Ask HN: What are some must read books? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some must read books?

66 pointsmelonbar124 comments

Life is too short to read crummy books. So after reading the review on Blade Runner 2049 which touched on PKD and Nabokov I have decided get Pale Fire. I am curious what you would recommend on top of that (I was also planning to get A Confederacy of Dunces). That said, take a penny leave a penny, if you haven’t read A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again or Gibsons’ Neuromancer, try and make time. They’re exquisite!

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Thanks for the recommendations. I’m feeling old, so I’ll add:

Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote (1609! The more things change, the more they stay the same)

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (I thought I knew the story until I actually read the book—whoah, that opened my eyes to our relationship with technology and industry and how we use energy)

Dracula, by Bram Stoker (from Blindboy’s podcast episode “Paddy Dracula” I learned Stoker is from Dublin, son of a Protestant mother who told him stories, bedridden until seven years old, about the horrors of cholera)

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (further awareness of how we convert resources, this time before petrol, and for the descriptions of sea life and human relationships)

For background, I’m also into contemporary sci-fi and fantasy and would have an easier time going without electricity than without books, unless I was part of a community that carried on storytelling traditions.

Two others: Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard, both about ecology and reciprocity, guiding how I garden, parent, and relate to the bleeding edge of life in general.

Wow thank you for taking the time to write this list I really appreciate it! I have always wanted to read Don Quixote but had trouble figuring out which translation. This is awesome I will for sure be getting that one and perhaps some others. Have a great Monday.

To your recommendations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula, I'd add Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. That is by far my most favorite of the classic "monster" books.

> Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (I thought I knew the story until I actually read the book—whoah, that opened my eyes to our relationship with technology and industry and how we use energy)

Can confirm, the novel is very unlike every film adaptation I'm aware of. It also, incredibly, hits its themes even harder than those do.

Don Quixote is 900 pages of gut-busting humor that will ruin most comedy for you. And Moby Dick was an incredible read (if you're into audiobooks, Anthony Heald is the perfect narrator for Moby Dick IMO).

Will have to check out the others!

  Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!

Love Moby Dick

Just to add a counter opinion: I found Moby Dick a real slog to get through

It has very detailed descriptions of whaling which I didn't find interesting

I second this 100%. I found Moby Dick extremely tedious and mostly boring except for a few highlights here and there. And as the old saying goes "Melville never met a run-on sentence he didn't love."

The Harry Potter series remains the most enjoyable books I've ever read. The Pillars of the Earth comes close though.

Terrific sci-fi reads were Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Hyperion, Ringworld, and to a lesser extent A Deepness in the Sky. Also Excession, whose human characters are poorly developed and written but whose world-building and AI characters are amazing.

Terrific fantasy reads were The Time-Traveler's Wife, as well as The Name of the Wind and its sequel The Wise Man's Fear. The latter two have rather bad writing and TERRIBLE female characters, but the story is extremely engrossing anyway and some of the ideas are really original (the Cthaeh!).

Catch-22 was an amazing read as well. Watership Down, After Dark, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, and Blood Meridian all dazzled me.

Oh, and The Sandman, Watchmen, Maus, and Persepolis for graphic novels.

For short stories: MMAcevedo (https://qntm.org/mmacevedo), The Last Question by Asimov, The Library of Babel by Borges, and The Dead by Joyce (whose final sentence is my favorite of all English-language writing).

Lastly, The Design of Everyday Things changed how I saw man-made items.

Edit: I almost forgot-- Ecclesiastes, from the Old Testament. I am not religious and this work stands out strongly from all the other writings collected in the bible. It's a poetic work on finding purpose in a world that lacks any inherent meaning. Considered one of if not the most well-written book of the entire bible. Recommend the NIV translation.

Wow, I love this edit, I’m agnostic myself but that seems rather neat. I remember reading about how Warren Buffet, despite not being particularly religious, has read the Bible like 7 times or something. I always found that rather interesting. Thanks!

If you do read it, try to spot the point where the authorship switches. It's believed that at some point after the original author's death, a later cleric decided to expand the original work. The change in writing style is extremely apparent.

After reading it once, find a good reference that points out the threads between the old and new testaments. Taking into consideration the time between the writings, these are amazing.

As a counterpoint to the praise of "The name of the wind" I read it on an HN recommendation and didn't enjoy it. The writing, characters, and story were all boring and poorly constructed, I kept thinking to myself, 'This is starting to get exciting I bet something good will happen' but nothing ever did. The world building and magic system was pretty well thought out but within the confines of 'The name of the wind' it was never put to good use.

