Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2013?

[fraqed]

Ok this question is a shameless attempt to find out what the HN community has been reading in 2013 but the caveat is that the book must have had a meaningful impact in the way you live your life. That's fairly open ended and can include anything such as new programming languages learned, health and fitness, investment philosophy, relationships and so on. Choosing one book is an artificial constraint but it does help with focusing on that one big change. Also the book doesn't have to be from 2013 only that you read it during the year and it in some way changed your life.

The most significant book for me was in the area of health and fitness as I finally read The 4-Hour Body (2010) by Tim Ferris. I'd read about many of the topics he covers before but they just didn't stick until The 4-Hour Body. What I like about Tim's approach is that one should experiment to see what works rather than following a rigid plan. I tried many of his suggestions and some worked for me while others didn't. The binge day was particularly bad so now I just follow the same plan every day; as well I had to increase the amount of carbs before my last meal of the day to get a better sleep. But experimentation and tracking my results has made all the difference from other diet and exercise changes I've attempted in the past. It's definitely worth the read even if experimentation and tracking are the only things you get from the book.

Thanks for a great community and I look forward to your suggestions.

[Evgeny]

It's hard to choose a single book, as I've read (or listened to) a number of books this year.

I'll choose Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow (http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman-ebo...).

The way it changed my life was to make me actually think more about the way my mind operates, the decisions I make and the way these decisions affect my life. As a consequence, there were a few books I read later that were loosely related to this one in the way that they all refer to the way people think.

Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice

Steven Pinker - How the Mind Works

Nassim Taleb - The Black Swan; and Fooled by Randomness

Leonard Mlodinov - The Drunkard's Walk (quite similar to Fooled by Randomness)

Carol Dweck - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Neil Postman / Andrew Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death

Rolf Dobelli - The Art of Thinking Clearly (just started)

On my reading list now:

Quiet by Susan Cain - mentioned already

The Better Angels of Our Nature - Steven Pinker

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel

Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

Jared Diamond - The World Until Yesterday

Also, did not quite change my life, but very recommended:

Neal Stephenson - Anathem.

You may have to struggle through the beginning, but as soon as I understood the way the world he devised operates, I was thrilled completely.

[canistr]

+1 Snow Crash

The interesting part about Snow Crash is that I feel that the dialogue between Hiro (the protagonist in the story) and the Librarian (an artificial intelligence in the metaverse but more advanced than either Siri or Google Now) amount to what may be the future of Google/Wikipedia/Research in the form of Q&A search queries. His questions are usually ones which attempt to draw new insight from historical documents, but are asked in a way in which the Librarian can answer them as though a computer can, but does not immediately draw conclusions. I can easily see that in 10-20 years, research/Q&A/Google could perform many of those same functions without biasing the user with any particular conclusions (because it can't).

[capkutay]

I was thinking about reading 'Thinking, Fast and Slow', but I couldn't tell if it would really be useful or if it would just be another glorified self-help book. But if people here like it, I will probably give it a shot.

Also, Drunkard's Walk was excellent.

[trendoid]

Reading 'How Mind Works'. Do you think his proposal matches the recent discoveries in neuroscience? Till now(120 pages in) he seems to be an evangelical of Computational theory of mind

[mbesto]

+1 to Kahneman - the book is brilliant.

[daphneokeefe]

Guns, Germs & Steel was a real revelation about the rise of Western civilization. Ain't because we're so smart or genetically superior, sorry. Just a matter of being in the right place at the right time a few thousand years ago.

[Codhisattva]

+1 Thinking, Fast and Slow. I was going to post that as the most influential book of the year.

(I started reading Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise when I got to a reference to Thinking, Fast and Slow. Switched and haven't gone back yet.)

[ryanmarsh]

If you liked "Guns Germs and Steel" you'll also enjoy Diamond's latest book "The World until Yesterday". Everything I've learned about organizational dynamics can be gleaned from this book.

[jeroen]

Barry Schwartz on TED, same title as the book you mention:

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...

[nathankot]

+1, I was just going to reccomend this!

[pmcpinto]

Great list

[trentnix]

How to Win Friends and Influence People

I had avoided this one for years due to its age and because reading it seemed to imply one has no friends and no influence. It gets long-winded in parts with a few too many examples, but it's excellent. Definitely something everyone should read once, no matter what type of job or lifestyle one leads.

