Ask HN: What are you reading right now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you reading right now?

28 pointssun12359 comments

I am currently reading

The Code (By Charles Petzold )

Brain Rules (John Medina)

Steve Jobs - I have to admit, it is not at all what I expected. I thought it would be a gushing tribute, but instead he comes across as a complete asshole-tyrant (so far... I'm about halfway thru the book) and his success was almost in spite of himself. He was dead wrong almost as much, if not more, than he was right (at least until he rejoined Apple, which is where I'm at right now). Not a glowing biography in the least, which is shocking but I guess refreshing.

Rules of Ascension by David B Coe. A book I picked out of a library shelf one day because it sounded intriguing, and it is – it's the first volume in an epic about political machinations across several fantasy continents, and about a race war between two species, one of which is basically human, one of which is a frailer, magic-wielding species. I'm a sucker for political complexity, and I love that fantasy lets authors invent hypothetical scenarios for me to delve into.

I just wish the book's marketers would have respected it a bit more. The cover is of a long-haired man with an earring and a sword walking away from a burning castle, and it makes me feel a little bit cheesy carrying it around. I dislike smart books with deceptively stupid covers about as much as I dislike stupid books with deceptively smart covers.

Feynman lectures on physics - vol 1

If at some point you found Physics wonderful, and then lost it when everything became calculations, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, and the other volumes once you are done with it.

Feynman has an engaging conversation style, and when you are immersed in the book, you literally feel the wonders of the universe. You go through Newton's motion and gravitation laws, and then using simple numerical methods, he plots you the orbital path around the sun of a given planet.

It does has derivations, but it doesn't let derivation take over the idea it's discussing. And some derivations and deductions will be enlightening when you already know something about something - for e.g for the first time in my life, I saw why the observed velocity won't exceed speed of light.

Even for the ideas I know, Feynman's explanation either add something, or make me thing "Holy Shit I didn't think of it that way." While discussing Newton's laws, he mentions this whole set of laws depends on a coordinate system - but we really can't say all experiments are to be performed at place x - but you know what, these laws are independent of the axis you choose, and here is how.

You are left thinking, hell, I kinda knew it but didn't approach it that way.

Then he will tell you a system moving with constant velocity in a straight line will observe the exact same laws of physics, and here is why, which is just an extension of the previous axis transform.

Even if you don't like Physics, give this book a try. Most likely you will understand universe better when you are through.

If somebody hypothetically knows nothing of Feynman or physicals, would this be a good starting point? Or would you suggest this book as a follow-up to something simpler and more immediately engaging?

You don't have to know anything about Feynman or Physics. The book assumes a basic knowledge of Mathematics and Science, and that's all you need to understand it.

But be warned - this isn't an easy book, and you can't skim through it. This is an extremely dense book; it builds on what it already has told you, which makes sense because "Observe, Reason, Experiment" is how you do science. To reason/deduce, you need to have a base and then you take it from there. When it introduces concepts that can't be deduced, it tells you that. Also, it clearly says analysis/logic alone isn't a killall - sometimes you just go the numerical method road(which is somehow similar to brute-force algorithm most of the times), and it gives you results which analysis alone can't.

I am reading it a very slow pace, because the book is packed with information with no superfluous content, and many a times I have to stop to think about what it's telling me.

I would recommend you read the first chapter "Atoms in motion" first. Well, I already knew everything is made of atoms(duh), but still, it presented things to me in a very engaging way.

Some gists to give you a preview:

Everything is made of atoms; water is made of molecules which are atoms in a bond; molecules are held together by mutual attraction; molecules always jiggle; the jiggle is represented as heat; you heat water - you increase the jiggling; increased jiggling loosens the mutual molecular attraction and some molecules escape, and you get steam.

And molecules which escape are the ones which are jiggling badly; because the ones which aren't jiggling hard won't be breaking the mutual attraction; and when high energy molecules escaped, the net energy of the system is lower.

Oh, and now you know why you feel cold when your sweat evaporates.

I'd read Six Easy Pieces first.

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GHN26W?ie=UTF8&tag=...

Thinking, Fast and Slow : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00555X8OA?ie=UTF8&tag=...

Here's my Kindle @ Amazon link - does it work if you're you and... well, not me? https://kindle.amazon.com/profile/David-N--Welton/208047#rec...

It shows what I've been reading lately, notes, etc...

Speaking of which, something that aggregated Kindle reading patterns of HN readers is something I would love to see as an application. How cool would that be? Popular books, notes, etc...

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Michael Lewis recently wrote an article about Kahneman and the book, and the discussion of that on HN really piqued my interest. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219240)

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

I hesitated to start. Partly because I found the original Harry Potter kind of boring/frustrating. And partly because it's fanfiction, a sort of writing I do not normally enjoy.

I'm most of the way through the 1200 pages and find it pretty enjoyable.

Harry's portrayal seems pretty uneven (swinging between "scientist/genius in an irrational world" and "arrogant prick demigod").

I like Drako's additional depth far better than Rowling's one dimensional jerk.

