>Books that changed your life and you can't get

>>9571411
The book of Revelation

>>9571411
It was some fantasy garbage I read after isolating myself in a room for 5 years. It changed my life because it contained copious human interactions which I could experience vicariously.

1984 and Flowers for Algernon. Also anyone who thinks 1984 is about politics or government is a complete total fucking retard and needs to fuck off. Flowers for Algernon is also a great book but anyone who thinks the ending to that book is sad, missed the point, and is a fucking retard.

>>9571520
1984 is about many things but the main thing it is about is politics

>>9571531
The politics part is the most boring, though. It's basically "lol government surveillance is bad anyone else love edward snowden XD XD?" It's when it gets into the shit about human nature and metaphysics that it actually becomes interesting.

Prometheus Rising, Cosmic Trigger

andy clark - supersizing the mind

>>9571520
people are probably gonna call you an entry-level fag or something but these are my two as well, i experienced both of them at a young age and constantly think of them. also "we" by zamyatin

>>9571574
>Prometheus Rising

This. it made me view human psychology differently.

the circuits make a lot of sense. humans develop in stages, so naturally we all get tied up at point or another in those stages and play out the respective "games" of each

>>9571520
>1984 isnt about politics
>flowers for algernon isnt sad
This fuckin guy

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>If you haven't read this
>Go read it asap
>Read it 2-3 times a year or more frequent if you really need it

>>9571574
>>9571594
are you guys being ironic?

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>>9571411
>The Holy Bible
>Some book I read in fifth grade about self-deception
>Some article I read in none other than Highlights For Children Magazine about the imperfection of our memory
>The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
>Entry level "graphic guides" about Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and other philosophers

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Hey I don't know if this is the best place to ask this.

But how well to books like coding and drawing for dummies work?

I have a lot of different fields I want to explore and I have no idea of where to start, would these books give me a good idea?

Also my favorite self help book is no more mr. nice guy.

it hits the nail on the head

>>9571611
quotes from the book:

>Each of us is trapped in the reality-tunnel
his or her brain has manufactured. We do not "see" it or "sense" it as a model our brain has created. We automatically, unconsciously,
mechanically "see" and "sense" it out there,apart form us,and we consider it "objective."

>As the semanticist Alfred Korzybski often warned, when we split verbally that which is never split existentially we introduce fallacies into our thinking.

>Ideas about ideas—mathematics about mathematics(Godel) —language about language—consciousness of consciousness— the whole seventh circuit brings us into
what Hofstadter calls Strange Loops. we follow our own tail around in ever-narrowing
circles, but we never complete the
process by flying up our own rectums and disappearing. It just seems like we're about to selfdestruct in that colorful way, and we decide that what we have been reading, or thinking, or perceiving, must be "nonsense."It is not nonsense. We are merely confronting infinity where we least expected to encounter it—in our own lonely selves.

>>9571668
Drawing with the right side of the brain


Read it. Do the examples. You'll be blown away that it's just a learnable skill.

>>9571531
>>9571539
The surveillance doesn't mean much to be honest. It's more about "doublethink" and how The Party seeks to control reality and thought.

>>9571585
I don't give a fuck, obscurity =/= quality.

>>9571601
1984 has more to do with the nature of truth and knowledge and perception than it does about politics. it barely says anything about politics.

Flowers of Algernon... bro just read it. The guy is happy when he's retarded and miserable when he is smart. What benefit did being smart get him besides some temporary pussy?

>>9571709
>how The Party seeks to control reality and thought.

Yeah.

Answer me this question anon: do you know that Donald Trump is president right now? I mean yeah pretty much everyone says it but do you KNOW? Are you SURE he is actually in the white house every day leading our country? Can you prove it to me? or do you just know it because people have said it to you.

>>9571606
Tell me "The 7" and I'll consider reading it. Self-help books tend to have a short-lived impact on me.

>>9571719
MIND...BLOWN...

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>>9571719
nigger he touched the orb of anti-terrorism, you only get to do that if you're a god-tier nation like the US

>>9571709
>>9571719
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts

>>9571668

The Dummies books offer a good basic foundation but then you should expect to read one or even two more in depth books or text books on your chosen subject(s). You might also look into the "(Subject) DeMystified" books as well.

>>9571752
Wow a Dune adaptation that actually looks good.

>>9571769
Bump

>>9571699
>Drawing with the right side of the brain

Thanks m8! Have a good day!

