Ask HN: What is your 2019 book reading list? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your 2019 book reading list?

36 pointsjaoued18 comments

I’m planning to avoid self-help and business books and try to read much more fiction instead.

This is a big of a self plug but my goal for 2019 is to read more text books and read more concurrently.

I started a project directly for this purpose:

It allows me to keep track of where I am in the text book, even if I jump around through something called 'pagemarks'. Which are like bookmarks but for a region of the book.

It also supports annotations, comments, highlights, and flashcards which can be sync'd to Anki.

This way you can keep an important fact in your brain forever.

The goal is to reduce lower the "I'll probably forget it anyway" problem with reading and text books.

This way I'm more encourage to read complex material s the chance of me keeping it is higher.

I have had it with impractical books that give opinions masked as advice on tech and business.

I'll prefer fiction any day.

Recommendations?

I've been reading The Culture series lately! If you're into science fiction then it's a set of very enjoyable reads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_(series)

Pick one of the Discworld Series from Terry Prattchet. I have read it as a teen/tween, my wife discovered it a year ago, and we both really like it.

Depending on your tastes:

* if you like straight up fantasy parody, you can go from the beginning, and follow Rincewinds journey, a mage hapless at magic, running away from peril of mostly his own making.

* if you want different take at folk-tales, with a hint of Shakespear and a dash of, dare I say a dash of feminism, follow Witches of Lancre. Granny Weatherwax is an icon!

* if you like noir and urban-fantasy, follow Ankh-Morpork city watch led by daring Samuel Vimes and then continue with introduction of newspaper, resurection of post office, rebuilding of banking system and ushering in the age of steam.

I loved most of them. Didn't regret reading a single one. You might or might not want to refer to a reading guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8900fu/the_discwor...

For a hard magic system[0] in the fantasy genre, I'd heartily suggest any of Brandon Sanderson's novels.

My favorites are the second set of the Mistborn series (Wax and Wayne), the Stormlight Archives and the Rithmatist.

[0] https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/

Having reached the stage where you are able to distinguish between opinion and fact, i would suggest reading a bit of philosophy. You might find it illuminating and interesting in a different way. Worked for me at a similar stage though your mileage might vary.

Topping my list: “Robot Builder’s Bonanza” 5th ed. by Gordon McComb and McGraw Hill, out worldwide in mid Dec https://www.amazon.com/Robot-Builders-Bonanza-Gordon-McComb/...

I'm not reading any book in 2019. I usually find a moment of quiet during lunch and I would read then. But it developed into an eating habit and, as a side effect, a weight gain. I want to focus on building practical things this year instead.

2018 is not over, we are not even in December.

I just about finished reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Strongly recommend it, to ponder over the human condition.

a) Crucial Conversations, Kerry Patterson

b) Way of the Wolf, Jordan Belfort

c) Never Split the difference, Chris Voss

d) Radical Honesty, Brad Blanton

e) Outthink the competition, Krippendorff

Never split the difference is fantastic. Voss gives a good amount of tangible conversation tactics that you can try out nearly same day on people. I got it as an audio book too so I can listen to it every now and then in the car.

Thanks everyone with your personal suggestions. This will allow me to widen my reading spectrum. Interesting that no mention about books on History.

I would like to know that it was good in 2019 for books related to OS.

My goal for 2019 is to be even more deliberate in what I spend my time reading. This year I started being deliberate in my reading habits and read a lot less than I would in previous years when I was just consuming books en masse, but I find I'm retaining a lot more, or if nothing else, have less Dunning-Kruger cognitive dissonance.

What I would really like, is a streamlined workflow for incorporating spaced repetition into my reading. I usually read on my Kobo so not sure how feasible it would be to integrate it with Anki. I would welcome any ideas.

Apart from that, I'd like to read some more Neal Stephenson. I LOVED Cryptonomicon (read it 2 years ago) and I've been unable to find fiction books with a similar style. Neal Stephenson has written a lot of stuff so I'm not sure which book to attack next.

Don Winslow - The Border

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