6 ms·
Ask HN: What book bit, stung and shook you deeply?
Someone here quoted Kafka [1] on what types of books to read:
Books that “bite and sting”. That “wake us up with a blow to the head”. And which “affect us like a disaster, that hurts us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves”.
Ever read a book like that? Which was it? How did it affect you? What did reading it do to you?
[1] Brief an Oskar Pollak, 27. Januar 1904. , https://homepage.univie.ac.at/werner.haas/1904/br04-003.htm.
English (ChatGPT): "I believe one should only read those books which bite and sting. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book? To make us happy, as you write? My God, we would be just as happy if we had no books, and those books that make us happy, we could write ourselves if necessary. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that hurts us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were being driven into forests, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."
Original: "Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns."
- UmWhatever 2y agoIshmael by Daniel Quinn. As for why it bit and stung me: IYKYK, I guess? Any reasons more than that tend to start flame wars.
- hluska 2y agoThat’s another good one. Sadly, I’ve learned not to talk about Ishmael (or Daniel Quinn) online but yeah, if you know you know.
- rexpop 2y ago[flagged]
- UmWhatever 2y agoHahaha this is my first direct brush with Godwin's law. Thanks, rexpop!
- rexpop 2y agoHahaha! > Never believe that [fascists] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. They [presume] the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. — Sartre (1944)
- nataliste 2y agoThis is an unwarranted appeal to authority (and quoting a person that colluded with Simone de Beauvoir to groom young women into predatory relationships). Honestly, I don't understand what kind of effect you hope to achieve by calling random people Nazis except self-validation, but I guess I could turn your Sartre quote around to apply to [autistic pedants].
- rexpop 2y agoI am not in the least amused.
- qtk8 2y agoDo you think the book is fascistic? If so, maybe it’s helpful to explain why.
- CamperBob2 2y agoAnother way to pose the question is, what book/author did you read as an adult that you were either very thankful you didn't come across as a teen, or that you wish profoundly that you had? For me, Borges answers both. It would've changed things.
- cfors 2y agoWhen Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi. A fascinating memoir by a philosopher turned brain surgeon, facing a terminal cancer diagnosis. A person who spent their entire life pondering the morality of life being faced with their own ultimatum. I reread it once a year, at minimum. A deeply moving book.
- Horffupolde 2y agoLike Dr. Wilson from Dr. House.
- etrautmann 2y agoI was a labmate of Paul when I was starting my PhD. He was an incredible human, and such a fantastic writer.
- TheAlchemist 2y agoIt's a fantastic memoir indeed, very moving. Love this quote from the book: "You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving".
- hluska 2y agoDeath on the Ice - Cassie Brown and Harold Horwood. Going in, you know things are going to end badly. The foreshadowing is so deep that it gets painful to turn pages as you watch everyone make mistakes that would condemn all those men to death. But the two days on the ice?? I read a lot and have read some truly painful books, but some of those stories still haunt me.
- howard941 2y agoRussian Spring by Norman Spinrad. It did all of the aforementioned: Bit, stung, head blow, and it felt like the US dying would feel.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- slibhb 2y agoI've never really felt like Kafka seems to have and I read a lot, mostly novels. For what it's worth, I don't love Kafka's novels: I think he wanted them burned for a reason -- they're meandering failures. Very clever but they don't go anywhere. His short stories, though, are excellent. Off the top of my head, the most moving books I've read are The First Circle, any long Dostoevsky novel, The Master and Margarita, The Tartar Steppe, any Elena Ferrante, any Cormac McCarthy, some Murakami (Ryu and Haruki), Gene Wolf (The Book of the New Sun), 2666, parts of Moby Dick, any Alice Munro. All well known "good books".
- acacac 2y agothe jungle by upton sinclair
- chrismatheson 2y agoYes man, Danny Wallace. Don’t take it’s comedy approach wrongly, I think a lot of folks could improve their happiness by reading and internalising this book.
- stanski 2y agoThree Comrades by Remarque. I'm not sure what it is about it. On the surface it's a fairly straightforward story but the way the everyday struggles of the times, strong friendship and love are interwoven, is perfect.
- thepuppet33r 2y agoThe Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. https://marydoriarussell.net/novels/the-sparrow/ https://marydoriarussell.net/novels/the-sparrow/ Almost didn't finish it. Whatever your feelings on religion are, it's a fascinating and heartbreaking exploration of how far a man can be pushed before he loses faith in his god.
- thorin 2y agoFor some reason i can't get the stranger, Camus out of my head. I had it on my desk for at least 10 years at one company as a sign that I never quite fitted in there, but I never felt like I fitted anywhere else either. I enjoy books you can easily read in a single sitting as you could really get into a zone with the story. Old man and the sea and several Iain Banks books fell into the same category.
- TheAlchemist 2y ago"The last lecture" by Randy Pausch - there is a book, but also a talk you can watch online. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend to watch it. Not giving any spoilers, but as a father, the ending of the talk made me shed a tear.
