Cosmos

1. Animal Farm by George Orwell 2. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes [1] 3. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley 4. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette Mccurdy 5. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris 6. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe [2] 7. Cosmos by Carl Sagan 8. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins [3] 9. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson 10. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander [4] 11. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 12. Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan [5][6][7] 13. Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076596 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452253 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48326741 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539535 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49751771 [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49740712 [7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739256

"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan - that book was a life changer for me and has been with me ever since.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Cosmos by Carl Sagan It really opened my mind to the quest for knowledge being its own noble pursuit.

I personally have an enormous debt from my perception of the world to Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It's not simply a world view absent of supernatural forces. Yes, it is that, but at the same time it is much more. It's a world of discovery. It's a world of curiosity. It's a world of wonder and imagination. It's a world of exploration. And the way to properly search for questions is first to stop pretending we already have all the answers, like religion does. I find almost every religious comment and answer so... reductionistic, so simplistic, so pompous, so pretentious, it kind of kills the mood of discovery and curiosity.

The Art of Creative Writing by Lajos Egri ended up playing a huge role a decade after I read it in how I approached sales and marketing. From a more theoretical perspective Cosmos by Sagan had a huge impact on how I view life's big questions.

Getting More - Stuart Diamond. I still think this is the best book on the art of negotiation. Getting Things Done - David Allen. If you have adult ADHD like me, and you haven't read this, it's the first system that's really worked for productivity for me. Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl. Living Buddha, Living Christ - Thich Nhat Hanh. Cosmos - Carl Sagan. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin. The One who Walks Away from Omelas - U.K. LeGuin. Wild Seed - Octavia Butler. The Heike Monogatari - (tr. Helen Craig McCullough) “The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.” If you need a comparison. this is the Japanese historical equivalent of Game of Thrones combined with a bit of MacBeth. The rise and fall of two shogunate families, and an analysis of the tragic flaws of character that brought their fall about. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad.…

Professionally by adding to soft skills - Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High Personally - by helping me appreciated science better - Cosmos: Carl Sagan As a side note - a lot of the startup stuff is learned on the job and by talking to others about their experiences. Doing a side project can be a good way to try out and you will be forced to think about marketing, sales, etc. Shameless plug: http://hackernewsbooks.com/ - is what books the HN community comments on, maybe you find something interesting there

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Fiction: 1. Life of Pi - Yann Martel 2. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas : An awesome closeup of revenge 3. The complete Sherlock Holmes series : 'nuff said. Non fiction: 1. Cosmos - Carl Sagan : I fell in love with science post-reading this book. 2. October Sky - Homer Hickham : A real life story of how a group of boys in a backwater town build a rocket that changes their lives. 3. Chariots of the Gods - Erich Von Daniken - A real mind bender, even if you choose not to agree with his ideas.

1984 - turned me from a die hard socialist to a rabid anti authoritarian. Cosmos - helped me fall in love with Physics, and the sciences. Tao Teh Ching - If I could tell you how it influenced me, we'd both have the wrong impression.

It is hard to say what my favorite book is. But the book that impacted my life most was Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Read it. My favorite authors and playwrights are (in no meaningful order) Michael Lewis, Carl Sagan, Siddhartha Gautama, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, Patrick Marber, Arthur Miller, and Shakespeare.