Ask HN: What are you looking forward to reading in 2023? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you looking forward to reading in 2023?

34 pointsanavette47 comments

Curious to hear what books are on everyone's reading lists for the coming year.

For work, learning, curiosity, pleasure, or otherwise.

Also would love to know why you're interested in the book as well!

This year I have set my goal high: completing 100 books from start to finish. For this, I need to consistently read about 2 books per week(2 * 52 = 104). I plan to read the classics and the most recommended books from the West and India. This will dovetail two objectives: a) Cutting down the time I spend mindlessly on reddit, youtube and so on. b) Assimilating more thoughtful material to ruminate over and write down my thoughts on.

I created a blog just today to record my notes and thoughts on some of what I read, at https://chitramdasgupta.bearblog.dev/

This is a great idea. I've read >100 books over each of the past 5 years (2022: 121, 2021: 183, 172, 193, 208). My goal is 156 this year. (Tracking via Goodreads). Probably 90% of mine are audiobooks, otherwise kindle, and only rarely paper books, but it's mostly replaced music, TV, movies, and other non-interactive online media. I realized reading only 10-20 books per year, I'd never get to even 1% of the books I'd want to read in my lifetime, but there's no TV show I'd be unhappy not having watched 10 years later.

Curious question, how do you folks find energy to read more text after spending hours a day reading code on a screen? I find my ability to concentrate on it totally shot.

I can't concentrate on a book by the time I'm done working. It's probably been a decade now since I read a book.

Read in the morning? Read during lunch?

Audiobooks help a bit, at least for non-technical stuff.

Buy a small, popular book on a topic that interests you. A physical one. Dedicate ten minutes to it before bed. If you are like most people you will fall asleep but at least read a few paragraphs before you do. And it is better than blue light from your phone.

Some nights I cant fall asleep quick so I finish books that way.

It's impossible if they do that they cut time for other more crucial things in the long term like meditation and exercising. You only get a limited amount of time in the day.

Becoming a super nerd is unnatural.

Why impossible? I sleep about 6 hours a night (I can stay in bed longer than that, but I wake up after 6 max), work for about 8 hours, live near-ish the office or work remotely (call it 1 hour total commute, but since I can work remotely my average is lower), 30 minutes for lunch and 30 minutes to get ready before heading to work. That's only 16 hours total, leaving me with 8 more hours in the day. That's a lot of time if I'm not wasting it on HN like right now.

A good workout can be done in 30 minutes, though I prefer about 90 total (core/weights, rowing, running in the non-winter seasons, about 30 minutes of each). Dinner, about 30 minutes to cook and 30 minutes to eat, another 15 max to clean (mostly done while I'm cooking so really usually just 1 minute to put plates in the dishwasher). So that's 2.75, leaving me with 5.25 hours for spending time with my wife, wasting time on HN, reading, or working on side projects.

And that's just the weekdays. Weekends I get 9 hours back since I'm not commuting and working, though some of that goes to yard and house work so realistically call it 7 extra free hours as an average.

Reading just 15-30 minutes before bed works really well for me, and if I'm not too tired, I'll read a bit longer. I can usually average a book a month this way.

I used to think the reason I couldn’t read anymore was because the day drained me.

A friend suggested trying to read 3 days into a 1 week vacation. I couldn’t.

And from that moment I realized it was a muscle like anything else. Consuming media that requires active participation and work, that you are not rewarded for (professional learning) takes practice.

I come home tired most days but I still manage to crank out time to read.

Maybe it won’t work for you the way it worked for me, but give it a try. You might be surprised.

How much time do you spend here? Or on your phone or watching TV. Replace that with reading

90% of the books I read are audiobooks. My eyes get tired before brain does.

It's rather personal what works for you or not. What helped for me was the accessibility of a good 10inch ereader. And strangely another ingredient was a very bad sleeping baby, which only slept in his own bed if I lay next to him on the ground. That period between 19:00 and 20:00 was perfect for me.

Trying to read just before trying to go to sleep never worked for me, my brain shuts off completely as soon as I lie and bed with w book after 2200, yet if just stay up I don't sleep before 00:00.

Also, it helps to read something by people who can write. For example I never thought I'd read business related books, yet after it being mentioned so often here on HN I read the innovator's dilemma, loved it! His style of clear paragraphs and constant examples really works well for me.

