Ask HN: What good books have you read lately?

Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke

Set in the near-ish future, a big asteroid comes whizzing into the solar system. Looks weird, so we investigate. It's a total page turner, and reads like an adventure/mystery. Highly recommended.

---------

The Malazan Book of the Fallen series - Steven Erikson

A fantasy series, set in a really unique setting. It's an epic fantasy series with a huge ensemble cast and a bunch of parallel plots that break a lot of the usual tropes. It's tough to describe, but if you like epic fantasy it's a must read. I'm on book five of ten and loving it.

I have found Google's Authors@Google playlist an excellent resource for finding new books to read. Even better, you can usually listen to the first 5 minutes or so of the talk and get a very reasonable idea whether you are interested, without investing too much of your time.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGGpadyh0wS589np9dre-...

For example, I found Amy Herman's "Visual Intelligence", it is pretty good (I am still reading it).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v_tn4nyjwE

"Clear Waters Rising" by Nicholas Crane. An account of his journey on foot across Europe--literally across Europe--from Cape Finisterre, Spain to Istanbul, Turkey. The route Mr Crane takes is particularly interesting: one day while looking at a physical map of Europe, he notices that the major mountain ranges of Europe (more or less) form a continuous chain across Europe--eg, the Pyrenees -> Alps -> Carpathian (+ Tatras). His path follows follows this chain.

There is some remarkable fiction coming out this season by some of the best:

Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am

Zadie Smith's Swing Time

Ian McEwan's Nutshell

Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad

Carl Hiassan's Razor Girl

Alan Moore's Jerusalem

Jonathan Lethem's A Gamber's Anatomy

Ha Jin's The Boat Rocker

T.C. Boyle's The Terranauts

Michael Chabon's Moonglow

Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger

I've got plenty of friends who never touch fiction because "it's not real". Preferring science, history, economics, biography and virtually anything else. But I think its obligatory at times. The soul requires it's own nourishment, if not more so than the body and the mind. Indulge yourself. If only because great writing will make your writing greater, as if by osmosis. But ultimately, because only fiction can uncover the truths that can't be revealed any other way ;)

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari

"The years of lyndon johnson" series by Robert Caro. Though it's a biography, it is really about how power is gained in the US political system. I'm on the third book right now, and I recommend them if you are interested in 20th century american history

Did Gustafson's "Swift Dam" set in a time 50 after the first swift dam catastrophically failed, wiping out horses farms and family in the valley below. Our family often went to the Birch Creek Campground below the dam nice family picnic.

Sid's brother is Wylie whose voice does the yodel in the Yahoo commercials. Their father, Rib Gustasfson was the vet for Pondera County and the Blackfeet Reservation and all around the Rocky Mountain Front. Rib also wrote a book called "Under the Chinook Arch"

As a side note, Pondera county is home to an amazing number of authors given its population. Not the least of which is Ivan Doig. There are about 14 nationally known.

Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim

As a software engineer, I've come to really love how good products are built and how to explore new markets. While I don't think it's a life-changing book, it's certainly a good read and I'd recommend it to any engineer that wants to be more product-focused (also Inspired, Creativity Inc, and Zero to One)

Rework By Jason Friend & DHH / Basecamp. Ignored it for quite some time now, but got hooked to it, and finished it up in a weekend.

Exercises in Programming Style - Cristina Videira Lopes

The same simple programming problem (term frequency) solved using 33 different programming styles.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L2EAVAW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

I've been really taking my time with this one, lots of annotations, lots of re-reading passages and pages.

I'm not done yet, but what I've read so far has really spoken to me and provided a lot of clarity where I previously had trouble filling in the blanks.

Wise Guy - Nicholas Pileggi This is the chronicle of the life of Henry Hill, a half-Irish half-Sicilian kid from Brooklyn, New York who rose through the ranks of the Mafia back in it's heydays. The most entertaining book concerning organized crime that I've ever read, by far (these guys really had it all. they were both feared and respected. they could quite literally do whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it and they need not have any fear of reprisal from anything or anybody). Also, this is the book that gave birth to the Martin Scorsese movie GoodFellas -- but as is so often the case, the book is much better than the movie. Given that the movie is fantastic, that is really saying something IMHO.