If you like great world building and magic systems I would recommend Brandon Sanderson series 'The Stormlight Archives' or 'Mistborn'

Sorry it didn't appeal to you! I actually did read two books of The Stormlight Archives though and found it not too bad but ultimately rather generic sword & sorcery. I forgot nearly everything about the book as soon as I put it down. The only idea that stayed with me was that of a blade that passed through everything unhindered and didn't harm organic matter except to sever the nerves it passed through, that was a neat battle concept.

Maybe try Malazan Book of the Fallen, in terms of worldbuilding and plot/lore depth it is far ahead of any other (modern) fantasy books. Sheer scale of the world and its history might be a bit overwhelming at first, as it is not an easiest read, but often if you don't understand something it means that it will be referenced later in the book (or later in the series).

I've had this recommended before actually. I'll get a copy soon!

That's actually really interesting how subjective reading experiences can be. It's amazing that we basically had opposite reactions to these books. I wonder what is the best approach to sharing subjective reviews? It would be nice to give reviews in a way that helps others make a better choice.

The downside of reading The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear is that the third book isn't written yet, and no one seems to know exactly when it's going to appear (if ever). That is, unless something has changed very recently regarding this.

If you like Harry Potter, and you're a regular reader of HN, I highly recommend Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (HPMOR).

I'm not a "fan fiction" person, but after seeing it recommended so many times, I gave it a try. It is very good.

I actually did check this out about a year ago. It started off beyond hilarious, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. The beginning is worth reading by any measure.

Then it started trying to heavily incorporate elements of the plot of Ender's Game and went a bit off the rails. The poor quality of writing combined with the tediously pointless plot tangents lost my interest. The idea it was getting at was fascinating - finding the source of magic - and I've been meaning to try reading it again by skimming past the Ender's Game nonsense and back to where the plot hopefully gets back on track.

Having read Ender's Game half a dozen times as a kid, I never got that vibe from the story. I've only read HPMOR once (it's super long), but if there's bad writing, I didn't notice it because I was so engrossed in the story.

I'm referring to the subplot where Harry and Malfoy start organizing the other students into armies and having them battle on the grounds outside the castle.

As a counterpoint, I found HPMOR to be incredibly disappointing. It felt like a brilliant idea squandered on author-insertion proselytizing. This review sums it up better than I can, and I think I enjoyed reading the review more than HPMOR itself: https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/

This reviewer and I had similar reactions - a quick page search for "Ender" shows he too finds the fanfic repeatedly imitating that story.

> The Name of the Wind and its sequel The Wise Man's Fear. These are far from terrific. There are better -- and actually finished -- fantasy series out there.

People take issue with them, but picking something off Adler's or Harvard's (five-foot-shelf) or Bloom's Great Books lists will almost never lead you wrong.

But, here we go anyway (and yeah, some of these are just off those lists):

1) Shakespeare's big four tragedies are, in fact, out-fucking-standing. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth. IMO Hamlet reads the best of those. Any would be fine to watch, as well, and may be better that way. The language, especially, is easier to understand when performed, because you have body language, tone, and other context to work with.

2) Gilgamesh. I like Mitchell's edition.

3) The Odyssey. Iliad's a bit of a bore, but with a few incredible scenes that really stick with you. The Odyssey, though, is great. Screw the haters, even the "Telemachy" portion is good.

4) Revolutionary Road by Yates, for a certain kind of struggle with identity & purpose that I suspect will resonate and provide a useful mirror for lots of folks on here.

5) Woolf's To the Lighthouse is probably my favorite book, so I'll throw that on here.

6) The 20th century gave us tons of essayists (some of whom also wrote novels and such) who are great reads. Orwell, C.S. Lewis, and Forster all come to mind.

7) Maugham wrote a lot of novels, and most of them are well worth a read.

8) Farmer's Riverworld series are probably my favorite very dumb books.

I've never read Shakespeare but so I'm curious to hear what you think makes it outstanding? I've tried reading a bit before but I was weighed down by words and phrases that we no longer use and found myself losing the meaning.

> I was weighed down by words and phrases that we no longer use and found myself losing the meaning.

I have the same problem. I found a used physical copy of "No Fear Shakespeare - Macbeth" to be very helpful. On the left page is the original text, on the right page is are notes and a translation. I was able to get through the book and understand it.

You can access online here: https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/

> what you think makes it outstanding?

I'm not the original commenter, so speaking for myself only. I would say the prose is very poetic and has a certain magical quality to it.

