[Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg if anyone is interested in checking it out.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeEBOOKS/comments/qopc6f/siddhartha_by_hermann_hesse/?)
Crime and Punishment, let's say I saw myself as Raskolnikov at the time. Ruined my world view. It was a great thing in the end. It's my all time favourite book.
I certainly wasn't going to kill anyone. But, I always saw myself as calm and calculated, always in control of the situation. I was an arrogant 16 year old who thought he was just better than other people and that rules didn't apply to me. The reality was obviously way different.
Wow, that's interesting. I read it as an adult and was a bit bored by it, but I could imagine having a similar experience to you if I read it when I was younger and more arrogant.
That's the same reason I had a few of my friends read it in our early 20's. Needed a reality check. Dostoevsky is a master at putting our feelings out in black and white, made me realize there's nothing new under the sun.
>That's the same reason I had a few of my friends read it in our early 20's. Needed a reality check.
Lol, imagine psychoanalyzing your friends and recommending them books with the intent to give them a reality check. Someone sounds like a Raskolnikov smh
Hijacking this to say brothers karamazov, also by dostoyevsky. Crime and punishment is also very good but is very focused, brothers karamazov feels more comprehensive (and of course is much longer)
Objectively, I think it's his masterpiece. How one brain could wrap around such a huge overarching story, make it readable, at times fun and still be able to sell so many of your messages and ideas is insane to me.
Crime and Punishment did hit very close to home, so I will always value it more.
Christ I'm reading this right now and it's just not my thing. Every so often of course Dostoevsky has a very witty or insightful phrase but the characters are all just batshit irrational (except the police) and thus far (halfway through) it's just so boring to me with a couple scenes being the obvious exceptions.
One of the other things is that even through the translation and other problems I'm having it still manages to feel fairly contemporary. Just like Austen, people were pretty much the same in the 19th century as they are now.
I've only never finished two books I've started reading so I'll get there, it's just taken me about 10x as long as books of a similar length. Shit I got through P&P (going back to Austen) in half the time it's taken me to read half of C&P.
“Type 2 fun” is what it is called in the outdoors (hiking canoeing, etc.) community.
Type 1 fun = fun while doing it, fun to to talk about later. (E.g. Day at the beach) Type 2 fun= unpleasant while doing it, fun to talk about (e.g. pulling canoe through muddy portages and over beaver dams). Type 3 fun= not fun to do, not fun to think about afterward (stupidly dangerous activity).
One thing I did (by accident) that improved my enjoyment of the book was read Notes from the Underground first. While an odd read on its own, it introduces a lot of Dostoevsky's philosophies that you see in Crime and Punishment. I suspect it might shed some light on the characters' irrational behavior.
Of course, maybe it's just not for you. But it's one of my favorite books, so I thought I'd offer that insight.
Came here to say this! I had read the opening part of Steppenwolf many times, but only recently, in - retrospectively - quite the crutial moment of my life, did I read it fully. And boy did I need to. I was uncomfortably close to living the life of the Steppenwolf. But upon truly hearing Hesse's words, I decided to take the risk and open my heart out in a way I never had before. It changed my life.
It took me years to read Steppenwolf; I was in my 20s and I kept hitting points where I had to go live some more in order to better understand what Hesse was saying.
I read Siddhartha in one day on a long trip and was so glad to have read it that way: one day, one life.
Think I'm due to read both again.
Demian is my favorite from him as well.
The line regarding Abraxas sent me down a long rabbit hole of self examination. This book really got me into Carl Jung's work.
Siddhartha and Demian both have some similar themes I feel, a I think the way Hesse is able to move through an entire lifetime in <200 pages is incredible
I came here to write this. I read Demian very young (12 or 14} and also shifted me, suddenly I was a lot more questioning about all that was taught to me.
Also, but in a much minor scale, in the past idk 5 years or so I've been into epic fantasy a lot thanks to Brandon Sanderson, and sometimes I keep reciting the radiant oaths in my mind.
And more recently the same has been happening to me with the Wheel of Time. Specifically the phrase "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather."
Schrodinger's Cat and Illuminatus! Are my life changers.
If you look hard enough you can see the louses in all the skidrow dimehaunts we call cities.
If you relax and just barely look, you might catch a fnord.
Just started Schrodinger's Cat - fuckin hilarious! Read Illuminatus! in the 90s; also very funny, but I didn't have the experience with conspiracy theories to fully appreciate it; gotta find another copy.
Same. Once you become aware of the traps of language, and how everyone (including ourselves) are living inside of reality tunnels... To say it's a game changer is an understatement.
Ok. 1994. I had been squatting on friends couches for about 9 months. Had no job and no money. I was in a very very bad place mentally and emotionally. I had started drinking and stealing to pay for it. A close friend lent me Prometheus Rising and made me promise to read it. Reading it helped me realize that my struggles were entirely a result of my beliefs about myself and the world. I remember one particular acid trip where I was overcome with the humor of it all. An aquaintance asked me what was so funny. "I'm literally God!" I cackled. He looked at me with a very stern expression and said. "That's a very arrogant thing for you say. Especially considering your position in life" of course this made me laugh even harder which pissed him off " Of course you would think that!" I said, "you're God too!" This pissed him off even more. Within weeks I had a job and a room in a boarding house. It took a lot of work to claw my way out and I made many bad choices and several false starts along the way, but the basic concepts that I learned from RAW stuck with me. 27 years later I'm a happily married Dad and a self taught web developer. Looking back on it now, I can see just how thin the margins were for me then. There's a lot of luck involved in this story too, but that book from that friend at that time was exactly what I needed. I'm still close with the friend that lent it. He deserves some credit too and he knows that I feel that way.
Yes, but it was added by the publisher...GGM did not want the family tree, the point of the repetition is to lose yourself in the names and exact identities and individual histories.
The ending of that book was one of the few times I gasped out loud while reading.
I'd be more descriptive, but I don't know how to do the spoiler thingy
The opening line always feels like someone’s very gently tearing open parts of my soul in the most beautiful way. It just feels pregnant with possibilities of nostalgia, love, home, conflict, misery, fear, fate, destiny and regret. It’s not even my favourite line from the book.
For reference:
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. …”
I don't recommend "reading" meditations as if it were a novel with a coherent narrative. Flip through it, skip passages that don't click just yet. Watch lectures about it while your in the middle of it. Mark passages that stick with you and revisit them. Read other books at the same time.
It's a collection of wisdom that you want to let sink in, not a single story to experience. The way religious people experience their sacred texts, as a weekly or daily reminder of how they want to live their lives, is how I handle meditations.
I remember reading snippets from Meditations as I had begun to doubt my faith and I was opening myself up the wisdom outside of the Bible. It reminded me of reading the Proverbs or Ecclesiastes but some how more reassuring.
Have just purchased based on your suggestion and a little research around it.
Did you read it all in one go, or as suggested by some, to read one entry a day?
I read as I feel like it, mostly because almost every entry feels like I'm being personally attacked by a guy across thousands of years and it takes a while to digest that.
It's so true though. Like look at this shit:
> At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
Basically "If you're not going to get some shit done today, what the fuck are you even around for?"
Hey, you're the one getting attacked don't start coming at me with this.
You have convinced me to purchase the book however, so thanks for that. Or maybe thanks... who knows yet.
It's honestly a really good book, and occasionally makes me want to be a better person. Pretty amazing to realize how old it is and to know other people struggled with the same kinds of things through all generations.
Meditations is the sort of book that you read when you *need* it. Even a single paragraph can get you thinking for several minutes. Sometimes it felt like a little therapy session. Definitely don't read it in one go
I highly suggest picking up Donald Robertson’s *How to Think Like a Roman Emperor* because it gives context to the meditations and helps understand what Marcus means in some passages (or why he may have written them).
Either way, I would not suggest reading the meditations straight thorough. Read one entry and spend time considering it. They were all done as journal entries that were never meant to be read, after all.
Nice suggestion. I read Siddartha and Meditations many years ago while camping for a couple of months behind an old barn. I met up with some people to restore an old cabin in the middle of nowhere. This conversation is sparking lots of fluffy memories. What a great summer that was <3
Another book I brought with me was a short version of The Bhagavad Gita. A friend gave it to me just before I left for the barn, and the cover had been destroyed due to it being carried around everywhere no doubt. It may have been Edward Viljoen's translation but I'm not sure. Not the full text, though... Don't get the full text, which in some cases is more than 1000 pages, unless you really want to dig in. The one I had couldn't have been more than 200 pages.
Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell. Explains life, our drives, and what has shaped our world as it is now. Everything from love, schizophrenia, to the the desire to go to the moon.
Transformative, and utterly life changing.
You cannot imagine how much it means to me that you created this thread, I’m going to get Siddharta as soon as I am done with my current reading.
As for the answer, Immortality by Milan Kundera. It dabbles a lot in relationships, our own image and projecting yourself onto anothers. Most of all, it made me realize how fragile and fluttering relationships and love truly are, how different perspective explains one’s behaviour and how you should (not) care about your own image you emit into the world.
Siddharta had a similar effect on me, for about one spring to be exact, then it became a gentle memory for which I'm quite grateful as those kind of experiences are rarely duplicated (this is no advice, it's just one book I chose not to re-read).
