Ask IH: Which piece of literature changed your life?
For me it’s David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech, titled This Is Water:(http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html) Mind-altering and humbling!
You must also have a piece of literature, or a speech that you keep coming back to, over and over for inspiration, or a reminder of what really matters. What is it?
Let the rest of us know in the comments!
Reading Ishikawa Takuboku's poetry in college had an effect on me for sure. The sheer amount of despair he conveyed at his "failure" was poignant considering the fact that his work is so widely read a century later. Actually, so did a number of other poets, including Emily Dickenson, and other classics.
For prose, it's probably old school American sci-fi like Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Dick, Niven, Zelazny, etc.
Your One Word by Evan Carmichael.
I would say it was the book that caused me to completely pivot my career and go from a secure job with a six-figure salary into the startup world and "indie hacking". I've yet to bring in a dollar of revenue but I'm already 10x happier.
Hey Caitlin, thanks for sharing that book. Just added it to my list. And congrats for carrying thru with the career pivot!
And I have to add ‘A Million Miles in a Thousand Years’ by Donald Miller. This book is still making me think, several months after finishing it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1999475.A_Million_Miles_in_a_Thousand_Years
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I’ll have to check those out! Thanks