The language takes some getting used to. Watching a performance is easier than reading it, since (again) you have the context of the actor's physical performance, delivery, the setting of the scene, et c., to inform your understanding. Another thing is that often his plays rely on some historical understanding for full effect. For example, most people reading the beginning of Hamlet might not fully grasp what's going on, while someone with a good understanding of feudal politics (or anyone who's played much Crusader Kings) will be going "oh shit, this is really bad". This is where something like Asimov's guide to Shakespeare, or any number of free online lectures about the plays, can be helpful.

As for what's great:

1) Masterful plotting, leaving just enough up to the audience to figure out (and, more often than not, leveraging that for ironic purposes).

2) Outstanding characterization.

3) A hard-to-pin-down quality that makes relating episodes, characters, and exchanges in his plays to real life the most natural thing in the world. There's a reason we've ended up with so many of his characters and phrases as parts of the English language itself.

For non-Americans, this is basically the US high school required reading list.

I think we read abridgments of certain episodes from The Odyssey a couple different years, but never the whole thing. AFAIK Shakesepeare's Big Four are rarely all covered in high school. Maybe one of them will be. Romeo and Juliet is much more popular, for whatever reason—I think it's considered easier, and maybe curriculum designers think kids will relate better to a story of young love. IIRC the only one of the Big Four we read in my high school was Macbeth, and I took all the extra English classes possible, starting in 7th grade.

I don't think Gilgamesh was covered at all. Yates, Maugham, Farmer, or Forster are certainly not commonly assigned in US high schools. Woolf, maybe, and if so, yeah, it'll probably be To the Lighthouse. Orwell, yes, but mainly for Animal Farm and maybe 1984, not his essays. I guess there might be some schools that assign C.S. Lewis, but I doubt it's common.

Yes, The Odyssey is great (even if Telemachus is an entitled twit). The Iliad is great if very straightforward. The Aeneid is great, well the first half is, but like Romeo and Juliet after Mercutio dies, The Aeneid flags after Dido does the thing that she does.

BIOGRAPHY: The Power Broker by Robert Caro - one of the greatest biographies you'll ever read. Long but absolutely first class. I've been meaning to read his trio of books on LBJ but for now they're on the later-base.

CLASSIC FICTION: The Master and Margarita Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov - a magical text of immense imagination. Had it not been released posthumously Bulgakov would no doubt have gotten shipped to a gulag or worse.

CHILDREN'S BOOK: The Little Price by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - I read this charming book at the age of 28 and found it to be one of the most enchanting books I've ever read. Full of life lessons.

NON FICTION: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Once every while you read a book that forces you to view the world in a whole new light, this is one such book.

COMEDY SCI-FI: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - delightful book with immense irony and is absolutely hilarious.

> BIOGRAPHY: The Power Broker by Robert Caro - one of the greatest biographies you'll ever read. Long but absolutely first class. I've been meaning to read his trio of books on LBJ but that on the laterbase.

I started reading this based on another recent recommendation on HN. So far, I'm absolutely loving it. I second this recommendation (based on what I have read so far)

The Brothers Karamazov. It really is as good as it's reputation would make you think

It's fascinating to read a novel written 200 years ago in a country completely unlike mine, but see so many traits and characters that I know and have met in my life today. Dostoevsky has this un-nerving ability to see through people like they are transparent, and show their innermost depth in a few sentences

How to win friends and influence people.

Its the book I wish I read in high school and college. I genuinely believe the world would be a better place if everyone were to read that book.

Funny, I am currently listening to this book on Audible. A lot of people think that it's a book about manipulation but it's really not. It's a book about leadership through reciprocity. If you want people invest in your goals you have to contribute to theirs.

Win Your Case by Gerry Spence is also a favorite of mine of the same vein but applied to confrontational situations, but the advice are based on the same foundations.

I don't get why this book is so hyped

Did anyone else read it and think "well duh" to most of it?

Seemed like common sense

As I was reading that book most of it was certainly “common” sense, which was most certainly not common!

My take was kinda “well, being (or even just trying to be) a decent human being is a super power that I needed to be reminded of!”

I'm wary of labels such as "must read" - but a couple of books I'm glad I read:

"Dahlgren" by Samuel Delaney (and most everything else I've read by him as well).

"Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin - and "Powers".

"Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson.

"Holy Fire" by Bruce Sterling (I also enjoyed Islands in the Net, Zenith Angle and Schismatrix).

"Foundation" trilogy + prequel by Isaac Asimov.

"Brave New World", Aldous Huxley.

"Deepness in the Sky" / "Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge.

"Something wicked this way comes" by Ray Bradbury.

And a couple of comics/visual novels:

"V for Vendetta" and "Watchmen" by Alan Moore (David Lloyd/ Tony Weare and Dave Gibbons / John Higgins).