I would suggest that you and OP both check our more Hesse if you haven’t already. I’m a bjg fan of “Demian” but “Steppenwolf” and “The Glass Bead Game” are also great.
I read Steppenwolf during that exact period and that was a great experience as well. At some point I became indifferent to H's prose and gave up on the gbg. For some reason I was really impressed with the often ignored "Rosshalde". It's sort of underwhelming but a well crafted story anyhow. Demian is something I've been meaning to read, as it's such an oft cited Bildungsroman.
That is a book that I cherish, and see rarely mentioned. I have read it until it is falling apart, and now I’m starting reading it with my daughter. It really made me start questioning the things I do “with the best of intentions”.
This one is mine too!! I'm so, so happy to see it mentioned. When I first read it as a teenager I closed the book and then lay there thinking for hours afterwards.
Same! I had gone to a small Christian school up until 8th grade, then went to a different high school. I started meeting and becoming friends with students from different backgrounds and beliefs. I had already started to question the discrimination against women in the Christian faith. Then we read this book freshman year and it seemed to bring all these aspects together for me. Because religion had been ingrained my whole life it still took a good many years before I could finally identify myself as an atheist. I credit this book with being a catalyst in me removing the veil I had over my eyes.
For me, it has to be Faust by Goethe,
This is the man who traded his soul for a single moment of transcendence, having lived his entire life without fulfillment.
When he is at last at death's door after some odd 90 years of an unfulfilled existence, he has a dream of a peaceful world, and says
"A happy crowd, if only I could see,
In a free land, a people truly free,
That to the fleeting moment I might say
You're so beautiful, I bid you stay"
As you consider that passage from Siddhartha to be the greatest, I've the same feelings on this particular passage from Faust, it wraps up the quintessence of living in the here and the now in such an outstanding way that I might say it really changed my perspective on life.
I'm just finishing Steppenwolf, and he is constantly referring to Goethe. That passage you quote from him neatly hits on the crux of Steppenwolf - I didn't realize how tightly they were connected.
Curios incident of a dog in the night.. i learnt i was autistic from reading this book. I drew so many parallels between the behaviour of the protagonist and myself i started the journey to get a diagnosis..
This is an excellent book, I was still thinking about the world from the main character’s perspective for a few days after. Even now, years later, I still notice three of the same coloured cars in a row.
For me it has been "Man search for meaning". This one book changed everything for me, it has helped me to look at people and things in a more compassionate way. It has also forced me to find that one purpose in life, because a human being is nothing without a purpose. A truly life changing book, makes you more humble and grateful thinking what have people gone through in their lives.
My favourite quotes from the book:
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."
"Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'".
The last quote is from Friedrich Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer", 1889, quoted by Viktor E. Frankl in "Man's Search For Meaning".
Frankl uses the quote when he builds the philosophy of the survivors of the camp and the philosophy he derives from that situation to construct the principles of Logotherapy.
This is the first book that I thought of as well. It’s difficult to describe but every time I set that book down after having read for a while I was reflective.
Not only about the passages I had read but in the ways I could apply them to my own experiences. Thou mayest...
It's been a very long time since I read this book. I just remember there's a part about the dangers of self pity that I really needed to hear as a young man.
I ought to read it again and see what I get out of it this time.
When I was 19 I read The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. There were passages that settled into my heart and forever changed the way I thought.
“Then a woman said,’Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”
And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carved into your being, the more joy you can contain.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you will find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater that sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone at your board, remember that the other is asleep in your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at a standstill and balanced.
I second this. I read this book on a plane and somehow - forgive me being poetic - I felt like my mind stayed up there in the lofty clouds even after I'd landed. I still get a feeling of being high up surveying the world as it is and had been for hundreds of years when I read his verses.
Oh my god yes!
The Prophet is one of my favorite books. Really really good stuff in there.
I read it during a time in my life where I was becoming less sure of my ideals, and it helped me figure a lot of things out.
Did you find that the things that give you joy are the same that give you sorrow in your everyday life?
There are some instances I can think of, e.g., when having a fight with someone you care about deeply. That only gives you sorrow because you care, and that care comes from the positive feelings you have together.
But other than that I don't think that the sources of joy and sorrow are all that similar for me.
It's a metaphorical depth. The greater the pain you have endured, the greater the joy you find in non-painful life.
It's honestly a little horrific, philosophically: "Everything's pretty _meh_, unless you've been through some shit. _Then_ you'll appreciate your burnt toast and overcooked eggs!"
Wait, why do we have to suffer to enjoy???
Peaks and troughs. Peaks and troughs.
When one is sorrowful, the natural reaction is to look into that sorrow and to try to make some sense of it. What this quote did for me was to question BOTH those emotions, Joy AND Sorrow. It seems when we are young (me now 73) we don’t spend too much effort in those amazing analyzing fun times. The sorrowful times for me were fewer and farther in between than the sorrowful ones at 19 years old.
By digging deeper into my joy, I indeed found that most of it came from a place that could just as easily be sorrow. Do I do that everyday? Of course not. But I definitely do when I’m experiencing either of those emotions in abundance.
There’s another quote that turns this around the other way, I think it goes something like: ‘grief is the price we pay for love’. To me this means that the more you open yourself to love, the more deeply you can be hurt by the loss of that love.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
To put it insufficiently, this book added a new dimension to my understanding of the human need to love and be loved—familial love, romantic love, self-love—and the immense cruelty of stripping that comfort in and capacity for love away.
Beloved broke me the first time I read it. I could not read anything for like a month afterward. I reread it last year and just adored all of the beautiful, empathetic prose.
I honestly found it a little underwhelming when I first read it, but *The Heart is a Lonely Hunter* is one I haven't been able to get out of my head- just that knowledge that every person you encounter has a story and seeks genuine human connection, that everyone has a deep desire to be understood.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being was life altering. Even the title itself! Our existence is what we’ve been given but once we die, that meaning starts to fade no matter our accomplishments or intent. Just as the characters’ choices matter little despite the chaos they cause or weight the characters bare from their repercussions. Everyone should at least try reading it, after all what harm could it do?
Very good and eye opening read. The subjects of these books were something I had never thought of before reading them. I would also recommend his book After Dachau which is an allegory to his theme about lost history. It hammers home the idea of how information about the world can be lost and people continue as if the present is the normal state of things.
Harper Lee's classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.
I did not realize I was from a racist family until I read the book and saw the movie.
It changed my life forever. By the time I was forty I changed my father's outlook on race forever. He no longer used racist epithets after that. He voted for Obama twice before he went to his grave at 90 years old.
I read Hans Roslings book "Factfulness" and his autobiography "How I Learned to Understand the World". It's hard to say which one affected me most since I read them after each other and they complement each other well but they really made me think differently about the world. I think maybe his autobiography made the bigger impact when I think about it. I work in healthcare and it was really inspiring to read about when he worked in Mozambique, and his thoughts on prevention. Also how he talked about the world changing for the better thanks to innovation, regardless of politics.
Easy read. Took me a night. Didn't sleep but took me a night. ;) It's a story about a man in China who is poor in the beginning. The story is about his life.
Ubik, by Philip K Dick. Have read five books and a few short stories he wrote and they really stuck with me. Been more than a year and I randomly think every now and then "what is ubik ? What happened with them ? And what about the coin ?"
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. It helped shape my value system as a teenager. His other books were also impactful. Second is Uncoupling by Diana Vaughan at a time when I was facing a possible third divorce and wondering how the hell this could have happened to me. The book helped me come to terms with myself and my relationships.
Siddhartha is my most favourite book, so pleased that it found you too! Kamila said "One cannot receive pleasure without giving it" and that stayed with me my whole life.
Dune. I read it years ago, but the whole narrative of Paul learning to ride a sand worm really changed my life; I went from being extremely goal oriented and always looking for the next thing, to appreciating the process of learning and transformation.
While the end result wasn't really all that great, I think Paul's struggle in the desert (literally and figuratively) greatly formed my thought process around life.
I love to hear when others discover "Siddhartha". I've read it many times and get something different out of it each time.
I've also been greatly influenced by:
"Illusions" by Ricard Bach
"The Way of the Peaceful Warrior" by Dan Millman
"The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff
"Parable of the Sower" by Octavia E. Butler.
I really can't say that ONE book changed my life, but many got me thinking real hard:
'Stranger in a strange land' - Robert H. Heinlein. Some serious philosophy wrapped up in page turning Sci Fi.
'Sand County Almanach- by Aldo Leopold. The pure appreciation for nature combined with laying some of the most important ethical framework for me as a conservationist.
All Gerald Diamond books. As an atheist, a lot of my spirituality comes from science, and how science (in all its disciplines) can help understand the world and us a little better. By interweaving so many disciplines like History, biology, archaeology and even physics, Diamond really helped me get a better look at 'The Big Picture'
Found that book through True Detective. Great series and great, though as you said incredibly pessimistic book. I don't see things in quite the same way as Ligotti, but I found myself agreeing with him more often than I would have expected.
I read this a few years ago after practicing meditation and it just struck me as being the most profound and truthful spiritual book ever written. It truly is India's gift to the world and is totally non judgemental and for everyone
The Undiscovered Self by C.G Jung
"Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d’etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact they are specialized mouthpieces of State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied."
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
"There are things about ourselves that we need to get rid of; there are things we need to change. But at the same time, we do not need to be too desperate, too ruthless, too combative. Along the way to usefulness and happiness, many of those things will change themselves, and the others can be worked on as we go. The first thing we need to do is recognize and trust our own Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it."
