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Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Books You Wish You Had Read Earlier?
Reader joshtops writes: Hey, community. Could you folks please name some books that you wish you had read earlier -- especially because these books presumbably had an impact on your life. The books could be from any genre or year.
Sheldon Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right
Grays Sports Almanac 1950-2000... back in 1990
Shocking how much more to it than the movie/tv versions. In fact, they only serve as spoilers.
"The power of now" and "A new earth" by Eckhart Tolle. Very simple techniques but very hard to master.
The book I wish I had read earlier...
My Diary.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
By the time I'd read it I had figured most of it out, but if I'd read it earlier I could have saved some time getting there.
Definitely The Bible. Doesn't matter which version. I was well into my 30s before I started sacrificing chickens after accidentally touching women during menstruation.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Written by a woman about how men are groomed and managed by women
All the Adventures of a Curious Character (on Richard Feynman) by Ralph Leighton
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Rereading Daniel Dennett's "Conscious Explained" now... really opened my eyes to what consciousness is and isn't.
(I reference it in my own comic on dealing with mortality, as plugged in my sig)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships by Diane Vaughan
I first encountered Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy in adulthood and I immediately wished someone had introduced it to me in middle school. For the purposes of this discussion, it's about a kid who keeps getting moved from one society into another. Each time he assimilates into a new group he notices the strengths and weaknesses of the new culture. Most of the coming-of-age books I was exposed to glorified the misfit and tried to reassure the reader that it's OK to be different. Citizen of the Galaxy doesn't bother with that at all---the protagonist integrates more-or-less successfully into every society he joins and he never gets angsty about not fitting in. This would have been a good thing to read when I was younger.
Before I ended up working for a psychopath.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell.
While 1984 is better known, Down and Out is much more relevant especially today.
RTFM. Wiser words were never acronymized.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn (http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
by Dale Carnegie.
Seriously.
There's a thousand fantastic resources available on how to be a better programmer. Accruing technical acumen has always been the easiest part of navigating my career. Knowing how to work with humans has always been tricky. I wish I would have read this book back in high school.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
How to Win Friends and Influence People.
I'm currently on Green Mars (book two) and absolutely loved Red Mars (book one). Book Three is called Blue Mars. The first books was so good, and so timely with this topic, that I felt compelled to post. I read a lof ot Arthur C. Clarke as a kid, and wish I had read this trilogy when it first came out. The topics related to life back on Earth are so prescient, it is hard to believe the first book is nearly 25 years old. I'm definitely hooked, and will be reading more of Kim Stanley Robinson in the future.
It seemed odd until I had enough years under my belt.
Trumps masterpiece, of course. All hail our orange leader.
No... don't. Everyone in our college clique who read it became fantastically unsuccessful. I only got a half way into the first book and somehow managed to salvage my life.
I'd read the The Book of the SubGenius instead. At least then you'll know how to fail upward.
Someone had to do it.
Look up "Kickback". Turns out it's important.
Kind of wish that I'd read Ringworld earlier, didn't get to anything Niven until I was already in my 30s. It's interesting to see what all Niven did with works in other genres like in the scripts he wrote for Star Trek: The Animated Series that included characters from N-Space.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I didn't read "Battlefield Earth" by L. Ron Hubbard until Amazon had the ebook version for $1.99 last year. I've enjoyed the book much more than the movie. Although I've read the first three volumes of "Mission Earth" as a teenager, I didn't read all ten volumes until this year. Gets off to great start, sags in the middle, and finishes with a bang. This book series is like the Trump Administration: just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it takes you further down into the corruption that is humanity.
Could have saved me decades of aggravation
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0762415339
The dictionary. Doesn't matter which version. If I was able to read one of those at age 1, I'd be far ahead of where I'm at now.
I was left with two distinct ideas after reading this book that I'd wished I'd had 20 years earlier.
1) It's damn ok, if not mandatory, that a person feel good about making money off their talents
2) Pure unabashed capitalism is an extreme philosophy.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
The Naked Ape (a Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal), by Desmond Morris, 1967.
The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, 1976.
These give clues about what we are, and why.
By the time I read it at age 14 I thought the main character was a whiny annoying little prick. If I had read it 1-2 years earlier it would have been profound.
Any sports almanac from 2020 and beyond.
Perennially relevant to critical thinking about power. Similarly, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World can explain how we make ourselves slaves. Follow up with Amusing Ourselves to Death.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
The Four Agreements
Meditation related literature including Buddha's Brain and Wherever You Go, There You Are
Also "The Bible" and "The Torah", but so that I can properly address the cognitive distortions of the Christian/God-centric mindset as needed in an authoritative manner.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand One Second After by William R. Forstchen Both equally relative with everything that's happening these days.
I actually read it at exactly the right time, maybe I was around 14-15 years old. Helped me put some things in context and get some good priorities in life, helped me get where I am now.
How to win friends and influence people, the magic of thinking big, how to have confidence and power when dealing with people, how I raised myself from failure to success in selling, personality plus, seven habits of highly effective people, 21 irrefutable laws of leadership are some of them off the cuff. I have an entire bookcase filled with others.
Because if I had started it 20 years ago instead of 15 I might have finished it by now.
but I knew even then that there was only a very narrow path to make a living at it, so I majored in Comp Sci instead...