Dave Sims: "Cerebus" (I don't think I've finished this yet, but the first ten volumes or so is.. Something else).

Fair enough haha, thanks this is a great list, Foundation has always been something I wanted to read.

I was pleasantly stunned when I recently re-read Foundation - after reading them in junior high school, some 25 years ago. I actually remembered most of the characters (note, there's pretty much a protagonist per chapter and the original trilogy spans... 10? thousand years).

On a different note - Hurki Murakami's non-fictional account of the Tokyo subway gas attack "Underground" is a harrowing, but rewarding read. And while tragic, "Norwegian Wood" is lighter, and also great (I actually think his best book among those I've read is "South of the Border" - in a similar sense that "The great Gatsby" is good (unsurprising as Murakami translated Scott Fitzgerald).

https://www.cupblog.org/2013/05/07/haruki-murakami-on-transl...

Any of P G Wodehouse's major works (ignore his incunabula, anything before 1915, though early Psmith is still amusing), if you want some laughter to lighten the pains of life.

The Jeeves & Wooster series, of course, but also any of the Blandings Castle series. And the glorious Golf Omnibus. (Always used to think of golf as utterly boring, but PGW can make it hilarious.)

See https://wodehouse.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_books_by_P._G._Wod....

My recent favorite books:

Epic Fantasy: The Malazan series. (Gardens of the Moon, the first book is a challenging read and has a bit of an anticlimatic end. Don't judge the series till finishing the first three books. They get easier to read starting book 2).

History: The making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes. (The title is misleading - it's not about the manhattan project really. The book traces the history of nuclear physics, starting from Rutherford realizing that most of an atom's mass must be concentrated in a nucleus - and step by step, follows all the turns and surprises as a group of people pieced together what an atom must be made of. The book makes an unavoidable turn into the manhattan project and ends with Hiroshima/Nagasaki, so yes the Manhattan project does make a significant part of the book, but it's really not the focus of the book).

Design: The Elements of typographic style by Robert Bringhurst. (A beautiful book about typesetting beautiful books).

Nature: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. (A fascinating book about fungii. I'll never see trees the same way again).

Autobiography: A man for all markets by Edward O Thorp (Claude Shannon shows up and helps the author try to cheat at Roulette using wearable computers! A lot of fascinating stuff).

More history: The Anarchy by William Dalrymple. (A book on the British East India company went from being a merchant company to eventually becoming the British Raj).

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Factfulness by Hans Rosling et al.

Both of these books profoundly changed the way I look at the world.

+1 for Wallace. Basically everything in that collection and Consider the Lobster is worth reading.

Absolutely unrelated, but I'd recommend Vaclav Smil in general - Energy in Nature and Society and Energy and Civilization are two I've read and enjoyed. A bit dry as reading material, but well-worth for his energetic perspective on human and biological systems.

Pfffff you really asked the impossible question here. Best I can do is scan through the books on the shelves next to me:

* Beyond good and evil: Nietzsche

* The Temple of the Golden Pavilion: Yukio Mishima

* Steppenwolf: Hermann Hese

* Library of babel: Borges

* The Brain: David Eagleman

* The Magical Mountain: Thomas Mann

* The Dark Tower: Stephen King(actually tons of King books - I am a bit of a fanboy)

* Factfulness: Hans Rosling

* William Blake: selected poetry

* Dostoevsky: The idiot

* Captain Nemo: Jules Verne

* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Adams

The dark tower series is one of his best IMO. Unfortunate he ended the series earlier than planned... Was supposed to be quite a few books longer but I remember reading (and I could be remembering wrong) in the foreward to one of his books that the weight of people sending him letters such as "I'm terminally ill, i was hoping you could tell me how it ends before I pass" and all the other contact he got led him to cut it a bit short. That said, I think it's his best work.

The intro to the first book was kind of sad, with mails from sick people and people sentenced to death asking King how it ends and he was unable to respond because he wasn't sure where he wanted to go.

So I’ve read Hitchhiker’s but was always curious about the others he wrote, any thoughts? Thanks!

I tried Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and never really managed to get to the end. I was somewhat disappointed cause I had my expectations up to the Hitchhiker's guide. On the subject of the Hitchhiker's guide, I liked "And Another Thing..." the most(though it was largely written by Eoin Colfer.

You may enjoy the audiobook versions of the Dirk Gently series, which are fully scripted and voice acted like a radio play. It was a really fun experience, and very well acted!