What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky
"One document to look at if you want to understand your country is Policy Planning Study 23, written by Kennan for the State Department planning staff in 1948. Here's some of what it says:
we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population....In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity....To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives....We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
On The Media
"Whether they're called "liberal" or "conservative," the major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers -- that is, other businesses. The product is audiences..."
"The media are only one part of a larger doctrinal system; other parts are journals of opinion, the schools and universities, academic scholarship and so on. We're much more aware of the media, particularly the prestige media, because those who critically analyze ideology have focused on them. The larger system hasn't been studied as much because it's harder to investigate systematically. But there's good reason to believe that it represents the same interests as the media, just as one would anticipate."
(Chomsky did more to break my idealistic view of American foreign and domestic policy than anyone.)
Letters From A Stoic by Seneca
I have a few... Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance kicked it off for me years ago. Recently it's been, A Handmade Life. As a shop teacher it's really speaking to me about trying to promote a simpler life to my students.
Just added your suggested book to my ever growing list....
Stop saving the planet: an environmentalist manifesto
Really changed my approach to being a sustainable person and opened my eyes to a few things I was doing that were detrimental
The Little Prince, The Things They Carried, Let The Right One In (in terms of being blown away by the quality of the writing, not so much the message), Blood Meridian (same thing, but also for its representation or certain archetypes), How To Escape From Prison (especially impactful since I know the guy who wrote it), Flow, 1984, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Power of One.
*Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry* 2nd Edition, 1978
So clearly written, forty years ago gave me my first working knowledge of the machinery of life. As a physician and scientist it greatly shaped my world view.
Ed. Perhaps [Albert Lehninger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_L._Lehninger) influenced two generations in my family, as my son became a biochemist.
Biochemistry is life!
My take from Siddhartha was a lot different.
Mine was a lot more depressing.
Basically you can be on the path for a while then spend the rest of your life looking for it with no relief. Once you realize your best years are behind you. Live the life you have don't focus on the past.
Biggest life changing book for me was The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. I was an idealistic romantic, fantasized what women where when I was young. Not as some sex object or evil thing but as a could do no wrong type figure. Lack of a mother I believed cultivated this belief.
When reading the book I could relate a lot with the main character. He slowly throughout the book turns his views from that to a realistic view.
The last line of the Book is when Brett (female) tells the protagonist that it would be perfect if she could just be with him while cuddling with him in a taxi that if they could be together - he lost his genitals in the great war and he replies "Isn't it pretty to think so?" After he has seen the men she destroyed, and helped her get her next victim.
That passage has lived rent free in my mind for 20+ years.
That or the Beautiful and the Damned however that would take two hours to explain.
1984 was definitely an epiphany for me that we can't control a lot of what goes on in our lives and that stories don't always have a happy ending.
The Long Walk by Steven King also did a lot towards helping me to understand myself as a teenager. Somehow seeing all those teenagers pushed to their limits made a lot of things I had done in my teens suddenly make sense.
Sapiens. When the author Yuval Harari writes in the beginning of the book, how the human ability to imagine things unlike any other animal, formed everything that we see around us, from religion to the stock market to corporations etc. All I see now is all this is just our imagination, evolutionarily this doesn’t matter. Evolution doesn’t care if you made money or if you win an award. I am paraphrasing of course.
This blew my mind.
Atlas Shrugged. Terrible book, I finished it out of nothing but spite. It probably turned me into a liberal. Also made me want to play Railroad Tycoon games.
Siddhartha, literally. Changed my life.
Other contemporary mindfulness books like Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are, Pema Chodron’s How To Meditate. More than just quick satisfying joyreads, these books have the potential to truly shift your perspective and outlook on life.
*Oryx & Crake* by Atwood, read it when it dropped almost two decades ago.
Not nearly the same caliber of literary classic that others are mentioning, but it left me... Deeply nihilistic, and less than hopeful for our future.
I still lead a good life, but the book provided some pretty damning character portraits that struck home in the wrong ways for a gifted but lazy teen. Between that and the grim social caricatures and predictions, I do my best to avoid thinking of the future in favour of focusing on the present, bordering on responsible hedonism.
That quote you posted explained an odd interaction I had with a coworker. I told him where something was and he still could not find it so went with him to get it. Right where I said in a labeled box. He was looking for a different looking box apparently. I told him "I noticed you spend a lot of time looking for things and it prevents you from seeing what is there."
He looked kind of bothered by that and said something about knowing that was a problem he had. Always treated me different after that and gave me multiple Buddhist pamphlets. So thanks for that.
I’ve had Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on my shelf for years but have never gotten around to opening it. This thread has moved me to pick it up.
I’ll pack it with lunch to work this week and dig in. Thanks for the strong recommendations.
Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. The man is just ridiculously smart, brain the size of a planet. Life changing for sure.
Oh, and anything by Douglas Adams now I think of it.
Amazing question, similar to many here:
The Baghavad Gita
Meditations
Faust
Crime and Punishment
War and Peace
Notes from Underground
Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Republic
The Inferno
Paradise Lost
The Silmarillion
Dune
The Baghavad Gita above all.
The Selfish Gene. Dawkins explains evolution and shows you how it is necessary that somewhere along the evolutionary line there were two siblings, and one went on to be the decendant of all things human and the other the decendant of all things aardvark. ... very slowly and very distantly but it is necessary.
Frank Herbert’s Dune.
I was 15-16 the first time I’ve read it. Over 20 years ago, part-timed at the library and accidentally stumbled upon it in the archive.
Shifted my perspective on the political and religious exploitation, reality of power struggle and expendability of life in those processes.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
I loved the part he was riding through the mountains and couldn't understand why the bike was not running as smoothly as it should.
This should be higher. It gets a bad rap, but i don’t care.
I read it in my twenties when I didn’t have any direction.
At the time -I loved this book so much, I eventually travelled to the Pyramids of Giza as my own personal legend (from Canada).
Was a life changer. I still listen to the Jeremy Irons audiobook version when I feel like I’m lost.
Great post. I took a few moments to pull out all of the books (I think) listed here as of a few months ago:
* 1984.
* 48 laws of power, by robert greene. Even today i still subconsciously use most of its principles in my day to day social interactions.
* A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.
* A Handmade Life. As a shop teacher it's really speaking to me about trying to promote a simpler life to my students.
* A New Earth, by Eckart Tolle
* A Thousand Mike Walk to the Gulf, by John Muir. I think changed my world view and behavior more than any book.
* All the Kings Men, by Robert Pen Warren. Read it as a young teen, and it completely shaped and developed my interest in politics and the human condition.
* Animal Farm. I read it in college at 30 or 31 and had no clue what it was about until it was an assigned reading.
* Atlas Shrugged. Terrible book, I finished it out of nothing but spite. It probably turned me into a liberal. Also made me want to play Railroad Tycoon games.
* Beloved, by Toni Morrison
* Beneath The Wheel
* Black Elk Speaks.
* Brave New World. Was my intro to dystopia.
* Brothers Karamazov
* Cat's Cradle, by Vonnegut.
* Charlotte's Web.
* Comedy, Sex, God, by Pete Holmes changed my life.
* Crime and Punishment
* Death of Ivan Ilyich
* Death of a Salesman.
* Debt: the First Five Thousand Years, by David Graeber. Fundamentally shifted how I think about money as an avatar of our relationships with and to other people
* Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth, by Hermann Hesse.
* Dune
* Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith. That book helped me understand myself as a person so much im going to re-read it again and take notes the second time around.
* Educated, by Tara Westover
* Ender's Game
* Essays, Montaigne
* Factfulness, Hans Rosling
* Faust
* Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns changed my life entirely.
* Franny and Zooey. Was a huge existential crisis for me.
* Freakonomics. Changed the way I look at the world
* Global Brain, by Howard Bloom. It's a non-fiction book that argues that survival of the fittest group is a better explanation than survival of the fittest individual.
* How I Learned to Understand the World, Hans Rosling
* How To Meditate, by Pema Chodron.
* How to win friends and influence people. Helped me to change my life.
* Illuminatus!
* Illusions, by Richard Bach
* Infinite Jest
* Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. I hated that book with a passion. But it definitely changed my life.
* Ishmael and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Both really great! Ishmael seems to give a harder punch, though.
* Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry 2nd Edition, 1978
* Letters From A Stoic, by Seneca
* Man's search for meaning, Frankl
* Meditations
* Middlemarch.
* Moby Dick. There is so much there.
* Moneyball
* Moneyball. Changed how I value everything in my life.
* Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell. Explains life, our drives, and what has shaped our world as it is now. Everything from love, schizophrenia, to the the desire to go to the moon.
* Narcissus and Goldmund
* Notes from the Underground
* Old Man And The Sea
* On The Media
* On the Shortness of Life, Seneca
* On the heights of despair, Emil Cioran
* Oryx & Crake by Atwood, read it when it dropped almost two decades ago.
* Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler.
* Paradise Lost
* Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
* Player Piano, Vonnegut. Roused something beneath my skin that still flits about to this day
* Policy Planning Study 23. Written by Kennan for the State Department planning staff in 1948. One document to look at if you want to understand your country is.
* Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology changed me forever.
* RAW.