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant
The World As Will And Representation, Schopenhauer
The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper
Word and Object, Quine
There are plenty of great books that I wish I had read earlier:
1. Masterminds of Programming
2. Infinite Jest
3. The Sun Also Rises
are just a few examples. However, the one that came to mind first was Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. I really tried to stay away from it because I heard so many people say that it was a great book. I didn't want to read it just out of spite.
When I finally read it, I really enjoyed it and it helped me think through some things differently that I did not expect.
remove nospam. to email!
by Daniel Quinn
I didn't read that until several years after it came out, which was way too late given how much I love it.
This book would have changed my world had I read it when I was four. But now that I'm 44, not so much.
Yaz
If I knew how much money can be made from being a "Christian" preacher, I would have done it LONG ago!
Joel Osteen on '60 Minutes' admitted to pulling in $60 million for his church from donations and $70 million from his books.
And so are all of Trump's so called "Preachers". And they do have the ear of the President.
And the word of "GOD".
*mumbling*the human race is a bunch of bald monkeys and they will never learn*mumbling*
I wish I would have started to read this book when I was younger as I would have had the stamina and attention span to finish it. I think that everyone should read the little prince early as it makes less sense to an adult who reads it for the first time. I was fortunate that I read Enders game the year it was published. All his other stuff, which I have also read, is mostly spiritual crap.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books.
Preferably the day it came out, as I was using C++ at the time.
davecb@spamcop.net
Rule #1: Be an asshole to your employees. Yes, this is an actual book and it really said that.
There is more to read than you can but go for it anyway!
Bill Gates' twee The Road Ahead is definitely a book that should not be on your list. That dweeb completely missed the importance of the internet.
Suggestions ,V1–3
1984
Brave New World
Paris in the Twentieth Century, by Jules Verne
The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White
The English Language | A User's Guide – oh so readable...
The Art of War, Clavell edition
The Concise 48 Laws of Power
The Cogito (Cogito er sum my ass!)
The Selfish Gene
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Distinction, by Bordieu
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
A People's History of the United States
Asian American Dreams
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Abridged Edition
The Demon-haunted World, by Sagan
The Oxford English Dictionary, two-volume micro-text complete version as a reference
You Can Negotiate Anything
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Stranger in a Strange Land
Zen and the Art off Motorcycle Maintenance (at east until 2/3 through)
The Structure of Science, by Nagel
A Rocky & Bullwinkle coloring-book!
I would rule the world!
Bad Science should be basic requirement in all high schools. People need to understand the difference between good science and bad science. Too many people think good science is bad, and bad science is good.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Contact by Carl Sagan
and
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Stranger in a Strange Land
Atlas Shrugged
https://www.amazon.com/Never-S...
Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
Interesting read, and you end up with Tactical Listening skills. Changes how you view negotiation situations completely. And everything is a negotiation in life. ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling
I don't have the energy/drive to plow through tech books, absorbing their sweet, sweet knowledge I did 20 years ago.
I'll still get there, but with significantly more breaks and annoyance at not being done already.
Michalangelo Progr
The Happiness Advantage
If you are an engineer, manager or other technical career.... OR a MANAGER of anybody who falls into those categories, this should be *required* reading every few years.
Truths I've learned from this book include...
"If one woman can make a baby in 9 months... Then let's get 9 to make one it 1 month..." is a logical fallacy often used by management.
"Technical teams should be clearly scoped and fairly small or the amount of effort required for communications and coordination will consume more resources than the actual work. "
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein. It predates HHGTTG and has a very similar two headed mutant in it. Also, HHGTTG by Douglas Adams
Only the classics, i.e.
TAoCP (Donald Knuth)
GEB (Douglas Hofstadter)
The Illuminatus! trilogy (Robert Shea & Robert A. Wilson)
Taleb's 4-part Incerto series (see http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/247576/incerto-4-book-bundle-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb/9780812997699/) is fantastic reading. Changes your perspective on the nature of randomness and how much control we actually have over our system and our environment. Not just control, but how little information we even have about the situation! (it is easy to get "fooled by randomness"). Antifragile is particularly a very good concept we should follow in all of our systems; it occurs to me so often now how fragile our systems are, and many steps we take actually make it more fragile, not less.
I believe Taleb is working on a 5th book, I am looking forward to it.
If I had read it before college I am certain I would have learned even more during my years there. As role models go, one can do a lot worse than Richard Feynman. :-)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The Spirit's Book.
Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain
by Philip B. Crosby
This fantastic book explains Quality in a simple and direct way.
I wish that I had read it 10 years earlier than I did, as I would have done many things differently in my first decade of work.
also, Homer.
should have been published much earlier so I could have read it 10 years ago. As a conservative working for a University, this would have helped to explain (and counter) many of the bat-sh!t crazy things that go on in public education. I've since picked up most of the book's info the hard way, but it sure would have made it easier along the way.
"Most Secret War" by R. V. Jones
https://www.amazon.com/Most-Se...
A story of doing vital technology on the time scales of total war. This book should be read by anyone who cares about practical innovation.
If there is such a book
He took action and changed what he didn't like about himself.
Dianetics. I had money before I read it.
Shel Silverstein "Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book"
dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet GoliathOct 15, 2001
by J. David Kuo
Ideally in 1995.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I wish I had read yesterday's Wall Street Journal last year!
Winning through Intimidation
by Robert Ringer
I read this book when I was in my early teens, so earlier might not have helped. Still one of the best books that I've ever read.
