Ask HN: What are you reading these days? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

112 pointssujayk_33281 comments

Just wondering

I'm reading the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson

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The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard [1].

Ballard is science fiction in the sense he explores inner space instead of outer space.

Some are kind of eh, and ones that have really stuck out for me,

"Concentration City" - a giant infinitely expanding city ala Dark City or Blame!.

"Studio Five, The Stars" - poetry is written by machines and only eccentrics write their own. Think AI generation of art but in 1961.

"The Subliminal Man" - government uses subliminal messages to promote mindless consumerism - They Live but 1963.

"Billennium" - Earth is vastly overpopulated and any semblance of personal space or privacy is non-existent.

"The Garden of Time" - allegory of never ceasing approach of time no matter what you do to defend yourself from it.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Short_Stories_o...

That collection has a bunch of great stories. Some I particularly like:

* "Report on an Unidentified Space Station" — shades of Lem, Borges, and Harlan Ellison as a crew explores an apparently infinite construct.

* "A Question of Re-Entry" — post-colonialism á la Heart of Darkness by way of science fiction allegory; a beautiful companion to his apocalypse series (of which the best is The Crystal World; there's another story here, "The Illuminated Man", that Ballard used as the basis for that book).

* "The Drowned Giant" — an odd fable about giant found washed up on a beach and how a cottage industry of scavenging grows around it. (There's a decent animated version of this story in Netflix's "Love, Death & Robots.")

* "Dream Cargoes" — I guess I like Ballard the most when he's off in some tropical environment where nature is doing weird things, and this is one of them, and also because it's implied to be set on Vieques, an island that I love very much.

There are a few duds, but what's interesting is the wide span of Ballard's focus. He doesn't do one type of story, but many. (Unfortunately his later career could have done with more of this type of imaginative variance; he spent his last couple of decades writing at least three (four, if you count Running Wild) about rich gated communities hiding dark psychological secrets, and they were not very good.)

My non-fiction pile is very peculiar to me (maths, probability, gambling, Rust and Elixir books, a backlog of a load of recent Humble Bundle deals), but I have some solid fiction recommendations:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is the sort of novel where you start to get sad as the weight of unread pages in your right starts to lighten. A novel about some friends who build some games (set in the 1990s and 2000s, with references to games of that era), it's really about friendship, social awkwardness and creativity.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke can't really take a review. When I first of it in Literary Review, the reviewer refused to disclose any plot for fear of providing spoilers, and I'm the same. I can just tell you, it's lovely. Her writing has got even better since she wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and it's a really, really solid novel.

Yesterday, my Dad messaged me about a current read I'll share here as a warning, and because his style is just hilarious:

I treated myself to a copy of "A Stroke of the Pen" by Terry Pratchett: short stories unearthed after his death. Very disappointing. If I were you, I would wait until it is available at your local library and then you could scrawl cuss words inside it without damaging your personal copy.

Solid advice that, I hope you'll agree.

I can't for the life of me understand Piranesi. I've read so many good reviews but I just couldn't stay focused reading it. It was very slow for me.

It's a slow fantasy. Maybe. There are lots of different ways of reading a book. I err towards looking at the use of language, the turn of phrase, at least as much as I do the plot. Piranesi suits me, if you're more plot oriented, it might be quite a jarring story.

>short stories unearthed after his death. Very disappointing

Perhaps that is why he never published them?

He did. They were published in newspapers in the 1970s, under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/11/a-stroke-of-th...

Thanks for the clarification. I guess he was still polishing his craft 50 years ago.

As Neil Gaiman tells, Terry Pratchett had his hard drives steamrolled upon his death to prevent any half-done work from being released.

Not just Neil Gaiman, it was widely reported at the time: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchet...

Bluey: Camping

When Bluey is on a family camping trip, she meets a new friend, Jean Luc. Join them as they plant a tree, hunt a 'wild pig' and learn about the magic of friendship.

What!? I never realized there are bluey books

They’re really just breakdowns of episodes. This is common in tv adapted to books. Great for kids who are being read to or learning to read.

This episode broke my heart with its wholesomeness! I'm a grown ass adult and I watch Bluey unashamedly. I don't even have a kid companion to provide cover. It's such a layered show, with themes that resonate with adults as well. Cafe, where Bluey as a kid makes friends immediately with another kid, and Bandit and the other kid's dad were very cagey about how fast is too fast. Puppet subtext is as serious as any Ridley Scott Maker/Creature theme. Space is about revisiting traumatic events in one's past, and a gentle advise on how to deal with it. "I am Magic Claw. Magic Claw has no children. His days are free and easy." Hilarious and true.

