Kevin Kelly's New Rules for the New Economy. I gave away probably twenty copies to my friends to explain why I left one career to do a startup.
Course that book and Kevin Kelly post bubble were roundly criticized. But looking back he got most of it right. Sadly he stopped writing for quite a few years. That book motivated me that I was doing the right thing. That startup failed, but the next one didn't.
The one book is probably actually three books that were read more or less at the same time: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick, Little, Big by John Crowley, and Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe. These books led to a change of reading habits in way that led eventually to working in publishing.
The Inner Game of Tennis. My coach gave me his copy from like 1998 that was very, very worn and I could tell he had read it many many times.
He was a badass, grew up in South Central, would ride his bike to nicer areas of LA where there were tennis courts, and just hit against the wall until someone else would show up & he’d ask to play with them.
Ended up playing in High School, and getting a full ride to a DI college.
He told me that reading this book when he was trying to get scholarships to college was one of the turning points in his life and then said, “How I’m teaching you to respond to adversity on the court is preparation for the more important challenges you’ll face in your life off the court.”
To this day, I often suggest this book to anyone as it played a similar role in my life as well.
I am a classical musicianby profession (principal bassoon in Norrköping Symphony orchestra if that tells anyone anything). I have used the techniques in the inner game of tennis daily for about as long as I can remember. A teacher of mine noticed I had a very uneven level and made me read it. One of the most important books in my professional career.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I learned to be less Arthur and more Ford about my approach to living my life in general, and dealing with Fenchurch winking out of existence in particular.
"The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later."
Did you learn how to fly yet? ;)
I think at that point, Arthur learns how to be less Arthur himself. I don't think things between him and Fenchurch would've worked out, had he been the same person he was at the beginning of the books.
Then again, the last book really depressed me - I can't imagine having my Fenchurch being ripped away from me...
That part was probably worse than the ending for me.
I was probably to young for the book when I read it (about 15): the explicit description of a brain-wash torture with the result, that two lovers won't recognize each other emotionally anymore afterwards was beyond my imagination and left me with a mild form of capgras delusion that lasts until today.
I lead a team to translate the whole book to Vietnamese fifteen years ago as a freshman highschool student, and released it for free online. We beat the printed book publisher by months. I should have gotten into tons of troubles, but everyone was kind enough to not beat me down. I didn't get into any legal troubles partly because people saw the values in doing it, partly because they didn't know what to do with it, partly because we were anonymous later on. The website received so much traffic I couldn't believe. Later on, I wrote an ajax-based site: after loading a very simple skeleton, it would only load plain text on demand afterwards, yet it would quickly saturate any free hosting bandwidth I could get. To put it into perspective, I had several HN front page stories nowadays and I got about 50k unique visitors worldwide a day at best. I got 5k a day just from Vietnam back then.
It was how I knew and met half of all the important people that shaped my early twenties, many of them were writers, translators, poets, reporters. It was an incredible stretch of luck and a huge eye-opening experience to be starting it and seeing how powerful the internet could be and where following a passion could lead me to at that age. I was a college dropout at 19 and an internet celebrity I knew from that incident picked me up and suggested to me that I should look into studying in the US. If not, I would have been typing this in a dark hot corner in Vietnam today.
This is awesome! Order of the Phoenix has a special place in my heart as well, because this was the first book I have read in English :D Me and my mom didn't want to wait half a year for translation.
But actually on-upping professional translators? That sounds amazing!
I refer to my handwritten notes on this all the time, and seemingly no matter how consistently I apply the ideas in my dealings with others, I always have a feeling that I wish I was doing better at it.
Turining the mind into an ally ... a budhist book for westerns. I dont practice, as in I dont meditate. But the budhist have it right when it comes to being productive, aware, and clear in your thoughts (eventually your actions). This book helped me critique my own mannerisms and corall my will. You become more and a better a more pure you with this clarity. It doesnt change you, it only removes the unimportant noise and gives you the perspective to be the person you really are.
Introduction to Algorithms, Charles E. Leiserson, Clifford Stein, Ronald Rivest, and Thomas H. Cormen
Not because of contents, but because of the fact how i got it. Our local "search engine" (already dead) make a gift to everyone in the country - you can pick any IT book that you wish and they will give it to you for free.
That was a great example how spending (very little i suppose) money can help a lot of people. Most of my friends got something from them. Eventually when i won several prizes on coding contest i have done same thing - i gifted 50 books to young developers and they was able to pick anything they want too. That was a great experience and after years people sometimes still tell me that how it helped them.
The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky, without doubt. Seriously, the chapter with the Legend of the Great Inquisitor forced me to ask myself what was the meaning of "freedom", and this in turns urged me to reconsider a lot of beliefs I had hold before.
It helped me better detect and understand seemingly hypocritical and self-defeating actions by middle managers in companies, and also a lot of the disingenuous emphasis on “passion” used to suppress wages in start-ups or sell job candidates on a reduced salary or equity package with poor expected value or risk characteristics.
I wouldn’t say anything from Moral Mazes was surprising when stepping back to think about known manipulative behavior of middle and upper management. But it did give an excellent analytical and even a normative philosophical framework to use for recognizing and diagnosing it, which sometimes helps for avoiding it, choosing your battles, or knowing when to quit or turn down job offers.
