Which books you read or re-read in 2022 were interesting to you? And why were they interesting actually?
The Afghanistan Papers - A book similar to the Pentagon Papers and goes over the 20+ year War on Terror in Afghanistan and how much it failed.
I read a lot, but these were the some of the last couple of books I've read in 2022 that I found interesting.
One of the best books on the history of interactive computing, human-computer interaction, and networking, which are all connected in surprising and fascinating ways.
It's eye-opening how many things we take for granted were invented back in the 60s and 70s – and how many visionary ideas from that time still hold their value in this day and age.
About halfway through this, kind of like a novel form of black mirror (although less dystopian imo). Full of interesting short stories, always thought provoking and entertaining.
How to build a car - Adrian Newey: I think even people with only engineering interest and not specifically cars, would find it interesting. What a joy it must be to work in a field where you have to be super creative and each week can measure your progress against other extremely clever teams and people.
Going the wrong way - Chris Donaldson: A bloke driving around the World on his Moto Guzzi LeMans. Probably only interesting if you are into bikes, but very weel written and enjoyable. I have read a lot of "around the World on motorcycle"-books and this is up there with the best.
Sandworm - Andy Greenberg: Probably the best fit for HN of the books I mentioned. Extremely interesting look at the hack that left Maersk paralized for several days. I read it shortly after Russia started invading Ukraine and it really educated me a lot about the situation leading up to the actual invasion.
After reading it, I realized that the world is less about lies and deception, but more about "bullshit".
Lies are easy to spot, bullshit however is impossible because it's rooted in deception and destruction. Similar to when you bullshit yourself, you are being self-deceptive and self destructive.
Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Endurance by Carloine Alexander
How To Live by Sarah Bakewell (Life of Montaigne)
Now Way Down by Graham Bowley
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall
How to be a Liberal by Ian Dunt
Short Stories by Brian Friel
It’s a memoir by the co-star of a disney channel show about her relationship with her abusive mother. I thought it was a very sad, funny, and hopeful read. I loved how introspective the author is.
The Rules of the Game - by Andrew Gordon. This is a 50 year history of the battle of Jutland. Meaning, one of the most thorough accounts of the battle of Jutland, plus a very detailed history of the 50 years preceding it, and the military/cultural background that led to the events at Jutland unfolding the way they did. A little innocent spoiler: after reading this book, you'll come to appreciate (like me) that one of the most consequential events in the world history (at least of the last two centuries) was the collision of HMS Victoria with HMS Camperdown two decades before the start of WW1. What a tragedy. There's a good chance that if that collision did not happen, then WW1 would not have happened, because Great Britain would have still been un-challengeble on the seas.
Freedom's Forge - by Arthur Herman. How America mobilized itself on the economic front. Unleashing the US industrial production juggernaut seems like preordained in hindsight, but it was anything but that. This book is a page turner. Once you start it, you know that you'll finish it.
I've learned so many concepts since I started programming that I'm always forgetting how alien it seems for other people. This book introduces some nice explanations why we do have programming languages, the mechanism of learning and why we do program. My take from the book is to not teach a language, but how to transform your thoughts to something that the computer can accept.
Exactly! Programming is nothing more than a precise codification of one's thoughts on how to tell a Computer to do something. I believe it should be taught with a mixture of Structured English, Mathematics (Basic Set Theory/Logic/Predicate Calculus) and Graphical Visualization. The student should be helped to make up his own pseudo-code and diagrams to express his thoughts in a manner most natural/appealing to him/her. This is what is known as problem-solving.
Once the above has been grasped, using a specific programming language then becomes a simple act of becoming familiar with the artifacts of the language. The Concepts/Idea generation phase have been nicely demarcated and mastered from the Constraints of Actual Mechanisms used to express them. Going the other way (i.e. from specific language to general abstracted pseudo-code and thence to another language expression) is much more difficult since we get mentally set in a specific way of solving the problem.
I've been recommending it to everyone who'll listen since three chapters in.
I enjoy reading the opinions of de Montaigne. He writes in a pleasant, easy, and funny way. Moreover, it gives you an interesting view on how people in the 16th century thought.
the "psycopath test" because i just love the way jon ronson writes these books (so called gonzo journalism).
i'm also just finishing "the hidden life of trees", from which i've been learning some interesting trivia about trees and it has made me pay closer attention to these awesome plants.
Surprisingly applicable to non-climbers. It is for anyone trying to get better at their craft.
Almost done with Status and Culture by David Marx, it's a fascinating look at how groups work and how much the hunt for status explains about our lives.