Manual of Photography: 10th Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilford_Manual_of_Photography

The Last Days Of Night - Graham Moore - It's historical fiction about Westinghouse, Bell, Edison and Tesla and the fight for the light bulb and electricity. Fast fun read and rather interesting.

Here's the best books I've read in the last year or so:

>> Computer History & biographies:

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, Michael Lewis

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman

Machines of Loving Grace, by John Markoff

The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson

Ghost in the Wires, by Kevin Mitnick

Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft, by Paul Allen

Creativity, Inc, by Ed Catmull (reading)

>> Startups:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

The Founder's Dilemmas, Noam Wasserman

The Launch Pad, by Randall Stross

>> Other books:

Trilogy: Off to Be the Wizard (series), by Scott Meyer

Search Inside Yourself, Chade-Meng Tan

Joy on Demand, Chade-Meng Tan (reading)

zero to one - Peter thiel - good read

old man and the sea - Hemingway - good read

sapiens (currently reading) - Yuval Noah Harari - fantastic till now

What if (still reading) - Randall Munroe - an interesting read

The End of Error: Unum Computing - John L. Gustafson

https://www.crcpress.com/The-End-of-Error-Unum-Computing/Gus...

"A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara. It follows the story of a group of friends over 30+ years. I haven't been this gripped by a book in a while. Difficult subject matter and hard to read a times but it rewards you for your effort.

Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs

Fifth Season - N. K Jemisin.

Epic Fantasy, set in a alternative Earth, where the magic system works on Earthquakes. Won the Hugo this year, which is why I read it. Breaks a lot of core writing rules, and tries hard to do things that are rarely seen in the genre.

A book of Garrison Keillor short stories from early in his career, called (I think) "Happy to Be Here". Pure hilarious americana, where everyone is fleecing everyone else all the time but they're always polite.

Guns, germs and steel - Jared Diamond

History and evolution of man kind. Hihgly recommended.

Last three great books I've read are:

$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

Didn't read it lately but Consilience by W.O Wilson (Nobel Prize winner) is definitely worth a look if you're not too distressed by having your sacred cows butchered.

"Everybody Writes" Not that I follow all the great advice yet but I aspire to get there someday. I have it on my shelf next to "Elements of Style."

"Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World" It was a bit over the top but I'd recommend reading it anyway.

Anything by Charlie Stross, especially Accelerando (great futurism)

Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz (reading this book WILL make you feel like you're on drugs)

The pleasure of finding things out- Richard Feynman

The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin My first introduction to non-western sci-fi. Intriguing concept and very good translation.

Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson

The vital question

The Sovereign Individual. Highly recommended.

The Compass Rose - Ursula Le Guin

Witch Piss - Sam Pink

1Q84 - Haruki Murakami

Irwin Shaw "Rich man, Poor man"

Sapiens

Mastery

The Geography of Genius

Ready Player One

From a recent HN comment, a list, some authors, and some guidelines, largely based on books which radically changed my thinking.

Currently: Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History (1994), and Manfred Weissenbacher, Sources of Power (2009). Both detail the role and impact of energy through world history. The latter draws strongly on the first, both are exceedingly well documented. TL;DR: coal changed much, oil changed everything.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/3...

http://www.worldcat.org/title/before-oil-the-ages-of-foragin...

http://www.worldcat.org/title/oil-age-and-beyond/oclc/837625...

James Burke's books Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, and their accompanying television series, were a profound introduction to the history of technology, science, ideas, and philosophy. Though 30+ years old, they remain highly current and relevant.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/connections/oclc/4494136

https://www.worldcat.org/title/day-the-universe-changed/oclc...

Jeremy Campbell's Grammatical Man (1984) introduced the concepts of information theory and their deep, deep, deep interconnections to a tremendous number of interconnected systems, many not explored within his book. Darwin's The Origin of Species, James Gleick's Chaos, and many of the works of Santa Fe Institute members, including John C. Holland, J. Doyne Farmer, Geoffrey West, W. Brian Arthur, David Krakauer, and Sander van der Leeuw, continue these themes.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man-information-e...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/chaos-making-a-new-science/oc...