In a nutshell: All people will try to screw you over, here are the three ways they'll do it, and this is why you won't need to worry about it.
Nice to be able to talk to a woman.
I wish I had read this *before* I had to repair my motorcycle because it, in fact, did not help me fix it.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
by Albert Camus.
You then should probably read about how it can be interpreted. YouTube video discussions are ok, too, as long as they are reasonable discussions on philosophy. You kinda need to read it to be able to get the most out of it, though.
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
SCUM manifesto
Dianetics
Book of mormon
The Game
48 rules of power
I would have loved to read it but I am a bit tied up at the moment.
The Elements of Style.
It's not actually a book I wish I'd read early, it was a book I did read early and have been grateful for ever since!
It's a short, clear, concise book as you would hope for from a book to help improve your writing. It has many small points that really stick with you, in my case for decades.
For some reason the Kindle edition (linked to above) seems to be totally free at the moment so you have no excuse not to grab it! The paperback itself is fairly small if you prefer paper.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I found Think & Grow Rich when I was in my early 30's. Had I found it earlier in life, I would have been 3 miles ahead of myself.
It's one book of many which ought to be reviewed on a regular basis to kick your thinking into high gear for better accomplishments in this world.
Rampaging Bulls by Alexander Tadish. How YOU, employee of startup, are almost certainly going to get hosed when your company goes public (IF it does). Oh God, if I only had a time machine, I'd send this one back to myself before I got involved in startups.
The Fix by Damian Thompson. How dopamine rules everybody's life.
Games Primates Play by Dario Maestripieri. How what happened on the plains of Africa a very very long time ago made the human mind what it is today.
You Are Not So Smart, and You Are Now Less Dumb by David Mcraney. You are not in control of your life, no matter what you think you think.
Death March by Edward Yourdon.
By G. Edward Griffin. If I'd read this book in college, I would certainly have known a lot more about central banks, state banks, private banks, investment banks and the entire monetary system before its complexity overwhelmed me. Everyone who read The Big Short should read this book if they want to understand what really happened in the financial collapse of 2008. Griffin predicted the collapse decades before it happened.
What I really wish I'd read more of earlier are financial books. How to handle money, how to budget, how to eliminate debt or be much more careful about using it than the average American is, how to invest, how to plan for retirement, all of those things.
I'm not really attached to these, but they're examples of a few reference points that made a difference to me in terms of how I thought about my finances:
* a Dave Ramsey book (they're all kind of redundant) - for budgeting, saving, and month-to-month financial management
* The Millionaire Next Door - some framework for understanding what habits contribute to wealth, and which ones don't
* The Four Pillars of Investing - a lot of history and basic investing environment
* The Intelligent Investor - a more detailed perspective on investing and history
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
More valuable to my professional life than any text book given to me at school
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by the media theorist and NYU prof Neil Postman.
Read it a week ago after letting it languish on my bookshelf since college. Really wished I had read it ages ago! I'd have a lot more books than TV series under my belt.
Postman prophetically saw how TV would drastically reduce both our individual and our culture's collective capacity for critical thought and intelligent discourse by conditioning us to expect entertainment in every sphere of our lives (not just TV). In this important book, he sounded the alarm bell for American democracy. And his warning is even more relevant and critical today in our binge-watching, distractable, and social-media driven culture.
Here's a snippet from Postman's own forward:
"... What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture... As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right."
Perhaps I'm just a bad geek, but I've found Lord of the Rings a little challenging to finish, though it's been a while since I've tried. I find that people who read it when they were younger (or had it read to them young) have a reverence for it I just don't quite share, but I feel a little like I'm missing out.
by Chris Hadfield. Maybe I would have strived more to be a zero and to do things properly.
This book changed the way I see humankind. AC because moderated
"A Demon Haunted World" and "Pale Blue Dot" by Carl Sagan are two I wish I'd read in my teens or early 20's.
Makes you think about citizenship, the right to vote, and damn If I read it in highschool I probably would have joined the Marines and my like would be very different.
Specifically books 6 and 7.
Also wish I'd played Half Life 3 sooner.
The Mind's I by Hofstadter and Dennett
I read it when I was in my 20s, and I loved it....it made me search out other works by Hofstadter, all of them worth reading.
I really should go back and read all of them.
Good Calories Bad Calories / The Primal Blueprint
These books literally changed my life. I am going on 5 years on a low-carb diet. I didn't do it to lose weight, I did it get and stay healthy, and I've never felt better.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
One of the worst things you can do to yourself, long term, is forget where you came from. I have diary from about ten years ago that is absolutely horrible to read. I was in the US military and I was chronically suicidal, as were at least half of the people who worked with me. I don't want to forget that because I don't want to lose appreciation for where I am now or forget how I got here. I look back and I talk to people I knew back then and most of them have lives that are very different from what I have now, and I don't want to forget how important one or two small decisions can be in the long run.
The C Programming Language - Kernighan and Ritchie: http://www.cprogramming.com/bo...
Herman Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/2981...
By Michael Shaara . Hands down the best Historical novel written about the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. Done in a "First Person" Narrative, it is gripping, easy to read and makes History literally come alive. It makes one understand just how close the United States came to being split into two separate countries.
The Moral Animal by Robert Write
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
anyone that's going to dig in to Dennett's explanation of consciousness should also consider two epistemological works by rudolf steiner:
The Philosophy of Freedom - Some results of introspective observation following the methods of Natural Science:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/...
and
The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/...