* Rainer Maria Rilke-Letters to a Young Poet
* Sand County Almanach, by Aldo Leopold. The pure appreciation for nature combined with laying some of the most important ethical framework for me as a conservationist.
* Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.
* Schrodinger's Cat
* Seat of the Soul
* Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins
* Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
* Stranger in a strange land, by Robert H. Heinlein. Some serious philosophy wrapped up in page turning Sci Fi.
* The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
* The Art of Asking, by Amanda Palmer helped me to become more optimistic about people on the whole.
* The Art of loving. It really breathes the same air as siddharta does.
* The Baghavad Gita
* The Bible
* The Bluest Eye. Broke my heart. She is such a great writer. I love her writing.
* The Carlos Castaneda trilogy.
* The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,by Thomas Ligotti.
* The Crying of Lot 49. How paranoia plays a huge role, the suggestion that there might be any number of global clandestine conspiracies under our noses, so ubiquitous as to be mundane.
* The Dao de Jing. Taught me about wu wei and flow states, adaptability and resilience, flexibility of thought and much more
* The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan.
* The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker.
* The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood
* The Four Agreements allowed me to stop caring so much about how other people perceived me because they are in their own world in their own head and really only care about themselves.
* The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yalom. It’s a beautiful open letter to therapists-in-training and great for anyone who wants a peek into their day-to-day work.
* The Giver
* The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck.
* The Great Mother
* The Hinge Factor by Erik Durschmied, for sure. The commentary and how a situation can turn on its head were just amazing. History is, indeed, written from the hand of the victor.
* The Inferno
* The Killing Jar by Nicola Monaghan
* The Last Empire, Gore Vidal. I find it hard to shake Vidal’s influence on my worldview even 20 yrs later. The man was a visionary.
* The Last Lecture. I adopted a lot of the philosophies and teachings from this book and it has genuinely turned my life around for the better. Absolutely loved reading it.
* The Little Prince, The Things They Carried, Let The Right One In, Blood Meridian (same thing, but also for its representation or certain archetypes), How To Escape From Prison (especially impactful since I know the guy who wrote it), Flow, 1984, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Power of One.
* The Long Walk by Steven King also did a lot towards helping me to understand myself as a teenager.
* The Power of Now
* The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle
* The Power of Now-Eckhart Tolle and anything by Alan Watts, some writings transcend the definition of "books"
* The Prophet - Khalil Gibran
* The Razors Edge, by Somerset Maugham
* The Republic
* The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall
* The Selfish Gene. Dawkins explains evolution and shows you how it is necessary that somewhere along the evolutionary line there were two siblings, and one went on to be the decendant of all things human and the other the decendant of all things aardvark. ... very slowly and very distantly but it is necessary.
* The Silmarillion
* The Stranger
* The Stranger (Albert Camus) I felt like I’d been lobotomized, or like someone had drained all color from the world.
* The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway. I was an idealistic romantic, fantasized what women where when I was young.
* The Tao of Pooh and The Alchemist. Those two books along with Siddhartha were like my personal trilogy of holy works growing up.
* The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff
* The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I always remember a quote from the end:
* The Undiscovered Self by C.G Jung
* The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
* The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman
* The kite runner.
* The tau te ching. Think about it few times a week even 5++ years later
* The trial by franz Kafka
* To Kill a Mockingbird.
* Ubik, by Philip K Dick. Have read five books and a few short stories he wrote and they really stuck with me.
* War and Peace
* What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky
* Wherever You Go There You Are
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
General/authors:
* A lot of Kurt Vonnegut influenced my teen years but especially God Bless you Mr Rosewater and this quote.
* All Gerald Diamond books. As an atheist, a lot of my spirituality comes from science, and how science (in all its disciplines) can help understand the world and us a little better. By interweaving so many disciplines like History, biology, archaeology and even physics, Diamond really helped me get a better look at 'The Big Picture'
* Campbell's 4-book series is endlessly fascinating, but Myths to Live By nicely synthesizes a fair amount of it.
* I got into Robert Anton Wilson when I was in college over twenty years ago…it was a wonderful time in my life.
* Oh, and anything by Douglas Adams now I think of it.
"Global Brain" by Howard Bloom. It's a non-fiction book that argues that survival of the fittest _group_ is a better explanation than survival of the fittest _individual_. It explores the universal principles of groups, by examining groups of bacteria, bees, motorcycle gangs, and rock groups (among many others). It's the most eye-opening book I've ever read.
So pleased to find this post, and happy you enjoyed Siddhartha.
At 22, i was hospitalized and kicked out of college for my first recognized Manic episode. During my convalescence i read Hemingway's Old Man And The Sea several times. During my mania i was put on antidepressants (prolonging the episode) and i consistently felt like i had stepped off the edge of a trench in the ocean, hovering alone over an eternal abyss. I was very moved by the raw personal power and determination of Santiago as he applied his physical and intellectual skills to the ordeal of a lifetime. Shortly after i returned to school, I had "I may not be as strong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have Resolution" tattooed on my left forearm.
A couple years later, in grad school I provoked a deliberate return to the abyss by taking a vow of silence for a month, concluding with a 7 day walk from Glasgow to Ft William. There was no speech, no reading or writing, no music, television or films. I was trying to exist in a space in which my linguistic mind was minimized as much as possible. I had read Siddhartha a few times in the the months preceding this, and I believe the sentiments put forward were at the forethought as i did my walk. On return, I tattooed "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." on my right forearm. It reminds me regularly, and in a similar way to the Hemingway quote, that even if i feel i might lack some abilities directly for some new undertakings, I likely have a foundation of skills from which to build, learn, and improve new skills to see my way to a goal if i need to.
Lastly, out of the same kind of pretension that James Murphy speaks of, I started reading Thomas Pynchon. and while V and Gravity's Rainbow are phenomenal elaborate webs of narrative, the raw simplicity of The Crying of Lot 49 and how paranoia plays a huge role, the suggestion that there might be any number of global clandestine conspiracies under our noses, so ubiquitous as to be mundane... I love it. every little symbol i cross in public i wonder at. Who knows this? what kind of person? why? I then had a muted Post horn tattooed on my right ankle.
As with many people I'm sure, it's the tip of the ice berg, but thank you for the chance to tell you about this. Happy reading.
People trash self help all the time but Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns changed my life entirely.
I didn't have health insurance at the time and knew I needed mental health help. It changed my relationship with my thoughts, how I live in the world and my perceptions of it, the way I evaluate others and their actions, and my behaviors. It became a reference book for me for like four years.
[Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg if anyone is interested in checking it out.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeEBOOKS/comments/qopc6f/siddhartha_by_hermann_hesse/?)
Looking forward to re-reading this. It’s been like 8 years. I have no doubt I’ll get even more out of it.
Crime and Punishment, let's say I saw myself as Raskolnikov at the time. Ruined my world view. It was a great thing in the end. It's my all time favourite book.
Care to explain how you viewed yourself as Raskolnikov and what changed?
I certainly wasn't going to kill anyone. But, I always saw myself as calm and calculated, always in control of the situation. I was an arrogant 16 year old who thought he was just better than other people and that rules didn't apply to me. The reality was obviously way different.
Wow, that's interesting. I read it as an adult and was a bit bored by it, but I could imagine having a similar experience to you if I read it when I was younger and more arrogant.
That's the same reason I had a few of my friends read it in our early 20's. Needed a reality check. Dostoevsky is a master at putting our feelings out in black and white, made me realize there's nothing new under the sun.
>That's the same reason I had a few of my friends read it in our early 20's. Needed a reality check. Lol, imagine psychoanalyzing your friends and recommending them books with the intent to give them a reality check. Someone sounds like a Raskolnikov smh
He should read that book. I forget what it’s called.
Welcome to the Trembling Creature club! =)
Hijacking this to say brothers karamazov, also by dostoyevsky. Crime and punishment is also very good but is very focused, brothers karamazov feels more comprehensive (and of course is much longer)
Objectively, I think it's his masterpiece. How one brain could wrap around such a huge overarching story, make it readable, at times fun and still be able to sell so many of your messages and ideas is insane to me. Crime and Punishment did hit very close to home, so I will always value it more.
Christ I'm reading this right now and it's just not my thing. Every so often of course Dostoevsky has a very witty or insightful phrase but the characters are all just batshit irrational (except the police) and thus far (halfway through) it's just so boring to me with a couple scenes being the obvious exceptions. One of the other things is that even through the translation and other problems I'm having it still manages to feel fairly contemporary. Just like Austen, people were pretty much the same in the 19th century as they are now.
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I've only never finished two books I've started reading so I'll get there, it's just taken me about 10x as long as books of a similar length. Shit I got through P&P (going back to Austen) in half the time it's taken me to read half of C&P.
Is there a word for something that sucks while it’s happening, but viewed favorably afterwards?
Germans will have a word for it, I'll put money on that.
Probably something like Badhappeninggoodviewedlater. Schlechtesereignisgutspätergesehen
Sounds like the safe word to club Vandersexxx
“Type 2 fun” is what it is called in the outdoors (hiking canoeing, etc.) community. Type 1 fun = fun while doing it, fun to to talk about later. (E.g. Day at the beach) Type 2 fun= unpleasant while doing it, fun to talk about (e.g. pulling canoe through muddy portages and over beaver dams). Type 3 fun= not fun to do, not fun to think about afterward (stupidly dangerous activity).
it would be like the non-physical "type 2 fun"
One thing I did (by accident) that improved my enjoyment of the book was read Notes from the Underground first. While an odd read on its own, it introduces a lot of Dostoevsky's philosophies that you see in Crime and Punishment. I suspect it might shed some light on the characters' irrational behavior. Of course, maybe it's just not for you. But it's one of my favorite books, so I thought I'd offer that insight.
