Life on the Mississippi

What Hacker News says

1. jwardenAug 2022
   Mark Twain wrote a lot about the Army Corps of Engineering’s work on the Mississippi, as well as many other wonderful facts about this river and his experience as a steam boat pilot, in Life on the Mississippi, a uniquely informative and entertaining book.
   thread
2. bryanrasmussenFeb 2022
   In no particular order, except that #1 is #1.

   1. Adventures of Huckelberry Finn

   2. Little, Big

   3. Winter's Tale

   4. Titus Groan

   5. Gormenghast

   6. Titus Alone

   7. Dune

   8. The manuscript found in saragossa

   9. The Three Musketeers

   10. A Scanner Darkly

   11. The Man in the High Castle

   12. Do Androids dream of Electronic Sheep

   13. Ubik

   14. Valis, basically almost every book by Phil Dick.

   15. Life on the Mississippi.

   16. The Garden of Forking Paths

   17. Dhalgren

   18. The Gods of Pegāna, basically all the fantasy work of Dunsany.

   19. The Lathe of Heaven. Anything by LeGuin.

   20. Their Eyes Were Watching God

   21. The Master and Margarita

   22. The Gulag Archipelago

   Show morethread
3. CalChrisDec 2021
   Must read?

   1984 and Animal Farm.

   Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It.

   Emma and Pride and Prejudice.

   Iliad, Odyssey and first half of the Aeneid.

   A Room With A View and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

   The Great Gatsby, Call of the Wild and Age of Innocence.

   War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

   Don Quixote.

   Show morethread
4. NzenFeb 2021
   You might enjoy the 'Two ways of seeing a river' passage [0] from Mark Twain's _Life on the Mississippi_ which treats the same idea.

   [0] I could not find the passage in Project Gutenberg's copy, though I found it reproduced here https://www.thoughtco.com/two-ways-of-seeing-a-river-by-mark...

   thread
5. 5lettersJun 2020
   When I've needed to laugh I've read and reread:

   Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" and "Roughing It" as well as many short stories, esp. "My Watch", "Political Economy", "Journalism in Tennessee"

   Also short stories from others: J.S. Perelman's "Strictly From Hunger", Alex Atkinson's "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You"

   thread
6. BalgairDec 2019
   Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi has a good bit in it on the perils and triumphs of the Mississippi River Boat Pilots. Their special status on the ante-bellum Mississippi has a lot of parallels to today's tech workers and the challenges you all face. I'll spoil it a bit and say that things did not end up well for the pilots. Techies would be wise to heed their lessons.

   Chapters 14 and 15 contain the majority of the lessons of the pilots:

   https://www.gutenberg.org/files/245/245-h/245-h.htm#linkc14

   Show morethread