectures are to physics. Don't expect to read it and then create a master piece of software using Scheme, but rather expect to think differently about programming afterwards.
You can see an excerpt at http://m.video.pbs.org/video/2201676017/
READ "THE GOAL" by Eliyu? Goldratt - the bottom line is throughput
The Art of Electronics, 2nd edition, by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill.
I was into programming and electronics when I was a kid. Later I made that into embedded systems career.
This recent one by Jonathan Haidt is subtitled "why good people disagree on Politics and Religion." The author was
a liberal Jew who had his mind expanded & prejudices reframed by a trip to India.
The book is full of other fascinating anecdotes & research, for example the apparent effect of shared bodily motion
(everything from Rave dancing to soldiers marching) can produce altered/enhanced states of consciousness.
Highly recommended and valuable, especially if you have to get along with people of opposing political or religious persuasions.
Posting anonymously after moderating here...
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)
Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter)
Infinity and the Mind (Rudy Rucker)
A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking)
From Eternity to Here (Sean Carroll)
Tao Te Ching
The Way of Zen and others by Alan Watts
For the fiction side, may I suggest:
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)
A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)
First read it twenty years ago, liked it so much I put it on my car where it remains to this day.
I'll be the first to admit it's not for everyone, much like Pynchon in general I suppose, or even the supposed "best" of his catalog, but it certainly was for the book for me. There is also a sequel of sorts called Inherent Vice, not bad.
This is the last book that managed to change my world view. The ideas that the author probes as to the nature of human conciousness and the resulting human condition are extremely provocative and which is even better, completely plausable. I don't remember the last time when I suddenly started laughing in the middle of reading a book, not because it is funny (which Peter Watts' books certainly are!) but because the idea that was proposed goes so hard against my intuition that I have no better way of parsing that then to laugh. If you haven't read it, you have no good excuse not to now: It's available free from Watts' homepage at http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm Also what probably boosted up my like for that book is that the author doesn't do hand waving but bases all it's information on actual cold hard science. I am quite knowledgable about current research in cognitive and neurosciences, in biology and other basic sciences and unlike a lot of Sci-Fi books, "Blindsight" does not rub me the wrong way.
Destination: void, by Frank Herbert.
This is what alighted my passion for artificial intelligence. It is still inspiring me in my life's work.
The Way Things Work, David Macaulay.
Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder.
http://www.leedberg.com/mad/satsq/satsq.html
http://www.madmagazine.com/tags/snappy-answers-to-stupid-questions
Didn't know how much that would prepare me for life, but it did.
Another book, Only The Earth And Sky Last Forever by Nathaniel Benchley. Loved that book. Taught me not to trust the white man.
Also, The Bible. It taught me that religion is man made, and that people are really really fucking stupid when it involves belief/faith.
Be seeing you...
http://shop.fsf.org/product/book_bundle/
Problems for Computer Solution, published by RAND Corporation.
Mathematics, A human endeavor.
Power and Speed, Computer series by Time Life.
Pascal: User manual and report.
Basic Computer Games.
I'm not going to supply links, but the following gives a pretty good idea of what shaped me-
The Strawberry Statement by James Kunen
Be Here Now by Ram Dass
The Secret Life of Plants by Tompkins and Bird
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
A People's History of The United States by Howard Zinn
How to Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce
Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Seize the Time by Bobby Seale
Plus various books by the following-
Anais Nin
Tom Robbins
Gurdijeff
Carlos Castaneda
I average around four books a month, 50-50 between ebooks.and print. Potboilers, textbooks, classics- doesn't matter. I get most of my ideas from reading...since I like to write and sound smart, it works out.
The Beyond Freedom Evolution is a 12 month web-based success education curriculum. Beyond Freedom Evolution is a tool that will give you new and insightful ways to look at life and how to effectively deal with the obstacles you will inevitably face. It is a collection of thought provoking and enlightening information, universal principles and personal perspectives for the situations that arise when one chooses to take full control of their life and take on achieving big goals. These concepts were forged in the heat of overcoming insurmountable adversity by people who refused to give up, and at the end of the day, had success. I am very happy to provide more information if you are interested. Regards Sandra Free
Microsoft dos and gw-basic manuals, when the "o" in Microsoft still had the blibbet.