>>9571719

>tfw to intelligent

>>9571712
>implying ignorance is bliss
what a fucking faggot

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>>9571727
Read this instead.

>>9571769
this

Lenin's Tomb

Thought maybe, maybe in the future we can have real communism.
Now I don't think so. People will people, there's no way around it. Maybe in 40 years because of the machines.

>>9571833

I read it and I can't do the things he recommends. It would be so phony and beyond my character/personality. I just don't like people and I find most of them mundane/banal

>>9571719
Fuck off with your deep state theory.

>>9571712
Yes, he was happier when he was retarded - at first. At the end of the book he was not only retarded again, but remembered how people really thought about him. So he was retarded and unhappy. Plus the possibility that he could quite possibly die like the mouse as he continued to deteriorate.

Joyce fag

feggit, joyce is god-tier fuck off

>>9572892
Elaborate for us, anon.

>>9571712
>completely missing the point of flowers for algernon

>>9572845
Yeah but he wasn't angry about it. I don't even think he was that unhappy at the end, he barely even understood why Alice ran out crying.

>>9573341
>completely missing the point of flowers for algernon

Then what is the point?

>>9573359
The treatment of retards and intelligence vs. emotion. Basically like the only themes in it, it's definitely meant to be sad though, you're just too much of an intellectual to have emotions.

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The Ego and His Own

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own

Steppenwolf. It's gotten to the point that I always try to compare it with books of a similar theme and even nonfiction ones on psychology

>>9571539
>"lol government surveillance is bad anyone else love edward snowden XD XD?"
Not really. The main point is that people don't really need to fear upstart, overtly totalitarian regimes in the future, rather they need to fear subtle and careful manipulation of the population slowly compounding over time to the point that you basically have an overbearing totalitarian regime, it's just the people don't recognise it as such and wouldn't even care if they did, they are used to their existence and the state has them very deep in it's pocket.

>>9573409
>The treatment of retards and intelligence vs. emotion.
How does that contradict what I said.

>it's definitely meant to be sad though
Yeah from your point of view. Note that the story ends before Charlie dies. This is important. I wouldn't say it's a happy ending because it's implied he's going to die, but where the book leaves off is not sad, from Charlie's subjective experience.

>>9571727
This isnt self help, it showed me the way my thinking patterns worked and how to better myself, it isn't something you read once and forget about it, these lessons still hold true

>>9573492
Yeah but that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is on the subjective nature of reality. Who cares if it's in an entry-level book, because the story is entertaining enough by itself.

>>9571769
Why?

I haven't read it yet, might buy it paperback uness I can find a legit pdf quality doc

>>9572423
He doesn't say you have to make friends with people, but you can use his advice to get what you want out of them.

divine comedy and ulysses

Ein Mann will nach Oben.

The Magic Mountain.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Steppenwolf.

Diary of Anne Frank.

Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
The Fall by Camus
The Plague by Camus
Blood Meridian by McCarthy

>>9571411
The sorrows of young Werther and Faust Part 1 and Two by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe
The great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
the decline of the west by Oswald Spengler

The Brothers Karamazov
The Ego and It's Own
Notes From Underground
Steppenwolf
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

>>9574761
Yu are most definetly German and
>Diary of Anne Frank.
nice bait

>>9574761
Wit are you that guy who wrote a letter to that actress and gets drunk on wine regularly?
>Ein Mann will nach oben
>Falladadidada

>>9572918
Arse full of farts

Borges, Musil and Shakespeare the most.

>>9575273
The great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

>Why this one?

Rebuilding Agricultural Engines: Small Ford

I enjoy reading, but none of them has helped to break the habit of consumption. Demons and Notes from the Underground made me more socially aware and thoughtful though.

>>9571574
This.

RAW changed my life more than any other author.

>>9575350
how did i not know this existed

>>9571783
Underrated post

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>>9571411
Plato's Apology. Socrates put on a display for the ages in front of the jury, refuting the charges placed against him. But still he was found guilty. He expected it too.

>It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.

>>9571833
GOAT

the copy I own is from my grandfather and it's beautifully worn yet well kept but getting to the point that more use will do serious harm. Restoring books just dawned on me. I think that's my oldest book

>>9571411
Gravity's Rainbow

>>9571712
congrats, you dont even understand your two favorite books

>>9576300
How is it GOAT if you haven't read it?

>>9576097
>But now it is time to go away, I to die and you to live. Which of
us goes to a better thing is unclear to everyone except to the god.

