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Very off-topic, but has anyone ever read a book that someone else credited with changing their life and felt like their own life was changed? Anecdotally I hav

Very off-topic, but has anyone ever read a book that someone else credited with changing their life and felt like their own life was changed? Anecdotally I haven't despite having read at least a dozen such books. Assuming I'm not an outlier, I think it's a bit like the "monad tutorial fallacy[1]" where the book crystalizes things that have already been bouncing around in one's head, rather than being the original source of the change. 1: https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-intuition-and-the-monad-tutorial-fallacy/ https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-intuiti...

fragmede 2y ago
The Alchemist came recommend that way to me, and it's certainly shaped how I think about certain things.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Good example, because I thought it was a terrible book, utterly pedestrian and pseudo-deep.
  - phoe-krk 2y ago
    One man's pedestrian book is another man's lifechanging literature. Everything depends on whether the words that one is reading are what, when, and how they need to read. That's why reading a ton of books, and re-reading old ones, are both decent ideas. Something is gonna stick, even if purely via application of statistics.
  - bookiest 2y ago
    I had this experience with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I am sure I read it at the wrong time in my life. For me The Fountainhead was life changing precisely because I was an insecure and overly-mothered boy that needed to read about pursuing one’s own ends to the exclusion of all expectations otherwise. Today I’m a father and would find it uselessly myopic.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  I was guessing that would come up. If it's not the most recommended book to me as a "will change your life" book, it's near the top.
mikestew 2y ago
My experience has been that a book gets recommended, but I’ve already read it (and I read a fair bit, but I’m not a bookworm). It is rare that I’ve had a recommendation that wasn’t already on the “usual suspects” list. On those rare occasions, yeah, it wasn’t all that (usually some pop self-help book).
BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
"Might is Right" (https://ia803202.us.archive.org/0/items/might-is-right-by-ragnar-redbeard/might-is-right.pdf https://ia803202.us.archive.org/0/items/might-is-right-by-ra...). Not as a way to form a personal philosophy, it's obviously not a book to build but to tear down. And in that regard it does it better and simpler than Nietzsche and with much less stupidity than Stirner, in my opinion. I also find the writing style pretty attractive, same way that Magma's music can be "attractive". I guess that Kaczynski's short manifesto could also change some lives, as it is pretty good (not without faults, though).

fragmede 2y ago

The Alchemist came recommend that way to me, and it's certainly shaped how I think about certain things.

andrepd 2y ago
Good example, because I thought it was a terrible book, utterly pedestrian and pseudo-deep.
- phoe-krk 2y ago
  One man's pedestrian book is another man's lifechanging literature. Everything depends on whether the words that one is reading are what, when, and how they need to read. That's why reading a ton of books, and re-reading old ones, are both decent ideas. Something is gonna stick, even if purely via application of statistics.
- bookiest 2y ago
  I had this experience with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I am sure I read it at the wrong time in my life. For me The Fountainhead was life changing precisely because I was an insecure and overly-mothered boy that needed to read about pursuing one’s own ends to the exclusion of all expectations otherwise. Today I’m a father and would find it uselessly myopic.
aidenn0 2y ago
I was guessing that would come up. If it's not the most recommended book to me as a "will change your life" book, it's near the top.

mikestew 2y ago

My experience has been that a book gets recommended, but I’ve already read it (and I read a fair bit, but I’m not a bookworm). It is rare that I’ve had a recommendation that wasn’t already on the “usual suspects” list. On those rare occasions, yeah, it wasn’t all that (usually some pop self-help book).

BoingBoomTschak 2y ago

"Might is Right" (https://ia803202.us.archive.org/0/items/might-is-right-by-ragnar-redbeard/might-is-right.pdf https://ia803202.us.archive.org/0/items/might-is-right-by-ra...). Not as a way to form a personal philosophy, it's obviously not a book to build but to tear down. And in that regard it does it better and simpler than Nietzsche and with much less stupidity than Stirner, in my opinion. I also find the writing style pretty attractive, same way that Magma's music can be "attractive". I guess that Kaczynski's short manifesto could also change some lives, as it is pretty good (not without faults, though).