Very enlightening book written by an Army Psychiatrist on human mental development.
Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion
If I had got my hands on that book at the very beginning of my Unix[like] career, my whole life would probably have been very different. It would have jumped me up a level in competence at a time when it would have made a seriously major difference in the way I handled an opportunity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As mentioned before, I read a lot of scifi growing up. Some was good, some was great, some was just simply crap. I'd heard a lot about Iain Banks one way or another, but it took I while till I picked up one of his books. They are smart, challenging, thought-provoking and anything but the normal scifi grind. I'm particular fond of Use of Weapons, The Player of Games and Excession. There's been only one book in the series that really didn't work for me (Matter).
On a similar note, I'd heard about Altered Carbon (by Richard K Morgan) and Takeshi Kovacs for a really long time before I picked them up. Like Banks, he's challenging but he also throws a lot of atmosphere in, and the trilogy is a work of noir mastery. Also some of the tightest writing I've ever read. Morgan can describe scenes in the absolute minimum amount of words required, as to not bog down your enjoyment of the world. The first two are also fantastic in audiobook form, then they changed narrators for the third one and ruined it.
"Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn
"Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse
"The Republic" by Plato
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
"A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Arthur Miller
"The Log of the Sea of Cortez" by John Steinbeck
"Games People Play" by Eric Berne
"The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli
"Wanderer" by Sterling Hayden
Cool, thanks for the pointers.
I know Robert O. Doyle's son, Robert has written some survey stuff looking over the problem of free will, like what does that mean in a universe that's seemingly pretty damn deterministic...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Friedrich Hayek: The Road to Serfdom. Reading this book earlier would have enabled me to understand some of the developments in the World much better. The most recent example being the miserable fate of Venezuela.
I read the Lord of the Ring triology skipping the Hobbit.
When I came upon it much later in life, it seemed that I had somewhat lost interest in imaginary topics.
I don't mean it as a critic for those who still do, and even feel slightly envious, but I get the same feeling when I try to play golf.
Even though I should be enjoying myself, I have a constant nagging feeling that there are real things to learn and much to be done.
by |@in M. B@nks::Sm@|| n0v3|, Gr3aT |it3r@tur3
Took me seven years but well worth the read~!
This book helped me learn to control my own emotions. The most important thing I learned was that how I responded to any situation was completely under my control. You can choose to be angry or not. This helped me learn to deal with others more effectively and be happier. The sooner people learn that they are in control of their emotions and a situation or event does not force you to feel one way or another it sets you free.
Harry Potter and the Methods Of Rationality ( http://hpmor.com/ ) by Eliezer Yudkowsky (and the community) I wish it had been written earlier, so I could've read it earlier. Also, it's free.
A quick google of "The UNIX Programming Environment PDF" shows several available sources. Archive.org has a few other titles.
The AWK Programming Language
The C Programming Language - First Edition (useful for old systems, HP-UX bundled K&R compiler), Second Edition.
Practice of Web Programming (audio), also CBC Spark
DMR final web page mirror
The UNIX Time-Sharing System (C Programming Language alternate text)
FYI, I got this from your link:
Your connection is not secure
The owner of soyouregoingtodie.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.
Advanced->
soyouregoingtodie.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: ftp.soyouregoingtodie.com, ftp.soyourgoingtodie.com, soyourgoingtodie.com, www.soyouregoingtodie.com, www.soyourgoingtodie.com Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN
It works without complaint when I add "www." to the URL. Seems to be some variations in spelling.
Best book about design I've ever read.
What now appears intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer, was once dismissed as fiction or viewed as easily address by advancing technology. But the point was always not to worry or be overly concerned; there will always be solutions - either because we took action or because we didn't. We are free to implement solutions or let nature implement them for us. But either way, the problem gets solved.
Suggestions ,V1–3
1984
Brave New World
Paris in the Twentieth Century, by Jules Verne
The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White
The English Language | A User's Guide – oh so readable...
The Art of War, Clavell edition
The Concise 48 Laws of Power
The Cogito (Cogito er sum my ass!)
The Selfish Gene
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Distinction, by Bordieu
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
A People's History of the United States
Asian American Dreams
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Abridged Edition
The Demon-haunted World, by Sagan
The Oxford English Dictionary, two-volume micro-text complete version as a reference
You Can Negotiate Anything
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Stranger in a Strange Land
Zen and the Art off Motorcycle Maintenance (at east until 2/3 through)
The Structure of Science, by Nagel
A Rocky & Bullwinkle coloring-book!
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I would have just liked to enjoy it as a teenager.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe.
Covers the essentials of strength training which has improved my health and well being considerably.
Dune: Health & Safety Inspectors.
Accountants of Gor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Vol. I, Mainly mechanics, radiation, and heat. One of the most beatiful books I read.
The book that has by far influenced me the most is George Orwell's 1984. I read it when I was a teenager (~15'ish), though I don't think I would have appreciated it more if I had read it earlier. It's pretty dark, and its adult themes would have been harder to grok.
I'm in my mid-forties now, and it has influenced and informed my opposition to a surveillance state ever since. I remember thinking how awful it was that Winston would go out into the forest with his lover, thinking he was alone -- but they were STILL able to record him out there. As others have said, 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
- ------ Go 'til ya know.