[city41]

This is a good book. The simple tip of asking people about themselves when unsure of what to talk about does work in a pinch. I also found it interesting that Susan Cain (see my comment in this thread) largely derided this book and the others like it that came out at the same time.

[stevewillows]

I read this and also the 48 Laws of Power -- both interesting reads that have a few crossovers. Mind you, the 48 Laws of Power audiobook sounds like it's read by the devil.

[__derek__]

Definitely! (Unfortunately, that goes for everything you mentioned, including the long-winded parts.)

[andersthue]

I agree, it's a good foundation to build upon!

[city41]

Quiet by Susan Cain

This book profoundly affected me because she convinced me that many of my mannerisms and preferences are completely normal, and even positive. She also confirmed a lot of my suspicions that open offices, group work and the like are not as beneficial as they may seem.

Her TED talk[0] hits most of the major points in her book. If you enjoyed that, her book is a must read.

[0] -- http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts....

[mark_l_watson]

+1 thanks. I just listened to her TED talk then bought her book. What she said resonated because sometimes I like busy social scenes, but usually I like quiet contemplation and work. BTW, I dislike open office layouts intensely. The first company that I worked for had private offices for everyone, technical, managers, and secretaries - a big productivity booster in my opinion. When we needed to talk in groups then a walk outside, getting a snack in the cafeteria, or grabbing a conference room was more than sufficient for people to get together and share ideas and information. Private offices are better for one to one communication also (compared to grabbing a conference room).

[rickdale]

Two years ago I was lucky enough to read a comment here about the 4 Hour Body and how it changed someones life. I downloaded it and read it that night. Lost 50lbs. Never looked back.

This year the book that shaped my year has to be The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter. Great read, teaches you how to motivate yourself to get shit done. Has worked really well for me.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Motivation-Hacker-Nick-Winter-eboo...

[thinkersilver]

I got this book 3 weeks ago. I agree it is a good book on motivation. It isn't very polished though, like some of the other popular psychology books out there. It isn't embellished with eloquent flowery writing or mind-blowing feats of accomplishments. This isn't a criticism but a strength. It reads more like a series of blog posts where the authour is discovering how to amp up his motivation using a set of hacks to tackle goals. The format makes it easy to walk away from the book and apply it to those unfinished tasks that have been hanging over your head for months. It's a great find and ranks high on the books I've read this year.

[Patrick_Devine]

I read a significant amount of fiction and non-fiction in 2013, including books on founding start-ups, marketing, psychology, english lit (even Shakespeare, Dickens and Jane Austin), and sci-fi.

Surprisingly (at least to me), the most interesting and profound was an obscure sci-fi book called Permutation City by Greg Egan. It was surprising because it was written in 1994 and pretty much nails HPC and cloud computing. It also plays on the ideas of intelligence, consciousness, artificial life and longevity, all of which I think we're right on the precipice of making some pretty significant inroads within the next decade.

The cloud computing aspect of the novel though really blew me away. Most parts seem almost like throw away paragraphs which help support the plot, but you don't have to squint very hard to see the similarities between it and something like the Amazon Spot Market. For me, in 1994, I couldn't even imagine cloud computing. The PC was so completely dominant at the time (I had a 486DX2-50) and the internet might as well have not existed for most people. The web consisted of a handful of sites and only a few people had even heard of NCSA Mosaic.

I realize others might not find this profound, but for me, working in cloud infrastructure and virtualization, it really struck a chord.

[Ironballs]

Greg Egan is a great visionary, his ideas and ingenuities are profound and intelligent. His works exude a kind of brilliance, a technological devotion to the big ideas, but at a cost: sometimes the ideas take the stage, and characters and plot are bystanders. Overall, they are still excellent, and they're big on the ideas. A warning: it's the hardest hard sci-fi out there, for example, the book Schild's Ladder is full of hardcore mathematics and physics.

[blendergasket]

I think "The Kingdom of God is Within You" by Tolstoy was the most life changing book I read this year.

It made me start thinking about the idea of sin, which I haven't given much thought about before since I was not raised as a Christian and do not identify myself as one. But sin is such a powerful concept for understanding my own weakness and shortcomings and the evils that come about when I let them control my life.

It is also a very powerful message against the corruption of Church and State and the necessity of peaceful rebellion against these corruptions if they do not allow the living of a Christian life.

