Hacker News Books

40,000 HackerNews book recommendations identified using NLP and deep learning

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nemo44xonApr 30, 2021

Yeah “Player Piano” was a good read. I don’t think I really 100% got it when I was 15 but it rings true today still. Might reread it - building a collection of novels for my son in case I die early. And that’s one (as well as “Breakfast of Champions” and “Slaughterhouse 5”) from KV he should read.

okareamanonMay 12, 2021

Yes, we have become very efficient in doing things. What we are doing, we have become so efficient in doing that we don’t need any awareness to do it. It has become mechanical, automatic. We function like robots. We are not men yet; we are machines. That’s what George Gurdjieff used to say again and again, that man as he exists is a machine. He offended many people, because nobody likes to be called a machine. Machines like to be called gods; then they feel very happy, puffed up. Gurdjieff used to call people machines, and he was right. If you watch yourself you will know how mechanically you behave.

http://www.pomyc.org/blog-details/55

The exact quote by Gurdjieff is worth reading.

Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" dealt with this theme in an extraordinary way. He created a character who was going mad because he felt he was living among robots. At last, his character finds an artist that had a "light" in him, a soul, and the character decides everything is ok. At this point Kurt Vonnegut inserts himself into the narrative (which struck me as extraordinary) and says that he decided not to kill himself because he wrote this story (his mother committed suicide.) This book also helped me become more self-aware.

dfxm12onMar 26, 2021

Fiction, yes. I've recently read and recommend Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami (which in a way is a blend of sci fi and fantasy), Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, and Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.

On Deck, I have Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

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