William Ophuls' Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977) is perhaps the best, most comprehensive, shortest, and most readable exposition of the fact, reality, dynamics, and interactions of limits on the present phase of fossil-fuel fed economic growth I've found. This is a book I recommend not only for the message, but the author's clarity of thought and exposition, his meticulous research, exquisite bibliographical notes, and, given the nearly 30 years elapsed, testability numerous of his predictions, some failed, yes, others uncannily accurate. Rather more the latter. In a similar vein, William R. Catton's Overshoot looks at the ecological dynamics in more depth, with much wisdom, the writings of Richard Heinberg cover the ground of limits fairly accessibly and more recently. Vaclav Smil in numerous books addresses technical factors of the profound nature of the past 250 years, and implications for the future. Meadows, et al, in Limits to Growth set off much of the post-1970 discussion (though they're hardly the first to raise the question -- it dates to Seneca the Elder),

https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/overshoot-the-ecological-basi...

https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Aheinberg%2C+richard&a...

https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Asmil%2C+vaclav&qt...

Though hardly pessimistic, Daniel Yergin's book The Prize (and TV series) impressed upon me more than any other just how much petroleum specifically changed and transformed the modern world. Though intended largely as laudetory and championing the oil industry by the author, my read of it was exceptionally cautionary. The impacts on business, everyday life, politics, wars, industry, and transport, and the rate at which they occurred, are simply staggering. You can continue this exploration in Vaclav Smil's Energy in World History (1994) (I've recommended Smil independently elsewhere), and a rare but profound two-volume set I'm currently reading, Manfred Weissenbacher's Sources of Power: How energy forges human history (2009). The shear physicality of this book speaks to the message -- it's divided into five parts: 1) Foraging Age (6 pages), 2) Agricultural Age (156 pp), 3) Coal Age (160 pp), 4) Oil Age (296 pp), and 5) Beyond the Oil Age (142 pp). That is, the ~2 million years of pre-agricultural existence are little more than a footnote, the 8,000 years of agriculture roughly equal to the 150 years of coal, and the 100 years of petroleum use roughly twice either. The oil and post-oil ages comprise their own volume. Yergin followed up with The Quest, continuing the search for oil, though I've been less impressed by it.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/prize-the-epic-quest-for-oil-...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/before-oil-the-ages-of-foragi...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/oil-age-and-beyond/oclc/83762...

Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is among the most-cited (and most incorrectly cited), least-read books of high influence I'm aware of, outside religious texts (and perhaps it is a religious text to some…). The author's message has been exceptionally shaped and manipulated by a powerful set of forces, quite often utterly misrepresenting Smith's original intent. Reading him in his own words, yourself, is strongly recommended. I'd also recommend scholarship particularly by Emma Rothschild and Gavin Kennedy, though also others, on Smith. Contrast with the portrayal by the propaganda disinformation front of the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network / so-called Foundation for Economic Education, and much of the modern American Libertarian movement (von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Hazlett, Rothbard, and more recently, Norberg). Contrast The Invisible Hand (1964), a compilation of essays published by Libertarian house Regnery Press in 1966, at the beginning of the rise in public use of Smith's metaphor to indictate mechanism rather than an expression of the unknown.

There are numerous editions of Smith, I believe the Glasgow is frequently cited by Smith scholars: https://www.worldcat.org/title/glasgow-edition-of-the-works-...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-sentiments-adam-smit...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/adam-smith-and-the-invisible-...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/adam-smiths-lost-legacy/oclc/...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/invisible-hand-a-collection-o...

I'd like to put in recommendations on technology specifically, but am still searching for a good general text. The material's covered somewhat in the chaos and complexity recommendations above (Campbell et al), though I'd add Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies. Charle's Perrow has several excellent books including Normal Accidents and Organizing America. I'd like to reference something concerning Unix, Linux, and programming, perhaps Kernighan and Pike's The Unix Programming Environment, Linus Torvalds' Just for Fun, Richard Stallman's The GNU Manifesto, and Steve McConnel's Code Complete. The O'Reilly book Unix Power Tools also encapsulates much the strength of the Unix toolset. All these are somewhat dated.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/collapse-of-complex-societies...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/normal-accidents-living-with-...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/organizing-america-wealth-pow...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-programming-environment/...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-power-tools/oclc/5238168...