Zx81 manual
BBC micro AUG
K&R
Petzold
The Odyssey. Indisputably one of the best books ever. Quite geeky and excellent, Umberto Eco's "Foucault's pendulum" is one of these books I've reread regularly for 25 years.
Well, that was fun. Further confirmation to store my post in an editor before trusting SlashDot to correctly process my submission.
My post is directed for those at 40 and older. At this point you should have had offspring, which I think (both biologically and ethically) is significant.
1. John Gardner has written a number of books on how to evaluate fiction. In order to judge a piece of art, you have to have a framework in which to evaluate the piece.
2. As others have mentioned, Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance is a good read on determining values. I think it is better to read this book than relying on the Tao of Pooh, as someone else recommends. Also, it is worthwhile to remember that Pirsig's son killed himself.
3. Also, as others have mentioned, GEB is a must-read for programmers.
At 40, we're at the halfway point; we're thinking about mortality, and our legacy. If we're not parents, we've spent considerable time thinking about why we're not parents.
Though not a book, I've been extremely impressed by film> .
A couple of books I think are relevant for 40+ year old readers:
1. http://www.amazon.com/Soldier-Great-War-Mark-Helprin/dp/0156031132/
2. http://www.amazon.com/Sunlight-Dialogues-John-Gardner/dp/0811216705
I think both Atlas Shrugged & the Bible are worth reading, at the least to have the background to discuss them intelligently.
I was about to recomment the Harvard reading list, when I went out to confirm what it actually was. The irony is that the Google searching
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sica/reading.htm
does not in any way match what it used to be:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Whole-Five-Feet-ebook/dp/B00280MWSS/
One thought is to read the Pulitzer/Hugo/Nebula/etc. books. IMO, though, the recent winners do not have the same quality as those written, say, 30 years ago.
Yes, the original one, by Homer, about 2700 years old. The basis of western literature ( together with the Iliad, which is way more complex ). Why ? Because of the theme: man alone ( "rugged hero" ) fights, for 10 years, against himself, his past and the consequences of his actions to get back home, where nothing is as it was when he left that place. The Odyssey is THE basis for any general culture, self-reflection and further reading for any cultivated Westerner.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Also animal farm, brave new world, dune, and many others I can't think of at the moment
I read this book when I was 17 or so. Even now I do t consider myself big on spirituality, Ive never been a fan of crystal wavers and things of a religious nature. But there were a lot of great concepts that I took from this book and a few of the others I read. Primarily the drive for personal growth and a constant need to learn.
It's not called "The Prince",but "The Ruler" afaik.
It's a homophone (in Italian) on "The Rules & "The Ruler". ("Il Principe").
Every time I see people calling it "the Prince" I think they haven't actually read it.
That's looking at you, whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry on the book.
In the list of "right kind of jerk" books I would add
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings
Anything by the following authors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harrison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Vance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams
for a more tongue in cheek yet (imo) insightful look at humanity.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I've always had a copy of Dr Seuss' _On Beyond Zebra_ in my cube. It helped me learn to think outside the box.
If we talk about books that really changed my life, many of those were not fiction:
"Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn and "Guns, germs and steel" by Jared Diamond - anthropology is an eye opener!
"Cosmos" and "Contact" by Carl Sagan - Cosmos made me a scientist and Contact is one of the best reads on the subject "Science and Religion" (this one is fiction, I know)
All the books of Oliver Sacks - wow, just wow!
Hofstadter - "The mind's I" and "GEB"
"48 laws of power" and "33 laws of war" - the real-life examples in those books are amazing, instructive and fascinating.
"Bulgarian Chronicles" - this one is very specific - for Bulgarians only (not translated) - it is the first sincere attempt to give my countrymen their real history, as unbiased as possible. Absolutely ground shaking! I hear that Oliver Stone is trying to do this as a series of documentary movies about USA's modern history (last 100 years). I bet massive controversy will ensue...
And fiction:
Sci-fi/fantasy - the absolutely stellar D.Adams and T.Pratchett, The Dune saga, (most of) Asimov, the Strugatski brothers and the godlike Stanislaw Lem (a philosopher who writes sci-fi - unbeatable combo. Hofstadter uses his writings to illustrate many of his scientific concepts about consciousness)
Victor Pelevin (available in English), check this two out - Buddha's Little Finger (aka Clay Machine-Gun) / (Chapayev and Void) (1996) and
Babylon (aka Generation , Homo Zapiens) / Generation "" (1999)
"Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov - the best gospel there is. One of the story lines in the book is the trial and crucifixion of Jesus; people like it so much that they call it the gospel of Bulgakov (I heartily agree)
"The gospel of Jesus Christ" by J. Saramago
I know I'm too late for mod points. Who cares.
