Ask HN: Are there any books that changed your life during college or school?

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I picked it up for the first time in the 7th grade and have reread it about a dozen times since. The book is deeply thought provoking about what constitutes knowledge and served as a light introduction to epistemology and metaphysics. I later went on to study philosophy and computer science in college, largely because of this book. The long discussions about the scientific method still resonate with me, and every time an experiment “goes wrong” I remember that one of the lessons in the book is that there really is no such thing as a failed experiment as long as you are open to what the world is telling you.<p>The book is also an easy read because the entire thing is told in the form of a father-son travelogue. The fact that the author pulled off a travelogue about the philosophy of science is an amazing feat of exposition. So another lesson is about the value of good communication.

For me it was the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.<p>His biases are clear, but even if you disagree with him, looking past those there is still the very important lesson that much of what we take for granted as true about the world is really not much more than shared <i>mythology</i>, not some objective, universal truth.<p>So regardless of what you think about his particular viewpoint I think that’s an important lesson that helps you examine the world and assumptions we all make more critically.<p>If there is such a thing as a “red pill” moment, that book was it for me. After reading it there were many things about our culture that I just couldn’t take seriously anymore.

“All quiet on Western front”, as well as the follow up novels “Three Comrades” and “Arc de Triumph” by Erich Maria Remarque.<p>I’ve read it when I was in my late teens &#x2F; early twenties and it sort of changed my outlook on things. My then very naive and straightforward view of the world where right and wrong are obvious was shattered. It’s kind of made me sad and that sadness has remained with me ever since.<p>Since that time it’s been my answer to a question about a book that has had the most impact on me.

It wasn&#x27;t during college (I dropped out) but in 2020 I did the audio version of &quot;How To Win Friends and Influence People&quot; which had a profound impact on how I handled day to day conversations.<p>A few others:<p>The Simple Path to Wealth - JL Collins (changed my entire investment strategy)<p>Breath - James Nestor (something so routine but there is so much to learn)<p>A Short History of Everything - Bill Bryson (silly, but its a pretty large and encompassing look at various parts of life from the galaxy to the planet to cells)

The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I always had the impression that Malcolm was the bad boy of his era. His reputation is much worse than King(who is seen as a hero). After reading it, it&#x27;s all undeserved. He&#x27;s not a pacifist sure, but the forces acting on him weren&#x27;t pacifists either. It changed my world view, and did a lot to lift some blinders I had on. Of course he is from a different era, but many of the things he was struggling against are still in the USA today(sadly). So still relevant.

&quot;How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big&quot; by Scott Adams. I have purchased and disliked every book he&#x27;s released since then, but I found quite a bit of useful, actionable life advice in that book. I can honestly say that the book changed the way I look at life and made me a more positive and ambitious person.<p>This one was right when he was just on the edge of being overly impressed with himself, so the lessons include more humility and less lecturing. His later books still have useful material but the delivery and underlying smugness is jarring.<p>In short, it&#x27;s a book you can get a lot from without liking or agreeing with Scott Adams on most of his public opinions.

„How to read a book“ by Adler &#x2F; van Doren. Taught me how to read several books on a topic (he calls this syntopical reading) to unserstand the structure of a topic.<p>„Getting Things Done“ by David Allen. Learned about how to capture everything that’s on my mind and organize it. Best way to keep sane. - Also how important it is to contantly review my systems and lists to keep them current and to make decisions.<p>„Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs“ by Abelson &#x2F; Sussman. Learned a lot about how to structure and organize code, how to abstract and build smaller functions that solve problems and glue them together and thus build ever more complex soltions.<p>„Siddartha“ by Hermann Hesse. Reminded me of my inner struggle in my young years regarding life, religion and meaning of life.<p>„Wherever you go, there you are” by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Introduced me to the idea of mindfulness, of being present, of letting go.

Not a book but an essay (There Is No Speed Limit): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sive.rs&#x2F;kimo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sive.rs&#x2F;kimo</a><p>Really exposed me to the idea that you were in control of your learning.<p>If we really need a book… Ulysses by James Joyce. It was a model of pure creativity and artistry that really inspired me.

