David R. MacIver's Blog: What books have made you a better person?

What books have made you a better person?

3 May 2011

This post is largely an aggregation of some conversation on twitter that I want to preserve for posterity and share with a wider audience.

Yesterday I asked:

Question: What books have you read that you’d say improved you as a human being? (Ethically, rationally, creatively, whatever),
I’m aware that’s a bloody hard question. I’m not sure I can answer it.

Here are the responses, in roughly chronological order.

@alexjs: 1984 taught me at an early age to question misinformation. HHGTG taught me that ignorance can be even better...
@mdreid: Singer’s How Are We To Live. DFW’s Infinite Jest. Feynman’s QED. Mandelbrot’s Fractal Geometry of Nature. Coetzee’s Youth.
@etorreborre: I think it was this one: http://amzn.to/kl9Mjv (psychology)
@davidpeto: American Psycho.
@riffraff: excluding others already suggested, “King Solomon’s Ring” by konrad lorenz, taught me “human” behaviour is not so human after all
@wgren: Stephen J Gould - “The Mismeasure of Man”. Charles Stross - “Accelerando”. Carl Sagan - “The Demon Haunted World”.
@newsmary: In that case, Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! tends to be the first one I recommend to storytellers.
@illyrica: I Fought the Law, Dan Kieran. Chinese Whispers, Hsiao-Hung Pai. Contingency Irony & Solidarity, Richard Rorty
@cemenzel: 1984; The Demon-Haunted World; The God Delusion. None really changed me much, but made me more aware.
@lordcope: Full Catastrophe Living; Getting Things Done; The Little Schemer; Crucial Confrontations; 7 Habits; Getting to Yes.
@reyhan: Neuromancer and The Adventures of Endill Swift
@channingwalton: zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Tao te Ching,Timeless Way of Building (look at things differently)
@jarhart: Working backward - Learn You A Haskell; Sex, Ecology Spirituality; No Limit Hold ’Em Theory And Practice; Rich Dad, Poor Dadu
@wgren: Also- Diamond: “Collapse”. Wright: “Remembering Satan”. And ofc 1984, Brave New World, Postman: “Amusing ourselves to Death”
@toluju: Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but Sophie’s World has a pretty big effect on me.
@kssreeram: “If you want to write” by Brenda Ueland. More than just writing, that book is about self-expression and creativity.
@DanielJMaxwell: Domain Driven Design by @ericevans0. It looks technical but really it’s about communication. Every human being should read it.
@dylanbeattie: ‘Chess for Young Beginners’ - the book that taught me that you can learn things from books. I can remember every page vividly.
@dylanbeattie: Chaos (Gleick). Every Rough Guide I ever read. Andrew Martin’s “How To Get Things Really Flat”, the first Dirk Gently novel...
@obs3sd: To Kill A Mockingbird has stuck with me for over 30 years
@dylanbeattie: ...and Leonard da Vries Book of Experiments. Neuromancer. Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. Does the Jargon File count?
@paraseba: If “Les Misérables” doesn’t improve you, I bet you’re a statue
@runarorama: Ethically: Getting Things Done. The Virtue of Selfishness. Hávamál. And of course The Nicomachean Ethics.
@palfrey: Godel, Escher and Bach
@dcsobral: The Players of Null-A, Hellspark

Feel free to add more answers in the comments.

Myself, I still don’t have a good answer. But maybe when I’ve got through the above list I will.