I was 19 and living in a van, camping under bridge overpasses in Colorado so I could just ski all day every day. My naive uneducated mind was formulating some sort of psuedo-hippy philosophy around the state of ecstasy reached in the perfect ride down a mountain through powder. Little did I know the "no-thought" mantra I had been inculcating was just a pale impression of this thousands year old tradition of mindfulness. When I picked this book up at a library I just sat down reading page after page being blown away by how he would describe the exact same sensibilities I had been reaching for. It was my first spiritual awakening as an adult.
Hey man, where did you do most of your skiing? Also I would love to chat with you about how you went from ski bum to professional programmer (I'm assuming) but you don't have an email in your bio. Cheers
184 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 365 ms ] threadCourse that book and Kevin Kelly post bubble were roundly criticized. But looking back he got most of it right. Sadly he stopped writing for quite a few years. That book motivated me that I was doing the right thing. That startup failed, but the next one didn't.
He was a badass, grew up in South Central, would ride his bike to nicer areas of LA where there were tennis courts, and just hit against the wall until someone else would show up & he’d ask to play with them.
Ended up playing in High School, and getting a full ride to a DI college.
He told me that reading this book when he was trying to get scholarships to college was one of the turning points in his life and then said, “How I’m teaching you to respond to adversity on the court is preparation for the more important challenges you’ll face in your life off the court.”
To this day, I often suggest this book to anyone as it played a similar role in my life as well.
I can palpably feel my awareness expanding as I do the sentence completion exercises.
:-D
Then again, the last book really depressed me - I can't imagine having my Fenchurch being ripped away from me...
That part was probably worse than the ending for me.
I hope you are doing well.
So, that's what it is called? Thank you.
and after that i could have gotten started with the beauty and power of the internet
I lead a team to translate the whole book to Vietnamese fifteen years ago as a freshman highschool student, and released it for free online. We beat the printed book publisher by months. I should have gotten into tons of troubles, but everyone was kind enough to not beat me down. I didn't get into any legal troubles partly because people saw the values in doing it, partly because they didn't know what to do with it, partly because we were anonymous later on. The website received so much traffic I couldn't believe. Later on, I wrote an ajax-based site: after loading a very simple skeleton, it would only load plain text on demand afterwards, yet it would quickly saturate any free hosting bandwidth I could get. To put it into perspective, I had several HN front page stories nowadays and I got about 50k unique visitors worldwide a day at best. I got 5k a day just from Vietnam back then.
It was how I knew and met half of all the important people that shaped my early twenties, many of them were writers, translators, poets, reporters. It was an incredible stretch of luck and a huge eye-opening experience to be starting it and seeing how powerful the internet could be and where following a passion could lead me to at that age. I was a college dropout at 19 and an internet celebrity I knew from that incident picked me up and suggested to me that I should look into studying in the US. If not, I would have been typing this in a dark hot corner in Vietnam today.
I wrote a bit in more details about it here: http://www.tnhh.net/posts/Harry-Potter-and-me.html
Archive of the translated book in 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/20040213105923/http://huanhuu.net... (it was lame)
But actually on-upping professional translators? That sounds amazing!
Just caring about that has helped me lose 94lbs, and changed my life forever. Thank you Larry.
Not because of contents, but because of the fact how i got it. Our local "search engine" (already dead) make a gift to everyone in the country - you can pick any IT book that you wish and they will give it to you for free.
That was a great example how spending (very little i suppose) money can help a lot of people. Most of my friends got something from them. Eventually when i won several prizes on coding contest i have done same thing - i gifted 50 books to young developers and they was able to pick anything they want too. That was a great experience and after years people sometimes still tell me that how it helped them.
https://www.amazon.de/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Better-Decisions/...
It helped me better detect and understand seemingly hypocritical and self-defeating actions by middle managers in companies, and also a lot of the disingenuous emphasis on “passion” used to suppress wages in start-ups or sell job candidates on a reduced salary or equity package with poor expected value or risk characteristics.
I wouldn’t say anything from Moral Mazes was surprising when stepping back to think about known manipulative behavior of middle and upper management. But it did give an excellent analytical and even a normative philosophical framework to use for recognizing and diagnosing it, which sometimes helps for avoiding it, choosing your battles, or knowing when to quit or turn down job offers.
Tied together a lot of concepts from my undergrad with my new work, and on top of it also Poker, which became one of my main analogies for life.
Fascinating story of a fabled trader from the bucket shops of mid-America in the Gaslight era to the roaring twenties on Wall Street.
https://smile.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Commen...
I was 19 and living in a van, camping under bridge overpasses in Colorado so I could just ski all day every day. My naive uneducated mind was formulating some sort of psuedo-hippy philosophy around the state of ecstasy reached in the perfect ride down a mountain through powder. Little did I know the "no-thought" mantra I had been inculcating was just a pale impression of this thousands year old tradition of mindfulness. When I picked this book up at a library I just sat down reading page after page being blown away by how he would describe the exact same sensibilities I had been reaching for. It was my first spiritual awakening as an adult.
We liked to hate on Vail on that side of the pass, but it really is the best. The only problem was affording it ;)