Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
HN produces better book recommendations than any other place I know of. People at HN have recommended such books like Chimpanzee Politics, which are so basic yet eye-opening that everyone would benefit from reading them.
If you would get to recommend a single book for everyone to read, what would it be?
364 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 373 ms ] threadYes, I know you've probably read it already, but it's probably time to read it again.
A quote that haunts me: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” Do we have that freedom in the west, today? Will we have it tomorrow? It’s a lot less clear than one would hope.
Surveillance is one of the methods of control, but it's really about oppressing the way people think, shaping it to suit the needs of The Party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y83UkvHpYk
Its an incredible non-fiction book
- Range
- Conversations with God
- Factfulness
- Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations
His explanation of Correlation vs Causation while likely obvious to some was eye-opening for me as well as his idea of looking at products from what Job they fulfill standpoint
It is a book about turning beauty into ruin. About the stupidity and cruelty of man. And also about the authors love of humanity and finding joy and love in the fate we all share.
Vonnegut stared into the abyss and never lost his idealism.
Recently found an audio version read by Vonnegut himself - originally released on vinyl. It was great to hear him tell it, though it is quite abridged.
A different (and unabridged) audio version I found recently was read by the actor Ethan Hawke — and though I respect the man, his voice/acting just couldn’t do the material justice.
Great work of art.
Much of what he says is very inspiring but he also tends to over-generalize in order to make his point salient. It should be reflected upon and taken with a healthy grain of salt.
My experience was similar to yours, I think. The book opened my perspective on how to think about myself and the world around me, and it was a stepping stone towards the original sources of Hinduism and Buddhism.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Not everyone is interested in the same things as you.
Edit:
Also "The Art of War" is fun. It mostly boils down to common sense, but it's interesting to see application of first principles to ancient warfare.
The above commenter is very right - that's the role I'd intended the line beneath it to fill, though it clearly doesn't.
Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.
As many modern books - it suffers from lack of focus; my opinion.
I'm just curious to know how our context differs if any, not trying to imply anything else.
For me at least, there were things he talked about which felt like there was someone/something that understood and that there was a chance to work forward through things. There were also a few things I read which... well, lets just say I added the warnings for a reason.
Yes, the book was recommended by my therapist. There were interesting and helpful parts to the book, in my case specifically the idea that it's hard to be anxious in a relaxed body, the yoga part, and the chapter about psyche being composed of different parts that protect one another and you can ask them to "step aside" were the most influential.
So I took useful things out of it, but I cannot say it is well written. In particular a lot of "meta" conversation would have been better left out. Like coming back to the DSM classification and ranting how it doesn't include childhood traumas even thou the author feels he demonstrated they should be a separate entity. And on research - I don't know much, but I know something about epigenetics. There was a chapter that touched upon epigenetics (about how stressors change the expression of our genes), and the papers were cherry-picked to agree with what the author was saying. I didn't like that and this made me doubt some of the cited literature in other chapters that I cannot judge on my own.
Our experiences definitely differ somewhat, but I also didn't have time to read the book as thoroughly as I would eventually like.
Wishing all the best too you, and hope you've been able to make progress on your issues!
For someone more ambitious I might recommend "The Anatomy of Melancholy," by Richard Burton (17th c.). At least the preface (around 100 pages) and maybe a smattering of the book proper. It's hard to explain - better to look it up.
For something more recent and immediately relevant, I think "Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Davis was quite eye opening about the history of racism in law enforcement and the production of the modern prison system.
Bhagavad Gita: As it is.
Do not read the explanation which are biased to god and religion.
But you can definitely read the stanzas. The idea that we are actor whose duty is to act is a powerful concept, especially when you are feeling low.
The book also has some egoistic stuff like "I am god, obey me." But once you filter some of these, you see bigger picture.
I only came to know of the Gita by this quote: "To work you have the right, but not to the fruits thereof". Resonated with me, and brought me to the concept of "karma yoga".
How did you come across it?
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." - Jean-Luc Picard
Who Wrote the Bhagavadgita: A Secular Enquiry into a Sacred Text by Meghnad Desai https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21454853-who-wrote-the-b...
Many people consider BG to be unchallenged book and that all it's ideas are good. But this book by Meghnad Desai opened my eyes and now I am disillusioned for the good.
* The Bhagavad Gita translated by W. J. Johnson and published in Oxford World's Classics. This is a good succinct translation in the spirit of the original.
* The Bhagavad Gita translated and interpreted by Franklin Edgerton (2 vols in one). Edgerton was a noted Sanskrit scholar and this translation contains a lot of background and detailed material in the form of illuminating essays.
The above two paired together will give you excellent insight into the text.
Product-led growth for deep tech category creation sounds like a new thing, but there's almost a century of quantitative social science on pretty much that. The book is a super easy & enjoyable distillation of it.
~10 years after reading, still inspires a lot of my first-principles thinking for how we approach basic product, marketing, partnering, etc
"A mini habit is basically a much smaller version of a new habit you want to form. 100 push-ups daily is minified into one push-up daily. Writing 3,000 words daily becomes writing 50 words daily. Thinking positively all the time becomes thinking two positive thoughts per day. Living an entrepreneurial lifestyle becomes thinking of two ideas per day (among other entrepreneurial things). The foundation of the Mini Habits system is in “stupid small” steps."
I did a summary here : https://www.chestergrant.com/26-highlights-from-mini-habits-...
It seems authors were in search of the smallest habit possible. Probably smaller = easier for readers searching for shortcuts to build willpower
Can't wait for subatomic habits!!
I've only gotten to the title, so far.
BJ Fogg's writing is much better organized than Guise's. Between Tiny and Atomic, I find Tiny covers much more conceptual ground on human behavior. The interplay of motivation, ability, and prompts is relevant even for behaviors that aren't habits. Also, Tiny covers much better the "why" and "then what" of these small habits.
Another book I would recommend that ties in nicely with Tiny Habits is The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. She covers a lot of ground on the topic of why we do or don't do things. I think it could be a helpful debugging guide if you're struggling with a habit or behavior and need more depth than Tiny Habits.
Between all of the books mentioned though, just to be clear, Tiny Habits would be my pick if you were only going to read one. It's much more than just "make a habit of doing something really small". It's changed how I work on my own behavior and how I manage my team at work.
To have a total opposite mindset of the socialist we have here was mind blowing for me.