Ask HN: What book(s) did you love reading this year? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What book(s) did you love reading this year?

45 pointspetecooper32 comments

Inspired by [1], I considered my key reads of the year:

* Courage Is Calling by Ryan Holliday

* Post Corona by Scott Galloway

* Feck Perfuction by James Victore

What about you?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309758

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Standouts for me were Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro), Exhalation (Ted Chiang), Invisible Planets (an anthology of Chinese sci-fi short stories, translated by Ken Liu) and Longitude (Dava Sobel).

I also finally got around to reading Cixin Liu's Three Body series, and although not perfect, there's so many interesting ideas in them.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson, Bandwidth by Eliot Peper, Accelerando by Charles Stross, in this order.

I enjoyed quite a few short stories and collections, “One day all this will be yours”, “forward collection”, “dispatcher”.

Books I really struggled with, “klara and the sun”, “snow crash”, “oryx and crake”.

I'd like to share the following:

- "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

I believe it is a pretty common book amongst the HN crowd, no need to expand over it.

- "The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?" by Michael Sandel

Currently reading this book. I find this book amazing. The arguments are well thought and the language is easy. I think Sandel is one of the top Philosophers of our time. Sandel, it seems, has a level of empathy that most well educated people are lacking. The topic of meritocracy interests me particularly, so I bought another book which is a meritocratic proponent "The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World" by Adrian Wooldridge. The two held a really interesting debate at intelligence squared ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOpdahGGoxE ) not long time ago.

- "The Burnout Society" by Byung-Chul Han

This book is hard, as most books by Mr Han. To a large extend the book is like a thesis: dense, technical vocabulary, etc. Those not too deep in modern psychology and philosophy, like myself, will find following through challenging but IMO the idea of the "self-slave" is extremely prominent in the tech industry.

I started reading classics this year and want to continue. Best i read was the histories by Herodotus - the first history book in the western tradition. Absolutely incredible and completely changed my view of the world. I wish I read read it a long time ago.

Also Atomic Habits by James Clear. I liked this one so much i outlined it myself after reading through it straight. I had never done that

I loved reading "Le Petit Prince" to my 6 yo son.

I was pretty young myself the last time I read it and I found the experience very different now that I'm on my 30s.

I've read somewhere that you're supposed to read this book 3 times in your life: as a kid, as a young adult and as an older person. Curious to see how it will feel like to read it in 30 years.

That probably goes for many books, though mostly I think of young adult/middle-aged/older as the ages. Certainly The Great Gatsby has read very differently over the years.

Fiction

- Night Over the Solomons, Louis Lamour

A rollicking read of daring exploits of GIs in the Pacific Theater (fictional). Louis Lamour writes well; excellent light reading.

- Tales of the South Pacific, James Michener

Tales of quirky characters in the South Pacific, during wartime and after it. James Michener can spin a good yarn, and he totally immerses you in the place. I read Hawaii (and almost got to finishing it) and got on a Hawaii / Pacific kick a couple years ago. It is a surprisingly rich and enjoyable sub-genre of literature.

Non-fiction

They say truth is stranger than fiction. You couldn't find a better example than this tale set in Silicon Valley.

- Bad Blood, John Carreyrou

I'm late to the party, but better late than never. It shows how low seemingly ordinary people can stoop, but also, how high seemingly ordinary people can reach. It also is an example of how utterly ordinary our so-called leaders are.

I really enjoyed The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

It has a good condensed summary of practical philosophy as well as a great list of books to check out for further ideas.

Being short on time, the summary was very helpful.

The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday was a short high level description of some aspects of Stoic Philosophy. It opens the door to some of the classics.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle made me think a lot about being present, that the mind is apart from the consciousness.

Redirect by Timothy Wilson - I like that it is experimental based and debunks a lot of other stuff out there that has no basis for truth.

The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti - reading this now, I really like the daily meditation format. It gives you something to think about.

History:

* Russia Leaves the War by George Kennan * The Battle Cry of Freedom by James MacPherson

Fiction:

* Hunger by Knut Hamsun * White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Philosophy:

* Philosophy of Logic by W.V.O. Quine * Modes of Being by Paul Weiss * Phenomenology, Its Genesis and Prospect by Quentin Lauer * Philosophy of Right by Hegel

Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns. https://www.confessions.engineer/

I have also been enjoying my subscription to the [American Affairs Journal](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/) and, similarly, [National Affairs](https://www.nationalaffairs.com/subscribe).