I do have a kid, but I’ll sneak some Bluey even when they’re not around. It’s a great show with good lessons about life. Even good those of us who don’t quite fit the demographic.

_Regenesis_, by George Monbiot.

About how we can realistically feed everyone on the planet long term, in a way that doesn't destroy nature, keeps soil healthy and more able to deal with climate change, and is also affordable.

Very good. Very well sourced, sceptical of romantic ideas that just don't scale.

Given that we currently use 60% of our agricultural land to feed livestock, that we then use to produce 12% of our calories (and 40% of the land for the other 88%), and that methods of agriculture that leave the ecology healthier have lower yields than current industrial methods, he takes as a given that we'll have to do without most of the livestock.

I really don’t understand how so many smart people don’t understand this and continue to consume animal products regularly.

People still smoke cigarettes despite decades of clear evidence that they will lead to a horrible death in many cases. Society has built so many disincentives to doing so, and yet they persist.

Animal products will continue to be consumed no matter how obvious it is that their production is morally repugnant and environmentally destructive.

I am sorry to say that I am one of those consumers despite knowing better.

As a former smoker and meat eater I know smoking was far far harder to give up than meat since there is a physical addiction component. Meat eating is just habit and something you can easily enough wean yourself away from.

It’s on the list of things I want to change about myself. I’m a work in progress.

Dietary control is not something I have been able to exercise in the past. I’m attempting to obtain pharmaceutical help on that front, so maybe I will be able to execute on being a better person in that dimension in the coming months.

Cigarette use is plummeting in the west.

Meat eating should also plummet if meat eating is banned in restaurants and there’s a minimum meat eating age that increases a year at a time. Bonus if there’s a health insurance question about meat eating and special meat taxes.

There is no societal structure to disincentivize meat eating. Social pressure from vegetarians (which is so very slight) and logical arguments are the only thing we’ve got. Tradition, convenience, identity, and preferences are all arrayed against the reasonable thing.

For now meat consumption is probably going to be somewhat inversely correlated to meat prices, as per usual.

In fairness it has been dropping, eg https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58831636

Here’s hoping a tipping point is reached soon

I'd expect change to come either from stronger regulation of agriculture that makes it much harder to produce meat, or if that's not introduced, from huge food shortages after desertification and other climate change effects become more pronounced.

As long as meat is produced in sufficient quantity and at prices consumers can afford, I don't expect huge change from them.

It is difficult to ban something that has been an integral part of a culture for centuries.

But societal attitudes can change quite quickly. For example, homosexuality has gone from being illegal, to being tolerated and now (I think for a lot of people in the UK) pretty much a non-issue in 50 years.

I think that's what the person above was saying already, just that it's a surprise that many intelligent people still prioritise tradition over the logical arguments.

How much is vaping taking up the slack?

Here in the UK it seems that cigarettes have to be hidden from view in a 'drawer of shame' while vapes are in left clear view. I'm not sure why vapes seem to be getting an easier ride than cigarettes. Are vapes any less harmful than cigarettes? Apart from the effects on health they create a lot more waste. Also some vapes seem to be clearly marketed to children.

(Disclaimer: I have never smoked or vaped, so it isn't a subject I know much about. Please enlighten me.)

How do you define 'regularly' on a global scale?

I don’t since I really only know about what happens in the west. Here most people seem to eat meat 2-3 times a day, that seems far too frequent to be sustainable. Especially if you consider it immoral to live a lifestyle that couldn’t realistically be sustained if everyone on earth had access to it.

Even in the west it varies a lot. As a vegetarian who recently visited Florida it seems that American eat quite a lot more meat than people in the UK. Case in point - my family wanted to go to a steak house in Florida (they aren't vegetarians) but the one they wanted to go to didn't a single vegetarian item on the huge menu. Even the salads and mac & cheese had bacon added! We didn't go. My local steak house in the UK always has several vegetarian/vegan options.

Well, using land to produce feed to ship to CAFOs where animals experience almost nothing but suffering for their short lives is clearly reprehensible.

But George Monbiot quite famously adjusted his position[0] in response to - and since this is a thread about books - one of my favourite works on the subject, 'Meat, A Benign Extravagance' by Simon Fairlie (2010).

