Ask HN: Which book do you want to read next? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which book do you want to read next?

34 pointshumility41 comments

And what's your reading frequency for books?

Reading Next: Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Last year I read 63 books and started posting notes online, which helps me consolidate my thinking: https://www.briansnotes.io

At any given time, I have about 3 books going - one technical, one fun, and one management/leadership.

Thanks for sharing.

Very impressive website, thanks for sharing book notes.

Excellent website. I really like your graphs to quickly show where the book's focus lies.

Finished Range and Siddhartha, and now reading Seneca's letters from a stoic.

Range is a great book that extols the virtues of playing around and dabbling with multiple skills. Immensely readable.

Siddhartha, is a fascinating take on advaita vedanta, Sramana, and Buddhism. As someone familiar with these 3 philosophies, I liked Hesse's take on them. The story is really simple and can be finished in 2-3 sittings.

Letters from a stoic is full to the brim of wisdom and I've never filled a book with so many bookmarks and notes before. Seneca writes like a straight arrow and doesn't mince words. No wonder the book is still around, one of the best examples of Lindy effect.

I read Siddhartha three years ago. I realize this is a long quote, but when I read the passage below, I had a huge rush of emotions and joy. It's been easy to forget this passage with everything that has happened over the past year. Thank you for the reminder that I wish more moments of my life were like this one.

>>> Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path for the world was transformed, and his heart was changed. He saw the sun rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the distant beach with its palm-trees. At night, he saw the stars in the sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the bushes in the morning, distant high mountains which were blue and pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice-field. All of this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon, had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of the visible. But now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search of the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the gold-beetle, the flower and the butterfly. Beautiful and love it was, thus to walk through the world, thus childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without distrust. Differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern, the pumpkin and the banana tasted. Short were the days, short the nights, every hour sped swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under the sail was a ship full of treasures, full of joy. Siddhartha saw a group of apes moving through the high canopy of the forest, high in the branches, and heard their savage, greedy song. Siddhartha saw a male sheep following a female one and mating with her. In a lake of reeds, he saw the pike hungrily hunting for its dinner; propelling themselves away from it, in fear, wiggling and sparkling, the young fish jumped in droves out of the water; the scent of strength and passion came forcefully out of the hasty eddies of the water, which the pike stirred up, impetuously hunting.

>>> All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart.

Hesse is insanely good. I read almost all his books in the past year.

I want to re-read Siddhartha soon, after only like 8 months. I don't think it's really about Buddhism persay. Hesse uses it to get across some ideas. The main point was that Siddhartha realized the oneness of the world, in that each part is not a distinct entity - because that "distinct entity" is defined by it's relations to everything else. The realization brings him joy to consider himself not second class, but simply part of it all. Right?

At any given time I have somewhere around 50 books "in flight" in the sense that I've read at least a few pages and put it in "currently reading" status on Goodreads. But there's usually one (or two) that are getting the bulk of my attention. Right now the main book I'm focusing on is Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Norvig and Russell. I'd had this on my shelf for years and never got serious about working my way through the entire thing until recently. And I have to say, I now really regret not starting this project sooner. There's so much great stuff in this book.

I'm not just "reading" it like a novel though. I "just read" up to a certain point (basically the end of the section on inference using FOL) and now I'm going back to a certain point (the beginning of the section on logic based agents) and going back through and doing exercises, implementing the algorithms myself, etc. Once I've satisfied myself that I have done all I need to do with this area, I'll pick back up with the section that starts talking about Uncertainty and repeat the process.

And I'll keep picking through a couple of these other 49 books in random moments of idle time here and there. I'll probably finish Behind The Cloud by Marc Benioff soon.

Reading frequency? Not sure what you mean. I read everyday with few exceptions, but since books vary in length and density, I can't say "I read two books a week" or anything like that. But FWIW, I log my reading with Goodreads, and over the last 10 years or so of my life, I've averaged finishing somewhere between 35-50 or so books per year.

I'm aiming to read Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. I'm always being told I should read it, but the title has always put me off.

I used to read a lot, but over the past few years I've read less and less. 2020 was definitely not a good year for deep reading.

Kind of a dumb title, but it'll make sense when you read it. I have zero interest in motorcycles (let alone maintenance), but it's a fantastic read.

I got a few nice sci-fi books for Christmas, including Exhalation by Ted Chiang and Peace by Gene Wolf.

I also want to read Godel, Escher Bach, it's been recommended to me a lot.

Definitely some interesting picks on this thread.

Any of those standing on my bookshelf I want to read next, especially the "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs".

What about my reading frequency, nowadays I read more of whitepapers and less of books, because whitepapers are way harder to read than books. Every day I read at least half of A4 page of whitepapers or at least 10 of A4 page of books or blogposts. It is just a hobby for me, not kind of job.

I only ever read the first 2 chapters of SICP but always intended to go back, I just need something a bit lighter during lockdown.

where do you find whitepapers to read that interest you?

I read one paper that I am really interested in, then go to read all papers that were mentioned in the one paper and so on. Priority in time is for the easiest to understand paper from that piramid. Also reading all available papers from author of any great paper is almost always rewarding. Some random papers with amazing content can be finded on HN, usually I read them until I realize that I stopped to understand that wording.