- suranyami 2y agoThis is gonna sound a bit corny, but it impacted me for reasons that will become clear: "1984", by George Orwell. I was 13 at the time, and I was lucky enough to have a passionate English teacher that gave us challenging books to review. I chose "1984". It was the first book I'd read, up to that point, that didn't have a "Hollywood ending". The hero didn't save the day and get the girl… just the victory of tyranny over individualism. Admittedly, I had read a lot of crap, up till then. As the leader directly tells Winston (i.e. you, the reader): "If you want a picture of the future, think of a boot stamping on a human face - forever." I was gripped by the writing up till the very last words, then a panic set in… I thought that there were pages missing… I literally checked that someone hadn't torn out the last chapter where everything is made right again. No. There was no liberation. I sat stunned for the better part of an hour. "The Dispossessed" by Ursula le Guin: never have I experienced the idea of a working anarchism described in such a genuinely coherent form.
- cwover 2y agoMy immediate thought after reading the question was also the very last sentence of 1984. It was the first time that a book caused me to feel a deeply visceral, lasting emotional response. Reading through the first 99% of the book, I found it a well written and engaging book, but all of that just lead up to the very last sentence. It absolutely hit me like a truck. I also just sat stunned after finishing the book.
- xorvoid 2y agoMountains Beyond Mountains A biography of Dr Paul Farmer and how he dedicated his life and sacrificed everything to solve (in his words) “easily preventable” health problems in Haiti. It hits on many levels: his unapologetic empathy for ordinary people, the global abuse and abandonment of Haiti by western powers, the flaws of thinking about global health through a lens of utilitarianism, the real change that just one person can initiate, etc Highly highly recommended!
- gmuslera 2y agoCould it be a short story? Because Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle somehow fits in that category. Or maybe is not just the story but what we know about the author.
- CamperBob2 2y agoCould it be a short story? Absolutely. Munro's Meneseteung was what convinced me to stop trying to be a writer, and stick to hacking.
- hackeraccount 2y agoI think the The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin would be the short story that got to me. I don't know if when I read it was particularly revelatory but I think about it a lot. This will rightly get me down voted but in U.S. politics lately I was thinking, "How much would you be willing to lie to get towards a desired or avoid a bad political end?" Though that thought is really just Le Guin retold.
- nathants 2y agochildren of time, adrian tchaikovsky. impossible to communicate the experience. run, don’t walk. prefer the audiobook.
- AGivant 2y ago"Everything Flows ' by Vasily Grossman, about Ukrainian Holodomor and people they brought to live in these empty villages.
- leobg 2y agoBecause I didn't know, I asked ChatGPT. For the benefit of those in a similar situation, I'm posting the output I got below. --- "Everything Flows" by Vasily Grossman is a novel that explores the devastating impact of Soviet policies on the lives of individuals. Although the book does not focus exclusively on the Ukrainian Holodomor, it addresses the broader tragedies inflicted by the Soviet regime, including the forced famines in Ukraine. The Holodomor, specifically, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians due to starvation. In the context of the novel, Grossman discusses the repercussions of such events on the human spirit and the moral compromises of those who survived. The narrative sometimes touches on how the Soviet authorities repopulated areas depopulated by famine and repression with new settlers, often people from other parts of the USSR, to consolidate control and continue the Sovietization process. The novel provides a deep reflection on guilt, suffering, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of oppressive political systems.
- Jeaye 2y agoFarseer trilogy, by Robin Hobb. I often read fantasy fiction and someone recommended Hobb for having a joker/fool character along the lines of Wit in Sanderson's Cosmere universe. Well, it turns out Hobb is brutal when it comes to writing stories that destroy people. I finished the trilogy, but I was more impacted by it than any other work of fiction I've read in years.
- UmWhatever 2y agoOh, boy. The Fool is one of my favorite characters in fiction and poor, poor Fitz. I picked the original series up on a recommendation from a college friend. I went in thinking I was too old for a "YA Fantasy" book to make my heart ache. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Took me right back to bawling over Feist's Riftwar Saga as a young teen.
- hnthrowaway0328 2y ago"Brother Karamazov" and "Notes from underground".
- kelseyfrog 2y agoCapital Vol 1. Mostly because it demonstrates two things: 1. How small ideas can have big consequences - each section is a logical consequence of the former, and 2. How multidisciplinarism is greater than the sum of its parts. One can be an ok historian, sociologist, or political theorist, but combined can find connections outside of the narrow scope of any single domain. The accounts of working conditions, especially of children, will never leave me.
- aristofun 2y agoYou mean Marx’s? Shame on you spreading this nonsense
- qtk8 2y agoHe’s been very influential in the field of economics. What about Capital do you think is nonsense?
