
Ask HN: Most influential books you read growing up - hexagonc
While reading the post, &quot;The Domain-Driven Design Paradox&quot; (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13520209), I was reminded of a book that I enjoyed as a kid, called <i>The Paradoxicon</i> [1] by Nicholas Falletta.  This was where I learned about the works of M.C. Escher and Moebius strips.  I didn&#x27;t originally own this book; instead, I had checked it out from the library.  I eventually bought the book in college out of nostalgia and was hoping to thumb through it again after reading the article above, only to realize it was not on my bookshelf.  I was considering buying it again and was reminded of all the other technical books that were influential to me as I was growing.  What technical books did you love as you grew up?  Bonus points if you have the title as an adult.  Even more points if it is the same book that you grew up with.<p>[1] - www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;2521223.The_Paradoxicon
======
colanderman
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Things_Work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Things_Work)

Probably the single most influential on my technical education. Each page made
me feel like I was inside the machines.

~~~
hexagonc
I had this book, too. It was given to me as a Christmas present along with the
_Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual_ [1].

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Next-Generation-
Technical/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Next-Generation-
Technical/dp/0671704273/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=00RWBJQRSR5ABP0B6R75)

~~~
qubex
Again, yup! To this day I can remember that warp coil plasma injectors work
their way up to a maximum frequency of 50Hz at about Warp 8 and then merely
keep increasing warp plasma flow. ;)

------
tmaly
I had a few books growing up that I came across that I really enjoyed.

Getting Started with Electronics was a Radio Shack book I owned that I used to
learn the basics of circuits.

Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman was a book I came across back in high school
that opened my eyes more to self teaching / learning and curiosity.

Later on in college I came across How to Solve it by Polya that opened my eyes
up to ways to approach problem solving.

I also stumbled on Thinking as a Science by Henry Hazlitt which had a great
approach to learning something new.

~~~
hexagonc
_Getting Started with Electronics_ \-- wow! I think I read that one as a kid,
as well. I grew up in the eighties so Radio Shack was still (I think) a good
place to buy electronic components and equipment. I remember the electronics
kits and educational books that they had. A lot of the Radio Shack electronics
books were printed on graph paper and looked like they were taken directly
from an engineer's lab notes, informal font style and all. As a kid, I
remember being bemused by this style since I had not seen it used anywhere
else.

~~~
tmaly
I still have quite a few of those smaller books printed on the graph paper. I
had a lot more fun building circuits compared to seeing kids today stuck on
mobile phone.

~~~
hexagonc
It's just so sad. I like gadgets as much as anyone and consider myself a
technology enthusiast, but there's got to be a way to engage kids on
smartphones other than games. One of my on-again-off-again side projects has
been to create an Android app that allows kids to create their own simple
programs and games for their smartphones without needing a computer.

------
theoneinskane
Design for the real world by Victor Papanek. It was recommend reading for my
design & technology GCSE course and it had a profound affect on the way I
thought about design, form, function and just the holistic way in which we
should try to live.

------
SBCRec
Rich dad poor dad.

It got me thinking pro actively about money, paraphrasing "its not I CANT
afford it, but HOW can I afford it".

~~~
chatmasta
I came here to say the same.

To be clear: there is a _lot_ wrong with this book. I find the title to be
abrasive and not reflective of the value of the content inside the book. The
authors also never established any real credibility of domain expertise. The
book reads a lot like a Malcom Gladwell version of financial education.

The book's strength is also it's weakness: it presents lessons as simplified
parables without considering much nuance. For me as a young reader, this was
valuable. Now, I'm not sure I would get as much value out of it because I
would not be able to get past the many contradictions and flawed logic. But
perhaps I wouldn't be able to read it critically if I had never read it in the
first place.

I don't even remember the specific lessons. But I remember it providing many
moments of clarity for my young mind to internalize.

------
elyrly
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors - by Piers Paul Read

