List of books that will induce a mindfuck

[bloak]

I was amused to see "The Outsider" and "The Stranger" as two books by Albert Camus, though "The Outsider" seems to link to novels by Colin Wilson and Stephen King. "L'Étranger" is a good book and not too hard to read in French because it's written in a colloquial style, or you could read one of the many translations: at least four just in English.

There are a lot of books in that list that I liked so I should probably pay some attention to the ones that I haven't yet looked at.

[the_clarence]

I can't get interested in a book if I don't get a warm recommendation. Anyone want to recommend one of the books in that list?

[mindcrime]

Before looking at the list, two of the books that came to my mind as possible candidates were Permutation City by Greg Egan, and Glasshouse by Charles Stross. Permutation City made the list, and I definitely endorse it.

Glasshouse is not on the list, but I definitely think it's worth a read.

Neuromancer is on the list and it may be my personal favorite novel (if not #1 on my list, it's very close).

A couple of Murakami novels were on the list here. I've read several of his novels and would basically make a blanket statement "read anything by Murakami".

[darkfloo]

Iain M Banks use of weapon is both an incredibly good book and a portal to the culture series , in which almost all books are just as good.

[Morac0o]

Same happens to me, and if I am not interested I can not focus on reading it.

[kranner]

Tor Nørretranders' The User Illusion was a great read, hereby warmly recommended. One of the principal ideas was that our senses take in many orders of magnitude more of data than we are able to be conscious of. I believe he estimated something like 10 Mbps taken in and 80? baud being aware of — something like that, I should read it again sometime.

[lukan]

Many are just classics (and not mindfuck in my opinion).

Hesse is good in general.

Kafka is good in a weird fucked up way and to be recommended after one had to deal with the legal system for example.

Castaneda is interesting fantasy, but many took it literal and a real cult evolved around his books (with him included as the Guru).

Peter Caroll is interesting, if you like the occult.

And Robert Anton Wilsons Illuminatus! is the bible of conspiracy theories.

(But a really good book and deserving of the mindfuck category, I think it popularized the term mindfuck)

[Hikikomori]

Neuromancer and Snow Crash are usually recommended here.

[thefz]

John dies at the end -> all the other books. Silly scify nonsense that will have you giggling. Oh, and the Zoey Ashe trilogy too.

[FooBarBizBazz]

Blindsight by Peter Watts.

That messed with my head but good.

And not necessarily in a good way.

But I have to mention it.

[Yizahi]

That one definitely fits definition perfectly. Still can't forget that idea, brr. Scary.

[IHLayman]

One book not on that list that really threw me recently was The Anomaly [0]. The less you know about it going in the better.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anomaly_(novel).

[anthk]

As a Spaniard, I don't find South American magical realism books 'mindfuckey', but maybe a bit half-unsetting and half-romantic, as if you gave some kind of personality to the environment itself.

On Focault's Pendulum, [Spoilers, rot13] Gur jubyr obbx vg'f nobhg znxvat sha ba pbafcvenabvqf

[gom_jabbar]

Nietzsche is on the list, but Nick Land's Fanged Noumena is clearly missing. As Mark Fisher has written about Land's work:

"There was a great deal of cyber-theory around in the 1990s but none of it seemed to come from inside the machines – which is to say, outside us – in the way that Land's did." [0]

[0] https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/10459/1/...

[sourcepluck]

Ooh thanks for the quote, I'll happily follow up on something Fisher says is worth a look.

[Yizahi]

Skimmed through the list.

First problem - it is gigantic. Statistically there is no chance that so many books are so revolutionary genius that they are on some other level etc.

Second problem - it is a generic top100/top500 style list, populated by exact same old "classic" fiction books like every other list on the internet.

There are some "above average" books intersperced in this list, but a casual reader will not know how to find them among the books being there simply on the virtue of being good and 50-100 years old. Being old book is not a virtue, unless we are in a history class.

[tarboreus]

Wow, 50 years, so old.

It strikes me as a pretty decent list. The books on here I've read (maybe 30%) are worthy of recommendation.

People always get offended by lists, I've noticed.

[flanked-evergl]

After being indoctrinated to hate everything about the west and Christianity for most of my life — through school, university, news media, entertainment, and the administrative state — and after coming to hate the west and Christianity as a consequence of this indoctrination, I really found the following books to be the ultimate mindfucks:

- Heretics by GK Chesterton

- Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton

- Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America by Mary Grabar

- A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell

- Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland

[FooBarBizBazz]

This "the West and Christianity" thing may reinforce dichotomies that we do not need (East vs West), while glossing over essential distinctions (Christianity vs its Abrahamic roots).

Yes, much is good about Christianity, and yes, it caught on in the West -- but it originated in the Near East, and Ethiopians and Keralites had it first (and still do). Moreover, prior to the Islamic conquests, it was widespread in the countries that we now think of as Muslim. So, while it is central to the culture of Europe, it is also a bit of an adopted alien -- and it is not unique to Europe.