This one hit me hard.

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>>9573566

Anon, w-what to do you mean by this? To use people as a mean? No way!

>>9573566
What? You're an asshole if you use Carnegie for manipulation, his entire message is helping people, mutual benefit, empathy, etc.

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>>9571411
Read it at a formative age. Probably contributed somewhat to my rather bleak view of humanity. Although I was disposed from beforehand.
There are english translations, but this cover is pretty good. >mfw

>>9576348
>>9576382
You're right. It was a poor choice of words on my part, and it makes myself sound like a devious sociopath. I guess what I meant to say was how to persuade people. I was trying to explain to that anon there are other practical benefits for the techniques described in the book besides making friends and shooting the shit.

>>9572423
>implying your character/personality isn't determined by what you do
okay pal

>>9576327
Read it a couple years ago. Refer back to it somewhat regularly

Narcissus and Goldmund

Ride the Tiger

>>9571468
Could someone with knowledge of calc 1 jump into this, or is it more like spivak difficulty?

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain has fucked with my head permanently.

Mainly the ending of it.

>>9575991
You have to break away from that yourself you lazy faggot.

>>9578317
Yeah I know

My diary desu

>>9577732
Which one? He never finished it and didn't write a one proper ending.

>>9577429
My nigga

As I Lay Dying

i don't know, but that book snapped something in my skull. it's psychedelic as fuck

The Brothers Karamazov

>>9571411

No More Mr. Nice Guy, actually.

>>9577429
Came here to post this. I read it months ago and i think about it daily still. It changed my perception of virtue

>>9571520
so Orwell himself is a retard?

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>>9575997
unironically this

I can't remember much of books. I'm sure (hope) they stick with me in some way. I can't recite quotes from books for example. I've been kind of obsessing over my memory in a negative way lately.

The Long Walk

>Good Old Neon

>The Old Man and the Sea
Thought this was a pretty average book when i first finished it but few months have come to appreciate it more. it's got some simple, honest lessons that have surprisingly stuck with me

>>9573539
2 days late, but anon you have to read it. The dystopian setting of the novel is exactly the future I would imagine- one built on evolutionary psychology. The people in that world were genuinely happy, more so than us. Though they didn't have freedom, they were ignorant of it. All their needs(read: dopamine) was available to them, it was a paradise for them. To this day, I still think about that novel. Just get an epub from b-ok.org or libgen.io , I read it on my phone.

>>9571783
kek

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Now I know the truth about the jews and their wicked tricks.

D.T. Suzuki's intro to Zen Buddhism is the only book I can think of that had an immediately significant impact on my life. Others might have changed my life in subtle ways but the effect Suzuki's had on me was unmistakable and has lasted ever since.

>>9571833
Does this actually contain good advice or is it just a meme?

>>9571411
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The world as will and idea
Ecclesiastes
The Gospel of John
1 Corinthians
How to win friends and influence people
Ulysses

>>9575639
>Borges
Yeah bruh, "las ruinas circulares" "el aleph", dayum, to dream a man, see the universe in a point, endless circular time, blew my mind

>>9571411
k&r c book

For the longest time it was "Smiles To Go" by Spinelli, but earlier this year I was reading "Tuesdays With Morrie" when my grandma died so it's very near and dear to me.

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I read The Idiot and tried being as emotionally open with others like the prince for a while. It actually worked and people started being more open with me too, which unfortunately backfired as I have now found out my best friend is a bisexual pedophile that wants to become a trap.

>>9582000
that sounds kind of HOT

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I'm only around 60 pages in, but GEB is a hell of a book.

I didn't think I'd understand any of it, since I'm shit at mathematics and never really been interested in it, but it's actually nicely laid out. This is probably going to be the only thing in existence to make me like this subject.

If anyone here has experienced it, what's the best way to enjoy it? I read around a chapter per day, all while doing the puzzles along with the book. Is there any other way? Should I be reading faster? Should I even bother doing the puzzles?

>>9582038
whats GEB?

>>9572892
For anybody who wants to write, this has to be up there. It's essentially a manual on creative writing. There are 7 page stories with fully formed characters, emotional depth, perfectly paced narrative and rich literary allusion. joyce is worth the entry fee lads, and wrote this book in his early twenties.

>>9582000
My fucking sides

>>9582706
Geneva English Bible

>>9582706
Godel, Escher, Bach, I guess.

