The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the sea - Hemmingway - so many things, with every reread I find something new. The Heart of the Buddhas Teaching - Thich Nhat Hanh, useful prayers, concepts for understanding and dealing with life and a moral compass for going through it. The Way of Zen - Alan Watts, opened my eyes to different forms of religious experience Also a lot of psychology and philosophy books in undergrad were foundational to my thinking. The Moral Animal, the Moral Landscape, The Blank Slate, The Republic and Plato’s writings on Socrates, Tao te Ching, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, the Tanakh and parts of the Talmud, but many of these were more academic, still holistically they have shaped my thinking and moral compass.

The old man and the sea

For some reason i can't get the stranger, Camus out of my head. I had it on my desk for at least 10 years at one company as a sign that I never quite fitted in there, but I never felt like I fitted anywhere else either. I enjoy books you can easily read in a single sitting as you could really get into a zone with the story. Old man and the sea and several Iain Banks books fell into the same category.

Heart of darkness is very short and fits into those great books like L'Etranger and the Old Man and the Sea that can be usefully read in an afternoon and give back way more than they demand from you. Republic is quite long but very approachable and I really enjoyed it. Again the mythical man month still holds true and it very readable. It's interesting for anyone interested in computing history as well as for it's key points on management.

Old Man and the Sea. Was forced to read it in high school and promptly forgot it. Read it again and it's amazing. A short but big story about wants vs. needs with a surprising but inevitable ending. Before that, The Great Gatsby. Same thing - forced to read earlier, then decided to read again. I missed so much about it the first time around. It's kind of sad how education can tarnish classics in this way. To re-iterate another commenter, Code by Prezold is surprisingly good (based on first few dozen pages). I had low expectations based on what seemed like hype, but so far it's holding up. It reminds me of the way that James Burke in his series Connections wove what seemed to be entirely disconnected technological threads together.

+1 "The old man and the sea"

1. La peste (Albert Camus) - entertaining if you're into French existentialism 2. Linked (Barabasi) - insightful and useful to understand that most phenomenon we see in real life follow a power law and what that means 3. Leonardo da Vinci (Walter Isaacson) - surprising how little of da Vinci's real personality is reflected in his modern image 4. Matrix computations – third edition (Gene Golub, Charles van Loan) - good read if you're into linear algebra 5. Giving effective feedback (Harvard business review) - useful for getting an understanding on how to handle human interaction 6. The old man and the sea (Ernest Hemingway) - enjoyed it a lot, a reflection of Hemingway's romantic spirit. Also, a quick read. 7. Screwjack (Hunter S. Thompson) - didn't resonate with me although I am a fan of existentialism 8. Sun and steel (Yukio Mishima) - raw and intimate. before reading this book I'd recommend reading up on Mishima's life 9. Stranger than fiction (Chuck Palahniuck) - somewhat entertaining, more so because it served as a glimpse into Palahniuck's creative process…

A lot of Hemmingway is deeply touching work. I found both The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom The Bell Tolls to be excellent studies of human nature.

To continue the Ishiguro and Hemingway theme, two of the books I enjoyed most this year were The Buried Giant (Ishiguro) and The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway).

zero to one - Peter thiel - good read old man and the sea - Hemingway - good read sapiens (currently reading) - Yuval Noah Harari - fantastic till now What if (still reading) - Randall Munroe - an interesting read

I like this question for its introspective impact. It is hard not to interpret the question as "If you could recommend one book, which would it be?" My answer isn't one that I would necessarily call a "must read." Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea was simply the right book at the right time for me. It was more about what it led me to discover through more reading and more books than the book itself.

Some old that I have re-read, some new, all worth your time: Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway IQ84 - Haruki Murakami The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch On Writing - Stephen King When Bad Things Happen To Good People - Harold Kushner Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger Notes To Myself - Hugh Prather

Harmony Silk Factory - Tash Aw Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdi Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway

Maverick - Ricardo Semler (For inspiration) The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemmingway(For enjoying the process)