The question is kind of interesting, but I think it's a loaded question like "Has Donald Trump stopped beating his wives yet?" or "Does the general strike against #PresidentTweety start on Thursday or is that just people calling in sick to watch the Comey testimony?" (See the latest Borowitz column at the New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/humor...)
Anyway, any excuse to write about books, eh? Just now reading an interesting book called Influence about how the compliance professions (mostly in sales and marketing) manipulate people. Rather surprised I've never heard of this guy before, though I've read a lot of related material in psychology.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Design of everyday things. I think this should be mandatory for everyone to read. Peopleware was also nice if you work in a project and have meetings etc. Both of these are easy to read.
For a long time I believed that "religion of peace" shit.
If I ever had a mod point I'd give that an insightful, not a funny. The "flamebait" mods much have come from the insane Libertarian contingent. (I've yet to meet a Libertarian who actually understood much about freedom. Most of them are confusing it with one of the senses of "free beer", as in being so drunk as to act completely "freely" at other people's expense.)
Really disappointed to see the lack of funny book recommendations. Not surprised, however. This is today's Slashdot, after all. Talk about a target-rich environment.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Robert Trivers' original papers, or any decent rehash thereof.
I really didn't know Trivers' work until edge.org starting featuring these ideas in the early 2000s.
Instead I slogged through my teenage years reading Roots (icch), Airport (icch), Mere Christianity (icch), Your Erroneous Zones (icch), The Arms of Krupp (painful, but worth the effort), and The Sovereign State (of ITT) (even more painful, but also worth the effort).
I was a sampler of all things.
As such, it looks like I managed to read nearly every non-fiction work mentioned on this young thread either A) by the age of 23, B) shortly after first publication.
The one exception being Ayn Rand, a permanent no-fly zone.
Big Sister Is Watching You — 1957
My second vote goes to Wikipedia. Yes, I mean this seriously.
Since elementary school, I was no stranger to the Encyclopedia Britannica, its many gaps forming the permanent, eroding skyline of my bedroom bookshelves. Every month or so, I'd have 20 gaps and 3 volumes standing, so I'd gather them up off every available surface, shelve them in order, and start again.
Then a miracle happened in 2005.
For the last decade, I've been randomly looking things up in Wikipedia, that I would have liked to have looked up long before, only it wasn't immediate, organized, and convenient.
Just yesterday I started randomly looking up all the cartoons I grew up with, and a few more recent ones:
* xkcd — 2005
* Calvin and Hobbes — 1995
* Dilbert — 1989
* Bloom County — 1980
* The Far Side — 1980
* Doonesbury — 1970
* The Family Circus — 1960
* B.C. (comic strip) — 1958
* Dennis the Menace (U.S. comics) — 1951
* Peanuts — 1950
* Blondie (comic strip) — 1930
Doesn't that shine a different light on ye olde Dagwood sandwich?
Where else would one go to systematically back-fill these (perhaps) inconsequential gaps?
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/039333810X
At least the first few chapters.
In it he tries to explain String/M-Theory, but in the first few chapters he does an EXCELLENT job explaining General Relativity and a decent job explaining QED/QM.
I actually traveled the country for Deere & Co., installing SCO Xenix running on 286s in dealerships. Most(/all) of the development was done in RM COBOL.
The hardware was made by Texas Instruments, and the motherboard was in three sections attached by ribbon cables. TI later dumped x86 Xenix and moved to a 68000/nubus (Mac clone?) running their own port of SysV.
I really don't miss any of those machines. HP bought TI's UNIX line and shot it in the head.
by Eric Hoffer
I read this in a history class in college. Things happening in the world today make me think of it often.
by Thomas S. Kuhn
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Van Doren no despite the title this is not a recap of what you learned in elementary school. It does what highschools and colleges refuse to do explicitly : how to read at an analytical and syntopical level. Syntopical level reading is college level reading but most people don't reach this level of sophistication until graduate school.
Mathematics for the Million by Lancelot Hogben. Anyone, with sufficient intelligence who reads this in high school would score a perfect or almost perfect score on the math portion of the SAT. Einstein read it and liked it : enough said.
A book about systems thinking, life and finances. While it ultimately is about how to retire in 5 years, it is more about refactoring your life to make a web of goals rather than a single solutions. For example, having 3-5 smaller sources of income rather than a single source of income (A real "job"). Perhaps fixing old electronics or helping fix people's computers or dog walking or playing in a band or .... Or if you are attached to your job, you might instead choose to simply live close enough to your job to walk, thus getting exercise while commuting rather than paying for a car that just sits at work for 8 hours to take you back home at night. The idea is that your life is a more resilient system with you having gained multiple different skills and solutions that all work together.
https://www.amazon.com/Early-Retirement-Extreme-Philosophical-Independence/dp/145360121X
I wish I'd read Mervyn Peak's Gormenghast books decades ago, rather than after seeing the BBC TV series first. I like the first two books enough to reread them every couple of years. Peak's use of language is just amazing.
"Iceberg Slim: The Lost Interviews With The Pimp" by Ian Whitaker
Maybe I would have been in a better career.
Tales of the South Pacific
The Fires of Spring
Return to Paradise
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Sayonara
And maybe Hawaii
He was writing about something he really cared about and had editors that were not afraid to cut his words down. These books show how prejudice can be subtle and creep into human interactions without anyone really being aware of it.