Well, &quot;changed my life&quot; might be a bit much, but &quot;Free Software, Free Society&quot; really changed how I viewed the field I was entering. I didn&#x27;t really &quot;get&quot; why a developer would just give away code, but the combination of seeing firsthand the power of the libre ecosystem of code-sharing and reading RMS&#x27;s philosophical arguments both helped solidify my position and also handed me logical tools to use to reason about it and defend my position.<p>I read it as an e-book originally but ended up buying the signed copy.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. And after that, almost anything by Kazuo Ishiguro.<p>When I read that book, I was an intense student, and I could totally see myself in the main character. Since then, every single one of Ishiguro&#x27;s books has changed the way I think about things. It&#x27;s hard to convey what he&#x27;s trying to say in any other way than by reading his work.

&quot;Man&#x27;s Search For Meaning&quot; by Viktor E. Frankl<p>When you think you have it hard, read what Frankl lived through. He lost his family in the camps and almost didn&#x27;t survive himself. However, as a psychologist he used this experience to analyze and create the the theory of logotherapy. A great example of what strong human spirit and scientific mind can not only cope with, but grow inside the horrors of nazi camps.<p>I&#x27;ve read passages many times over the years and had given it to many friends when shit happened in their lives.

In school I came across `The World as I See It` by Albert Einstein.<p>It resonated with me on many levels and even made me actually think about things which I was somehow not thinking through just because no one questions them in general, especially in a country where patriotism is celebrated as a virtue. It is full of wonderful ideas and parts of it have been thought through in great depth.<p>Some excerpts which I really liked and have sort of stayed imprinted in my brain since:<p>&gt; This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed.<p>&gt; I am convinced that the great men--those whose achievements, even though in a restricted sphere, set them above their fellows--are animated to an overwhelming extent by the same ideals. But they have little influence on the course of political events. It almost looks as if this domain, on which the fate of nations depends, had inevitably to be given over to violence and irresponsibility.<p>&gt; What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men--in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy.<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_World_as_I_See_It_(book)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_World_as_I_See_It_(book)</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;worldasiseeit00eins" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;worldasiseeit00eins</a>

Albert Camus, &quot;The Plague&quot;. Basically a series of character studies of how different people respond differently to the same external pressure (being quarantined in a city stricken by bubonic plague on the North African coast in the early 20th century). The lesson was that it&#x27;s essentially up to you how you respond to difficulties of various sorts; and actions matter more than words.<p>Curiously relevant to the recent (ongoing?) pandemic as well.

Zen Mind, Beginner&#x27;s Mind[0]<p>The reason it changed me? I like starting with a blank slate for new projects without relying on huge monolithic frameworks. Such a book is invaluable for software engineers.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zen_Mind%2C_Beginner&#x27;s_Mind" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zen_Mind%2C_Beginner&#x27;s_Mind</a>

1984: Society is NOT désigned for free will, and thinking out of the box.<p>Ashes,ashes: mankind <i>can</i> go from gods to animals. <i>Really</i> fast.<p>Lord of the rings: teamwork makes the dream work. But expect a massive amount of pain in the process.

The Only Investment Guide You&#x27;ll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias.<p>What it did for me was inoculate me against all manner of foolish choices that I probably would have made during my young adulthood.<p>It&#x27;s short, entertaining and practical. The mechanics of investing have evolved considerably over the years, but the author has released frequent updates. Also most of the lessons are timeless.<p>If I could sum up the most important point in the book, it&#x27;s that in investing and finance, playing not-to-lose is unreasonably effective. Playing to win is usually a losing strategy.

&quot;Demon haunted world&quot; by Carl Sagan It allowed me the knowledge and linguistic framework to explore issues that had bothered me for years, like pseudoscience, the supernatural and poor critical thinking skills. The chapter &quot;The baloney detection kit&quot; alone is worth the price of the book.

Pirsig&#x27;s &quot;Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance&quot;, which I read while recovering from flu one year in college.<p>His description of the road trip from Minnesota to California motivated me to mark his path on my highway atlas. The discussion of romantic versus classical thinking resonated with me right away. The idea of Quality as a focal point was important to me. The story of his studies at the University of Chicago gave me a bit of insight into the academic world, and a different perspective on Great Books. When I had my own Zen practice years later, I could link it to this book. The distinction between Logos and Mythos opened my eyes to the power of our unspoken assumptions, built into our language. Later, after I had children of my own, I could relate to the way Phaedrus gets along with his son Chris.