Learning / Curiosity:

Fantastic Fungi, Paul Stamets - Because I watched the Netflix documentary

The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli - Because someone here mentioned it and it peaked my interest

Cloud Hidden, Alan Watts - Because I hord Alan Watts quotes and need to finally read one of his works completely

The Molecule of More, Lieberman & Long - Came across it at a book store and looked interesting

Pleasure

The Go-Giver, Burg & Mann - Been on my list for a while but can't remember why.

Just finished the order of time. It's a bit of a let down. Hoped for a more scientific book but most of it reads like a memoir. If you don't like it skip to chapter 14. This is the summary with reference to the chapter.

Spot on… appreciate the feedback. Cheers

- Self-Determination Theory (SDT) by Deci and Ryan - finish (and probably re-read). It's a major theory in psychology on human motivation, and it's one of the worldview-shifting reads for me. It's as nerdy and scientific as you can get to the motivation research, and it applies virtually every sphere of human interaction - work, parenting, sports, relationships, education etc.

- The Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design - CLA is the the best sports coaching (and also quite nerdy) philosophy I've found so far. Unlike SDT it's mostly concerned about motor skill acquisition science.

- Collection of books on figure skating starting from 1880 - aside from purely historical value, they have incredible knowledge on how to perform figures (that's where name "figure skating" came from) - the art almost extinct nowadays. It's a foundation of this sport, but as international federation removed them from competitions, nobody learns or teaches it anymore, so we literally loosing the roots of the most important skill in figure skating (US and Canada are doing better than everyone else, you can still learn and pass tests in figures, but that's quite unique cases).

History of financial fraud, from 13th century to 21th century. (french)

The early signs of a company difficulties and financial fraud. (french)

Financial fraud handbook. (Joseph T. Wells)

You see the pattern.

Why ? I don't know. I'm kind of fascinated by that. The first time I had any interest of stock market related things was for "The smartest guys in the room" (Enron scandal) long before I read anything about stock markets itself.

I just recently said to someone : "I don't understand why someone would engage in a Ponzi scheme when it's mathematicaly a sure thing, in a finite world with a finite money supply, the scheme will collapse and he will get caught". He responded : "Because he hopes he will get away with it"...

His response of course adds up to my curiosity, because my question states first he can't mathematicaly get away with it. There is definitively a logic of thinking I don't get. But I'm kind of dumb when it's about people.

That being said both my parents had a kind of personnal take about reality and truthfulness... Differences betweens what people say or write about financial matters and financial reality tend to disappear within a relatively short period of time, as reality always catches up in that case.

This explains maybe that.

A book store near us has an amazing January sale, so:

Entertainment: Babel - An Arcane History by RF Kuang, Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick, and my usual re-read of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Non-fiction: Code (second edition), The Myth of Normal by Gabor & Daniel Mate

Code (second edition) is excellent, just excellent. I read the first edition when it came out and it helped me contextualize the entire chain of how computers work. I've gotten rusty on that over the years, and I'm really enjoying going back through that and freshening up.

I didn't know there was a 2nd edition, thanks!

Petzold is a hero, this talk (2014) is on that same 'back to basics' wavelength and it's just brilliant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srWQdTGlnVg

Milan Curcic's Modern Fortran book is in the mail on its way to me right now. I'm pretty excited about taking some time with that after reading a chapter from the ebook version.

At the same time I'm looking forward to complimenting it with another go at Silvanus P. Thompson's Calculus Made Easy so I can hopefully get a better understanding of the models described in the fortran book. (Been working through Khan Academy material in the meantime as a prelude...)

I've also got the latest installments in Sammy Harkham's Crickets series and Sam Sharpe & Peach S Goodrich's Viewotron series on deck which I've been saving as a treat. They're both published so infrequently I wanted to save them for some time can sprawl into my reading.

I'm continuing to read a PhD thesis that happens to spend a lot of time talking about the migration of my great grandmother's family (and ancestors) through western Virginia and eastern Kentucky (and then on to Oklahoma and Arkansas) starting in the late 18th century.