>>9582038
>>9582767
Reminder that Godel's theorems do not involve actual self-reference, and any text that says they do is hack fraudery who can't into arithmetization of syntax

Yeh 'GEB' isn't a well known acronym - google says Godel, Escher, Bach - a book from the 70's thats described as non-fiction.

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>>9582785
Today's exchange may have served a little right to your course.

>>9582811
thank you based anon

>>9571520
Just because people cry '1984!!!' everytime the government does something they don't like, it doesn't mean its not about politics

>>9571719
Go back to Facebook

>>9582785
>>9582811
>>9582859
Don't undewrstand any of this exchange, halp:(

>>9571712
>implying truth and knowledge and a completely totalitarian government aren't connected

the gay science. If you're a nihilistic shlub whose first impulse is to find what is to be derided in everything and you lay about doing nothing all day, the gay science and much or neech may be one of few things to actually make you feel differently

Anything I've read by Chesterton. He not only pulled me out of nihilism but awoke me to the adventure of life.

The Righteous Mind

>>9583235
Where should I start with him? Hamsun kind of did the same for me desu, even if his works are usually melancholic and depressing

>>9583256
His collection of essays What Is Wrong With The World is a good start andbthe essays are not as pessimistic as the title suggests. The strength of his writing is in his essays.

>>9583288
Thanks anon, I will check it out

>>9583235
The Man Who Was Thursday was fun, but his apologetics did nothing for me.

>>9583296
I got alot out of his apologetics except the religion. His best ideas he ties to religion, but they can be taken just as they are.

>>9578781
>Addie's section is GOAT for what you're describing

It's threads like this that remind me that /lit/ is full of absolute losers

>>9585088
It's always the most maladjusted people who make comments like this. This is one of the more encouraging threads.

>>9572423
His advice litterally boils down to smile, don't be an asshole, and don't judge people.

>>9571719
ok socrates

I think it was Dumas' Three Musketeers. It was the first time it really clicked for me that the classics can be as every bit as fun and funny as more modern books.

I mean, I'd already read a broad spectrum of books, and I'd read "old" books before (an old german adventure book from the 1800s, for example), but they'd never fit into that "classics" category.

The Three Musketeers turned "classics" from this aloof necessity - something I felt was my obligation to read as someone who liked reading - into something inviting and engaging, into something I was eager to discover for myself.

>>9571520
>Flowers for Algernon is also a great book but anyone who thinks the ending to that book is sad, missed the point, and is a fucking retard.
>>9571601
>>flowers for algernon isnt sad

.
agreed. I think my teacher even tried to hammer that in- he was happy in the end, because he belonged and he knew his place in the world and was okay with that. People made fun of him before, but he didn't mind- when he was smart, he was still an outcast, but suddenly he was very vividly aware of how much he didn't fit in. When he got dumb again, people pitied him, so he moved away, to start a new life, as a retard somewhere else. And he was happy.

If you think a happy ending is always getting a girl and money and fame, then I don't know what to tell you.

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Suttree is mine. Partly due to the cinematic prose, and also because I identify a lot with Suttree. Quitting your life and its troubles to live alone in a completely different part of the country, in peace, humble, no pressures, but not in a fantasy way like Walden. People don't try to get close to you, they just accept you as you are and leave you space to breathe.
Five Easy Pieces deals with the same themes as Suttree and is one of my favorites also.

>>9571411
Till We Have Faces

Gravity's Rainbow desu senpai-chan~~~

the waves / infinite jest

All Cioran
Death of Ivan Ilych / Father Sergius
The Culture of Narcissism

Antifragile. It inspired me to be a hyper skeptic and convinced me of the superiority of experience and natural systems. It taught me to be even more disgusted with almost all formal education. It made me always alert to which skills are hyper specialised and which are actually transferable. I love that it aggressively promotes simplicity over complicated bullshit. It inspired me to either hyper focus on a few things or to stop trying to make plans at all. I also like how he uses boring as an actual insult related to the genuine Intellectual worth of things. That is pretty much a taboo in many places among pseudointellectuals.

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Read it as a teen and it was the first book I ever read in which the hero lost in the end. Really changed my perspective on how narratives can be treated.

>>9571411
Harry Potter
Twilight
Hunger Games

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The Goonan book I made a thread about talking about consciousness. I feel like I am at the top of consciousness now.

>>9571520
>flowers for algernon isn't sad
Fuck you, the chapters where he revisited his family and parents got me. His break-up with Alice, and the last letter he wrote to her can't be construed as anything, but sad.