I don't know about must-read but here are my top 5 books:

- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

- Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoy

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig

- Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky

- Dune, Frank Herbert

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a vastly underrated book. It was decades ahead of its time.

Non-violent Communication - One of my top 5 books easily. Changed how I think about the language we use in everyday communication with other people, and more importantly, the language I use with myself.

Despite its unfortunate mis-titling, it's a fantastic book.

Which ones would make your other spots for top-5 or even top-10?

Off the top of my head...

- Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson: it has its flaws but is still a rocket ride through a not-so-farfetched cyberpunk dystopia. I love the tongue-in-cheek nature of it as well "Hiro Protagonist" being the main character :D

- Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin: a different take on leadership than I've read previously, once you get through the first couple bits on "we're SEALs and badass" sort of stuff there's some amazingly good leadership qualities on display.

- Every Tool's a Hammer - Adam Savage: As a weekend warrior maker, this book speaks to my soul. It gives my brain permission to make mistakes and learn in a way that few others have.

- Michael Pollan: pretty much anything written by him has wit, intelligence, research, practical experience, etc. Love his writer's voice and most of his audiobooks seem to be read by him, a fun bonus!

Thanks a bunch.

I already have read Cryptonomicon, and I have Seveneves and Snow Crash sitting on my shelf.

I will give the others a try.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is as timeless as ever.

One of my all time favorites!

The ideas are timeless but the translated prose can feel dated. The Gregory Hays translation though is very readable.

Surprisingly, didn't find 'The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy' in this list. Must read !

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, 2021 edition

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, 2nd edition 2014

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury, 2011 edition

Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations by William Ury

Bargaining for Advantage by Richard Shell, 2nd edition 2006

Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff

Nonviolent Communication: A language of life by Marshall Rosenberg, 2015 edition

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

The power and the glory by Graham Greene. Crime and punishment by Dostoevsky.

I am looking forward to reading the whole thread, but while people are at it, you can check this out:

https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/0/all-t...

You could also find nice websites and collections if you Google "Hacker News books".

Hacker News has become one of the most impactful places in determining what to read.

I have read at least 10 books as suggested in HN comments by others within 4-5 months after deciding to do so.

I have a list of almost 70 books that I am going to check out, and a shortlist of ~20 books that I am definitely going to read- all from HN comments.

HN is a great place to find out new books- whether it is about tech, fiction, or non-fiction.

The books suggested here amazingly diverese in nature. I highly recommend reading books suggested in HN many times according to your choices to whoever reads this.

Happy reading!

Must read?

1984 and Animal Farm.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It.

Emma and Pride and Prejudice.

Iliad, Odyssey and first half of the Aeneid.

A Room With A View and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Great Gatsby, Call of the Wild and Age of Innocence.

War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Don Quixote.

> Iliad, Odyssey and first half of the Aeneid.

I didn't read the Odyssey, but read both Iliad and Aeneid.

I read Iliad first, and then Aeneid. Reading Aeneid right after reading Iliad was a great experience. It felt like I was reading a sequel! It felt right at home.

You might double back and read the Odyssey. The Aeneid is in two halves, the Odysseian first half and the Iliadic second half. Virgil is creating a new creation myth for Rome, different from Romulus and Remus, and he's binding it to the Homeric epics. I like the Odyssey more but I like both.

I will give it a try. Thanks.

I can't talk from experience, but whenever I think about the best books to read, Mortimer Adler's list of books always comes to my head.

Mortimer Adler is the author of "How to Read a Book", conincedentally, also a good book, he did a lot to promote quality reading in his age.

At the end of the book, he lists greatest books ever written, in his opinion. This list is called "Greatest Books of the Western World". It was even published as a series once. I'm still hunting for this set.

Here is the link to the list -> https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/120742.Mortimer_J_Adler_...

A lot of "must reads" depend on your background and interest. GEB for example I would classify as a must for anyone with a computer science background, The Glory of their Times for any baseball fan, Democracy in America for anyone into American politics.

I have a solid CS background and tried once to read GEB and while very enthralling I could only get about a quarter through. I will have to try that one again. Cheers.

I stalled out after a couple of the chapters the first time I tried GEB. Let it sit for a year or two, picked it up again and got totally enthralled and just plowed through it. I think maybe you have to be in just the right mood, or at just the right place mentally, to really want to jump into GEB. But when you do... what a rush.

It took me multiple cracks too! The CS content comes halfway, which was more penetrable and satisfying.

Moneyball is another great one for baseball fans.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine is another good one for people interested in American politics.

For anyone who deals with children "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk"

This book has a profound impact on me and my relationship with my kids. Read once early in their lives and then reread as they go through different stages in their lives.

