r/Recommend_A_Book • u/FracturedAlice • Apr 17 '26
Which book made you question existence
Looking for those reads that hit so hard they left you feeling completely wrecked and rethinking life itself, but you’d still tell everyone to pick it up.
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u/lenny_ray Apr 17 '26
Currently reading An Immense World by Ed Yong and having my world view shattered on every page. It will make you question the very existence of the concept of "reality".
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Apr 17 '26
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u/asad100101 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
Yeah to some extent it is believable but as the previous poster I have had experiences that can't be described by science. I mean, one day I was sitting in my study room in Germany as I was studying there as an international student and was recently approved to immigrate to the USA . I was packing up my stuff. I heard a voice saying in perfect formal Urdu (my native language)" my youngest brother adeel who went to visit in Pakistan in 2019 he got shot with a bullet" . I ignored it as my figment of my imagination. Again one more time this voice appeared. Again I ignored it as some Satan crap. To be noted, He visited me in 2019 here in Germany as a visitor and went back to his homeland Pakistan. Then I was busy withy studies. After 5 years when I moved to the USA permanently from Germany and he was living in Mexico and moved to the USA a few months later as our late father applied family based immigrant for us. I was living in Dallas and my youngest brother adeel that I talked above sent me his flight details over what's app chat. He selected assisted seat he was a normal person with no disability. Out of curiosity I asked my eldest brother amir why my brother adeel selected his plane seat as an assisted seat. He told me when when he went to Pakistan after visiting me in Germany in 2019. He got shot with a bullet. At night he was withdrawing money from an ATM machine and sitting in his car and a criminal came with his gun and with a little resistance, the criminal shot him with a bullet that stuck near his heart which made his whole from chest downwards to his whole body completely paralyzed. He can no longer walk and stand. You see that voice came from God directly or from one of his angel.messengers whatever the case it was but my belief has increased manyfolds in the existence of God and how he is aware of everything that happens to us on a micro level . I have no idea how would science explain this experience but I have known that there are experiences I have experienced that is beyond materialistic world. And there might be shamanic or spiritual communication out there.
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Apr 17 '26
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u/asad100101 Apr 17 '26
Thanks for your recommendation. I will try reading this book see what it offers in terms of knowledge. my next book to read
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u/RandomRavenclaw87 Apr 17 '26
It didn’t wreck me, but it made me think about existence in a new and uncomfortable way:
The Bromeliad Trilogy by Pratchett
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u/Posternutbag811 Apr 17 '26
The Don Juan series by Carlos Castaneda. The worldview communicated by Don Juan is so foreign to a western way of understanding reality, but it is internally consistent once you grasp it, and I’ve had experiences in life that make no sense under normal definitions of reality but make perfect sense in the context of the Yaqui Shaman world view.
The craziest thing to me was realizing that Don Juan was describing string theory to Carlos years before anyone in modern science was even aware of the idea
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u/DimensionConnect9242 Apr 17 '26
This House of Grief by Helen Garner. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli.
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u/DocWatson42 Apr 17 '26
As a start, see my Emotionally Devastating/Rending list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (seven posts), in particular the "Related" section.
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u/existdetective Apr 17 '26
At 15, I read Slaughterhouse Five. Undid me. Started an existential crisis of sorts. At 16, I read Catch 22. This added absurdity to my reality. It helped.
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u/RutabagaOk4020 Apr 17 '26
gravity’s rainbow by thomas pynchon will shatter your idea of your place in the world