De Rerum Natura by Lucretius.
Both books had a significant impact on my quality of life.
Anything by John and Julie Gottman ("Man's Guide to Women" is an easy place to start).
And "Life and How to Survive It" by John Cleese and Robin Skynner (starts with a very nice discussion of characteristics of "Olympic Gold Medalists" of mental health).
... as understanding and practising what they teach....
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
Thinking, fast and slow -Daniel Kahnemann
The Culture Map - Erin Meyer
Dag B
The only way to understand why we are how we are
There's a lot of excellent suggestions already, but here are a couple i haven't seen yet:
"Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge. A 2006 book imagining a future of autonomous cars, wearable computers, mass-digitization of knowledge, augmented reality, gig economies, and mass surveillance to combat rampant acts of terrorism. I know it's not the job of SF to actually predict the future, but it's a bit eerie how many things he included that are on the verge of happening now.
"Voyage From Yesteryear" by James P Hogan. Uses the concept of post-scarcity to enable an entertaining socialist/libertarian utopia set on Humanity's first off-world colony, and the ideological conflict that occurs when Earth makes contact again. If you're a libertarian or socialist it's an entertaining escapist fantasy, and if you're not it's interesting to pick apart the problems with implementing such a system in the real world. (This is from before the author was attacked by brain-eaters and went a bit loony.)
The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. A space opera series that spans an entire generation in a believable way. The first book, "Shards of Honor" was a little rough and the last couple were clearly written under pressure from her publisher, but the two dozen or so novels and short stories in between feature some brilliant writing and (mostly) subtle humor to go with the battles, adventure, espionage, and mysteries. It also includes occasional speculation about the societal impact of "uterine replicators" and other advanced medical technology.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
When I was younger...there were a number of things I would have said I wished I had read/known years earlier. Now, I would say that for the most part, I wouldn't have understood those things properly anyway--I wasn't ready to know.
For example, I knew of Dale Carnegie's book at least since I was a teenager, but I didn't have any desire to read it. It took years of personal experience for me to even realize that social skills were something that were learned--one way or another--and thus develop a desire to read that book.
Literate, historically accurate, complex and well-defined characters, humorous, and the detail transports you to the British Navy circa 1800. Even better, there are 21 of them, comprising one long novel, with the first 6 just great storytelling. Maturin is a doctor: medical research, natural history, naval custom, intelligence gathering, and repressed love for one of the better female characters of the time. Aubrey, starts as Master and Commander, and through courage and seamanship, advances up the chain of command. If you don't like the first ten pages of Book One, Master and Commander, you should stop and come back to it in a few years. You absorb unwritten lessons on friendship, leadership, character, decision-making, and observation as an aide to judgement. I read them 6 times and found something new at each reading.
Here are the five books that have most influenced my knowledge and analytical thought. The true ideal of an individual lies in combination of the protagonists Howard Roark, Aloysha Karamazov, and the Little Price; whereas, depth in existentialism is gained from the closing chapters of War and Peace and an objective understanding of our current geopolitical state is clearly described in The Origin of Political Order.
- The Brothers Karamazov
- War and Peace
- The Fountainhead
- The Origin of Political Order
- The Little Price
So that I would have known earlier how to avoid those annoying email anti-patterns
http://email-anti-patterns.com
but I am a man so I can't.
I never made it past Kierkegaard in college. Existential nihilism can set you free.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
2.) Second Acts by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine - I should have read it a long time ago, preferably in college or maybe a few months after I graduated would have been the best time to read it.
James Baldwin: Notes of a Native Son, Nobody knows my name
James Salter: A sport and a pass time. Also 'American Express' if you like short stories.
Phil Klay: Redeployment
David Halberstam: Fifties, followed by The Best and the Brightest and The Children
Irwin Shaw: Young Lions
By A.B Facey.
Two books, both by Dale Carnegie:
How to Win Friends and Influence People - I would have avoided a lot of useless arguments if I'd read it sooner.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living - It helped me get through a very rough patch of my life.
> I've yet to meet a Libertarian who actually understood much about freedom ...uhhhh? Right here pal...
Classical Liberal/Libertarian
Seriously. Please feel free to interpret this in light of your own beliefs to avoid arguments.
https://www.amazon.com/Answeri...
Regardless of your religious views, this is an excellent (and readable) example of seasoned academics taking a poor writer to task. The God Delusion was very popular, but incredibly poorly thought out and written.
Dr. Robert Cialdini, "Influence".
Be an asshole to employees in a poor country.
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? (Richard Mayberry) Economics in One Lesson (Henry Hazlitt) The Law (Frederic Bastiat)
I wish I'd read Rick Steve's Europe Through the Back Door back in college. Not just a listing of destination sights, it also shares a lot of insight on how to travel, and how to get the most out of the experience.
Sorry, nothing funny about it.
Blood Music, Greg Bear
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Skeleton Crew, Stephen King
Understanding Physics, Issac Asimov
Bonus Short Story: The Last Question, Issac Asimov: http://multivax.com/last_question.html
Philosophy of Science Vol. 1 From Problem to Theory, rev.ed.(M.Bunge 1998)607p
ISBN: 0765804131 Lib.Cong: Q180.55.M4.B64.v1_1998
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Problem-Theory-History/dp/0765804131/
I wish I had read this before studying quantum mechanics. Very enlightening! The future of scientific thought applied to philosophy, a field of study traditionally obscured by erroneous beliefs. All fields of science and humanities should adopt his axiomatization approach.
