Ask Lemmy

'Discover What You Are Best At,' by Linda Gail.

Spent most of my life thinking I just hated working. Got the book and found a career I enjoyed.

If you can wake up on a rainy Monday and feel okay, you've solved most of life's problems.

The Xenogenesis trilogy (Liliths Brood) by Octavia Butler. It examines what it means to be human and how much of us can be changed before we're no longer humans anymore. It also made me examine how we treat other cultures/species through the lens of how the aliens treat the humans and how they are so convinced that their way is the right way that they don't even question it until it's forcibly shoved in their faces. It shows the ugly side to the violent human agitators while also eposing the ugliness of the peaceful alien "saviors".

There's also a side thread of connections are chemicals in our brain and we can get trapped by them and circumstance into a situation where we're not always sure we're happy/on the right side/have any agency.

They aren't long books and even years later I still think about them sometimes.

Empire of the Ants by Bernard Werber

This was the book that got me to stop hating books.

I didn't like reading as a child or teenager until I was forced to read this one for a mandatory book report in high school and really, really liked it. I don't know why, I don't even remember that much about the book, but it got me interested in science fiction and reading in general.

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

Honestly reading nietzsche in college was mind blowing for me. Started with “the gay science” and read like 3 more of his books in a row. Will probably reread his “genealogy of morals” again soon.

For the worse: I, Lucifer by Glenn Duncan. The eventual thesis stuck with me and changed the way I think about the world and my own relationship with the divine: That the only true way to show that you are an independent, free-willed entity is through perversity, intentionally making mistakes, doing things on purpose which you know are wrong. It's stuck with me, an invasive meme that I can't shake. I can't say it's made me a better person, but it's certainly made me more of one.

Shock for the Secret Seven. It's a kid's book that was given to me by my godfather. It was the book that made me fall in love with reading.

A comparatively mundane example, and possibly unremarkable to many, but I habe incredibly strong feelings about Spider Robinson's "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" and "Callahan's Lady" series. In particular, I read them during an extremely difficult point in my life, and the eponymous Law of Conservation of Pain and Joy completely changed me and my motivation in life.

Babel 17 from Samuel Delany. It introduces me to language sciences, human sciences, and then humanism. It switched my point of view on all sciences, and on people too. But for people it also come from one or two other shorter novels from the same author. It was in the same book though. It somehow came during the holidays between high school and university, so like a coming of age thing. I will always remember it.

Another one is not from a book but a video game. Kotor2. At some point, you are asked by a ghost to take position. If you don't, you are answered "apathy is death", and all ghosts, friends and foe, attack you. It was almost traumatic : I learned with this that sometimes you cannot be neutral, you must make a choice that will have consequences, and you will still have to endure the consequences. I will always remember this : apathy is death.

The glass bead game by Herman Hesse.

I grew up an intellectual in a family of people far less concerned with matters of the mind. Not bad people, just otherwise engaged.

A voracious reader since a young age, I had begun by my early teens to see connections between things that felt somehow strange, perhaps even wrong or oddly blasphemous. I felt like I didn’t understand things very well and that these connections were somehow a product of my ignorance. That I was perhaps guessing at something and getting it very wrong. I felt I had oversimplified a complex thing and although exploring those connections was always fun to do, I’d never speak of them.

The glass bead game thought me that my intuition was right, or at least shared by a number of people. That there is a fabric of from which reality is spun. These connections I was tracing are the product of the pattern recognition propensities of the human mind and as such they are a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

Is there a connection between The Art of Fuge and certain architecture? Yes there is, not due to some mystical thing I am ignorant of but because architecture is influenced by many things including nature, classical music, mathematics, art and music.

As a young person this image of human exploit and how it ties in with nature eventually weaving the two together into a harmonious whole was deeply satisfying and provided me with a feeling of sanctuary and belonging that lingers a still in my own work and in my art. It is a blueprint for my life.