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Comment by rocketpastsix | Hacker News Reader

It wasn't during college (I dropped out) but in 2020 I did the audio version of "How To Win Friends and Influence People" which had a profound impact on how I handled day to day conversations.

A few others:

The Simple Path to Wealth - JL Collins (changed my entire investment strategy)

Breath - James Nestor (something so routine but there is so much to learn)

A Short History of Everything - Bill Bryson (silly, but its a pretty large and encompassing look at various parts of life from the galaxy to the planet to cells)

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Ha! I came here to mention "How To Win Friends and Influence People" as well.

I read it more when I was around 38 or so, but it really helped me change how I interacted with people.

While it's ostensibly a book about sales, I took it as breaking down selling into the idea that if you get along with people and they like you, they will want to work with you. That can take the form of making more sales, but I took it as having people want to do more with you and be around you more.

And how does that happen? Kinda simple: be nice to people, be genuinely interested in them (even if their interests aren't your core ones, they still are often curious), and genuinely try to get to know people.

I took this as a great life lesson for making friends and getting along better with the whole world. And from that flows nice things. And if it's what you need/want, more sales. But it doesn't have to be about sales.

I always had a negative view of this book with such a silly title until I read 'The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life' and learned that not only did Buffet read the book but also went to great lengths in applying it to his daily life.

So I figured it must be worth a try and learned a few valuable lessons, even though some of them seem kind of obvious - with the benefit of hindsight.

The title is indeed a trigger for some people, and I’d encourage those to people to get over the title and just read 25 pages to see if it’s your thing.

> even though some of them seem kind of obvious

It may be obvious to you… but believe it or not, there are people who have never seen these things spelled out in plain language and who never discovered these lessons on their own. Such people are not to be disregarded, we all have different strengths and weaknesses.

I’ve not seen another book that really spells out how to make friends and keep them. Everyone is supposed to learn this in Kindergarten, but many do not.

The book is almost 100 years old. Some of the examples have not aged well unless you can be generous in your understanding of the times in which it was written. The examples are still very useful.

> 'It may be obvious to you… but believe it or not, there are people who have never seen these things spelled out in plain language and who never discovered these lessons on their own.'

Indeed, good points well made, what I meant was that I have been such a person and have been guilty of failings that, when I look back, should have been obvious at the time but were not, for whatever reason.

"be nice to people, be genuinely interested in them (even if their interests aren't your core ones, they still are often curious), and genuinely try to get to know people."

It's a truly sad comment on our society that so many people have to be taught to do this and effectively be bribed to do it (the bribe being in the form of getting friends and success) instead of it coming naturally.

I also question how "genuine" such interest is, when it's done by people looking for a success/friendship payoff. It seems more manipulative than anything to me.

I'll second the recommendation of Bryson's A Short History of Everything. The thing I liked most about that book was its depiction of truly exceptional people in the history of science.

I read How to Win Friends in school and it was quite impactful, especially as a socially inept kid in a small town.

It changed how I viewed social interactions and made me realise it’s just another skill you can work at, with guidance even.

This Bill Bryson book is REALLY good ! Kudos for mentionning it.

/me putting it next to my bed, for a rereading.

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