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Give his Glass Bead Game a try; it is dense, delightful, & its content would appeal much to the denizens of this site.

Triphibian 2y ago
Narcissus and Goldmund is great. It feels like he's re-approaching themes from Siddhartha, but that notion of paths taken is worth exploring again and again.
- creature_x 2y ago
  Agreed! There is definitely overlap between the three books but my recollection of Siddhartha and N&G is that Hesse dwelled more into how hedonic pleasure corrodes the soul. On a side note, you'll get along well with Doestevesky's Brothers Karamazov if you found N&G affecting.
WillAdams 2y ago
Not sure how I feel about the on-going vanishing of efforts to create The Glass Bead Game as a computer interface/programming methodology. I want it to be something workable which helps folks in their use of computers, but the more I work with node programming interfaces and so forth, the more I worry that the fact that there is no universally agreed-upon answer to the question: >What does an algorithm look like? and that such systems are strongly-bounded complexity-wise by screen size, that they simply aren't workable beyond small/toy problems and educational usage, i.e., Blockly.
creature_x 2y ago
I actually started with The Glass Bead Game, but I found it too dense. Perhaps I'll give it another try!
mikhailfranco 2y ago
I assume Hesse was familiar with Kafka and Freud. GBG has that dream-like Kafkaesque frustration of having a concrete objective, but not be able to achieve it, even though it should be simple and tangible. However, in GBG it is all meta: the game is unspecified, the objective is unspecified, the adorable miraculous winning play is unspecified. It is meta-Kafka, which is incredibly doubly frustrating... SPOLIER ALERT: then, slowly, awkwardly, painfully, a realization creeps over you - GBG is life. Really a tremendous literary achievement.

Narcissus and Goldmund is great. It feels like he's re-approaching themes from Siddhartha, but that notion of paths taken is worth exploring again and again.

creature_x 2y ago
Agreed! There is definitely overlap between the three books but my recollection of Siddhartha and N&G is that Hesse dwelled more into how hedonic pleasure corrodes the soul. On a side note, you'll get along well with Doestevesky's Brothers Karamazov if you found N&G affecting.

WillAdams 2y ago

Not sure how I feel about the on-going vanishing of efforts to create The Glass Bead Game as a computer interface/programming methodology. I want it to be something workable which helps folks in their use of computers, but the more I work with node programming interfaces and so forth, the more I worry that the fact that there is no universally agreed-upon answer to the question: >What does an algorithm look like? and that such systems are strongly-bounded complexity-wise by screen size, that they simply aren't workable beyond small/toy problems and educational usage, i.e., Blockly.

creature_x 2y ago

I actually started with The Glass Bead Game, but I found it too dense. Perhaps I'll give it another try!

mikhailfranco 2y ago

I assume Hesse was familiar with Kafka and Freud. GBG has that dream-like Kafkaesque frustration of having a concrete objective, but not be able to achieve it, even though it should be simple and tangible. However, in GBG it is all meta: the game is unspecified, the objective is unspecified, the adorable miraculous winning play is unspecified. It is meta-Kafka, which is incredibly doubly frustrating... SPOLIER ALERT: then, slowly, awkwardly, painfully, a realization creeps over you - GBG is life. Really a tremendous literary achievement.