changed my whole perspective on life and jump started my love for reading

~~~
RUG3Y
That was a really great book.

------
BigAl
Godel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)

A friend of mine introduced it to me at school and we were both hooked. I
recently bought it again as I wanted a copy for my kids!

------
rijoja
Don't remember what books I read as a kid really but some book on political
philosophy really messed with my mind that and some Swedish books on computer
design and similar stuff. Not the same after that. Used to spend a lot of time
at the library. But I have fond memories from the disc world series.

------
qubex
_The Computational Beauty of Nature_ (1997) by William Flake is the book that
cemented my fascination with computation, computability, and computer science
as having something fundamental to say about the physical universe in which we
live.It probably sounds banal to all of you in this age but for a 16 year old
steeped in high school physics and this mysterious ’calculus’ problems with
their elegant closed form solutions the idea of the amount of actual
calculating required to figure something out being relevant was... amazing.

------
laughfactory
Not nearly as deep as everyone else, but I read all the Tom Swift books. And
the Robotech books. These opened my imagination and made me think of the
possibilities.

------
hexagonc
I'll start by posting my own list of influential technical books:

 _The Paradoxicon_ [1] by Nicholas Falletta. As described in question above.

 _Computers and the Imagination_ by Clifford A. Pickover [2] - This book is
filled with mathematical and computer related curiousities! I learned about
fractals, and chaos, computer generated art and poetry and a whole bunch of,
at time, interesting mathematical trivia. This is probably the first book that
got me seriously interested in computer programming. This was basically an
activity book for mathematics and computers.

 _Methods of Logic_ by W.V. Quine[3] - This stimulated my interest in symbolic
logic and symbolic computation. I didn't read the whole book but I read enough
to write a program on my HP-48 GX graphicing calculator to simplify symbolic
propositional logic statements.

 _Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology_ by
Steven Levy [4] - This was my first exposure to celluar automata in the form
of John Conway's Game of Life. This books also inspired me to write a Game of
Life program on my HP-48 GX.

 _God and the New Physics_ by Paul Davies [5] - I learned about the big bang
theory and singularities and how the universe could exist without being
created from this book. This may be the single most influential book I've ever
read. It spurted my interest in physics and cosmology and was probably single-
handedly responsible for my loss of religion.

 _Flim-Flam!_ by James Randi [6] - This is the book that made me a skeptic.
Before reading this book around 6th grade, I was a hardcore believer in the
occult. In fact, I had already read the Uri Geller book by Puharich [7] and
happened to find this book in the same occult section of the library.

 _The Mind_ by John Rowan Wilson [8] - My 5th grade teacher happened to have
this book in her classroom and let me borrow it. I had a hard time giving it
back and decades (well, maybe one decade) later I somehow managed to track it
down and buy it again. The book is from the 1960s, but there are some really
good illustrations in it and I learned about Grey Walter and his robot
tortoises from this book.

 _Creative Sciencing: Ideas and Activities for Teachers and Children_ by
Alfred Devito [9] - This book is just awesome! My mom was a teacher when I was
growing up and I remember finding this on the bookshelf that we had at home.
There are lots of very fun science projects in this book. I won't claim to
have done very many of them, but my favorite was the "rubber-band mobile"
[10]. Although I love technology and gadgets and computers, it still saddens
me that the desire for physical experimentation has waned in kids these days.

There were definitely other technical books that I loved but these are the
ones that I think were the most influential as far as my career choices and
outlook on life. They are not necessarily the best in their class and most are
outdated now.

[1] - www.goodreads.com/book/show/2521223.The_Paradoxicon

[2] - [https://www.amazon.com/Computers-imagination-Visual-
adventur...](https://www.amazon.com/Computers-imagination-Visual-adventures-
beyond/dp/0312061315/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485795792&sr=1-1&keywords=computers+and+the+imagination)

[3] - [https://www.amazon.com/Methods-Logic-Willard-Orman-
Quine/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Methods-Logic-Willard-Orman-
Quine/dp/0674571762/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485795820&sr=1-1&keywords=methods+of+logic)

[4] -
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/737831.Artificial_Life](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/737831.Artificial_Life)

[5] -
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263006.God_and_the_New_Ph...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263006.God_and_the_New_Physics)

[6] -
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/662277.Flim_Flam_](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/662277.Flim_Flam_)

[7] - find it yourself, I'm not providing links to this trash!

[8] -
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1135687.The_Mind](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1135687.The_Mind)

[9] - [https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Sciencing-Activities-
Teacher...](https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Sciencing-Activities-Teachers-
Children/dp/B002FCNJC2/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485793711&sr=1-7&keywords=creative+sciencing)

[10] - take a spool of thread and push a rubber band through the hole in its
center, allowing the ends of the rubber band to protrude from both ends of the
spool. On one end, slide a short matchstick through the rubber band loop, thus
preventing the rubber from being pulled all the way through the spool. Create
a washer out of hard bar soap or candle wax and carve a grove along its flat
disk side. On the other end of the spool, thread the remainig rubber band loop
through the soap washer and hold it in place with another match stick,
allowing the match stick to settle into the grove that was cut in the soap
washer. You now have a spool of thread with a rubber band threaded through the
middle and held in place by a matchstick on one end and a soap washer and
another match stick on the other. The matchstick on the soap washer acts as a
key for winding up the rubber band, which itself acts like a spring. After
winding the key up for 10 or 20 turns, place it on a table or any other flat
surface. As the tension unwinds the rubber band, it also rotates the spool,
causing the entire contraption to move.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
Awesome selection. Thank you!

------
telebone_man
How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie

I've always thought the title is a bit off putting, and to some the points are
common sense.

But I find myself referring back to it for advice on how to handle a
particular situation with a friend, colleague or client.

That's why I nicknamed it 'The Good Book'. :)

------
fratlas
The Power of One (Children's version).

~~~
gadders
I read the adult version as a teenager. Awesome book.

------
thenormal
Dostoevski (all of him)

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probinso
Calvin and Hobbes

