Ask HN: Reading Non-Fiction | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Reading Non-Fiction

2 pointskrat0sprakhar5 comments

Hey Guys

I'm a 21yr old student and I love to read. Before my early high-school days I used to read a lot of fiction. I then took up a course on C++ programming and started to love programming. Ever since I've spend most of my time reading technical books (books on programming languages, Algorithms and the likes).

Whenever I had this impulse to pick up a unrelated book I found myself telling me to finish my stack of technical books before buying a new non-fiction/fiction one. A few days back, however, I got my hands on a cheap copy of a book called Dot.con by John Cassidy. The book talks the dot com bubble and its history. I'm almost done reading the book and I'm glad to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a very pleasant change to read up something different.

So my question is what kind of books (preferably, non-fiction) do you guys read? Are there books similar to the one I mentioned - about technology, silicon valley, wall street etc ? And how do you guys manage to balance the books you WANT to read and books which you SHOULD read?

Thanks a lot for your suggestions.

PS: Can someone link their readernaut/amazon wishlist/goodreads account so that I can follow them. I'm extremely uninitiated in this regard. Thanks.

I have this quote from Charlie Munger taped above my desk: "You need to have a passionate interest in why things are happening. That cast of mind, kept over long periods, gradually improves your ability to focus on reality. If you don't have the cast of mind, you're destined for failure even if you have a high IQ." Here's a tip on reading non-fiction: It is very easy to get into a rut reading and re-reading what you already know. To achieve broader understanding leave your comfort zone and read what don't know. That is much harder to do well, but much more rewarding if you want to truly understand why things are happening. I scan book reviews looking for ecstatic reviews of books in areas I don't know. It's hit-and-miss, but I've learned so much more this way.

And how do you guys manage to balance the books you WANT to read and books which you SHOULD read?

I haven't really had an issue with this. The books people suggest that I ought to read, especially non-fiction, tend to fall close enough to my curiosity zone that I enjoy reading them. The only "should read" books that I've disliked were ones I read for school, and I haven't had any issues with that since high school (and only a few books I read for high school fit that description).

So my question is what kind of books (preferably, non-fiction) do you guys read?

Right now, I'm getting towards the end of A History of Western Philosophy, about half way through Gödel, Escher, Bach, and early on in Real World Haskell and Types and Programming Languages. One could make a decent case for categorizing any of them as "should read"; I read them because I want to.

I do a lot of Computer History- Soul of a New Machine, Hackers, Fire in the Valley, Commodore - A Company on the Edge. I go to used book stores and check out the pre-PC computer books... here's a great one: The Psychology of Computer Programming from 1972 that really is interesting (most of it still applies today).

I will preface, that I do not read non-fiction, other than a handful (some Mark Twain, and the Daemon/Freedom Tm series by Daniel Suarez, both of which were awesome, and I really liked Little Brother and Makers by Corey Doctorow); I too, like to break up my technical manuals, with good non-fiction, in no particular order these are some that are in my collection you may like:

Fatal System Error Founders at Work Masters of Deception Cuckoo's egg (one of my favs) Art of Social Engineering The Watchmen Hackers: Heroes of the Computer revolution (new one put out by O'reiley) The Art of Intrusion (loved) The Art of deception (meh)

As you can see mostly security related.

Most of the books on the list, do have a lot of "should read" qualities in there, but also fall heavily into the "want to read" category.

This is one of the best collections of non-fiction books I've ever come across:

http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

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