Ask Lemmy

Survivor by Chuck "Fight Club" Palahniuk.

After Fight Club I went on a spree of reading this guys work. Survivor was the last of his written before the Fight Club movie made it big. It was also released a couple of years before 9/11 which killed its chance of being made into a movie.

I think it highlights how being passive in the world isn't enough to avoid doing bad things. You have to make your own choices to avoid a bad result. Interesting story structure and has some dark comedic moments too.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Time enough for love - Heinlein

Nor crystal tears - Foster

A world out of time - Niven

Ringworld - Niven

Sassinak - McCaffrey

The Martian - Weir

Harrison Bergeron is my favorite piece of US literature. Incredible short story

"What Is a Laser?"

When I saw that book in the elementary school library it was a revelation: There are books explaining the cool mysterious stuff like that! And written for kids to understand!

I think that one book is a big part of what sent me on the path to geekdom.

It wasn't technically my first nonfiction science book, which would be "Our Friend the Atom" but I wasn't old enough to actually read that when I had it (probably got destroyed before I could). I liked the pictures though.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The first book I read was "Guards, Guards" and it's still one of my favourites. I own the series and every few years I read through it again.

The End of Policing.

These two changed my whole perspective on American history and the public school system, as I learned a lot of information that had been deliberately withheld from me.

• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
• A People's History of the United States

As for fiction:

• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein (Beautiful and a little sad)
• The Tapestry Series by Henry Neff (Just a wonderful series to read)
• Night Shift by Stephen King (Read it way too young, in elementary school)
• The Bible (in a bad way, God is an asshole)
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (A trip through my childhood, basically)
• Incidents Around the House (A scary book that touches on all our worst fears as kid)
• The Witches by Roald Dahl (Just a great kids horror book)

in no particular order:

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Swallows and Amazons
• How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People
• The Wizard of Earthsea

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson.

The main character’s reflection on his past and continuation of growth really resonates with me.

Learning Perl, 2nd edition

The Scar, China Meiville - It's an epic journey and the clear best, in my opinion, of the Bas Lag novels. It has such weight and magic to the journey. Mystery too. It's a book that leaves you feeling like you want to feel more.

The Wild Girls, Ursula K Le Guin - a tale so emotional that I was broken for two days after reading it. Couldn't bring myself to read, or really do much except think about what I'd read.
Its about a slaving raid on a village near a city state, family, love, and gender.

Played bloody knuckles with hard copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire once in grade school, and still have a lil mark from it.

How to solve it by Polya.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Tells you everything you need to know about war. First book which made me cry. Everybody should read it.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami

Everybody Poops

Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul. It showed me how the world really works. Also The Doubter's Companion as a supplement to that.

Edit to add that after reading through all the comments, it's pleasing what a well-read community we have here.

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm and Sam Hughes.

Atomic Habits.

As someone who is likely on the spectrum, it was like someone gifted me a user guide for life where other self-help books have either leaned a lot on the emotions of things or tried to cram all sorts of philosophy down my throat.

Lot's of common sense ideas around how to turn what, where, and who you want to be into actually achievable goals and genuinely helped me figure out who I want to be for myself and not for other people.

I wouldn't say it has any groundbreaking or radical ideas in it, but the structure and presentation of the simple ideas really helped me work out some life things for myself.

Fear of Small Numbers, by Arjun Appadurai

His Dark Materials

Singularity Sky (and its sequel, Iron Sunrise)

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (a fanfiction novel that is far better than the original series)

What If (and What If 2, by Randall Munroe)

The Planiverse

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Society After an Apocalypse

Sophie's World

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy

John Darnielle's Devil House is a GREAT novel. All of his books are but it's particularly great

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.

"The Arsonist in the Office" by Pete Havel

Helped me recognize that the incredibly toxic job I was in was not sustainable.

"It's Your Ship" by D. Michael Abrashoff

Excellent book on leadership. Should be required reading for anyone who manages people.

"Psychopath Free" by Jackson MacKenzie

Most people probably have no idea what it's like to be in a relationship with someone who has a personality disorder. It can be absolute hell. It certainly was for me. This book provided some good insights but also helped me feel less alone.

There are other books but those are three big ones for me.

• The Gray House, Maryam Petrosyan. It's the story of a house, which is a disabled children and teenagers institution. It's weird, hard, and incredible. It's not a book for children, nor a young adult one – I mean, you can read it if you're a young adult or a late teen, but don't skip this book only because the characters are teenagers. I will reread this one.
• Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy. I read it recently because it was translated in french in 2022, but it's a book from 1976. It's a SF novel, and one of the few fictions which speaks against psychiatry. It's a feminist utopia, but the first pages are pretty hard.

Anna Karenina. There's no better pshychological character study of upper class Russian culture (but at the same time, about people in general).

The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog.

Definitely not the bible. That shit is unreadable.

Whale Done by Ken Blanchard

Two books that made me cry at the end and helped me shape my idea of war and what really is for the common men are "Il sergente nella neve" (the sargent in the snow) by Mario Rigoni Stern, which is about the retreat of the Armir (italian army in Russia) after the second Don offensive by the Red Army from the point of view of Stern, as they started the endless march back to Italy on foot, with the Red Army biting their asses. Almost 80.000 between dead and missing. Amazing piece of literature and yet another reason to despise fascism; and All quiet on the western front, which doesnt need many explanations.

Absolute chills everytime i think about those books and the images of tragedy and hopelessness they shaped so vividly in my mind.