(My copy was signed by the author when I attended one of his scything weekends.)

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/meat-p...

Based on reading that article I think his position is still that we should be eating far less meat than we currently are.

> Based on reading that article ...

I reiterate my recommendation of Fairlie's book, which goes into much more detail than George Monbiot's brief article where he responds to same in the Guardian some 13 years ago.

I note in that article, however:

"If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it's a significant net gain."

I guess 'half the current global meat supply' probably is 'far less', as you say.

I think it’s also worth considering what level of meat eating would be sustainable if we extrapolated out to everyone on earth doing it. I think we’re extremely fortunate that vegetarianism is so common in India

Vegetarianism, but not veganism - there's a LOT of cows in India - about a third of the world's bovine population, give or take.

Milk products are obviously a big part of the diet there, and it invites the question 'what are all those cows eating?'. And then some questions like 'How much beef could they be consuming in a similarly sustainable <sic> fashion?'.

If you've been to India you'd have noticed cows are everywhere. Frequently just wandering wild along the city and suburban streets.

Tangentially, a big part of India being vegetarian is obviously cultural, but I suspect that health or food safety / handling plays a (growing) part. When I travel to India my diet shifts to primarily vegetarian - just to reduce my health risks.

I think Monbiit's book argues successfully that it's so hard to grow plants in a way that keeps the soil healthy (as little tilling, added nitrogen, pesticides and herbicides as possible) that there just wouldn't be space for livestock.

You're describing an integrated food system that, for permaculture practitioners, is considered a mostly solved problem.

There's probably lots of examples of people who don't self-label as permaculturists -- Joel Salatin's springs to mind -- who would also assert this is something we demonstrably know how to solve.

Permaculture is a piece of the puzzle but I'm not convinced it is cheap enough to be affordable for the poor globally, nor have I seen it work at scale for staple cereals.

Cheap enough?

Some of the biggest success stories have been implementations in $-poor environments.

There's nothing inherently expensive about the principles of permaculture.

As to 'work at scale for staple cereals' I think you are perhaps misunderstanding what permaculture advocates - broadacre cereal crops are definitely NOT on the menu.

> Cheap enough?

> Some of the biggest success stories have been implementations in $-poor environments.

So why is it not the dominant method of agriculture yet?

> broadacre cereal crops are definitely NOT on the menu.

And yet, they're a basic part of most humans' diet. How many people actually get _all_ their food from permaculture?

Anyway one of the things Monbiot talks about in his book are new perennial versions of wheat and rice that have decent yields, so maybe they can become part of permaculture.

> So why is it not the dominant method of agriculture yet?

Define dominant?

I'll note that permaculture does not have an army of lobbyists, sales people, marketers, lawyers, pushing this into public policy, beating its drum across media, using threats of prosecution to lock people into expensive seed / fertiliser / herbicide combinations, and so on.

It's a bit like free software competing with lower-quality non-free software, or fresh fruit competing with plastic-wrapped highly processed fast food - the product is demonstrably better for the consumer and the planet, but the disparity in advertising budgets dictate which is more popular.

Apropos whatever you like ... Bayer is worth around 130B euro - having picked up Monsanto for USD $60B five years ago.

In contrast, you can go do your permaculture design course for around US$1k, or pick up the original - Permaculture One - in ebook format for around AU$30.

Anyway, I've assumed by dominant you mean pervasive or popular, rather than merely superior.

> And yet, they're a basic part of most humans' diet. How many people actually get _all_ their food from permaculture?

I think you're asking some interesting questions, but perhaps coming at it from the wrong angle.

I mean, it's fascinating why it is that we're still using the same handful of grains that were chosen about 12k ya at a time when health & longevity weren't major concerns, and obviously weren't strong evolutionary factors.

Grains are far from great, and arguably the move from hunter gatherer to fixed / agricultural settlements was a backwards step in terms of individual health, but you'd certainly live long enough to propagate genetic material on a diet of mostly grains, so in that sense you could say 'it worked'.

Back to the thrust of your question - how many people actually use Debian rather than Microsoft Windows?

Does this mean the latter is two orders of magnitude better, or just two orders of magnitude more dominant?

> Anyway one of the things Monbiot talks about in his book are new perennial versions of wheat and rice that have decent yields, so maybe they can become part of permaculture.

You should probably read some books on permaculture, because 'growing a better monoculture' is entirely not what it's about.