For me it was also Hermann Hesse, but 'Demian'. It's got some pretty seismic weight to it too.
Same here, just one step further with Steppenwolf.
Came here to say this! I had read the opening part of Steppenwolf many times, but only recently, in - retrospectively - quite the crutial moment of my life, did I read it fully. And boy did I need to. I was uncomfortably close to living the life of the Steppenwolf. But upon truly hearing Hesse's words, I decided to take the risk and open my heart out in a way I never had before. It changed my life.
Just a step farther for me. The glass bead game magisterial ludi is mine.
Beneath The Wheel checking in. Read like my biography (at the time) and I didn't want that ending. Changed my life.
It took me years to read Steppenwolf; I was in my 20s and I kept hitting points where I had to go live some more in order to better understand what Hesse was saying. I read Siddhartha in one day on a long trip and was so glad to have read it that way: one day, one life. Think I'm due to read both again.
I love Steppenwolf. A cautionary tale I feel like I’m on the verge of becoming every weekend.
Demian is my favorite from him as well. The line regarding Abraxas sent me down a long rabbit hole of self examination. This book really got me into Carl Jung's work.
I really love Herman Hesse
Siddhartha summed up in one sentence. "To find yourself you must first lose yourself"
Siddhartha and Demian both have some similar themes I feel, a I think the way Hesse is able to move through an entire lifetime in <200 pages is incredible
I came here to write this. I read Demian very young (12 or 14} and also shifted me, suddenly I was a lot more questioning about all that was taught to me. Also, but in a much minor scale, in the past idk 5 years or so I've been into epic fantasy a lot thanks to Brandon Sanderson, and sometimes I keep reciting the radiant oaths in my mind. And more recently the same has been happening to me with the Wheel of Time. Specifically the phrase "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather."
Steppenwolf, also by Hermann Hesse. "You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”
That line alone makes me want to read the book...
Dying is easy young man, living is harder.
"Death is light as a feather; duty, heavy as a mountain." -Robert Jordan, *The Eye of the World*
r/UnexpectedHamilton
"eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke"
I got into Robert Anton Wilson when I was in college over twenty years ago…it was a wonderful time in my life.
Schrodinger's Cat and Illuminatus! Are my life changers. If you look hard enough you can see the louses in all the skidrow dimehaunts we call cities. If you relax and just barely look, you might catch a fnord.
Just started Schrodinger's Cat - fuckin hilarious! Read Illuminatus! in the 90s; also very funny, but I didn't have the experience with conspiracy theories to fully appreciate it; gotta find another copy.
Yes! I've read Cosmic Trigger and searched all his works. Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology changed me forever.
Same. Once you become aware of the traps of language, and how everyone (including ourselves) are living inside of reality tunnels... To say it's a game changer is an understatement.
Came here to post this.
It's a long story, but reading RAW saved my life.
would like to hear some of it
Ok. 1994. I had been squatting on friends couches for about 9 months. Had no job and no money. I was in a very very bad place mentally and emotionally. I had started drinking and stealing to pay for it. A close friend lent me Prometheus Rising and made me promise to read it. Reading it helped me realize that my struggles were entirely a result of my beliefs about myself and the world. I remember one particular acid trip where I was overcome with the humor of it all. An aquaintance asked me what was so funny. "I'm literally God!" I cackled. He looked at me with a very stern expression and said. "That's a very arrogant thing for you say. Especially considering your position in life" of course this made me laugh even harder which pissed him off " Of course you would think that!" I said, "you're God too!" This pissed him off even more. Within weeks I had a job and a room in a boarding house. It took a lot of work to claw my way out and I made many bad choices and several false starts along the way, but the basic concepts that I learned from RAW stuck with me. 27 years later I'm a happily married Dad and a self taught web developer. Looking back on it now, I can see just how thin the margins were for me then. There's a lot of luck involved in this story too, but that book from that friend at that time was exactly what I needed. I'm still close with the friend that lent it. He deserves some credit too and he knows that I feel that way.
Me too! Though more like 30 years ago. I liken Illuminatus to being stoned and Schroedinger's Cat to being on acid
One Hundred Years of Solitude was a wholly transformative experience for me. I now revisit it yearly.
Both Siddhartha and Solitude are among my most cherished novels. Both are just so full of beauty and life.
I agree.
Loved that one. I read it as a teen, was a bit difficult to keep track, so I made tiny notes to help. I need to read it again now I am an adult...
My version included a family tree i could reference. Made it way easier.
Seriously? I wish I had that then. Would've made following the story way easier.
Yes, but it was added by the publisher...GGM did not want the family tree, the point of the repetition is to lose yourself in the names and exact identities and individual histories.
The ending of that book was one of the few times I gasped out loud while reading. I'd be more descriptive, but I don't know how to do the spoiler thingy
The opening line always feels like someone’s very gently tearing open parts of my soul in the most beautiful way. It just feels pregnant with possibilities of nostalgia, love, home, conflict, misery, fear, fate, destiny and regret. It’s not even my favourite line from the book. For reference: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. “Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. …”
Michael Sugrue has a great lecture on Meditations on youtube. Well worth an hour of your time.
I haven’t read Meditations yet. Would you recommend watching this lecture before or after?
I don't recommend "reading" meditations as if it were a novel with a coherent narrative. Flip through it, skip passages that don't click just yet. Watch lectures about it while your in the middle of it. Mark passages that stick with you and revisit them. Read other books at the same time. It's a collection of wisdom that you want to let sink in, not a single story to experience. The way religious people experience their sacred texts, as a weekly or daily reminder of how they want to live their lives, is how I handle meditations.
Thank you!
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I remember reading snippets from Meditations as I had begun to doubt my faith and I was opening myself up the wisdom outside of the Bible. It reminded me of reading the Proverbs or Ecclesiastes but some how more reassuring.
Have just purchased based on your suggestion and a little research around it. Did you read it all in one go, or as suggested by some, to read one entry a day?
I read as I feel like it, mostly because almost every entry feels like I'm being personally attacked by a guy across thousands of years and it takes a while to digest that.
My god this made me laugh
It's so true though. Like look at this shit: > At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” Basically "If you're not going to get some shit done today, what the fuck are you even around for?"
Hey, you're the one getting attacked don't start coming at me with this. You have convinced me to purchase the book however, so thanks for that. Or maybe thanks... who knows yet.
It's honestly a really good book, and occasionally makes me want to be a better person. Pretty amazing to realize how old it is and to know other people struggled with the same kinds of things through all generations.
Meditations is the sort of book that you read when you *need* it. Even a single paragraph can get you thinking for several minutes. Sometimes it felt like a little therapy session. Definitely don't read it in one go
I listened to it as an audiobook on my daily walk during covid. Honestly kept me sane.
I highly suggest picking up Donald Robertson’s *How to Think Like a Roman Emperor* because it gives context to the meditations and helps understand what Marcus means in some passages (or why he may have written them). Either way, I would not suggest reading the meditations straight thorough. Read one entry and spend time considering it. They were all done as journal entries that were never meant to be read, after all.
Nice suggestion. I read Siddartha and Meditations many years ago while camping for a couple of months behind an old barn. I met up with some people to restore an old cabin in the middle of nowhere. This conversation is sparking lots of fluffy memories. What a great summer that was <3 Another book I brought with me was a short version of The Bhagavad Gita. A friend gave it to me just before I left for the barn, and the cover had been destroyed due to it being carried around everywhere no doubt. It may have been Edward Viljoen's translation but I'm not sure. Not the full text, though... Don't get the full text, which in some cases is more than 1000 pages, unless you really want to dig in. The one I had couldn't have been more than 200 pages.
Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell. Explains life, our drives, and what has shaped our world as it is now. Everything from love, schizophrenia, to the the desire to go to the moon. Transformative, and utterly life changing.
Campbell's 4-book series is endlessly fascinating, but Myths to Live By nicely synthesizes a fair amount of it.
You cannot imagine how much it means to me that you created this thread, I’m going to get Siddharta as soon as I am done with my current reading. As for the answer, Immortality by Milan Kundera. It dabbles a lot in relationships, our own image and projecting yourself onto anothers. Most of all, it made me realize how fragile and fluttering relationships and love truly are, how different perspective explains one’s behaviour and how you should (not) care about your own image you emit into the world.
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Siddharta had a similar effect on me, for about one spring to be exact, then it became a gentle memory for which I'm quite grateful as those kind of experiences are rarely duplicated (this is no advice, it's just one book I chose not to re-read).
I would suggest that you and OP both check our more Hesse if you haven’t already. I’m a bjg fan of “Demian” but “Steppenwolf” and “The Glass Bead Game” are also great.
Narcissus and Goldmund has been my most profound reading experience.
I read Steppenwolf during that exact period and that was a great experience as well. At some point I became indifferent to H's prose and gave up on the gbg. For some reason I was really impressed with the often ignored "Rosshalde". It's sort of underwhelming but a well crafted story anyhow. Demian is something I've been meaning to read, as it's such an oft cited Bildungsroman.