By Olaf Stapledon. I think it was originally written in Russian. It is sci-fi, political, sociological treatise that spans aeons. The pace is mind-bending, crawling during the current era then picks up and starts taking huge time leaps but pauses to visit certain epochs. I believe it is an epic pair of books and should be on any proper nerd's "Yeah! Of course I've read that" list.
Only I can judge you.
In college, I was into math and physics. Though I enjoyed chemistry in high school, my freshman chemistry book just sucked the fun out of chemistry.
Fast forward about 20 years. I've read "Caveman Chemistry" and "The Joy of Chemistry" as well as "Cooking for Geeks". All of these really brought fun back into chemistry. Recently, I got around to reading "General Chemistry" by LInus Pauling. My reaction was: "Wow, if I'd read this book in college, I might have taken physical chemistry".
"The 48 Laws of Power. Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, The 48 Laws of Power is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control."
The book described in great detail the ways powerful people gain power, retain power, and defend against power.
I read it about six months too late. If I had read it before I did, I would most likely have taken my previous bosses job. The book described, almost verbatim, the way(s) my boss was undermining my work, taking credit for literally everything I accomplished, and discrediting me for the eventual day his incompetence, arrogance, and outright theft was discovered, all of which he blamed on me. Subsequently I was fired, and he got a promotion.
It is a book I believe in so much, I "loan" it to people I love, knowing I will never get it back. I'm on my 4th copy now.
Excellent book.
Also, Guns Germs and Steel is very good.
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial AppealsHave Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class
I didn't understand politics at all or think that racism was still a thing until I read this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
"THE PRINCE was written by Niccolo' Machiavelli in the 1500s. It has continued to be a best seller in many languages
The Prince is a classic book that explores the attainment, maintenance, and utilization of political power in the western world. Machiavelli wrote The Prince to demonstrate his skill in the art of the state, presenting advice on how a prince might acquire and hold power. Machiavelli defended the notion of rule by force rather than by law. Accordingly, The Prince seems to rationalize a number of actions done solely to perpetuate power. It is an examination of power-its attainment, development, and successful use"
I you are a potential leader, ruler, king, emmperor, president,or a CEO of a company, then read this and learn something useful.
I will not eat Green Eggs and Ham, Sam I am.
I read literally hundreds of them in my 20's. They made me realize the problems, thoughts, corssroads in my life had happened to others and worse. I wish I had started in college, but then time was too precious then. Books can be some of the most intimate glimpses into another mind.
Leadership and Self Deception is an amazing book. If you want something for the tech industry: Activator http://amzn.to/2qYDoT1
tora
Many excellent suggestions: But I think it's curious that neither Candide nor Alice in Wonderland are cited.
Three others worth looking at if one has somehow missed them. ."One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ."Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values" -- Robert M. Pirsig
. "In Retrospect" -- Robert McNamara. McNamara seems almost unique among decision makers not in having made terrible decisions, but in admitting it and trying to provide some thoughts on what can be learned from his mistakes).
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The Great Global Warming Swindle BBC
I would recommend (in no particular order):
Brave new world - Aldous Huxley.
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell.
Animal Farm- George Orwell.
I think all should be prerequisites for people who want to vote.
I wish I'd read "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" by Douglas Blackmon many years ago. Of course, it was only published in 2009, so that wasn't really possible, but still. The book has some flaws -- I wish it included a little more data, rather than focusing primarily on anecdotal evidence -- and I don't agree with all of Blackmon's conclusions, but I found it incredibly eye-opening. I had absolutely no idea that blacks were so heavily and so hypocritically oppressed in the post-reconstruction era. I mean, I knew about Jim Crow and "separate but equal", etc., but it went so far beyond that, to outright slavery and worse, torture and murder of a degree that wasn't seen during real, open slavery. This book has done more than anything to help me understand the perspective of modern black Americans, especially in the deep south. Not that the same crap is still going on, but you don't live through generations of that without becoming deeply skeptical of the establishment.
Highly recommended. Especially if you often find yourself baffled, confused or outraged by events like Ferguson, etc.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This book is one of those books everyone needs to read. Having listened to his lectures and recently having read this particular book, I have to wonder how nobody I ever met ever recommended him to me. Knowing what I know now, it is mindboggling that I might have gone my whole life without hearing this.
Atlas Shrugged, or just about anything.
It would have been nice to be enlightened much earlier.
The Innovator's by Clayton Christensen. Clay wonderfully shows that there is no point trying to innovate within an established organizational structure that is optimized to deliver an existing value proposition according to an established business model.
Such an organization is built to stop any innovation since said innovation would detract resources from the iterative improvement of the original value proposition.
In other words, if you are in a company that has an established business, you are better off not wasting your time with innovation. If you want to innovate, go to a start-up.
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith. Read it, laugh, be freaked out, realise you are not alone in your stranger thoughts. Oh, and everything by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett ever. Because it's never too soon.
The two most valuable books I have read in my life: Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" and "New Earth".
In my case -- and many people I have met share the same view -- these books have shown the path to escape from every kind of emotional suffering. Even when it is small, such emotional "noise" disturbs our capacity to enjoy life, to work well, to be a good friend or a good relative, finally to be happy.