>>9585932
>It made me always alert to which skills are hyper specialised and which are actually transferable.
so which ones are which?

>>9586051
Is this book not a meme?

I got it in a name thread and put it on my read list but I am skeptical.

>>9571411
Works of love.
I'm not even Christian, but Kierk really moved to be unconditionally nice to other people.

>>9586088
Those chapters are a pleb filter. Yeah sure it's a ""sad"" ending, from YOUR point of view. From Alice's point of view and the other characters. But Charlie is happy. I mean he's sad about Algernon and confused why Alice is crying when she sees him, but he is not only happier when he is a retard but also a kinder person. Whereas when he has a 200 IQ he becomes a total jackass. That doesn't mean all smart ppl are miserable dickheads but it does mean something about the relationship between the two.

>>9581108
No, Orwell touched on something more important than the politics but yes his intent was to write about politics. A monkey could shit on a keyboard and somehow produce hamlet but have no idea what he wrote and what it means.

>>9576314
Sorry, you don't understand them. Because you've never thought about them past what your AP Lit class told you to think about them. Try having an actual opinion about something sometime.

Kurosawa's "Something Like An Autobiography"
Zamyatin's "WE"
I also read Salinger's oeuvre in high school, fucked my life desu senpai desu senpai.

>>9586273
It is seriously not a meme. Groundbreaking stuff. It is a very quick read, could take you an hour and a half and it is well worth the time.

>>9573539
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKdrQJC1e4U&list=PLkVT0vEPL4zQaS3_I7_zwlwjReqI9G3iV

>>9585317
Top Anime Villains: Milady de Winter.

Anyone brave enough to calculate in a list of all the recommendations here?

Or does /lit/ have a recommended reading info graph?

>>9581489
Yes what these books do is open up another view point on life for some of us, basically if your parents/social interactions didn't teach you something just read these books and write down what you take away from them. It can help senpai

>>9587154
http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading

>>9586318
that doesn't make your statement less retarded though

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>>9575331
I'm German yes and it's not bait.

>>9575333
Yes I am that person.
Funny how small a place this is.

book of the new sun; restored my faith in genre

>>9586051
Where can I find it online?

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>>9571411
Crime and Punishment

Herzog.

So relatable it was creepy. Describes perfectly what it's like to be stuck in your head while everything stable in your life is pulled from under you

>>9589402
As in Werner Herzog? What exactly by him?

>>9589409
I meant Herzog by Saul Bellow.

Werner Herzog is a boss too though. I vividly remember watching Bad Lieutenant with my parents in middle school.

>>9589419
Oh cool, thanks! Will def read!

>>9589387
http://www.thefoundationpress.com/fulltext.html

God forbid you ever begin to think of breathing as a burden; you'd stop doing so without a second thought. Lazy bastard.

In Search of Lost Time

Moby. Dick.

>>9577429
This. Also every other book by Hesse.

>>9577466
but spivak isnt hard tho

A book that my father had started writing, but never finished. It gave me insight on how he thought about things. I realized that we are eerily similar in how we think about things (seriously it felt like it was my writing). It made me feel not so alone at a time when I felt ostracized from my peers.

No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover.

This really opened my eyes.

Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night), and I'm really glad I got around to reading it as an adult rather than in my teens.

>>9571757
>"Sexual relations"
>"unknown knowns and known unknowns"
>definitions changing every 10 fucking seconds depending whatever the fuck the idiot talking feels like

>>9571833
Personally only use two points from this whole book : Become genuinely interested in others & Only way to win an argument is by avoiding it

>>9589500
that would be my nightmare

>>9571411
>death of a salesman
>maniac mcgee (pol's nightmare)

>>9579953
were you like, too lazy to read the fountainhead or something?

>>9573483
Steppenwolf fucked me up in a good way, I never thought there were authors that could explain what I felt better than I could. Hesse changed everything.

>>9581451
hello /pol/
I haven't read the book yet but its hard to believe that an elite of people are conspiring to rule the world, I know the world is a fucked up place but this is some fantasy tier shit

>>9589419
Abel Fererra directed the original Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel. Herzog directed that crappy pseudo-sequel with Nicholas Cage.

>>9571411
Unironically infinite jest. One of the only books where i actually see myself thinking and one of the only game changing masterpieces that is recent enough for me to see just how different it is from its influences and disciples. I'm lucky to be living in a time where this thing isn't archaic in the way all the great classics are.