Recommendations for works that influenced or impressed me

• 
  Das Glasperlenspiel

  AI-translated by Gemini 3 Flash I was deeply impressed by the complexity and multifaceted nature of the narrative and its characters. The way the book spans a life from beginning to end, and the poem describing that life, made me understand for the first time why people cherish poetry so much. The book truly touched and moved me—I can't say exactly why. For instance, it inspired me to start keeping a sporadic diary to get a better sense of how much I change over time.
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  Der Richter und sein Henker

  AI-translated by Gemini 3 Flash I'm a big Dürrenmatt fan and I think this is his best work. The contrast between an absolute, amoral nihilistic character and the policeman who is obsessed with him is brilliant. In particular, the question of how far he will go to achieve his life's goal fascinates me.
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  Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by A. Square

  This book impressively achieves two things, both inviting the reader to reconsider the limits of their perception: First, it is a satire of Victorian society; while I cannot judge the quality or accuracy of that satire, it is nonetheless fascinating to read a work aimed at a world that no longer exists. In this way the novel offers a new window onto a culture that is otherwise unintelligible to us, and it does so in an unconventional manner. The second achievement is that most of the story takes place in two‑dimensional space, thereby challenging the way we perceive reality. It vividly shows how unimaginable three‑dimensional space would be to a 2‑D creature, and, by extension, highlights our own difficulty in visualising dimensions beyond the familiar three.
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  Factfullness

  AI-translated with Gemini 3 Flash This book deeply impressed me because, like few others, it attempts to shake up the global societal picture and succeeds in doing so. One shouldn't misunderstand the book as "Everything is getting better, just keep it up" (as an example, the book mentions climate change, which is still highly relevant but has unfortunately faded from daily discussion (though things are happening there, like storage expansion)), but rather as a set of corrective lenses that (if one chooses to read it that way) first makes it possible to work purposefully on weak points. He also very decisively opposes the image of "We must help the poor in XY" and instead emphasizes their own perspective and, above all, outlook through anecdotes. The first few chapters drag a bit, especially if you already have some understanding of reading statistics, but after that, it's truly worth its weight in gold! In particular, it made me rethink the critique of capitalism (very common in my "milieu"). Capitalism can utilize economies of scale very effectively, even in the areas of infrastructure and quality of life. This isn't about "Manchester capitalism," and the book is no plea for capitalism per se, but it impressively shows how the power of the "current" system is underestimated in some things (as long as there are impulses like subsidies in the right direction and no *brutal* suppression). I definitely need to think more about this. A central element is always the proof that there is no "us" and "them," but rather a fluid transition in, for example, quality of life. I'd be curious to ask the authors how they can bear that child labor and terrible working conditions produce cheap clothes for us. I assume the answer would be something like, "Of course it's terrible, but hopefully it's just a short intermediate stage that these countries pass through faster than our own countries did." And if that's really true, it still doesn't justify buying cheap clothes (one could accelerate the process even more), but hopefully it will reduce the number of people in extreme poverty to near zero in the medium term. I notice I still have some dissonances between the book and my worldview (and also this text), but I will slowly work through them. By the way: I think the book overdoes it every now and then by lashing out at journalists and "the media."
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  The Annotated Turing

  This book makes Turing's original paper very accessible. It is extremely interesting to see the roots of a fundamental concept of computer science. Especially the differences between the 'original' Turing machines and Turing machines as used in my lectures were fascinating. The machines Turing is interested in are 'circle free', meaning in particular they never halt or get stuck in alternating writes but continue to write a number forever. For instance, a machine for ever writing pi. While the Turing machines I am used to are supposed to halt and solve algorithmic problems, instead of 'merely' computing numbers. The book showed the origins of lambda calculus and the historical backgrounds of these concepts (such as the people and the papers involved). It also touched on other foundations such as first-order logic and the difference between intuitionists and formalists. In contrast to all explanations of Turing's achievements, this provided an actual explanation. Not only do most other explanations leave out the transition between Turing machines and first-order logic and Turing's argumentation that Turing machines actually do what is considered as 'computing', but they also leave out that actually Alonzo Church was the first to show there are no general concepts to solve all algebraic problems. It also caused me to struggle with the concept of real numbers and their usefulness (as opposed to computable numbers) and the law of excluded middle. I am still struggling to regain my footing, but it definitely extended my grasp on what numbers actually are and how weird the continuum is.
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  A short history of nearly everything

  While it has been a while that I read this book, I still remember how impressed I was from the sheer range of topics covered but also how every seemingly dull scientific discipline appears as something thorougly interesting. I can really recommend this book both as a good read and to spark general interest in many topics.
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  While many essays listed in this book are not that interesting for the readers not familiar with British 20. century writers there are sill many many excellent and thoughtprovoking essays to be found: My country left or right, The lion and the unicorn, Antisemitism in Britain and Notes on Nationalism to name just a few. Often posing a different perspective on society and the life of the individual or interesting autobiographical details. I was especially interested in reading the Essays written about or during WWII in which George Orwells struggle on his relationship to Britain can be seen.
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  Horizon Zero Dawn

  AI-translated by Gemini 3 Flash I think what fascinated me most about it is the completely new media format for me. Although I have certainly played computer games from time to time, I had never played one that aimed to tell a story. Horizon Zero Dawn does this in an impressive way, in all its facets: language, facial expressions, clothing, environment, and weather. Additionally, you can freely decide what interests you: whether you want to learn more about the lifestyle of these people or the history of this person—or not. The storytelling is incredibly gripping and multi-layered; it manages very well to explain why the world in the game is the way it is. Even if the story itself becomes very improbable, as the game concept makes it necessary for "everything" to be achieved by a single person—namely the player's character. Horizon Zero Dawn is probably already a very good game of this type, which is why I was convinced to play it by a friend. Honestly, however, my fascination for this game stems largely from the fact that I was unfamiliar with this type of game. An equally good game that I play now would probably no longer fascinate me as much. I can recommend it to all people who are interested in new ways of telling stories.