In the "The power of now" I specially like the chapter about relationships and the last one, about surrender. "New Earth" is perhaps even better, with a clear and strong exposure of the "egoic mind" and the "pain body", his words for two traps we tend to fall into. But I recommend to read the "The Power of Now" first.
Rationalism-leaning people like me often reject anything which is named "spirituality". But these people are often those who need the most to escape from unconscious mental traps. Eckart Tolle was an academic, he is clear and precise. In my opinion he offers the best presentation of this kind of wisdom for a rational person.
I think I would have refused to read these books when I was 20 years old (precisely for being an disdainful rationalist). Eckhart Tolle says there is the right moment in your life to be open to what he tells. This changes from one person to another. But what is certain is that if you endure any kind of suffering, the early you read, the best.
Note that although there are a lot of easily accessible videos from Eckart Tolle, I don't think they are not a good substitute for the books. These videos are mainly useful when you have already read at least the first book. Especially if you are not used to read about spirituality the videos won't suffice to make you understand that this dimension is important for your life (they will not be persuasive enough to break your skeptical barrier).
A tragedy fought by the best of mankind.
Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability.
That is to say, "The Conquest of Bread" by Peter Kropotkin: http://thebreadbook.org/conquestofbread.html
By Douglas Coupland. This one I actually did read as a teenager, and it pretty much defined the next 20 years of my life. From style of writing, through choice of career, my fascination with LEGOs, all the way to how I now manage my teams at work.
(Darrell Huff).
Essential reading for anyone who values critical thinking; ought to be required school reading at age 12 or so.
During WWII, the US Army engaged a magician and ex-cardsharp, John Scarne, to educate the farm-boys being drafted on the many ways of cheating in crooked games of "chance", and how to spot them. This is something akin to the civilian equivalent: an utterly readable look at the ways that raw numbers can be misused or presented by someone with an agenda, whilst not actually (or deliberately) lying. Arguably more relevant today than ever.
Fun to read, great style.
Science fiction combined with commentary on society and people combined with sarcastic comedy.
I found his works around the age of 35.
So it goes.
BlameBillCosby.com
Should be manadatory reading in the same way as The Mythical Man Month, especially for everyone (like me) who had to study some statistics. So many things in our society and companies are based around assumptions that are fundamentally flawed, which is explained in a really good way by Taleb. Almost every planning and projection is based on a statistical distribution which does not reflect the way nature actually works and the "black swan" events that can disrupt our fundamental assumptions.
By Jiddu Krishnamurti. Really opens your mind about who we are, and "why we are". Closest I've seen to a logic explanation of buddhist teachings.
The China Study - to learn what NOT to eat from statistics, not from wild theories
Energy Works - by Robert Bruce - would have been nice to read before laziness struck me
Not a book - Learning How to Learn - at Coursera - would have made life easier.
I wish to have read this book much earlier.
Actually, I wish I had read the Memoirs of US Grant back in high school. His account of the Mexican-AMerican war, reasons for it, creation of Texas, how it related to the Civil War, the chronological account of Civil War itself through his campaigns, and the reasons for it are all put forward in nice straight forward language and easy to understand form that I think would have been a lot more help than the standard texts. Sure it skips most of the Eastern stuff but actually puts history into perspective with reasons rather than just a lot or random dates to be memorized.
Not just "Ishmael", but especially "The Story of B" and "My Ishmael" fundamentally changed the way I view our culture. It's been one of the few books in my life that has answered more questions than it raises; fascinating stuff.
Check out the author's website at
http://www.ishmael.org/
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
Also--
Make it Stick by Peter Brown : the best habits for getting the most out of your education. Every high school freshman should be required to read this book, and re-read it when entering college. Every teacher and policy maker involved in education should read it too.
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg : How our choices and habits can be reinforced and manipulated by ourselves and by others.
Was looking for some good SciFi to read and a buddy recommended the "Old Man Wars" series (6 books) by John Scalzi. Just finishing book 5 now, I highly recommend the series to any SciFi fans. FF
Here's a link to a blog posting I made awhile back listing some of the great books that I was assigned in high school, but never read then (except for the Cliff's Notes versions). I've since read and loved them all.
https://noctslackv2.wordpress....
Regards,
~Eric
Nocturnal Slacker
My girlfriend is currently reading this - wish I'd read it years ago, would have saved me loads of time looking at all those pages of meaningless gibberish.
Two books I wish I had read before high school: The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir and The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.
This is a great commentary about how we insist on maximising our differences, when those differences seem trivial to an outside observer.
I started using Audible and both Atlas Shrugged and The Rational Optimist have had a great positive influence on my personal worldview. I now listen to audiobooks any time I'm commuting, before sleep, while waiting in line, etc. Wish I had discovered this format earlier too, I'm absorbing a lot more content faster, especially when at 1.3x or 1.5x reading speed.
The Design of everyday things By Don Norman.
I wish I had read this years ago as it has changed my perception of nearly everything and making me seriously consider studying UX for a career pivot.
LOTR. I resisted the recommendation from a girlfriend in the '80s. When I did finally take it up in the early 90's I've read it at least once a year since. A teacher once defined "literature" as something that you got something from every time you read it. Yep.
How Stuff Works
Casteism
You provide excellent material in psychology
Better to have Trump running the world than you dweebs
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
On how to beat addiction:
Rational Recovery by Jack Trimpey (or just visit rational.org)