Earl Nightingale The Secret is pretty good.<p>Make fun of it if you want, but as long as your realistic it&#x27;s a great guide to thinking.<p>We become what we think about. This doesn&#x27;t mean imagine you&#x27;re a trillion are and Tuesday someone picks you up in a jet.<p>It&#x27;s more like imagine you&#x27;ll get that job, study for it, and maybe you&#x27;ll get it. If not try again.<p>Even if you keep failing that&#x27;s much more productive than whining all day.<p>To put it in HN terms, you can&#x27;t open VS Code and expect software to write itself. I&#x27;m a self taught developer so I fully get it. Everything I know I taught myself ( the Unity forums helped a LOT in my early days, more than Stack Overflow).<p>That said, take the original work. Not the spin off that tells you The Secret can turn a homeless man into a millionaire. A homeless man getting his own place is pretty decent.

A short book called &#x27;Principles of Spiritual Growth&#x27; by Miles Stanford really helped explain Christianity to me in a way that churches, pastors, never did, and helped me move away from fear-based beliefs to ones about forgiveness. Really changed the tone and direction of my life.

&quot;The Selfish Gene&quot; shifted my perspective on the drivers of evolution&gt;<p>&quot;The Beak of the Finch&quot; shifted my perspective on evolutionary timeframes.<p>&quot;The Design and Evolution of C++&quot; had an inverse impact on my appreciation of academic programming language design.

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, and the whole series on Discworld greatly affected how I think about life, and to look beyond first assumptions.

As a young man reading Virginia Woolf&#x27;s A Room of One&#x27;s Own and Carolyn Heilbrun&#x27;s Toward a Recognition of Androgyny in the 1990s were life changing in my perception of states of life and mind for (a certain class of) women.

Probably The Singularity by Ray Kurtzweil. Came across it at random digging through the tiny tech section of my university library.<p>I don&#x27;t think until that point I had really understood the idea of <i>accelerating</i> progress, like I knew that I wanted to work in technology just out of interest, but that book really instilled in me that the pace of change could be really quite rapid through my career, which to me made it all the more exciting. Certainly in my career in software so far that&#x27;s turned out to be the case.

<i>Invisible Man</i> by Ralph Ellison.<p>Read it in my first semester as a freshman Biochem major in college with a great grad student as the teacher of a class on American Lit. Really changed how I thought about books and how I approached writing.<p>The class was incredibly challenging. I stopped going to my chemistry classes and changed my major to English&#x2F;Creative Writing.<p>That was 20 years ago and things have worked out OK. I’m sure I’m happier now (business management career) than I would be in a scientific field.

Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life by Sissela Bok<p>Lying involves not just what you say. It includes what you don&#x27;t say.

The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg. Set me up for my way of thinking about how I get things done for the rest of my life.

<i>The Outsider</i> by Colin Wilson.<p>It turned me on to all sorts of interesting authors that I may otherwise have never read, or read much later than I did after being exposed to Wilson&#x27;s compelling writing on them.<p>Anyone interested in philosophy and why some highly gifted people don&#x27;t seem to fit in to this world would do well to give this book a read.

I was one of those kids who was deeply affected by my parents&#x27; copy of &quot;The Whole Earth Catalog&quot; (in my case the &quot;Next&quot; WEC.) I learned about people like Bucky Fuller, Christopher Alexander, Gregory Bateson, Bill Mollison... I saw a vision of the world where we subordinated our extraordinary power (&quot;We are as gods...&quot;) to our wisdom (&quot;...and might as well get good at it.&quot;)<p>I carried that thing around in my backpack in lieu of textbooks. (It&#x27;s a tome, like two feet high (more than half a meter)!)<p>Probably the single most important thing I learned from it is that we have all the tools and technology we need to live well together on the Earth without destroying the environment nor compromising on quality-of-life, we just have to learn to be nice to each other.

This Changes Everything - Naomi Klein.<p>This was a good alternative view to how we were taught the world was “meant” to be run

Noam Chomsky&#x27;s political books- Manufacturing Consent- and his reporting books, like Turning The Tide. Lots of strong opinions about Chomsky. For me as an American his work presented life-changing evidence documenting the operations of power.