"Who's your people?": Cumulative identity among the Salyersville Indian population of Kentucky's Appalachia and the midwest muckfields, 1677--2000" by Carlson, Richard Allen, Jr., Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2003, 711 pages; AAT 3115947

https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/47376

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's about an AI, which is becoming an important future possibility, and it's newer than what I usually read. I wonder if it's more shallow-entertaining like Her, or more serious like Asimov's robot stories. Or maybe an entirely new take?

Unsong by Scott Alexander. Yes, the famous blogger with original takes on society, politics, and philosophy. Will his solid reasoning and surprising conclusions carry over into a long writing form?

Glasshouse by Charles Stross. No other reason than it's been recommended as a series here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33146896 , and I'm done with the previous entries.

The Kalevala by the Finns. One of the four ancient epics. Even if a bit of a slog, it's a refreshing change from modern reads. https://sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/kvrune15.htm

Type-Driven Development with Idris by Edwin Brady - Idris seems different enough from the mainstream that learning it might prove eye-opening. Or spoil me for coding in normal languages forever. A bit of a gamble, this one.

Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP), volume 4B. This was published in December 2022 [1], 11 years after volume 4A.

I bought 4A and 4B yesterday. I'll first dip into them at random, purely for pleasure. Then pick a couple of sections to work through more seriously.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33082128

This is not about reading but I am looking forward to digging (mostly audiobooks) the Indian Epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata this year.

I never paid attention to these things before but after I lost my father a couple of years ago I have made it my personal avenue to walk in his footsteps in everything I do. He loved these books, the literature and often took out references from them for many lessons in life. Not just that, he remembers every character, every line, every verse and every poem from those things. He was a true genius.

I wanted to experience these epics as he did while he read them, and to make everything he loved a part of my life. I miss you daddy.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn.

All of Lee Kwan Yew’s books.

The Ancient City

Some Spanish literary classics, in Spanish. (I’m at newspaper reading level, not great, and still trying to improve.)

Always with Honor, by Pyotr Wrangel

Lots of great tech books I have on preorder from No Starch Press.

Re-reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's a yearly ritual.

Are you discovering new meanings or subtleties you missed ?

- finishing Atomic Habits(worth the hype, imo)

- Pale Fire, Nabokov

- Speaker for the Dead - I thought the first book was just ok, but praise for the sequel made me interested

- House Of Leaves

- Godel Escher Bach

Kindred by Octavia Butler.

I've been making my way through all of her other works for the past few years. I've read the Xenogenesis trilogy two or three times. Her works speak to me about the human condition in ways very few authors have been able to.

Kindred is her last remaining work I know of that that I have not read. I've been purposefully saving it for last and it feels like now is the time.

For pleasure: getting into the rabbit hole of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (41 fantastic sci-fi / comedy novels)!

If you're planning on reading them in the order they came out, don't be too put off if the first couple books don't grab you. A lot of people even recommend starting later in the series or going through a subseries- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Discworl...

Getting back into sci-fi. Just finished the first book in the third body problem series. Also have earth unaware (Enders game prequel) and We are legion (we are bob) ready to go.

From a work perspective I just finished creative selection which was excellent.

It's a much lighter read than those, but if you haven't read it before, I suggest Project Hail Mary.

Loved Project Hail Mary. Read that just prior! Any other suggestions?

We are Legion is brilliant. Be ready to read all the other parts too

This three-part biography on Teddy Roosevelt:

https://www.amazon.com/Edmund-Morriss-Theodore-Roosevelt-Tri...

Entertainment: - Blindsight - Children of Dune - War and Peace

Curiosity/Knowledge: - Peter Zeihan (author) - Atomic Habits - Turn the Ship Around

Work: - Domain Modeling Made Functional by Scott Wlaschin - Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman

Turn the Ship around is great

Thanks everyone, love reading these responses!

Fiction:

Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez, because I enjoyed Delta-V, Daemon & Freedom. Which reminds of Kill Decision, which I haven't read so far.

Others: TBD

TCP/IP Illustrated and Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, both by W. Richard Stevens.

The Haskell Wikibook.

More Ursula K. Le Guin.

The Doors of Stone by Patrick Rothfuss (please!)

A really good book produced with the help of GPT / ChatGPT ?

I always have too many books started, but one on my to-do pile is Shoshana Zuboff's, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism." I ordered the paperback, so it's here, glaring at me.

My obituary, probably.

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