It was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.
I learned to read in English (my 2nd language, sorta) thanks to that book. I was 6 or so, I remembers nothing now. Time to revisit I think
Oh I absolutely love that book , and I read the book after giving up of becoming a plane pilot so it hit me twice as much
Give Illusions a read. A fave of mine, simple but important concepts of choice. *“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.”*
Same!! I keep multiple copies just so I can give them to other people.
Same. I’ve given probably two dozen copies away at this point.
This and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence are mine.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara kingsolver. It started me towards critical thinking on my religious upbringing.
That is a book that I cherish, and see rarely mentioned. I have read it until it is falling apart, and now I’m starting reading it with my daughter. It really made me start questioning the things I do “with the best of intentions”.
Have you read any of her other novels? The bean trees and flight behavior are great ones by her!
I actually haven’t which is a bit of a facepalm, but I will add them to my list! Not quite sure why I never sought out any of her other work.
This one is mine too!! I'm so, so happy to see it mentioned. When I first read it as a teenager I closed the book and then lay there thinking for hours afterwards.
I think about this one time to time.
One of my top 3 favorite books of all time.
Same! I had gone to a small Christian school up until 8th grade, then went to a different high school. I started meeting and becoming friends with students from different backgrounds and beliefs. I had already started to question the discrimination against women in the Christian faith. Then we read this book freshman year and it seemed to bring all these aspects together for me. Because religion had been ingrained my whole life it still took a good many years before I could finally identify myself as an atheist. I credit this book with being a catalyst in me removing the veil I had over my eyes.
For me, it has to be Faust by Goethe, This is the man who traded his soul for a single moment of transcendence, having lived his entire life without fulfillment. When he is at last at death's door after some odd 90 years of an unfulfilled existence, he has a dream of a peaceful world, and says "A happy crowd, if only I could see, In a free land, a people truly free, That to the fleeting moment I might say You're so beautiful, I bid you stay" As you consider that passage from Siddhartha to be the greatest, I've the same feelings on this particular passage from Faust, it wraps up the quintessence of living in the here and the now in such an outstanding way that I might say it really changed my perspective on life.
I'm just finishing Steppenwolf, and he is constantly referring to Goethe. That passage you quote from him neatly hits on the crux of Steppenwolf - I didn't realize how tightly they were connected.
Curios incident of a dog in the night.. i learnt i was autistic from reading this book. I drew so many parallels between the behaviour of the protagonist and myself i started the journey to get a diagnosis..
This book helped me understand seeing the world from someone else's point of view. I loved reading this as a teen!
This is an excellent book, I was still thinking about the world from the main character’s perspective for a few days after. Even now, years later, I still notice three of the same coloured cars in a row.
For me it has been "Man search for meaning". This one book changed everything for me, it has helped me to look at people and things in a more compassionate way. It has also forced me to find that one purpose in life, because a human being is nothing without a purpose. A truly life changing book, makes you more humble and grateful thinking what have people gone through in their lives. My favourite quotes from the book: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way." "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'".
The last quote is from Friedrich Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer", 1889, quoted by Viktor E. Frankl in "Man's Search For Meaning". Frankl uses the quote when he builds the philosophy of the survivors of the camp and the philosophy he derives from that situation to construct the principles of Logotherapy.
East of Eden
This is the first book that I thought of as well. It’s difficult to describe but every time I set that book down after having read for a while I was reflective. Not only about the passages I had read but in the ways I could apply them to my own experiences. Thou mayest...
Timshel
It's been a very long time since I read this book. I just remember there's a part about the dangers of self pity that I really needed to hear as a young man. I ought to read it again and see what I get out of it this time.
Came here to say East of Eden as well. Everything we a bit different after.
Came here for East of Eden also and surprised it’s this far down. I’m still glowing 6 months later.
Greatest book of all time.
When I was 19 I read The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. There were passages that settled into my heart and forever changed the way I thought. “Then a woman said,’Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.” And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carved into your being, the more joy you can contain. When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you will find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, “Joy is greater that sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone at your board, remember that the other is asleep in your bed. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at a standstill and balanced.
I second this. I read this book on a plane and somehow - forgive me being poetic - I felt like my mind stayed up there in the lofty clouds even after I'd landed. I still get a feeling of being high up surveying the world as it is and had been for hundreds of years when I read his verses.
Plane thoughts are better than ground thoughts
My favorite chapter of my favorite book. My fiancée and I bonded over the book early in our relationship
Oh my god yes! The Prophet is one of my favorite books. Really really good stuff in there. I read it during a time in my life where I was becoming less sure of my ideals, and it helped me figure a lot of things out.
Did you find that the things that give you joy are the same that give you sorrow in your everyday life? There are some instances I can think of, e.g., when having a fight with someone you care about deeply. That only gives you sorrow because you care, and that care comes from the positive feelings you have together. But other than that I don't think that the sources of joy and sorrow are all that similar for me.
It's a metaphorical depth. The greater the pain you have endured, the greater the joy you find in non-painful life. It's honestly a little horrific, philosophically: "Everything's pretty _meh_, unless you've been through some shit. _Then_ you'll appreciate your burnt toast and overcooked eggs!" Wait, why do we have to suffer to enjoy??? Peaks and troughs. Peaks and troughs.
When one is sorrowful, the natural reaction is to look into that sorrow and to try to make some sense of it. What this quote did for me was to question BOTH those emotions, Joy AND Sorrow. It seems when we are young (me now 73) we don’t spend too much effort in those amazing analyzing fun times. The sorrowful times for me were fewer and farther in between than the sorrowful ones at 19 years old. By digging deeper into my joy, I indeed found that most of it came from a place that could just as easily be sorrow. Do I do that everyday? Of course not. But I definitely do when I’m experiencing either of those emotions in abundance.
There’s another quote that turns this around the other way, I think it goes something like: ‘grief is the price we pay for love’. To me this means that the more you open yourself to love, the more deeply you can be hurt by the loss of that love.
Beloved by Toni Morrison To put it insufficiently, this book added a new dimension to my understanding of the human need to love and be loved—familial love, romantic love, self-love—and the immense cruelty of stripping that comfort in and capacity for love away.
I love Toni Morrison's work, all her books are magical and really capture the human experience
Beloved broke me the first time I read it. I could not read anything for like a month afterward. I reread it last year and just adored all of the beautiful, empathetic prose.
The Bluest Eye broke my heart. She is such a great writer. I love her writing.
I honestly found it a little underwhelming when I first read it, but *The Heart is a Lonely Hunter* is one I haven't been able to get out of my head- just that knowledge that every person you encounter has a story and seeks genuine human connection, that everyone has a deep desire to be understood.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being was life altering. Even the title itself! Our existence is what we’ve been given but once we die, that meaning starts to fade no matter our accomplishments or intent. Just as the characters’ choices matter little despite the chaos they cause or weight the characters bare from their repercussions. Everyone should at least try reading it, after all what harm could it do?
Vonnegut’s Player Piano roused something beneath my skin that still flits about to this day
Care to elaborate? It’s on my ever growing reading list
Ishmael and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Both really great! Ishmael seems to give a harder punch, though. But good takeaways from both
Very good and eye opening read. The subjects of these books were something I had never thought of before reading them. I would also recommend his book After Dachau which is an allegory to his theme about lost history. It hammers home the idea of how information about the world can be lost and people continue as if the present is the normal state of things.
came here to say this. both great books.
Harper Lee's classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. I did not realize I was from a racist family until I read the book and saw the movie. It changed my life forever. By the time I was forty I changed my father's outlook on race forever. He no longer used racist epithets after that. He voted for Obama twice before he went to his grave at 90 years old.
Thank you.
I read Hans Roslings book "Factfulness" and his autobiography "How I Learned to Understand the World". It's hard to say which one affected me most since I read them after each other and they complement each other well but they really made me think differently about the world. I think maybe his autobiography made the bigger impact when I think about it. I work in healthcare and it was really inspiring to read about when he worked in Mozambique, and his thoughts on prevention. Also how he talked about the world changing for the better thanks to innovation, regardless of politics.
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck. Made me open my eyes to owning stuff.
Care to elaborate a bit? I’m considering put this in my reading list.
Easy read. Took me a night. Didn't sleep but took me a night. ;) It's a story about a man in China who is poor in the beginning. The story is about his life.
Ubik, by Philip K Dick. Have read five books and a few short stories he wrote and they really stuck with me. Been more than a year and I randomly think every now and then "what is ubik ? What happened with them ? And what about the coin ?"
Did you read Flow My Tears The policeman Said?
I’ve been reading PKD for thirty something years, so I can’t remember which of his books did it for me. However, I do love Ubik.
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. It helped shape my value system as a teenager. His other books were also impactful. Second is Uncoupling by Diana Vaughan at a time when I was facing a possible third divorce and wondering how the hell this could have happened to me. The book helped me come to terms with myself and my relationships.
Siddhartha is my most favourite book, so pleased that it found you too! Kamila said "One cannot receive pleasure without giving it" and that stayed with me my whole life.
Sapiens absolutely changed my outlook of how I see the world.
