| I alluded to this in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865350 , but want to respond to your comment about reading "making you think." I had a major breakthrough in my creative (programming, music) life when I realized that my most intensely creative periods were fueled by reading. What would happen is that I would work tirelessly drafting ideas, hacking or making music until I burned out and got very depressed. I stayed like this and, through some accident, started reading as a way to pass time. Before I got through more than one or two books, I'd have forgotten the depression and be back to creating stuff again. Now, I try to make time for reading daily (instead of binging/purging). It helps me avoid burnout on creative projects and gives me new ideas all the time. For the past two years I've been reading a handful of authors and will recommend them instead of specific books: HP Lovecraft, Jorge Luis Borges, Haruki Murakami, Philip K Dick, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Franz Kafka. I also very much enjoyed a book called Science and Society in the 16th and 17th Centuries that I picked up at a college library booksale. I don't recall the author, unfortunately. |