Journals are underrated. They take a lot of effort to read and digest though, and that makes me worried about the state of news media. People tend to consume popular magazines or newspapers, or worse, social media, but journals are mostly invisible. It makes me sad that such great long form content may never enter the public’s conscience.

The Bruno Chief Of Police series, just fun stories about a cop in rural France. Really enjoyed them and made for some great reads.

Clash of Eagles Trilogy – I LOVED this series, such a cool concept, historical fiction but reimagined as if Rome survived into the 1200s and lands in Native America to face off against the Native Americans. Then, their nemesis the Mongols arrive on the other coast.

The Last Watch – Great space sci fi read. Book 2 wasn't quite as good, but looking forward to 3.

Eagles of the Empire Historical Fiction series - Imagine lethal weapon but with two fantastic characters in the Roman legion.

As there are many books to read, so this year I narrowed down my focus and I thought of reading a few side hustle books that will help. Actually I am running a blog on the Side hustle niche so the more I read, the more I can give to my audience. Here are the books that I read: 1: The One Thing 2. Eat that frog and other books that I loved reading are listed here: https://www.growthfunda.com/side-hustle-books/

Merlin by Graham Hoyland

It's about the engineering of the Merlin airplane engine from the early days of rolls Royce thru to ww2

* Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

* Royal Tars: The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy - Brian Lavery

* SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - Mary Beard

* Ballad of the Bullet -- Forrest Stuart

* The Neapolitan Novels -- Elena Ferrante (4 book set, also a great HBO show adaptation!)

* Kitchen Confidential -- Anthony Bourdain (not sure why I hadn't read it till now... I was a huge fan of everything else Tony did)

- Currently reading 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows -- Ai Weiwei

1. Java Concurrency in Practice - Brian Goetz 2. Designing Data Intensive Applications - Martin Kleppman 3. Linux Kernel Development - Robert Love 4. Systems Performance - Brendan Gregg (reading this now actually)

My 3 Favorite this year: 418: I Am a Teapot by Edgar Scott Automatic Reload: A Novel by Ferrett Steinmetz Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

After Meta I had to re-read: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

I haven't read as much as i wanted to but, from those i've read, i really liked "In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin"

Fiction

- Three Body-trilogy, Cixin Liu

- The Children of Húrin, Tolkien

- The Silmarillion, Tolkien

- The Hobbit, Tolkien

- Lord Of The Rings-trilogy, Tolkien

- The Green Mile, Stephen King

Non-fiction

- Practical Vim 2nd ed., Drew Neil

- Pestens år: döden i Stockholm 1710, Magnus Västerbro

I've rewatched LOTR movies like 4 times, i want to start reading the books, how much of an investment are they in your opinion?

Of the Tolkien books I've read, the LOTR-trilogy is a classic page turner. Once you get past Bilbo's birthday you can't really put the books down. The Hobbit has more of a children's tale-vibe, but still worth the read. The Silmarillion is harder and the first time it feels like you are cramming for some history exam, but I found that if you read it again you get more context and start untangling all the relationsships which gives a lot of extra character to the other books. The Children of Húrin can be found in abbreviated form inside The Silmarillion and is a dark and tragic tale, but really good in my opinion.

Fortunately Peter Jackson made a good job with the original LOTR-trilogy. You can be a fan of the movies and the books at the same time even though there are (probably necessary) differences between the formats.

I really enjoyed:

"Uprooted" by Naomi Novik.

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory

Non-Fiction

* A mind at play - Jimmy Soni, Rob Goodman

* Show the work - Austin Kloen

* The effective executive - Peter Drucker

Fiction

* The 7 and 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton

Technical

* On Lisp - Paul Graham

I only managed one book this year.

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky

I should try to not being so lazy and read more.

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern - Simon Winchester

You must be into podcasts? I enjoy listening to Ryan and Scott.

The Burnout Society, The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han

Klara and the sun

Project Hail Mary

The Noonday Demon

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann.

The Last Lion (Alone) by William Manchester.

T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

Can you share a review?

Here's a quick, short review by a random user on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3426819525?book_show_a...

The play itself is fairly short but I'd need to ruminate on it for weeks on end to give it some worthy words.

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