All the recommendations of sci-fi or dystopian novels and whatnot by most of the slashdot crowd...they're good books, but I wouldn't say they have much impact on life. It's the touching stories that have impact.
The Last Lecture is good. But go with great: read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (English translation). It'll only take you about an hour to read, and it will impact your life. There's good reason for it being the 2nd best-selling book throughout the world (excluding any books of faith).
by Robert Musil
It's an amazingly well written story centered around a very intelligent youngish (30s) man with some success but no ambition. It uses satire to describe the scenes and perspectives present in a society going through the dramatic shifts of the economic, political and technological situation. It's long but the chapters are about 5-10 pages each so it works well in small doses.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
also hilarious satire for people who need a bit of a rethink. It may be a bit long winded for some.
I love literature, so it's almost heart-breaking to read that people's life-changing books are The Hobbit, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or, saddest of all, something by Ayn Rand. If The Hobbit is your life-changing book, take a look at your life. Is your primary sexual relationship between you and your computer monitor? Seriously, it's a good book, but it's high-fantasy and intentionally denies all aspects of modernity and contemporary human society. Maybe some Dickens? Like David Copperfield? If you're reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or that author one-step lower on the thought-chain, Richard Bach, maybe you could read some actual Buddhism or actual Presocratic thought? Thich Nhat Hanh has several books laying out the foundations of Buddhist thought, and wouldn't be bad. And any collection of the Presocratics would probably blow your mind. Parmenides, especially, is a hoot. Ayn Rand. Dear lord. Go ask the Wizard for a heart. And maybe a brain. Or you could, if you want to be open-minded and see if there's anything worthwhile in the idea of mutual obligation, you could read some John Rawls. Or, if you're not ready to go that far, you could try Schopenhauer, at least he has the grace to be honest about his occasional misanthropy and doesn't try to base an "ethical" system on it.
By Dale Carnegie. I read it when I was 20 (which is over 35 years ago) and if should mention a single book that has helped me through my life, this is the one.
My opinion? See above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg_(book) by Clifford Stoll It's about when the Astronomer Clifford Stoll was asked to investigate in a missing 75cent billing in the computer system and he is threwn into a Spy-hunter trail, ending up in an arrest of a West German hacker spying for KGB. Upon reading it I was struck by the inginuity of ways he had to trace the hacker. Also proves the thesis "its the small misstakes that takes down the big thiefs"
"Never EVER mess with a jumper you don't know about, even if it's labeled 'sex and free beer'." - Dave Haynie
"Der Steppenwolf" from Hermann Hesse was required literature at school and despite that I read it and it possibly saved my life.
At that time I was thinking seriously about suicide and when I read the following quote from the main character, something along the lines "you can always commit suicide later if it gets too hard, so just keep going for now"
(I don't remember the exact words and it is in German anyway, so it wouldn't be of any use here)
That absolutely made sense to me. As long as you are alive, things can improve, once you are dead, you are dead and that's it.
There have been other important books later but I think the above is quite fundamental so no other became as significant as that one book.
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy.
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.
Blindsight, by Peter Watts.
If everyone read this book, the world would be a more peaceful place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
You don't seem like an underachiever to me.
You seem like you always demand more from yourself, and can't be satisfied with whatever you've achieved.
If you want to entertain that hypothesis, try "Thoughts without a Thinker", a buddhist-psychology book by Mark Epstein.
I'm not a Buddhist, and I'm off Buddhist literature currently, but this book gave me a hint about trying to "be" instead of trying to "do". In order to improve yourself, you first need to understand that you cannot improve. This kind of gibberish philosophy starts to make sense after this book.