- aristofun 2y agoHitler has been influential too. And also Stalin, and many other bloody “influencers”. Virtually Everything in Capital is an artificial made up nonsense, starting from the basic premise of class struggle being the root cause of economic dynamics. I know that both from experience growing up in one of shitty socialist countries and from talking to professional economists with various backgrounds.
- CamperBob2 2y agoMarx is nonsense, but as we've seen lately, nonsense turns out to be a powerful and dangerous thing. As with most powerful, dangerous things, it's much better to deal with it from a position of understanding, than from a position of ignorance or indifference.
- aristofun 2y agoYes, but do you need to read every page of mein kampf to know that it’s bullshit? i say let psychiatrists and cult researchers do the job of figuring out why those ideas take off, and let’s hide those silly books from mass access
- ptrhvns 2y ago"The Case Against Reality" by Donald D. Hoffman I can't even ...
- JSR_FDED 2y ago“The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand shook me when I was younger. I know it’s popular to vilify her, but it showed how commitment to one’s own principles is admirable and at the same time not appreciated by society at large.
- rufus_foreman 2y agoThe Black Book of Communism. Among other things, it discusses the famine in China under Mao in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Some families traded children with each other. That way, they could kill and eat someone else's children instead of killing and eating their own.
- fullstick 2y agoThe Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Totally changed how I view literature and life. Made me believe in magic again.
- jackstraw14 2y agoInfinite Jest. It haunts me mostly because of the sheer density of the information in the book, it's impossible, to me so far, to fully process everything in the book. Once I feel like I have a good sense of what was going on, I remember another detail that sends me on another year or two of random daydreams trying to figure it out. Parts of it also feel like it was written specifically for me. So that doesn't help.
- jasonboyd 2y agoKolyma tales. It's a collection of essays from Varlam Shalamov, a Russian writer and reporter, who was imprisoned in the Gulag for nearly two decades. It was a shocking first hand account of human suffering and depravity.
- handyman5 2y agoThe His Dark Materials series. There were lots of pieces and ideas which I carry with me (particularly the bit with the harpies and what they come to value), but the circumstances around the ultimate disposition of the subtle knife truly broke me.
- jemmyw 2y agoBlindsight by Peter Watts. It has some silliness but the principal idea was brilliant and has really stayed with me: the idea that self awareness might be an aberration and alien life could be intelligent without it. In particular, the idea that we attacked first by broadcasting our nonsense, purposefully wasting the processing capacity of other intelligences.
- moribvndvs 2y agoAlso, the manner in which the aliens evaded observation literally took my breath away when I first used it. Brilliant book. All the Rifters books, actually. And The Island, and… well you get the picture. Fantastic author.
- dkdkdkdkdkdkd 2y agoBlindness by José Saramago and The road by Cormac McCarthy. Both offer a look at how humanity holds up under difficult circumstances. Do not watch the movies, read the books.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoA Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Original title: Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias) 1552, Bartolomé de las Casas. The genocide by the Spanish of directly and indirectly ~110M indigenous peoples and African slaves in the Americas needs a "Holocaust"-type unique name.
- tlubinski 2y agoLast Chance to See by Douglas Adams - it's a book from the early 90s and Douglas Adams travels the world to see the world’s most endangered and exotic creatures. It's heart breaking and at the same time written with such a delight that it is fun to read. I cannot explain it better but highly recommended.
- tylertyler 2y agoEducated by Tara Westover. This account of growing up in the US paints a picture of the hurdles and self determination needed to come out alive/functional/sane/educated from a rural, poor, religious family.
- rsync 2y ago2666 by Roberto Bolano.
- moribvndvs 2y agoThe Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. It’s an incredibly well researched historical fiction that explores bureaucracy and the darkness of human nature, particularly how intelligent, capable, ordinary, and deeply flawed people can be swept up into genocide and hypocrisy vis-à-vis the Holocaust. It is revolting, offensive, sepulchral, demoralizing, profoundly human, and a cascade of other powerful emotions I couldn’t even name, all at the same time. During my first read through, I recall being angry and disgusted by it at several points. It would weigh heavy on my mind even days after I had set it down, and a few times I would be unable to help but sob uncontrollably at work, the gym, supermarket, etc. I went through a long stretch of deep depression after reading it. Ultimately, it triggered a long examination of some of my values, how I perceived and treated others, and some of the negative influences in my life, and lead to a lot of positive changes. Later read throughs felt much more profound and even beautiful.
- leobg 2y agoJust Revenge by Alan Dershowitz. It’s a short read. But I’ll never forget it.
- nataliste 2y agoHere are some books that pop bubbles, but must be read with humility to avoid becoming its own new bubble, as the world is complex and contains contradictions: Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma Ayn Rand's the Fountainhead Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics Julian Jaynes's the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Iain McGilchrist's the Master and his Emmisary Varlam Sharlamov's the Kolyma Tales Jacques Ellul's Propaganda: the Formation of Men's Attitudes (or alternatively Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death)