[Nekorosu]

The book is Hold Me Tight: Your Guide to the Most Successful Approach to Building Loving Relationships. It's a book from the creator of emotionally focused therapy which is based on the insights brought by the attachment theory.

The attachment theory was completely new to me and it let me have a new look on the way I act in the close relationships. It cut a lot of shame I had about the way I act when the relationships didn't go the right way. The rest of the book related to the therapy itself was good too. It shifted my focus from solving relationship problems the rational way (it didn't work out) to something more aware of the emotional reality of the process.

In the end I feel like I perceive all the interhuman relations a little bit different then I did before.

[radex]

The one that made the biggest impression (and, hopefully, impact) on me was definitely The Power of Habit. tl;dr: on a fundamental level, habits of all sorts shape much of our days and lives. It's like setting up automation scripts — it takes some time, but makes your life better and easier once you do. And they're like a sharp knife — a powerful tool, but be careful not to cut yourself. Good habits make you do things right without any effort, bad habits will ruin you. The book shows you how.

[radex]

Oh and the thing that impressed me is that it's not just the typical BS-filled self-help book. The Power of Habit appears to be very well-researched and doesn't promise wonders, just shows you how habits work and how you can influence them.

[pathdependent]

I gave this book out as a Christmas gift to a lot of people. I read it six months ago and it has dramatically improved my life.

[incision]

Given the criteria, this would come closest:

* A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195374614/

Honorable Mention:

* Anything You Want - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00506NRBS

* On Intelligence - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003J4VE5Y/

* Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00555X8OA/

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6901046

[obstacle1]

Those interested in Stoic philosophy would do well to just skip to the primary sources. Not to say the guide you posted isn't a good book (I'll take your word that it is!) but Stoicism is one school of thought that I'd say rewards reading from a blank slate. As opposed to, say, certain domains in analytic philosophy wherein understanding is impossible without years of prior reading.

Seneca's various Letters [1], Marcus Aurelius' Meditations [2], Epictetus' Discourses [3] are all good places to start. There are a variety of translations for those titles available for free (see links).

[1] - https://archive.org/stream/Seneca/Seneca_djvu.txt [2] - http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html [3] - http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.html

[grimtrigger]

"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion"

If you're like me and love debates, this book is awesome. It'll show you how to find common ground and understand implicit values behind arguments.

Link for the lazy (non-affiliate): http://www.amazon.com/The-Righteous-Mind-Politics-Religion/d...

[Stronico]

That was on my top three for last year.

[fuckpig]

A really quick introduction to his ideas:

http://chronicle.com/article/Jonathan-Haidt-Decodes-the/1304...

[lpolovets]

I read about a book a week this year, and the one that I loved most was "Give and Take" by Adam Grant. The book discusses two opposite approaches to work and life: being a taker (where you always try to use people and situations to your advantage) and being a giver (where you try to help others out before yourself). The book included a nice combination of anecdotes and research that all pointed to giving being a more effective road to success than taking. The first half of the book is spent building a compelling case for the main thesis (i.e. that giving is better); the second half talks about a few pitfalls that should be avoided and offers tips on how to be a more effective giver. Some of the lessons that I learned included tips for learning when I'm being taken advantage of and tips on how to keep from burning out on generosity.

I loved the combination of research + practical applicability and I think the book encapsulates many parts of the startup/tech community where people will help others -- even strangers -- very generously. I've given (no pun intended) about half a dozen copies of this book as gifts to friends.

[maxaf]

How the hell do you manage to read one book per week? I can barely manage to read one every two months while working sixteen hour days.

[arash_milani]

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful By Marshall Goldsmith

I came to realize that sometimes to improve your teams' performance you don't need another tip to add into the behavior of the team members. actually the problem with mature team members is not that they don't know what to do; The problem is that they don't know what to STOP doing. And there is another thing that makes the situation even worse: Most of the time the team member who hurts others in the team don't realize that. But everyone in the room knows that something is wrong as the heat in the room rises. And this heat raise certainly will affect the team overall performance and unity. So this is a serious business.

[curiouslurker]

Understanding Michael Porter on Strategy by Magretta. Porter is a well known thinker on business strategy but most people misunderstand him. He has also been derided because his own company (Monitor) failed but his work in strategy still remains the best.