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson is next up on my list. Really enjoying Mistborn so far. Still working my way through the second book.

I've also read a lot of his other work as well as the Wheel of Time. If anyone has recommendations for other fantasy novels/epics, I'm all ears!

This is mine as well, I'll probably start it this week. I just finished Well of Ascension and really enjoying the series so far.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/wiki/lists

My recommendations, in no particular order:

* The Riyria Revelations by Michael Sullivan

* Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams

* To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts

* Worm by Wildbow

* Cradle by Will Wight (think anime like Naruto in book form, but without fillers/fan-service)

* Farseer by Robin Hobb

* Powder Mage by Brian McClellan

* The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

* The Dagger and the Coin by Daniel Abraham

Thanks for the list! I didn't think about utilizing Reddit but it seems like a no-brainer now that you mention it.

I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction when I can. Having recently finished Capital Vol 1, I've started Q by Luther Blissett this week. Q seems to be well regarded, but I'm going in blind. After Q I'll likely go back to Capital Vol 2 which I understand to be on the drier side.

During iso I've set aside Wednesday nights as reading nights. The schedule gives me something to look forward too, but it doesn't preclude reading during the weekends if I'm feeling into it.

I learned to program through Python and Scheme. Yet I still feel like I know jackshyt about programming. I want to realearn it from a mathematician's point of view. So, Programming for Mathematicians by Seroul [0] is in my to-read queue.

[0] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Programming_for_Mathema...

I am currently reading "Novice Dragoneer" by E. E. Knight and I'm almost finished with it. Next up is the sequel to it, Daughter of the Serpentine.

Fantasy isn't my go to genre but I've been wanting to read something in the fantasy realm because I am just tired of the lawyer/whodunnit stuff.

I am hoping my 12 year old daughter reads it as the heroine is a 14 y/o girl who has to overcome many obstacles and meets them head on.

→ Sam Keen - Your Mythic Journey - Finding Meaning in Your Life Through Writing and Storytelling

→→ Idries Shah - Learning how to learn - psychology and spirituality in the Sufi way

→→→ Marc Lewis - The Biology of Desire - Why Addiction Is Not a Disease

And always fiction mixed with non-fiction, recently Tess Gerritsen, currently Zygmunt Miłoszewski (his books are in Polish only, I believe).

Regarding frequency, it depends, only 26 in 2020, 40 in 2019.

"Post Wall Post Square" by Kristina Spohr appears to be a fascinating verbal illustration of everything that happened in the years surrounding the downfall of the Soviet Union, from the perspective of each world leader.

My usual reading list consists of tech books, but I figured I'd change it up a little to have a bit of an escape.

At the top of my list is "The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient." I find it an easy guide for developing resilience, which is necessary to go through the world's crisis.

I'm still in progress on Brandon Sanderson's Rhythm of War, the fourth book in the Stormlight Archives series. I've been reading a lot of business and indie hacker related non-fiction, so it has been nice to read something a little lighter.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I thought it would be a good time investment to read this book than to watch random Youtube videos about topics related to the cosmos.

Another, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Probably the podcast or the free PDF versions.

It's okay. Check out Parallel Worlds.

>> Principles by Ray Dalio

>> The Expanse (novel series) - I was introduced to it several years ago and have been meaning to get to it for awhile. I heard it now has a TV series and the next book in the series is supposed to come out this.

I'm currently reading the Product Management’s Sacred Seven based on a friend's recommendation that it was good for product management interview prep.

This book looked extremely think and daunting when it arrived.

The Sense of Structure by George Gopen.

Too little for my taste. I seem to have lost my ability to dive in and just read it without looking at the phone or HN, like it was with Harry Potter and all those books of my youth.

I have a bit of a queue going; I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle based on suggestions from here, and it was definitely worth the investment. Next on my list is Graham Greene's The Comedians.

I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle based on suggestions

I have that on my list to read "sometime soon." So far I've really enjoyed all the Murakami I've read - After Dark, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and A Wild Sheep Chase. Definitely planning to read the rest of his works eventually.

Current: Crack in the Creation by Jennifer Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg

Next: A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman

gonna start reading the wheel of time today. heard many positive things about it and I just needed something that's not about technology to get my mind off work.

I kinda stopped reading as much as I used to since I got my first smartphone two years ago, but I am trying to change that

Great book series, I've read through it twice now. There is a stretch in the middle though that is notoriously slow but overall it is incredible. The world building is the best I have ever seen. If you like them, I would also recommend Brandon Sanderson. He writes books almost as fast as I can read them

It really is a good series. I still have the final book left to read, but the journey up to this point has been well worth the effort.

I love mystery books (dad books) and am going to go through the whole Sandman Slim series.

I'm currently at about number 20 in the 70-book Maigret (French Detective) series of murder-mysteries. At the moment, we're in 1930s France, somewhat like Gatsby's America, quite rural even in the larger towns.

The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield

Completed this year:

Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Providence: God's Loving Care for Men and the Need for Confidence in Almighty God by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming by Dusty Phillips

Currently reading:

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous

Financial Shenanigans by Howard M. Schilit

Up next:

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

These Truths by Jill Lepore

Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms by Shalev Shwartz and Ben David

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