Books from childhood:
_Divers Down! Adventure Beneath Hawai'ian Seas_ --- Hal Gordon: love of the ocean, technology, work ethic and respect for other cultures
_Swiss Family Robinson_ --- Johann Wyss: work ethic, love of outdoors,attitude toward survival
_Mad Scientist Club books_ --- Bertrand R. Brinley: love of science
_Dark is Rising pentalogy_ --- Susan Cooper: the wide world and its place in history
_Lyonesse:Suldrun's Garden, The Green Pearl, Madouc_ --- Jack Vance: high fantasy, gender relations
_The 26 Letters_ --- Oscar Ogg:love of the written word, appreciation of its history
_ A Short History of the Printed Word_ --- Warren Chappell: ove of the typography, appreciation of its history
_TeX and Metafont_ --- Don Knuth: how computers would affect typography
_ Space Cadet_ --- Robert Heinlein: understanding of education and service
_Last of the Breed_ --- Louis L'Amour: love of archery
_Looking for a Ship_ --- John McPhee: how a changing world affects a career
_Doorways in the Sand_ --- Roger Zelazny: nature of education
_Bridge of Birds_ --- Barry Hughart: love and laughter
For all that there's a lot of fiction on the list. I wonder if I shouldn't have read more biographies starting w/ Robert E. Lee whose dictum was that fiction weakened the mind.
Current project is to sort all biographies on Project Gutenberg chronologically so as to read them thus and develop a better sense of history.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
"The Tao of Poo": Taoism explained by Winnie the Pooh character. If you are "hard on yourself" and don't feel like you fit in, learning about the "uncarved block" is going to truly help.
"The Way Things Work": At ten years old, I tore apart this book. Got my mind filled with the "how" of things.
"The Dancing Woo-Lee Masters": It was modern physics explained without math. I've since totally discarded the "observer influence" nonsense of Quantum Mechanics as basically, blasting these tiny particles with light is much the same as detecting cars with cannon balls with the same "observer influence". But it was great for a time to instill wonder and get a gist of a big part of modern physics that is a mystery to 99% of the public.
"Richard Feynman biography." This man had a life worth living. He also knew how to think and break down problems. Also, he appreciated Latin culture -- which all us European-Americans need to do at some point in our lives.
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." It helped me understand that things don't always make sense -- and it will always be that way, and I shouldn't get bent out of shape about it.
"Circle Find a Whole." Written by a former porn video producer. It's a children's book aimed at adults who might be co-dependent hoping that someone else is going to solve their problems. It's also about finding the right person rather than trying to fit into someone else's agenda. Read AFTER the 'Tao of Poo'.
Science Fiction Books. Lots of them. They open your mind like psychoactive drugs to alternate perspectives. I'm sure if the organizations who prefer unquestioning, brain-dead drones had thought about it, they would have done more to restrict publishing than drugs -- well, I suppose they did, but that was called the "dark ages" for a reason.
>> I'm not nearly complete in life, but my creative mind and larger perspective make me strong in places others are weak. Your results may very.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Moonwalking with Einstein
Reading the bible is important. Not because it is correct, but because it will help you understand 2 000 000 000 people better.
A number of people have recommended Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I agree with that recommendation. Ditto Flatland. However given your career and the desire to get promoted, I would also recommend two books by the French philosopher Pierre Lévy:
Lévy, P. (1997). Collective Intelligence. Man's emerging world in cyberspace. (R. Bononno, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.
Lévy, P. (1998). Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age (R. Bononno, Trans.). New York: Plenum Trade.
These are not easy reads (Lévy's been called "The Poet of the Internet", but his views are interesting and I've been impressed how relevant they are.
by Marcus Aurelius.
Also:
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Essays by Michel de Montaigne
When the Wind Blows by James Patterson
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Pretty small book, can quickly be read, I'll suggest it to anyone looking for a great book to read.
Flexner's multi-volume life of the great man changed my life. It will make you thoughtful about integrity, ambition, resolution, courage, and patience.
I'm assuming that you're a decent programmer or whatever your forte is, so I'll limit it to that type of book where there are two clear winners. _Debugging the Development Process_ by Maguire and _Programming Pearls_ by Bentley. The first will make you a better engineer and the second a better programmer.
"The Unix Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike. It got me off to a great start with making the most of the Unix (command line) environment and how integrating programs could multiply their benefits.
"Unix Network Programming" by W. Richard Stevens. Aside from the fact that he did such a beautiful job of describing network programming, he exposed so many other aspects of programming for Unix along the way.
Aside from tech related reading, "1984" by George Orwell. It was not so important when I first read it about 40 years go, but it informs my understanding of what is going on now in the US as well as scaring me about what is still to come.
