Armor
Felix wanted to disappear. So he joined the armored infantry regiments invading the Bug home world. How long can the Engine in his mind beat the odds against survival?
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- This list of books may sum up my entire personhood, some I read at a young age.
Thinking Fast and Slow. After you read it take a course on statistics & probability.
The Art of Strategy
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
Armor by John Steakley Great book of fiction, helped me understand PTSD.
Read a lot of Asimov, robot series, foundation and short stories starting with The Last Question.
Jules Verne
Mark Twain, various stories but particularly the Diary of Adam & Eve
The Jungle Book by Kipling
Lost Horizon
Robinson Crusoe
Dune Series
Enders Game and sequels.
The Odyssey
The Count of Monte Cristo
Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card because it helped me understand that a cultures internally consumed fiction tells you about its values.
The book of Ecclesiastes. The book of Job. Leviticus 25. Galatians 5:22-23. Romans 2:15. Luke 18:1-8. The minor prophets. Bible generally if you want to deep dive, I did once upon a time.
25th chapter of the First Epistle of Clement of Rome
Aristotle, Socrates.
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Through Gates of Splendor Peace Child
Let Freedom Ring. I was working illegally (as I recall) as a 15 year old teenager for Sean Hannity (as a w2 employee through a proxy) when this book came out and along with my personal interactions with him at the time it helped clarify that he is not a person whose opinion holds any weight or even much thought. I remember at the time thinking it was unbearably poor reading.
Farmer Giles of Ham. If you've already read the hobbit, LOTR, etc. it helped me understand the framing of Tolkien way better.
Then read Pride and Prejudice through the lens of Farmer Giles of Ham. Calling it a romance novel is a disservice.
A James Bond Novel. I can't remember the name but there is one in particular that describes why he always acts so overtly and not spy-ish at all. The explanation helped me understand why you should throw yourself fully into work projects and helped me get over fear of mistakes. It made me a far better consultant as well while I was doing that.
So good they can't ignore you & deep work.
How to win friends and influence people.
Run Silent, Run Deep.
The Communist Manifesto
The Christian Manifesto
From Dawn to Decadence.
Romance of the 7 kingdoms.
Life together.
There's a big yellow book about the 6 day war, it's very detailed and blow by blow, I can no longer remember its name but it impressed upon me the chance and vagaries of war.
The Free Will Defense. Alvin Plantinga (and the various philosophic revuttals/conversations)
In Defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. William Lane Craig (and the various philosophic revuttals/conversations)
No little people. Francis Schaeffer
The Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich.
The Rails Way. 1st edition.
Javascript. The good parts.
Visual quick start guide to SQL.
^These three are probably the most important books I ever read, they probably changed the trajectory of my life more than any others on the list.
Midnight's Children. Rushdie
Roberts Rules of Order.
The four loves
Love languages
A once popular anti catholic tract called "The Trail of Blood".
Basically there is truth, falsehood, history, emotion and understanding in all these works, synthesizing these particular books made me who I am today. There are many others but these are the ones that come quickly to mind and whose titles I can still mostly recall.
- I will second these recommendations and add Armor by John Steakley.
It's a sci-fi book that made sense of PTSD for me.
- Armor - John Steakley (Sci-Fi)
- It's an even better book - especially if you have any familiarity with the genre of soldier's memoirs, which often follow a very similar trajectory, from pre-military life to boot camp to the first brush with combat, to the climactic battle.
The philosophy is somewhat different, but the spiritual and thematic successor to Starship Troopers, Armor by John Steakley[1], which I think is an underappreciated classic.
- Armor by John Steakley
- > His battalion had 250% turnover during the war,
Ye gods. That reminds of Felix, a character from the book Armor, by John Steakley.
> It turned out the Japanese had stuffed the hill with explosives
Well, there you go. Nothing is new under the sun. Beneath Hill 60 [0] is a movie about the Allies doing the same thing to the Germans in WWI. The explosion was heard in London, about 250km away. It killed around 10,000 Germans [1], but according to the movie had very little effect on the eventual outcome.
I thought it must have been pretty unique event. Apparently not.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_Hill_60 [1] https://www.military-history.org/articles/world-war-i-hill-6...