Find it here: http://www.elsewhere.org/rationality/ (after the first few chapters I switched to the pdf version.. link on the right of that page)

The electric Kool-Aid acid test by Tom Wolfe. In a way I feel sorry that we don't have these kind of counter-cultural, non-conformist movements anymore. A hipster just isn't the same as a hippie... Reading this book has been an experience, although I'm not sure what exactly. I guess I'm just "on the bus"!

hipster is the new scenester, there is no comparison to a hippie. There are still a lot of counter-culture types out there, I consider myself one of them. I think we're just a lot less in your face and loud than what you're thinking of which is in some ways rather unfortunate. The modern day hippie is focused on real local food, reducing waste, anti-consumerism, labor issues, etc. Look at everything that's been going down in Madison, WI to see lots of examples.

Hacker Ne

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0x4ea43cbc in memcpy () from /lib/libc.so.6

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/140...

- quite good so far (1/2 way through)

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster

http://www.amazon.com/Room-View-Bantam-Classics/dp/055321323...

- not sure what I think of it yet (about 1/2 way through). Found some of the writing a bit opaque, where I'm not sure what he's trying to say.

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. A wide-ranging inquiry into the kinds of ideas that lead to human progress and those that don't. In the top five on the list of "best books I've ever read".

An introduction to Probability by William Feller Code(By Charles Petzold) Feynman Lectures Vol1 Artificial Intelligence,A Modern Approach By Norvig Blink By Malcolm Gladwell. Concurrently.

The Road To Reality - Roger Penrose. Slowly, step by step.

Neuromancer - William Gibson. 6th or 7th time through. Coming to it now after having read Delany's Nova, and the influence is clear.

Little Heroes - Norman Spinrad. All that's good about Spinrad and all that's bad. He does write well about Hollywood.

History Of Film- David Parkinson. A short survey text, sort of a review for me.

Physical Chemistry by Levine. It has given me an amazing theoretical and quantitative grasp for thermodynamics, aqueous systems, etc. It's incredibly easy to understand if you've had general chemistry and diff eq. It's my best textbook this semester.

It gets into quantum and statistical mechanics, but I haven't made it that far yet.

Version Control by Example ~ Eric Sink

The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook

http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming-Interface-System-Han...

Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows

Early Retirement Extreme - Jacob Lund Fisker

Steve Jobs Biography - Walter Isaacson

I'm surprised at how good a read this is, it is anything but a hero worship style book. Its long for a biography but Steve's life is a very interesting one, and am yet to be bored with it.

The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick http://www.amazon.com/Art-Intrusion-Exploits-Intruders-Decei...

Currently reading Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger. Interesting concepts :)

Cryptonomicon, so far love it

Interesting that most seem to read two books at the same time. Usually I read one fiction and one non-fiction, but this time really enjoying to focus on only one book

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: How Medical Imaging Is Changing Health Care (by Bruce Hillman and Jeff Goldsmith )

Agile Web Development with Rails (by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson)

A Game of Thrones and A Hitchhikers guide to teh galaxy. I've been using this past few months to read up a few things that I shyould have read long ago. Next up is Stranger in a Strange Land

Calculus - Michael Spivak

Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky

Teaching as Leadership,

http://www.teachingasleadership.org/

to learn more about effective teaching.

REAMDE by Neal Stephenson

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem

Artificial Intelligence, a Modern Approach (Russell & Norvig), while doing ai-class.com. Great writing for a text book.

Coders at Work (Seibel).

The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy (Dave Madden)

Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty (David Kadavy)

The Ruby Programming Language - Flanagan, Matsumoto

Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example - Hartl

Blood Meridian - McCarthy

How to live safely in a science fictional universe

Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in "The Matrix"

Breakthrough Rapid Reading (Peter Kump)

The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt)

Cashflow Quadrant (Robert T. Kiyosaki)

Currently on book two in the Spin series. Just finished book one (Spin) which was great.

Axis (Robert Charles Wilson)

I'm far more into history than anything. I'm reading "The Campaigns of Alexander" by Arrian and "Halliburton's Army"

I'm still slowly working my way through GEB. Also reading Ghost Story (Dresden Files #13) for some lighter fare.

Code By Charles Petzold. This book is taking me back to school. Law of conservation of energy. Brilliant text

Principles of Functional Programming - Glaser, Hankin, Till

I Have America Surrounded - John Higgs

Accelerated C++ (Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo) A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin)

Fundamentals of Physics - Halliday et al. and The Collected Short Stories of Robert Dahl.

Predictably irrational the hidden forces that shape our decisions by Dan Ariely

The Shallows (Nicholas Carr)

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo -- the book, not the musical. Well worth it.

Kudos to you!

Tried reading it several years ago and flung it down in despair at its veboseness ~quarter way through. My French friends laughed with & at me, saying I was lucky it wasn't mandatory reading like it was for them in high school... I hear glowing reviews very occasionally, but when I think of the sheer bulk of the book, I don't know if I can give it another chance.

I'm reading on Kindle and carefully not looking at the "% read" indicator... that might be helping.

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink

Well Grounded Rubyist, iOS Programming (Big Nerd Ranch), Steve Jobs

Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, ofcourse. (still a noob)

Auralia's Colors (by Jeffery Overstreet)

The Ascent of Money (Niall Fergusson)

The Forever War (Joe Haldeman)

Surface Detail, Iain M Banks

White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)

hacker news required reading of course:

Hackers & Painters - pg

1984, Gorges Orwell

One of the best ever. There's a part of me that is afraid to re-read it.

Gödel, Escher, Bach

A Feast for Crows

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