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer.

Anytime I hear about a new movement or school of thought I go back to that

Awesome, this sounds super interesting, thanks!

Altered Carbon - Richard K Morgan

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

A Walk Among the Tombstones - Lawrence Block

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Use of Weapons - Iain M Banks

Blood Song - Anthony Ryan

Red Rising - Pierce Brown

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

The Short Timers - Gustav Hasford

Interesting that books like "Bury my heart at wounded knee" by Dee Brown doesn't seem to come up in these threads - but maybe it's in the high school curriculum in the US?

Which reminds I've yet to read Isaac Asimov's books on the history of North America/USA.

https://sursumcorda.salemsattic.com/archives/2018/06/19/isaa...

The Master of Hestviken (The Axe quadrilogy) by Sigrid Unset. Life-changing-ly good. (There's always Kristen Lavrandatter as well.)

The Soldier of a Great War by Mark Helprin. Amazing meditation on life & beauty.

The Cornerstone and The World is Not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg. Even though they're translated from the French, you'll never read anything like it, in terms of conveying the life and struggles of a Crusade-era Norman knight. I finished it utterly exhausted and humbled, astounded at how great a man's life could be.

A smattering from my audible listening list which I particularly remember liking (this might actually be a 'less read books' list sorry ;-) ): Michael Palin - Erebus ; Alan Moore - Jerusalem ; Graeme Green - Travel with my Aunt ; Karen Maitland - A Company of Liars ; Louis de Bernieres - Captain Correlli's Mandolin ; Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose ; Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls ; Robert Harris - Imperium trilogy ...

I'd second for Master & Margarita and almost anything by Dostoyevsky

The King James Version of the Holy Bible. Regardless of your religious beliefs, it's of incomparable cultural importance in the Western world, in particular to English literature.

I’ve come to recommend Gene Wolfe’s series, starting with Shadow of the Torturer. Can’t explain this one, just read it. Wolfe was an engineer, he helped to create the machine for manufacturing pringles. Bonus: Rudy Rucker’s Ware Tetralogy. A hilarious and thought-provoking cyberpunk book. The author is a Mathematics professor who worked at Autodesk for some time in the 80s. 2nd bonus: Sherlock Holmes, all of Poe’s work and all of H.P. Lovecraft’s work.

A Confederacy of Dunces is amazing. It’s in my top 5. Not in the same vein but I read Flowers for Algernon for the first time as an adult and it really touched my soul.

There's only one - Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - it basically explains the whole world we live in, I've become like 10x human after reading it.

Patrick Leigh Fermor recounting walking from Holland to Constantinople in the early 1930's is an enchanting tale. He was in his teens when he started the walk, but only started writing the travelogue when he was in his sixties. He was a fascinating and erudite character. The three books in the series are:

A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, The Broken Road (unfinished)

A Mix:

— Founders at Work, Jessica Livingston

— Principles, Ray Dalio

— Calling Bullsh*t (The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World), Carl Bergstrom

— Masters of Doom, David Kushner

— Anything you want, Derek Sivers

— Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, Joseph Sugarman

— Ogilvy on Advertising

— The Art of looking sideways, Alan Fletcher

— The Messy Middle, Scott Belsky

— The Wart of Art, Steven Pressfield

— The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, Mel Lindauer

— The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

— Ikigai, Francesc Miralles

— The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman

— Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

Non-fiction :

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

A fascinating and intimate history about the people who developed particle physics and how it led to the atomic age. It really highlights what the scientific mindset is like.

Fiction :

Expeditionary Force series of books by Craig Alanson

I'm 12 books into this relatively new series and it is still going strong. If you like sci-fi and geopolitical dramas, this is the series for you.

Chaos by James Gleick

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

You really need to know your Russian history to really appreciate and get Master and Margherita. You probably know enough to read Animal Farm but M+M is Russian, capital R.

Someone in an HN comment already said this and they suggested reading it with a companion book, so I collected one.

I haven't started reading it yet.

Oh I don't know the entire premise is brilliant and hilarious from the get-go: Devil arrives in Moscow one morning with all his pals, proceeds to give everyone everything they want like Father Christmas, and it's a shit-show, I love it :)

I'm sure there's layers but I think most adults will appreciate the portrayal of human vice and vanity :)

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara Tuchman (more famously known for the Guns of August).

Nonfiction, but really entertaining. A must read because it's insightful on how different but similar human beings can get. It's more than just a history imo. Also a period of European history people think is important, but rarely read up on.

I actually just tried this out last month and thought it was a terrific book, but it was just too long and detailed to hold my interest. I found myself struggling to get through it and finally returned it to the library half-read.