Second, many Protestant readings of Christianity embrace the Old Testament, while underemphasizing the break from Old Testament practices and thought that it represented. You would think that Protestant culture would be more immune to this, because it emphasizes literacy and directly reading the book. But somehow that has led to an uncritical understanding of the Old Testament, instead of to a more Gnostic repudiation. Paul is best in this regard.

Because it is precisely Christianity's reformist elements that made it good. Its universalism. Its New Covenant.

Anyway.

I do appreciate your CK Chesterton references. Some of those are also among my favorites. I very much enjoyed The Man Who was Thursday, one of his works of fiction, a sort of novel -- which, I will only say, subverts expectations, and turns out to be more than a bit philosophical!

[somedude895]

A Conflict of Visions is a good one. Thomas Sowell is a true intellectual. Sure, he has strong biases, but I believe those developed out of his intense study of the facts, rather than being implanted in him before he started thinking for himself, which is sadly the case for many so-called intellectuals nowadays.

If you could recommend only one of the others, which would it be?

[washadjeffmad]

I'm from the opposite world, the US, where religion, education, and the state have been at nontrivial risk of becoming the same things, depending on where in the country you live.

Needless to say, those are all very different reads after experiencing an attempted ethnonationalist theocracy as a member of a non-dominant group. I'm not against religion, but I don't care for Christian apologism or its blindness to its effects; like political centrism, it seems to unify towards incumbent power and authoritarianism, only entrenching factionalization and incompatibility.

[eddyg]

Debunking Howard Zinn⁽¹⁾ doesn’t get nearly enough “publicity” (for lack of a better word), especially considering how much A People’s History of the United States is “pushed”.

⁽¹⁾ https://www.regnery.com/9781684511525/debunking-howard-zinn/

[Hikikomori]

Understanding our past and knowing we did some pretty fucked up shit isn't hating the west, its dealing with it and learning from it. I think you would agree that how Germany has dealt with their past is good compared to sweeping it under the rug and saying that while Hitler did some bad stuff he had some good points.

[scruple]

I have had the exact same experience, and I would also add CS Lewis Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce to the list.

[paxys]

"Mindfuck" is being used a bit loosely. The is mostly just a list of top sci-fi/fantasy books that the internet crowd generally likes.

[Cthulhu_]

The page links to another page where the term is described, but also refutations that it's used in a different connotation.

[deafpolygon]

As a teenager (30 years ago), I found this book to be a bit of a mindfuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun

I have heard of most on this list for obvious reasons but this book really got me to see war in a different light.

[djkivi]

Missing The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Mind fucked…

[comboy]

Uh, I'd love some recommendations fitting the title, but many of those on the list are definitely not that.

[vidarh]

I think I've read about a quarter of the list, and only a couple of the ones I've read fit that title to me. I wish the list contained a line explaining why...

[omega3]

There Is No Antimemetics Division deserves a mention as well.

[JakDrako]

It's on there... you just can't remember seeing it.

[Yizahi]

qntm recently wrote that he will do a "remastered" version 2 of the book next year v1 will remain freely accessible as it is now). Can't wait to reread it :)

[AntoniusBlock]

No Gaddis? What a shame. Everyone ITT should check out Gaddis' `The Recognitions' and `J.R.' (and his other books, of course).

[tenderfault]

"Revolutionary Road", by Richard Yates. Because it uncovers the greatest conspiracy of our time. Also "The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy, for the same reason.

The real so called "mindfuck" comes when what you read unravels the reality around you, not when it sends you in some utopia with the promise of a metaphor built to solve a great mistery you actually don't give a f... about.

P.S.This is just one of the HN threads which is more valuable than the article it refers to.

Thank you for all the good books mentioned here, HN!

[bwb]

I am a big fan of

Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

By Daniel Pinchbeck

Amazing book

[chaostheory]

I’m surprised that everything2 is still not mobile friendly.

[relaxing]

I’m not. Every attempt to fix the site has failed due to the incredibly fucked up use of turn of the century style PHP.

[geraldog]

I'd add Poker Without Cards by Ben Mack.

[geraldog]

Also, New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson. A huge treatise on epistemology and philosophy of Science and much more "mindfucker" than his fiction.

[mahrain]

Missing murakami's 1Q84

[satvikpendem]

I started reading his latest book released in English this month, pretty interesting so far.

[smitty1e]

I have a copy of Zinn, and one must know that he brings to his alleged task of writing history a deep Communist bias against his subject.

Not that the United States is above criticism; just understand that there is a lack of balance on offer.

[popularrecluse]

Zinn is extra credit for people that actually know history. He says it right in the preface, it's one-sided, it's the history that is generally left out of your textbooks. You guys have your panties in a bunch over anything that challenges your hierarchical worldview.

[delichon]

I appreciate that Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is in the same list. It's a sort of balance, expounding on the converse ideology. You can play mindfuck ping pong between the two. Cheers for the author's open mind, without which mindfuckery is at best foreplay.