Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives.
I’m an avid reader, if you haven’t guessed by now. So today’s question is What books have changed your life?
As always, post your answers in the comments below.
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Approaching Normal is the personal site of Larry Wright, a 30-something technologist. I live in the town of Normal, Illinois with my wife and three children.
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The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
Should I assume that the question meant to be, “What books have changed your life and why?” ;-)
In a nutshell, the book introduced and coined the phrase Meme as a way to help explain Evolution as something that not only happens throughout Biology but also in our modern cultural. It was through this book that my somewhat dormant interest in the Scientific process was revitalized. For those that know me well (friends, family, colleagues)... this revitalized interest has lead way to a lot of personal research in topics that I love to learn and talk about.
I consider The Selfish Gene to be one of my favorite books and a bit of a gateway drug. :-)
Robby, I have to be a me too on that.
The Selfish Gene satisfied a profound intellectual craving at a time when I was very curious and dissatisfied about how the natural world was presented and explained to me. This was before I had read other evolutionary biology texts and had only a cursory knowledge of Darwinian theory. It sparked a intense pursuit of my scientific interests and unpinned much of my world view at the time.
Tao Te Ching & Atlas Shrugged.
Also, The Joy of Cooking.
Atlas Shrugged was a gift to me at the right time in my life. Looking back it came during a turning point in my life and helped to shape the direction of my future.
I actually also changed some programming philosophies after having read “Code Complete” That was a great book for me and helped me to explain a frustration with legacy code that I had. I knew my frustration, but found trouble voicing it.
The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki.
I’ve wanted to read it for a few years, but never got around to ordering a copy until now.
In cut the story short – Rober Kijosaki “Poor dad, rich dad”