> ... since the asker seems to have a rather low self-esteem: learn another language and ponder about starting a new life in a new place.
A clarification is in order, as some here work for the weapons industry and want to see enemies of the US everywhere (by professional or sickness-related reasons).
I'm not offending or mocking the asker, I just have the impression -- since he hasn't got the promotions he was expecting in the last 12 years -- that he's not being recognized. Either he can move to another city/state or, as I suggest, sell his skills in another country.
Just that, in case some moron thinks I'd kick a person in his hour of need.
And boy, allowing people to carry guns, has created a lot of fools wanting to "defend" themselves and have some fun in the process...
"The Tao of Physics, Capra's first book, challenges much of conventional wisdom by demonstrating striking parallels between ancient mystical traditions and the discoveries of 20th century physics. Originally published by a small publisher with no budget for promotion, the book became an underground bestseller by word of mouth before it was picked up by a major American publishing house. Since then, The Tao of Physics has been published in 43 editions in 23 languages."
A number of years ago I read "Vehicles, Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262521121/geekstercom-20) and found it to be a really great and thought provoking book. He calls them vehicles, but think little robots. The book starts off really simple and shows how with some very simple circuits you could produce something which a black box observer would think had emotions of one sort or another. The book then progresses and you end up with some amazing concepts. It's not a very long book (just 168 pages), but it took me a while to read because I'd read a page and then just think about it for a while. The book is considered an artificial intelligence book, but it was written by biologist Valentino Braitenberg and in the second half of the book he basically says so in case you thought I was just making all of this stuff up, here let me show you real world biology implementations of what I have shown so far. Just a great book.
The question you are asking me is what books have impacted my life. There are many books that I have not read that have had a very large impact on my life. Many of these books convince people to act like nuts because they believe everything that's printed in these books.
There is no point reading something that bores you just because it is a bestseller or a classic. You won't get much out of it if it doesn't interest you. You'll be reading the words but not taking in what you read. Instead go to your local library and have browse to see what books you might like to read. Usually by the age of 36 most people have figured out what types of books if any they like to read more than others. Also Amazon is a good place to browse for books and write down any you might like to read. Always check to see if the local library carries it first before buying it online or in the book store.
the world's greatest prick get's the world's most desirable girl. Her more honourable would-be lover finishes last, with little or no encouragement ever from the selfish girl butpersists and gets a few meager crumbs of satisfaction after the prick is killed at the Battle of Waterloo.
A perfect prick gets the lovely girl, while his more admirable rival for her loses out. The prick dies at Waterloo, and the rival gets only a few meager crumbs of satisfaction from the lovely girl, blind as she is to enduring love and his superior character.
But the novel is much more wide-reaching and multifarious than that suggests.
There are many characters and the flaws of every one are ruthlessly though subtly exposed.
Thackeray revealed his own intents in writing it as follows:
"to indicate, in cheerful terms, that we are for the most part an abominably foolish and selfish people "desperately wicked" and all eager after vanities....I want to leave everybody dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the story–we ought all to be with our own and all other stories. Good God don't I see (in that maybe cracked and warped looking glass in which I am always looking) my own weaknesses wickednesses lusts follies shortcomings?.... We must lift up our voices about these and howl to a congregation of fools: so much as least has been my endeavour. "
The Prince has always been the traditional English translation of the title; it's not Wikipedia's fault.
I was juts am anmetue befor that
On the Road, gave me permission to step away from society. "Fahrenheit 451" Ray Bradbury. This book made me an avid reader. "Stranger in a Strange Land" By Robert Heinlein made me more willing to disobey authority. "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez showed that you can love a book with all your heart. "Politics of Experience" RD Laing changed the way understand others. "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein pushed me even more to the left politically. Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood are fucking awesome.
photosMy Photostream
Read Noa Sent John
Maybe you don't need a book, maybe you need consuelling, or this is burn-out.
But if you want a book, "What Should I Do With My Life" is a great book asking the same question as you do, and giving examples of actual people's answers.
I was in a position quite similar to you. Then I quit the IT field.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
Getting Things Done - David Allen
The Goal - Eli Goldratt
Flying, there's nothing like it.
Sciences of the Artificial. It's what we do.
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Your thinking about classes and objects will never be the same.