So, would recommend depending on the individual - if you know you have an appetite for thick and detailed history books, this one is great. A sardonic and entertaining writing style for sure.

"Clochemerle-en-Beaujolais" is hilarious. Don't know if it has been translated.

"Android Karenina" is a two-in-one deal.

Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran.

Blew my mind (pun intended) and changed my perspective on pretty much everything forever.

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers books are also good fun.

I would strongly suggest Anathem by Neal Stephenson. The book might initially seem to move slow, but trust me, it's worth it. The first half explores an alternate present where monks are primarily mathematicians, the second half explores causality links between alternate universes.

And the setting is awesome too.

Going bit ahead of time, since still reading the last book, but Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. It has it ups and downs, but mostly ups. I really like the pace, good balance between opening up characters and story/world building. First 2 books can be read without going full on with all 9.

I would put the Discworld series out there. Not because they will change your life, but just because they're so damn enjoyable to read. A lot of them are also suitable for reading together with children. My daughter (11) and I both loved The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

Some of my favorite fiction books and short story collections in no particular order:

1) Collected Fictions by Borges

2) The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka

3) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

4) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

5) 9 Stories by J.D. Salinger

6) 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme

7) 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

8) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

> 5) 9 Stories by J.D. Salinger

I'd encourage anyone who was put off by The Catcher in the Rye not to dismiss Salinger's other work, and agree that this is the one to read, if you're only going to read one (other) volume of his.

I will throw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series out there. It was good entertainment that challenged some of my notions about human nature. Nothing super profound but just enough to remain engaging beyond typical pop literature.

So, not a must read book?

It is a good book but I would not call it a must read for everyone. If you enjoy mysteries and fiction then yes. If you are looking for profound and deep introspection, then no.

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

It’s hard to categorise, nominally science fiction but not out of place with literary fiction. The writing is plain but it’s quite an emotional book to read with a very dark twist that creeps up on you.

The prose in Gatsby is so good. Every time I read it, I’m newly impressed.

The Master and Margarita, Burgin/O'Connor translation

It's funny how people recommend Master and Margarita, I found it unbearably difficult to read. The constant jumps between story lines (if I recall correctly) threw me off. Would absolutely avoid, but YMMV.

the invincible by lem

Very short to the point hard sci-fi.

Made me realise how sometimes some books/stories are dragged out and milked into oblivion.

*The review was a popular post on HN last night for anyone who has not read it, I rather enjoyed it :)

Some recs:

Fiction

- Dracula

Non-fiction

- Moonwalking with Einstein

- Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Scarne on Cards by John Scarne

The Old Man and The Sea, For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Some of my favorite fiction books:

- Seiobo There Below, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai

- The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

- Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

- Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

- Cuentos Completos, by Jorge Luis Borges (or at least the "Labyrinths" compilation)

- A Perfect Vacuum, by Stanislaw Lem (Forewords to Non-Existent Books)

- Imaginary Magnitude, by Stanislaw Lem

- His Master's Voice, by Stanislaw Lem (Along the same lines as Sagan's Contact, but better, way better.)

- Buddha's Little Finger, by Victor Pelevin

Some my favorite "non-fiction" books:

- The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, edited by Robert Strassler

- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon

- Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb

- The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb

- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter

- The Road to Reality, by Roger Penrose

- Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Every book written by Neal Stephenson.

Atlas Shrugged.

In no particular order.

- Scrum by Sutherland: We all know Scrum yet nobody really gets it. We've all read the blogs, we paid and heard the coaches, we've all done the daily standup and other cargo cult like rituals without really understanding what we are doing and why we're doing it. The book is very easy to read and simple to understand and you actually to know why Scrum came to be and therefore why you're doing it wrong.

- The Phoenix Project: Pretty much the best introduction books about DevOps. One of the few tech books written as a story yet also one of the best, because concepts are easier to remember and internalize when they are part of a broader story. The first half will make you go "are you me?", if you ever were in any kind of dysfunctional software organization. The second half borrow solutions from the manufacturing world and the authors successfully make the point about how they can be applied in in an IT context and also why they work. One of the few tech audio books that you can actually listen to.

- The C Programming Language: Learn the basics, a lot of what you will learn there is applyable to other languages and frameworks. Again, learn why stuff exists so everything makes more sense.

- The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup: Get out of tutorial hell. Actually get to know the language. You don't have to read it back to back.

- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie: A great book about leadership and reciprocity. Not a book about manipulation as the title might lead you to think. As pointed out by others, the world would be a better place if more people read this book. Really great to getting along with other devs.