The Global Trap, read it 20 years ago, and it made me see world in different view<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Global_Trap" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Global_Trap</a>

Neal Stephenson&#x27;s Diamond Age, had to read it in literature class.<p>The main character gets an A.I. powered book that teaches them anything. pretty mind blowing for me, I imagine one day possibly something like that could exist.

Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money by Kojin Karatani. Awesome interdisciplinary work that let me understand some mathematics (coming from a background in Philosophy and Literature).

On the Road. Reading that gave me the kick I needed to get out of my home town, live in other places, join Peace Corps, and question my status quo.

David Hume, <i>An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding</i><p>It showed me that intellectual curiosity doesn&#x27;t need to be coupled with abstruse language, that in fact unclear language is not a sign of deep thought, but more likely unclear thought. It showed me that being an optimist isn&#x27;t stupid, that it&#x27;s an art and that gloom is not an inevitable consequence of intellect. I was suffering from depression back then. It took me 10 more years to win the battle, but I did it. It was all more about how this book was written, rather than what was written in it.<p>Tony Judt, <i>Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956</i><p>Tony Judt, <i>The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century</i><p>Czesław Miłosz, <i>The Captive Mind</i><p>Raymond Aron, <i>The Opium of the Intellectuals</i><p>Those books taught me that there are quite a few secular religions to be beware of, with all the associated dangers and indeed opium for the mind. They were written with the example of Marxism, but this lesson can be generalised to other ideas, which explain away everything about life and bring a prophesy of things to come. It taught me that the religion I left behind when I was young is not the end, but there are more things to be vigilant about, lest your critical mind becomes anaesthetised and subjugated by the current intellectual orthodoxy.<p>Judith Butler, <i>Gender Trouble</i><p>A truly insane book. Prior to reading it I thought that the criticisms coming from &quot;the other side&quot; were caricatures. After reading this book I&#x27;ve known that there truly are people denying the reality of biology and making all sort of twisted reasonings you would have never dreamt of. The political movement associated with this book doesn&#x27;t let it slip at first, but when I confronted core members of this movement (responsible for most of the political messaging in the press etc.) in my country it turned out that they actually believe that stuff. It disillusioned me about the sort of nonsense people can seriously believe, while carefully not admitting it at first.

The Hiding Place. It gave me a much better perspective on life, and made my own problems feel small and approachable.

Dune. It made me realize even the distant future can be potentially planned for.

Atlas Shrugged<p>I read it while starting a company, and it was exactly what I needed to suffer that process.

Design Patterns in Java.<p>First time i&#x27;ve seen and experienced the power of abstraction in programming.

The Subtle Art of Not giving a F

Milton Friedman&#x27;s &quot;Capitalism and Freedom&quot;. I was arguing with people online about politics and I was embarrassing myself through my lack of &quot;Econ 101&quot; understanding of issues. Someone in the thread recommended this book and I now I&#x27;ve leaned libertarian for the rest of my life, ended up getting a PhD in economics..

Chaos by James Gleick was wildly inspiring to me

Architecture as Metaphor by Kojin Karatani.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Especially the appendices.<p>It has not aged well - it is a book written by two dudes who were the editors for the Playboy letters column in the swinging sixties, who kept getting piles and piles of far-right-wing-nutjob conspiracy tracts and decided to write a book asking &quot;hey what if all this crazy shit was all <i>true</i>&quot; - but it poked some interesting holes in my reality.

Hegemony Or Survival by Noam Chomsky

The Bible.

Misread title as kooks, and the answer was many. :)

The Communist Manifesto - before I didn&#x27;t find history very interesting because in class it was literally just taught as remembering birth dates of kings and the dates of actions by &quot;great men&quot;, etc.<p>Whereas Materialism (and Marxism) introduced a whole systematic view of competing classes and interest groups. It made it much more interesting and relatable.<p>[Questions from a Worker who reads](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.marxists.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;brecht&#x2F;works&#x2F;1935&#x2F;questions.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.marxists.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;brecht&#x2F;works&#x2F;1935&#x2F;questions...</a>) really sums up the issues with history education at school IMO.

It was a sequence of books that I read not immediately one after the other, but that had an impact on me once I started to connect some concepts and ideas among them:<p>1. Simplicity, William Jensen 2. Getting Things Done (GTD) 3. Getting Real, Jason Fried

K&amp;R

Atlas Shrugged

My Bondage and My Freedom by Fredrick Douglass

I can answer that fairly quick. No lol.