It would help to be knowledgeable about queueing theory and mereology, but it's tough to recommend books on these subjects.
Reading The Bible did changed my life too.
It made me realize the kind of evil behind the love thy neighbor mentality. And exactly how full of shit Christianity and the related religions are.
Perhaps you need to re-read Genesis; to realize the level of infanticide that was practiced by this kind and loving god.
Then Leviticus of more example of love.
Then the Job and think not about Job, but the workers and children who were all killed around Job to realize exactly how disposable human life really was. Well all the other humans except Job.
And then there's what the Israelites did to the Canaanites.
Its really a horrific book with exceedingly nasty implications.
If you think its a wonderful book keep reading the old testament, and actually think about the implications. And stop listening to the bullshit your preacher is spouting that has no basis in the bible.
Two years ago, after hearing a glowing review of it from Paul Thurrott on the Windows Weekly podcast, I bought a copy of 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taubes. I read it and immediately started applying the information to my eating and, within 4 months, lost 40lbs. 5 months after that I was down to where I need to be, a total of 70lbs. I've maintained it pretty effortlessly ever since.
That book not only changed my life, but probably extended it by 10+ years.
In no order and incomplete: Higher order Perl by Dominus Pears Cyclopedia Spatial Tesselations: Concepts and Applications of Voronoi Diagrams Forth: A text and Reference Programming the Z80 by Zaks The original non-ANSI K&R Using Type Right by Philip Brady Ursinus' Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology Thomas Manton Commentary on Jude The Bible: by The Creator Harmony and Melody by Elie Seigmeister Fundamentals of Data Structures - Howowitz and Sahni A year in Provence by Peter Mayle Dibs: In search of Self by Virginia Axline
...you asked for an honest answer :)
Also Freakonomics, "Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey, and the Bible of course.
Just be happy with your life and what you have, this is a dumb post. I wish I had a decent job like you, hell I just wish I had a job.
42
You are assigning value to a particular worldview. I was speaking to the qualitative improvement in job prospects, which you do not speak to, unless you are suggesting active discrimination on the basis of (non)religion, or that the original posters perceptions of their job prospects is a result of their personality?
As you say "I have led a couple projects, but I am not in any sort of leadership/management position. I realize I need to do something to enhance my career," i would suggest to improve your communication and leadership skills and to do some sort of assessment of yourself. For the the communication and leadership part you could join a Toastmasters Club. Will have some very well made manuals to start and a friendly and supportive environment. For the assessment, search for the book Zorbuda.
On a more serious note...
On a (perhaps) less serious (but probably more insightful) note, I would recommend The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
Wrong! "Principe" is prince. Get your lazy ass to an italian-american dictionary.
Yes, I've read it.
No, my post was not serious, I was just making fun of Steve Jobs.
That's because "Principe" IS Italian for prince and the person you replied to is ignorant. It's the italians' fault!
Science and science fiction didn't have much of an impact as they pretty much follow a linear progression. Grokking Bhagavad Gita is probably akin to a normal programmer grokking lisp.
That said, Stranger in a Strange Land, awesome book along the same lines.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War has taught me more about our social fabric than six years of study in the Humanities.
Samuel Shem's The House of God filled in the gaps Kahn left. Yes, it is pulp fiction in its most base sense. But it is, in the same base sense, true.
Neither book made me throw my plans over board and steer into a wholly different direction, but between the two of them I found a new perspective on my profession and confirmation for choices I had made.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
The Black Cloud, Fifth Plant and A for Andromeda all by Fred Hoyle - they are real science fiction - Black Cloud even has maths to work out in it. I first read them in the erly-mid seventies, ans I've reread them from time to time since. They are long in the tooth now but I would still recommend them now
Well said, Ayn Rand's books are the worst books ever written. People who like them relate to the brutalist message in them and have no feel for plot, character or good writing
In addition to many already named, this will give you some nuts-and-bolts guidance on improving your habits, which will in turn improve your character, without which a leader is worse than nothing.
If you want to get a supervisory job, though, I would recommend, in addition to reading books, taking the lead on some projects outside the office. Even if you just lead a half-dozen friends picking up trash at the park, it's experience and it'll teach you something. On a resume, what you've read doesn't even show up. What you've led, does.
The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II, by Fernand Braudel.