- Win your Case by Gerry Spence: Based on the same principles of How to Win Friends but applied to adversarial circumstances. Eventually you will have to defend your implementation, convince your colleagues against rewrites and sell your products to clients who were disappointed in the past. This book provides the right tools for that.

- Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraftian literature in general. When I read this book I had a huge sense of déjà vu, but this is because Lovecraft really was the spearhead that put the cosmic horror genre into the minds of the public. Also a great way to deepen your English vocabulary, especially if you are not a native English speaker like me.

- C++17 Standard Library Quick Reference by Van Weert and Gregoire: The fastest and most convenient way to navigate the STL and find the feature you want with just enough information that covers 90% of usual needs. I saved a lot of time with this book.

- Introduction to Electrodynamics by Griffiths: This is the best science book I have ever read and this sentiment was shared among my fellow physics class camaraderie at the time. The explanations are first intuitive and then builds to more rigorous foundations, as it should be for all scientific literature but is not unfortunately. It was so good that people got their copy stolen. I even bought it back years later even if I don't study physics anymore.

- Dune by Hebert. The Denis Villeneuve movie doesn't give Dune's lore it's proper due in my opinion and should have had a proper 20 minutes long prologue like LOTR did but I digress. This book really aged well because of the premise that all computers were banned ten thousands years ago and what replaced them was the supremacy of the human mind over body and matter. The book, at least the first which I just read, is very easy to read. The appendices are very good too, make sure to go back and read them often.

- The Art of War by Suntzu: More than a book about war, but also about organization, leadership, and general principles of strategy. Aidan Gillen (Little Finger) also reads in on Audible.

- CIA Human Resource Exploitation Manual by CIA: Now publicly available as declassified. Worth reading not only for its historical value but also for a toolkit on how to defend oneself against exploitation and know by the knowing the signs and methods. Funny fact: the mentions about torture are rewritten by hand to say not to use torture instead of "only with proper authorization".

I don't know if I really even believe in the idea of "must read" books, but here are at least a few I highly recommend. In no particular order.

FICTION

The Mysterious Island - Verne

The Time Machine - Wells

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell

Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury

Brave New World - Huxley

Snow Crash - Stephenson

The Shockwave Rider - Brunner

The Fountainhead - Rand

Cryptonomicon - Stephenson

The Foundation trilogy - Asimov

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Bradbury

Strangers - Koontz

After Dark - Murakami

It - King

The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

The Hobbit - Tolkien

Perdido Street Station - Miéville

Permutation City - Egan

Glasshouse - Stross

NON-FICTION

Report from Engine Co 82 - Smith

Godel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter

How the Mind Works - Pinker

The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Blank

Charles Proteus Steinmetz: The Electrical Wizard of Schenectady - Bly

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Levy

Artificial Life - Levy

Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Haffner & Markoff (Note: this book is not without controvery. There is a lot of debate about the veracity of much of the material on Mitnick. However, it is a wildly entertaining read, and an introduction to a number of interesting characters. But I'd suggest following up by reading other related titles, especially regarding Kevin Mitnick)

Ghost in the Wires - Mitnick (Mitnick's autogiography, basically)

Takedown - Shimomura & Markoff

The Fugitive Game - Littman (of the books written about Mitnick, but not by Mitnick, this one has a reputation for being a little more "pro Kevin" whereas a couple of the others are sort of pointedly "anti Kevin" in their bias. Maybe it all balances out in the end if you read them all).

The Cyberthief & the Samurai - Goodell

The Cuckoo's Egg - Stoll

How To Create A Mind - Kurzweil

On Intelligence - Hawkins

Engineering General Intelligence (volumes 1 & 2) - Goertzel

The Hidden Pattern - Goertzel

Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity - Wallace

Here's my recommendations without any particular order and just books ive read recently and havent sorted into the library.

Factfullness by Hans rosling: The world is awesome, stop focusing on some tiny negatives that are being mispresented by the media.

Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: Contemporary top scifi author

Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein: The movie was awesome, until you read the book and see the movie as an abomination.

Pheonix and Unicorn Projects by Gene Kim: Devops > ITIL.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: Stoicism, how to be a good leader, how to live life.

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie: Everyone should be forced to read this multiple times. I really need to re-read.

Lying by Sam Harris: Seriously don't lie. You'll find things get better unexpectedly.

12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson: Here comes the downvotes.

That reminded me

The moon is a harsh mistress by Robert A Heinlein

>The moon is a harsh mistress by Robert A Heinlein

That looks good, haven't read it. THANKS!

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