Ask Lemmy

'Discover What You Are Best At,' by Linda Gail.

Spent most of my life thinking I just hated working. Got the book and found a career I enjoyed.

If you can wake up on a rainy Monday and feel okay, you've solved most of life's problems.

Ishmael changed the way I view society.

The Courage to be Disliked.

It’s a look at Adlerian psychology through the format of a conversation. I’ve looked deeper into Adler and don’t agree with some but the book changed the way I think about a lot of things.

Shock for the Secret Seven. It's a kid's book that was given to me by my godfather. It was the book that made me fall in love with reading.

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

Honestly reading nietzsche in college was mind blowing for me. Started with “the gay science” and read like 3 more of his books in a row. Will probably reread his “genealogy of morals” again soon.

Two books that I read in high school definitely changed my life: first was Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. There are intentionally misspelled words, almost no punctuation and very little traditional structure to his writing (it's about him having DTs in a cabin on the coast in northern California). I was literally not aware that you could write books and not follow the grammatical rules they teach you in school, I remember showing it to my friends like "Look at this?! Can you believe it?!"

The second book was Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, which also has a non traditional structure, is full of potty humor (and I'm not trying to be polite, it's the best way I can put it), is filled with doodles and is just fucking bizarre while also being very readable and funny.

Kids need to learn the rules of how to write, but they also need to be taught that rules are meant to be broken sometimes.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

A comparatively mundane example, and possibly unremarkable to many, but I habe incredibly strong feelings about Spider Robinson's "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" and "Callahan's Lady" series. In particular, I read them during an extremely difficult point in my life, and the eponymous Law of Conservation of Pain and Joy completely changed me and my motivation in life.

Babel 17 from Samuel Delany. It introduces me to language sciences, human sciences, and then humanism. It switched my point of view on all sciences, and on people too. But for people it also come from one or two other shorter novels from the same author. It was in the same book though. It somehow came during the holidays between high school and university, so like a coming of age thing. I will always remember it.

Another one is not from a book but a video game. Kotor2. At some point, you are asked by a ghost to take position. If you don't, you are answered "apathy is death", and all ghosts, friends and foe, attack you. It was almost traumatic : I learned with this that sometimes you cannot be neutral, you must make a choice that will have consequences, and you will still have to endure the consequences. I will always remember this : apathy is death.