This book by one of his former students and proteges lays it out clearly. Too many people don't really know what strategy is about. The bottom line is that if you have a strategy it should show up in your profits and the examples/case studies of Southwest, Ikea and Zara are really insightful. If you are serious about business or entrepreneurship this book is a must read.

[jacques_chester]

I remember reading a tell-all autobiography of a literature major who got sucked into management consulting. He basically summarised Porter thus: the economics department discovered all the ways that a monopolist can misbehave. The business school began teaching those misbehaviours as "strategy".

[mindcrime]

I've read a lot of books this year[1], but if I had to pick one to fit your criteria, I'd lean towards The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker.

TOoW presents a case for a new view of Economics, rooted in evolution as the primary engine behind endogenous growth[2], and modeling the economy as a complex adaptive system[3].

In the end, his theories may or may not be correct, but I've learned a TON about economics from reading this book, and if the "Complexity Economics"[4] guys are right, it has some interesting implications.

Personally, I suspect that the CE folks are onto something, but this book is worth reading just for the history lesson it presents, vis-a-vis the development of modern economic thought. And for a book featuring a ton of history and on a topic (economics) that some people might find dry, it's very accessible and reads more like a novel than a textbook. I churned through the whole thing in about 2 days, it was so engrossing.

Anyway, I only just read it last week, so it may be too early to call it a "book that changed my life", but I can say that as soon as I finished it, I immediately started re-reading it, this time to take notes and jot down thoughts about some of the implications and actionable aspects of this thinking. It definitely gets a +1 from me.

Outside of that, The Discipline of Market Leaders would probably be the other candidate. I only discovered this one because it was referenced in a different book I was reading, but it's turned out to be quite interesting. The authors present a pretty strong case for a very specific approach to business strategy that resonates with me.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964841

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_growth_theory

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system

[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_economics

[dcolgan]

Test-Driven Web Development with Python.

Very well written and engaging. The prerelease version is available free online at http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754. I've known for a long time that I wanted to do unit testing on my web dev projects but never really understood the how part. I'm almost done with the book, and am super excited to try TDD on my projects now.

[davidw]

Looking through my list, none jumps out as a 'life changer':

http://davids-book-reviews.blogspot.it/

Although there are several good ones there:

* Nathan Barry's Authority: http://blog.liberwriter.com/2013/11/21/nathan-barrys-authori...

* Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: http://davids-book-reviews.blogspot.it/2013/09/worthless-imp... - not one for the ages, but I thought his take on entrepreneurship was interesting.

* http://davids-book-reviews.blogspot.it/2013/08/pathfinder-jo... - biography of John Fremont. Interesting guy in an interesting period of American history.

* http://davids-book-reviews.blogspot.it/2013/02/innovation-an... - Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Drucker. Still a very relevant book in a lot of ways.

[egypturnash]

[The one I self-published](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/52397119/decrypting-rita...).

It's the second volume of three. The change is still ongoing; book 1 has garnered me some new fans at the top of the comics game, some cool short-form opportunities, and some tentative little beginnings of nibbles from publishers. I figure bringing book 2 to cons will keep that going; I'm pretty confident that by the time I run out of copies of book 3 and want to publish an omnibus, I'll have someone interested in taking care of that and the distribution for me.

Oh, wait, you want books we read, not any books, huh? I'd have to say [The Primal Blueprint](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982207786?tag=egypurna-20&camp=0&...), which got me seriously thinking about what I put in my body and how I use it. I've been backsliding from the fabulous shape I was in during the year I was taking burlesque class, and while I haven't gotten it back, reducing my carb intake and trying to regularly remind myself to just run around for the hell of it! has been keeping things mostly under control.

I mean, I've actually started eating salads, made from awesome locally-produced ingredients that actually have flavor. I still eat a decent amount of junk, I'm nowhere near following a hardcore Primal diet, but I'm doing better than I was a couple years ago.

[kaiwen1]

A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian. This book has completely changed the way I approach interactions with people of faith. It's an incredibly important, useful and practical book.

http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghoss...

[petarb]

How to Win Friends and Influence People

I was skeptical at first due to how old the book is but the advice is truely everlasting and extremely effective.

[claudius]

I read it a few years ago and found it quite helpful, too – the most important bit being that (most) people like to talk about themselves.

[pearjuice]

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Such an immense story about love, friendship and the evil in all of us.