Braudel's book is a truly stunning/awe-inspiring/breathtaking summary of the nature and history of the Mediterranean and the lands surrounding it. Two volumes, and I think he gets around to Philip II somewhere in the second volume.
Anything Braudel wrote will be worthwhile and entertaining reading, but make sure that the translator is Sian Reynolds - she did a superb job, and I had the illuminating experience of reading some essays by Braudel that she translated alongside the same essays translated by someone else -- it was night and day.
This page accidentally left blank
Jiddu Krishnamurti (J K Krishnamurti) - Commentries on Life, On Relationships
Osho - The man who loved seagulls (lot of his books)
Eckhart Tolle - The power of now
The depth with which these books go on real life topics will help you learn a lot more about u'r own self, your own mind and your own life.
There are lots but I think these made tangible changes to the way I think Animal Farm - My Dad was a socialist, its was the first time I questioned his political dogma The Amiga ROM Kernel manuals Code Complete - 1st ed. Steve McConnell The Art of Electronics - Horowitz & Hill The BSA Bantam Haynes Manual - 32 years on I'm still spannering bikes The Camel book RSGB Radio Communications Handbook (an ancient pre-transistors copy) The Cuckoos Egg
...along with the eye-opening work of the Holy Spirit. If anything, "significant impact" is an understatement for finding out the truth about the true purpose of existence, the nature of the universe and the destiny of every man and woman in it.
Looking at the other answers, it's sad to see how few Christian geeks seem to read and comment on Slashdot... or perhaps they've all been modded down.
Objectivism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)
Libertarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
Libertarianism doesn't believe in laissez-faire capitalism. In general, Libertarians are strict constitutional constructionists (definition here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_constructionism if you don't know what that means either).
Really, Objectivist views, particularly when expressed as if they were Libertarian views, do a disservice the philosohical distintion, and, since generally Objectivist viewpoints are abhorred by anyone who buys the idea of Rousseau's (definition here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract in case you need it), which includes the majority of the population -- including most Libertarians, who will support the idea of public assistance, if only, as one pundit put it, "to keep less well off people from having an incentive to steal our stuff".
Objectivists are generally those people who don't understand the difference between "Character" and "Charactertures", and don't realize that Rand's protagonists and antagonists aren't representative of real people: real people are much more complex and multifaceted.
I really am beginning to think that people need to have passed a political philosophy class before they are permitted to read her books, so they at least realize that they are getting a philosophy along with the story.
Maybe people should also have to read The GNU Manifesto http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html in order to realize the GPL is an instrumentality of that manifesto, rather than something which exists separate from it, before they are permitted to contribute code to a GPL'ed project (disclosure: I've personally contributed plenty of code to GPL'ed projects, but I did it with an understanding of the philosophical basis and emergent properties of that basis).
The Holy Bible is a great source of advice for character, professional, and career development. Start with the Wisdom series of books within the Bible.
Well, I guess my reply was a little confusing. I was challenging the point that the Bible is the basis for morality, not its influence. On that I agree. And that Jesus Christ is probably the most influential person in the world, whether he is fictional or not.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I belive you have missed the forest for the trees. I am sorry you got hung up on terminology.
I'm quite aware of the fact that Ayn Rand is pushing political theories as well as philosophical models. She is also pushing certain moral and ethical models. I was referring to the political theory of Libertarianism that is expressed in her work. That is the part of her story which held in my memory, and which formed much of my world view.
A caricature is not a person. The map is not the territory. A caricature is a story, a model, an archetype. Perhaps that model is useful for describing something in the real world, perhaps it is not. Ayn Rand's expression of a socialist economic model has been useful to me, so I subscribe to it, even though certain aspects of her work (sexual relations and atheism) I have felt free to discard.
None of this changes the fact that I have used Libertarian ideas of self-improvement, hard work, and self-value to open my access to both professional work and academic opportunity. Not objectivism, as I don't subscribe to that. Nor atheism, as I don't subscribe to that. Nor free love, as I don't subscribe to that, either. Just Libertarianism, along with a healthy dose of Laissez-Faire economics.
I would like to hear your reasoning behind this statement, "Libertarianism doesn't believe in laissez-faire capitalism." That runs completely contrary to my experience and knowledge. I understand that some left-leaning Libertarians do not subscribe to capitalism, but I have yet to find a Libertarian that does not believe in Laissez-Faire market systems as a foundational premise.
cej102937
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
I used to always be worried about what would happen the next day, for the rest of my life, etc. It took a few years to change how I think, but I think this book probably had the biggest impact on my life over any other single book.