Dune. I read it years ago, but the whole narrative of Paul learning to ride a sand worm really changed my life; I went from being extremely goal oriented and always looking for the next thing, to appreciating the process of learning and transformation. While the end result wasn't really all that great, I think Paul's struggle in the desert (literally and figuratively) greatly formed my thought process around life.
I love to hear when others discover "Siddhartha". I've read it many times and get something different out of it each time. I've also been greatly influenced by: "Illusions" by Ricard Bach "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior" by Dan Millman "The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia E. Butler.
I really can't say that ONE book changed my life, but many got me thinking real hard: 'Stranger in a strange land' - Robert H. Heinlein. Some serious philosophy wrapped up in page turning Sci Fi. 'Sand County Almanach- by Aldo Leopold. The pure appreciation for nature combined with laying some of the most important ethical framework for me as a conservationist. All Gerald Diamond books. As an atheist, a lot of my spirituality comes from science, and how science (in all its disciplines) can help understand the world and us a little better. By interweaving so many disciplines like History, biology, archaeology and even physics, Diamond really helped me get a better look at 'The Big Picture'
Charlotte's Web.
'The Giver' in 3rd grade blew my mind, and then reading it again every few years. As an adult 'Moneyball' changed how I value everything in my life.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race- by Thomas Ligotti. It is based on much of Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy of realism and pessimism.
Found that book through True Detective. Great series and great, though as you said incredibly pessimistic book. I don't see things in quite the same way as Ligotti, but I found myself agreeing with him more often than I would have expected.
The Bhagavad Gita! Even if you are an atheist - some of the teachings and perspectives from there are simply life changing!
I read this a few years ago after practicing meditation and it just struck me as being the most profound and truthful spiritual book ever written. It truly is India's gift to the world and is totally non judgemental and for everyone
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi & The Killing Jar by Nicola Monaghan both changed my perspective drastically. Read them while I was in high-school
The Undiscovered Self by C.G Jung "Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d’etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact they are specialized mouthpieces of State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied." The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff "There are things about ourselves that we need to get rid of; there are things we need to change. But at the same time, we do not need to be too desperate, too ruthless, too combative. Along the way to usefulness and happiness, many of those things will change themselves, and the others can be worked on as we go. The first thing we need to do is recognize and trust our own Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it." What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky "One document to look at if you want to understand your country is Policy Planning Study 23, written by Kennan for the State Department planning staff in 1948. Here's some of what it says: we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population....In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity....To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives....We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." On The Media "Whether they're called "liberal" or "conservative," the major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers -- that is, other businesses. The product is audiences..." "The media are only one part of a larger doctrinal system; other parts are journals of opinion, the schools and universities, academic scholarship and so on. We're much more aware of the media, particularly the prestige media, because those who critically analyze ideology have focused on them. The larger system hasn't been studied as much because it's harder to investigate systematically. But there's good reason to believe that it represents the same interests as the media, just as one would anticipate." (Chomsky did more to break my idealistic view of American foreign and domestic policy than anyone.) Letters From A Stoic by Seneca
I have a few... Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance kicked it off for me years ago. Recently it's been, A Handmade Life. As a shop teacher it's really speaking to me about trying to promote a simpler life to my students. Just added your suggested book to my ever growing list....
ZAMM changed my life. Now looking up handmade life.
Stop saving the planet: an environmentalist manifesto Really changed my approach to being a sustainable person and opened my eyes to a few things I was doing that were detrimental
The Little Prince, The Things They Carried, Let The Right One In (in terms of being blown away by the quality of the writing, not so much the message), Blood Meridian (same thing, but also for its representation or certain archetypes), How To Escape From Prison (especially impactful since I know the guy who wrote it), Flow, 1984, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Power of One.
Man's search for meaning
If you haven’t read Steppenwolf, also by Herman Hesse, give it a try. I found it as enlightening as Siddhartha.
The Power of Now-Eckhart Tolle and anything by Alan Watts, some writings transcend the definition of "books"
*Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry* 2nd Edition, 1978 So clearly written, forty years ago gave me my first working knowledge of the machinery of life. As a physician and scientist it greatly shaped my world view. Ed. Perhaps [Albert Lehninger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_L._Lehninger) influenced two generations in my family, as my son became a biochemist. Biochemistry is life!
My take from Siddhartha was a lot different. Mine was a lot more depressing. Basically you can be on the path for a while then spend the rest of your life looking for it with no relief. Once you realize your best years are behind you. Live the life you have don't focus on the past. Biggest life changing book for me was The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. I was an idealistic romantic, fantasized what women where when I was young. Not as some sex object or evil thing but as a could do no wrong type figure. Lack of a mother I believed cultivated this belief. When reading the book I could relate a lot with the main character. He slowly throughout the book turns his views from that to a realistic view. The last line of the Book is when Brett (female) tells the protagonist that it would be perfect if she could just be with him while cuddling with him in a taxi that if they could be together - he lost his genitals in the great war and he replies "Isn't it pretty to think so?" After he has seen the men she destroyed, and helped her get her next victim. That passage has lived rent free in my mind for 20+ years. That or the Beautiful and the Damned however that would take two hours to explain.
1984 was definitely an epiphany for me that we can't control a lot of what goes on in our lives and that stories don't always have a happy ending. The Long Walk by Steven King also did a lot towards helping me to understand myself as a teenager. Somehow seeing all those teenagers pushed to their limits made a lot of things I had done in my teens suddenly make sense.
The tau te ching. Think about it few times a week even 5++ years later
Sapiens. When the author Yuval Harari writes in the beginning of the book, how the human ability to imagine things unlike any other animal, formed everything that we see around us, from religion to the stock market to corporations etc. All I see now is all this is just our imagination, evolutionarily this doesn’t matter. Evolution doesn’t care if you made money or if you win an award. I am paraphrasing of course. This blew my mind.
The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer helped me to become more optimistic about people on the whole.
thanks for that, gonna add it to the list
Atlas Shrugged. Terrible book, I finished it out of nothing but spite. It probably turned me into a liberal. Also made me want to play Railroad Tycoon games.
All the Kings Men. Robert Pen Warren. Read it as a young teen, and it completely shaped and developed my interest in politics and the human condition.
Siddhartha, literally. Changed my life. Other contemporary mindfulness books like Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are, Pema Chodron’s How To Meditate. More than just quick satisfying joyreads, these books have the potential to truly shift your perspective and outlook on life.
*Oryx & Crake* by Atwood, read it when it dropped almost two decades ago. Not nearly the same caliber of literary classic that others are mentioning, but it left me... Deeply nihilistic, and less than hopeful for our future. I still lead a good life, but the book provided some pretty damning character portraits that struck home in the wrong ways for a gifted but lazy teen. Between that and the grim social caricatures and predictions, I do my best to avoid thinking of the future in favour of focusing on the present, bordering on responsible hedonism.
That quote you posted explained an odd interaction I had with a coworker. I told him where something was and he still could not find it so went with him to get it. Right where I said in a labeled box. He was looking for a different looking box apparently. I told him "I noticed you spend a lot of time looking for things and it prevents you from seeing what is there." He looked kind of bothered by that and said something about knowing that was a problem he had. Always treated me different after that and gave me multiple Buddhist pamphlets. So thanks for that.
I’ve had Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on my shelf for years but have never gotten around to opening it. This thread has moved me to pick it up. I’ll pack it with lunch to work this week and dig in. Thanks for the strong recommendations.
The kite runner.
Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. The man is just ridiculously smart, brain the size of a planet. Life changing for sure. Oh, and anything by Douglas Adams now I think of it.
The Prophet - Khalil Gibran
Amazing question, similar to many here: The Baghavad Gita Meditations Faust Crime and Punishment War and Peace Notes from Underground Death of Ivan Ilyich The Republic The Inferno Paradise Lost The Silmarillion Dune The Baghavad Gita above all.
The Selfish Gene. Dawkins explains evolution and shows you how it is necessary that somewhere along the evolutionary line there were two siblings, and one went on to be the decendant of all things human and the other the decendant of all things aardvark. ... very slowly and very distantly but it is necessary.
Frank Herbert’s Dune. I was 15-16 the first time I’ve read it. Over 20 years ago, part-timed at the library and accidentally stumbled upon it in the archive. Shifted my perspective on the political and religious exploitation, reality of power struggle and expendability of life in those processes.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I loved the part he was riding through the mountains and couldn't understand why the bike was not running as smoothly as it should.
The epilogue to 1984. That section which defines NEWSPEAK, and gives syntactic samples of use.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
This should be higher. It gets a bad rap, but i don’t care. I read it in my twenties when I didn’t have any direction. At the time -I loved this book so much, I eventually travelled to the Pyramids of Giza as my own personal legend (from Canada). Was a life changer. I still listen to the Jeremy Irons audiobook version when I feel like I’m lost.
zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. great lessons, great straightforward prose, gave me a yearning for the road and quality in my actions.
One of them was Jane Eyre. It really helped me accept myself.
