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Books that changed your life

Totenkindly

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It's a step. Now we just need to work on the funny. ;)

Hmmm. Maybe the whole joke was meant to be situational comedy or something... :thinking: <wanders off confused>
 

Eileen

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Franny & Zooey
Brave New World
the Bible (both because it's spiritually significant to me and because I've spent a lot of time reacting against it)
Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love


I'm not sure that I'd say the His Dark Materials trilogy changed my life, but it would have, maybe, if I'd come across it earlier.
 

SolitaryWalker

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Yeah. After all, complex and glorious ideas just spontaneously generate within people's minds all on their lonesome.

(Heck, we can't even learn language and thus learn to think cohesively without the influence of other human beings....)

...Wait a second... :shock: you were... making a joke! :rofl1: yay! yay! SW made a joke!

No, I was serious. You should let them influence you, but not quite that much.
 

Ivy

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Franny & Zooey

Ooh, good one. I read and wrote about this in college on the advice of the professor I had a probably unhealthy attachment to, so it has some icky Fi stuff attached to it now, but it was very meaningful to me and probably did change me.

the Bible (both because it's spiritually significant to me and because I've spent a lot of time reacting against it)

Well said. This is what I meant by "maybe not for the reasons people might think."
 

ptgatsby

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I think, for most people, the title of the thread is hyperbole.

Well, the way I see it... what I had for breakfast this morning "Changed my life".

(That's cause I'm trying some green sludge health drink out...)
 

Geoff

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Well, the way I see it... what I had for breakfast this morning "Changed my life".

(That's cause I'm trying some green sludge health drink out...)

Yep that would change my life. It would confirm that I dont do breakfast.

-Geoff
 

reason

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How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell
The Retreat to Commitment by William Warren Bartley III
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Conjectures and Refutations - Sir Karl Popper

The first two helped get me thinking, the third broadened those thoughts, the fourth solved a difficult problem, the fifth was intellectually inspiring and the last was enlightening.
 

rivercrow

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Yes. More realistically, it should be entitled, "How has SW changed your life?"

LOL!

Okay:

  • Lord of the Rings
  • Dragonriders of Pern Series
  • Heinlein's speculative sci-fi (Stranger, Time Enough, Job, etc)
  • Autobiography of a Yogi
  • The Bhagavad Gita
  • Beyond Good and Evil
 

kuranes

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"Siddhartha", "Steppenwolf" and some others by Herman Hesse I read as a young man.
 

Noel

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Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig
Leaves of Grass - What Whitman
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe
 

Beyonder

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1. Upanishads
2. Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty)
3. Bhagavad Gita
 

macjoven

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The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. It is the why of the Liberal Arts all metaphored and punned out.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnagie. Sad but true. Everyone should read it.

Patriot Games by Tom Clancy. Only becuase it was the first book I read that was over five hundred pages long. It made me unintimidated of large and duanting works.
 

Jasz

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"Siddhartha", "Steppenwolf" and some others by Herman Hesse I read as a young man.

"narziss und goldmund" had a profound effect on me too. i can still see and smell the glowing landscapes.
 
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1984 biatch!

me too.

also, Down and Out in Paris and London, by the same author.
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Albert Pike
The Bible
Qur'an
A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence (almost forgot this one, i read it when i was pretty young)
 

Tayshaun

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"narziss und goldmund" had a profound effect on me too. i can still see and smell the glowing landscapes.

Interestingly Narcissus and Goldmund also had an impact on me even though it's a third-person narrative novel. Goldmund's journey, the psychology of women and children, the effect of a psychoanalytical unclogging, Narcissus's enlightened asceticism. It has also had an impact on the way I look at Medieval art.

Among the biographies about artists that inspired me, there is The Agony and the Ecstasy.

Noel said:
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

This one opened my mind and got me in a brooding condition for a week or two; but I always felt a distance with the narrator (R. Pirsig), a certain incompatibility that prevented the book from being an instruction booklet for my life but rather a secret spiritual book which touches something vital that is hidden in the fog of the narrative.
 

Opivy1980

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Jun 23, 2007
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The Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Brave New Worlld
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
 

darlets

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Apr 29, 2007
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where to start.

People Skills by Robert someone (heimen I think)
He lists ten obstacles to listening and talks about reflective listening.

"How to make friends and influence people." Dale Carnigigigeiigiegeesomething
(Random note. I was reading a software blog and the blogger made the point that if you want to design software you have to read this book. Shrug so I did. )
Anyway, Dale C, really drums home the point that you never win by convincing someone they're wrong, because on some level they'll resent you. You get alot further by asking them questions that lead to your point.

Steppenwolf.
Glassbead game (only read half of this)
Before these books I thought people were really stupid and not worth hanging around. For a few years after these books I went through my you should get out there and give life a go (This was probably an age thing too).
Unfortunately, I found out that people aren't stupid, they are just wilfully ignorant which is a great deal harder to overcome.

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. "

to paraphrase another quote (which I can't find)
When someone is faced with changing their mind or proving their opinion, they get busy with the proving.
 
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