I would like to hear your reasoning behind this statement, "Libertarianism doesn't believe in laissez-faire capitalism." That runs completely contrary to my experience and knowledge. I understand that some left-leaning Libertarians do not subscribe to capitalism, but I have yet to find a Libertarian that does not believe in Laissez-Faire market systems as a foundational premise.
cej102937
Laissez faire means "1: a doctrine opposing governmental interference in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights. 2: a philosophy or practice characterized by a usually deliberate abstention from direction or interference especially with individual freedom of choice and action."
The key points here are "minimum necessary", which most certainly applies to the recent quantitative easing, and before that, the TARP II and TARP, and prior to that, the deregulation under Clinton of the credit card industry which resulted in the large scale conversion of uncollateralized credit card debt, which was offered to people, including college students, with no means to repay, into collateralized debt. This was inarguably government interference where it did not belong: let the credit card companies fail, hoist on their own petard; let AIG fail, hoist on its own petard.
Objectivists tend to conflate lassiez-faire with the concept of non-regulation; yet when the regulation falls in favor of the corporation, is that also laissez-faire? I think not.
If you understand that all of the free money in the economy was effectively removed when the risk to the credit card companies was removed, then you understand that all of the marginal availability of money was pretty much sucked out of the economy when that happened. Lately, we've seen the remaining margin being pulled out by the oil refining companies, which do not lack for input resources at low cost, but certainly control the refining process to limit the availability of finished product. This was pretty obviously manipulated in microcosm by Chevron in California when they manipulated the clean air laws in order to require reformulation of gasoline in California to isolate the input to the market of pre-refined petroleum: if you can't buy out of state gas, then the refinery supply controls the available total supply, and therefore the saddle point for the profit/cost margin.
Regulation would have prevented this.
From a purely Libertarian standpoint, then, the purpose of government is not to interfere in economic relationships (which you might incorrectly term as laissez-faire), but to regulate the market so that equal opportunity exists for all (which is definitely not traditional laissez-faire "economic hands off" in the traditional definition). To put it more plainly: Enforcement of fairness is not interference.
Where Objectivists tend to get it wrong is the same place where confidence men fail to see the illegality/immorality of their actions: the idea that "if someone is stupid enough to sell themselves into slavery, they deserve to be a slave" is contravened by true Libertarian philosophy, which agrees with the inalienability of certain rights: even should you wish to alienate those rights from yourself, a just, Libertarian society would not permit you to do so.
To put it another way, in a purely Libertarian society, you might be permitted to sell one kidney, but you would not be permitted to sell both of them, and you would not be permitted to sell your heart, since that would kill you, robbing you of your inalienable rights. Likewise, you might be able to indenture yourself for a limited period, but you would not be able to indenture your child, since the rights of the child supersede yours as a parent.
There is a limit to laissez-faire. That limit is the limit between anarchy and government.
Where a Libertarian would disagree with a Democrat or a Republican is anywhere there are laws at a federal level regulating something which was not str
The Management Secrets of T. John Dick Might not change your life, but at least make you see the funny side. Or the sequel The Rise and Fall of T. John Dick. They're a bit like Dilbert in novel form, seen through the eyes of the pointy-haired boss.
Hadji Murat by Leon Tolstoy
For your particular situation I think that these would be helpful:
The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Leadership-Challenge-Extraordinary-Organizations/dp/0470651725/ref=sr_ob_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350654832&sr=1-1 )
The Oz Principle by Hickman, Smith, and Conners ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Principle-Individual-Organizational-Accountability/dp/1591843480 )
I second the Dune and Foundation suggestions...
Astonishing to me. Evolution is continuous, minute by minute. Changed the way I experience change.
http://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X
by David Allen.
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
To go far you must start near.
To know others and the world around you, you first need to know yourself.
If u are interested in learning about yourself, who you are, what your motivations are, what your thoughts are, what your feelings are,
what your relationships are, the following books will help:
On Relationships and Commentaries on Living - J K Krishnamurti
The man who loved Seagulls - Osho
The power of now - Eckhart Tolle
Actually if you truly know yourself, who you are, you will not need to look outside at all, you will lfind all your answers.