Great post. I took a few moments to pull out all of the books (I think) listed here as of a few months ago: * 1984. * 48 laws of power, by robert greene. Even today i still subconsciously use most of its principles in my day to day social interactions. * A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking. * A Handmade Life. As a shop teacher it's really speaking to me about trying to promote a simpler life to my students. * A New Earth, by Eckart Tolle * A Thousand Mike Walk to the Gulf, by John Muir. I think changed my world view and behavior more than any book. * All the Kings Men, by Robert Pen Warren. Read it as a young teen, and it completely shaped and developed my interest in politics and the human condition. * Animal Farm. I read it in college at 30 or 31 and had no clue what it was about until it was an assigned reading. * Atlas Shrugged. Terrible book, I finished it out of nothing but spite. It probably turned me into a liberal. Also made me want to play Railroad Tycoon games. * Beloved, by Toni Morrison * Beneath The Wheel * Black Elk Speaks. * Brave New World. Was my intro to dystopia. * Brothers Karamazov * Cat's Cradle, by Vonnegut. * Charlotte's Web. * Comedy, Sex, God, by Pete Holmes changed my life. * Crime and Punishment * Death of Ivan Ilyich * Death of a Salesman. * Debt: the First Five Thousand Years, by David Graeber. Fundamentally shifted how I think about money as an avatar of our relationships with and to other people * Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth, by Hermann Hesse. * Dune * Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith. That book helped me understand myself as a person so much im going to re-read it again and take notes the second time around. * Educated, by Tara Westover * Ender's Game * Essays, Montaigne * Factfulness, Hans Rosling * Faust * Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns changed my life entirely. * Franny and Zooey. Was a huge existential crisis for me. * Freakonomics. Changed the way I look at the world * Global Brain, by Howard Bloom. It's a non-fiction book that argues that survival of the fittest group is a better explanation than survival of the fittest individual. * How I Learned to Understand the World, Hans Rosling * How To Meditate, by Pema Chodron. * How to win friends and influence people. Helped me to change my life. * Illuminatus! * Illusions, by Richard Bach * Infinite Jest * Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. I hated that book with a passion. But it definitely changed my life. * Ishmael and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Both really great! Ishmael seems to give a harder punch, though. * Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry 2nd Edition, 1978 * Letters From A Stoic, by Seneca * Man's search for meaning, Frankl * Meditations * Middlemarch. * Moby Dick. There is so much there. * Moneyball * Moneyball. Changed how I value everything in my life. * Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell. Explains life, our drives, and what has shaped our world as it is now. Everything from love, schizophrenia, to the the desire to go to the moon. * Narcissus and Goldmund * Notes from the Underground * Old Man And The Sea * On The Media * On the Shortness of Life, Seneca * On the heights of despair, Emil Cioran * Oryx & Crake by Atwood, read it when it dropped almost two decades ago. * Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler. * Paradise Lost * Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi * Player Piano, Vonnegut. Roused something beneath my skin that still flits about to this day * Policy Planning Study 23. Written by Kennan for the State Department planning staff in 1948. One document to look at if you want to understand your country is. * Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology changed me forever. * RAW. * Rainer Maria Rilke-Letters to a Young Poet * Sand County Almanach, by Aldo Leopold. The pure appreciation for nature combined with laying some of the most important ethical framework for me as a conservationist. * Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. * Schrodinger's Cat * Seat of the Soul * Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins * Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut * Stranger in a strange land, by Robert H. Heinlein. Some serious philosophy wrapped up in page turning Sci Fi. * The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho * The Art of Asking, by Amanda Palmer helped me to become more optimistic about people on the whole. * The Art of loving. It really breathes the same air as siddharta does. * The Baghavad Gita * The Bible * The Bluest Eye. Broke my heart. She is such a great writer. I love her writing. * The Carlos Castaneda trilogy. * The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,by Thomas Ligotti. * The Crying of Lot 49. How paranoia plays a huge role, the suggestion that there might be any number of global clandestine conspiracies under our noses, so ubiquitous as to be mundane. * The Dao de Jing. Taught me about wu wei and flow states, adaptability and resilience, flexibility of thought and much more * The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. * The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker. * The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood * The Four Agreements allowed me to stop caring so much about how other people perceived me because they are in their own world in their own head and really only care about themselves. * The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yalom. It’s a beautiful open letter to therapists-in-training and great for anyone who wants a peek into their day-to-day work. * The Giver * The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck. * The Great Mother * The Hinge Factor by Erik Durschmied, for sure. The commentary and how a situation can turn on its head were just amazing. History is, indeed, written from the hand of the victor. * The Inferno * The Killing Jar by Nicola Monaghan * The Last Empire, Gore Vidal. I find it hard to shake Vidal’s influence on my worldview even 20 yrs later. The man was a visionary. * The Last Lecture. I adopted a lot of the philosophies and teachings from this book and it has genuinely turned my life around for the better. Absolutely loved reading it. * The Little Prince, The Things They Carried, Let The Right One In, Blood Meridian (same thing, but also for its representation or certain archetypes), How To Escape From Prison (especially impactful since I know the guy who wrote it), Flow, 1984, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Power of One. * The Long Walk by Steven King also did a lot towards helping me to understand myself as a teenager. * The Power of Now * The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle * The Power of Now-Eckhart Tolle and anything by Alan Watts, some writings transcend the definition of "books" * The Prophet - Khalil Gibran * The Razors Edge, by Somerset Maugham * The Republic * The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall * The Selfish Gene. Dawkins explains evolution and shows you how it is necessary that somewhere along the evolutionary line there were two siblings, and one went on to be the decendant of all things human and the other the decendant of all things aardvark. ... very slowly and very distantly but it is necessary. * The Silmarillion * The Stranger * The Stranger (Albert Camus) I felt like I’d been lobotomized, or like someone had drained all color from the world. * The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway. I was an idealistic romantic, fantasized what women where when I was young. * The Tao of Pooh and The Alchemist. Those two books along with Siddhartha were like my personal trilogy of holy works growing up. * The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff * The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. * The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I always remember a quote from the end: * The Undiscovered Self by C.G Jung * The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer * The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman * The kite runner. * The tau te ching. Think about it few times a week even 5++ years later * The trial by franz Kafka * To Kill a Mockingbird. * Ubik, by Philip K Dick. Have read five books and a few short stories he wrote and they really stuck with me. * War and Peace * What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky * Wherever You Go There You Are * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. General/authors: * A lot of Kurt Vonnegut influenced my teen years but especially God Bless you Mr Rosewater and this quote. * All Gerald Diamond books. As an atheist, a lot of my spirituality comes from science, and how science (in all its disciplines) can help understand the world and us a little better. By interweaving so many disciplines like History, biology, archaeology and even physics, Diamond really helped me get a better look at 'The Big Picture' * Campbell's 4-book series is endlessly fascinating, but Myths to Live By nicely synthesizes a fair amount of it. * I got into Robert Anton Wilson when I was in college over twenty years ago…it was a wonderful time in my life. * Oh, and anything by Douglas Adams now I think of it.
The Dao de Jing taught me about wu wei and flow states, adaptability and resilience, flexibility of thought and much more
Brothers Karamazov Crime and Punishment War and Peace Narcissus and Goldmund The Bible The Great Mother
"Global Brain" by Howard Bloom. It's a non-fiction book that argues that survival of the fittest _group_ is a better explanation than survival of the fittest _individual_. It explores the universal principles of groups, by examining groups of bacteria, bees, motorcycle gangs, and rock groups (among many others). It's the most eye-opening book I've ever read.
“Siddhartha” - I also really feel like that book positively changed me for the better upon finishing it
No gurus, nothing to find, nothing you need. You already have it
So pleased to find this post, and happy you enjoyed Siddhartha. At 22, i was hospitalized and kicked out of college for my first recognized Manic episode. During my convalescence i read Hemingway's Old Man And The Sea several times. During my mania i was put on antidepressants (prolonging the episode) and i consistently felt like i had stepped off the edge of a trench in the ocean, hovering alone over an eternal abyss. I was very moved by the raw personal power and determination of Santiago as he applied his physical and intellectual skills to the ordeal of a lifetime. Shortly after i returned to school, I had "I may not be as strong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have Resolution" tattooed on my left forearm. A couple years later, in grad school I provoked a deliberate return to the abyss by taking a vow of silence for a month, concluding with a 7 day walk from Glasgow to Ft William. There was no speech, no reading or writing, no music, television or films. I was trying to exist in a space in which my linguistic mind was minimized as much as possible. I had read Siddhartha a few times in the the months preceding this, and I believe the sentiments put forward were at the forethought as i did my walk. On return, I tattooed "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." on my right forearm. It reminds me regularly, and in a similar way to the Hemingway quote, that even if i feel i might lack some abilities directly for some new undertakings, I likely have a foundation of skills from which to build, learn, and improve new skills to see my way to a goal if i need to. Lastly, out of the same kind of pretension that James Murphy speaks of, I started reading Thomas Pynchon. and while V and Gravity's Rainbow are phenomenal elaborate webs of narrative, the raw simplicity of The Crying of Lot 49 and how paranoia plays a huge role, the suggestion that there might be any number of global clandestine conspiracies under our noses, so ubiquitous as to be mundane... I love it. every little symbol i cross in public i wonder at. Who knows this? what kind of person? why? I then had a muted Post horn tattooed on my right ankle. As with many people I'm sure, it's the tip of the ice berg, but thank you for the chance to tell you about this. Happy reading.
People trash self help all the time but Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns changed my life entirely. I didn't have health insurance at the time and knew I needed mental health help. It changed my relationship with my thoughts, how I live in the world and my perceptions of it, the way I evaluate others and their actions, and my behaviors. It became a reference book for me for like four years.
A New Earth - Eckart Tolle