If you're stateside, Toby Hemenway's book is well regarded. (He once intimated to me that my reliance on metric meant I couldn't be as good a designer as someone familiar with both metric and imperial / customary / archaic but nonetheless.) The original Permaculture Designer's Manual (600 pages) is hefty and dense, but definitely the canonical work.

I mentioned Joel Salatin earlier - he doesn't identify as a permaculturist, but his integrated approach to farming definitely aligns with some of the permy principles. I've only read his 'folks this ain't normal' and 'everything I want to do is illegal' but he's got an abundance of books, as well as some great videos available on youtube. He's the chap that featured in Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'.

My concern is that large corporations will slowly start pushing for taxes and restrictions putting limitations on natural proteins like meat so they can then sell their patented meat sources

Steaks and bacon are some of the few things that make life worth living. I'd rather talk about population control for humans to achieve sustainability(maybe necessary in the end anyway) than deprive ourselves of the joy of a burger.

You'd rather deprive someone else of a burger then

That sounds reasonable, as long as it's a choice. It's harsh and ineffecyive to ask people that aren't as attached to burgers to have their population controlled for them.

So people should have a choice, either go vegan, or they can enter the giant lottery where 90% gets population controlled by bullet or similar and the other 10% wins the right continue to consume burgers and other animal products the rest of their lives.

Or at least, that's what I understand when I read comments like yours.

In the meantime, you could try some plant based burgers. They're not a direct replacement but many of them are quite good on their own terms, and there is a huge variety.

(90/10 split is a guess)

Farmer here. This is false information - the land used to feed cattle is typically rangeland not capable of supporting other kinds of crops. Further, the cattle manure helps improve the soil.

I'm reading Against Method by Paul Feyerabend. It makes the case for more anarchy in science, that observations are shaped by the paradigm and that therefore new theories sometimes require respite from a lack of support in current evidence. It's a refreshing critique of Popper coming from within the analytic school. Like a Foucault light.

"Journey to the Edge of Reason, The Life of Kurt Gödel", by Stephen Budiansky. Even though it contains an introduction to his proof of the Incompleteness Theorems, you won't learn all too much about logic or mathematics, but it sure paints an interesting picture of the people involved at the start of the 20th century.

"Silas Marner" by George Eliot. Has redefined humor for me.

"Reinforcement Learning and Stochastic Optimization" by Warren B. Powell. I'm still not entirely sure what to think of his claims about unifying many scientific disciplines, but it sure is packed with a lot of information and theory.

Eliot was a genius. If you haven't read it yet, Middlemarch easily earns its claim to be one of the greatest novels ever.

I bought a copy of Ben Hur in a second hand store for 3 dollars. The book was printed in 1887 and you can se it has been read by a lot of people and has been repaired at least once. I am hoping I can stick with it and finish it. Wish me luck.

Good luck! Please do pass long as soon as you finish it to people interested in reading it.

I have old books in my native language and some other languages inherited from my parents and grandparents and I have to find people to pass along as libraries will not take it because they don't have space or demand for it.

But when I find people who are interested in those topics, their eyes lit up when I pass along those books. I hope they cherish those books.

I love Ben Hur! The book is slightly longer than the movie, and has angles not in the movie at all. That's not to say either is lesser. I think both of them are quite representative of the story. If you want to discuss this, I'm on twitter with the same ID.

I thought you were going to tell us it has an erratum on page 116.

(A reference to the 1946 film version of "The Big Sleep", starring Bogie and Bacall. If you haven't seen it, it's an excellent movie. It even has a used bookstore.)

For tooling, I am currently reading Practical Vim by Drew Neil. Vim has been my primary editing tool for a couple of years now but I know that I am not close to maxing its capacity. I would like to supercharge my vim skill with more advanced macros and less keystrokes.

Fiction: I am currently reading the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I love the way the book plays with logic in a fictional style. The dialogues with the little demon, Wormwood, are super interesting. More like psycho analysis in fictional form. It reminds me about reading Brothers Karamazov where you find a lot about you in characters in the book.

I just finished reading Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I'm currently reading Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences by Tynan Sylvester.

A good friend of mine gifted me Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and I'm planning on getting into that one soon.

Children of Time is a really good novel. Was scrolling through the comments to see if anyone was going to mention it.

Seconded

It is amazing ! I didn't like the 2nd book tho, didn't keep me interested

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky. There's a series of games based on the books but I'm enjoying the storytelling in the book far more. Basic premise is after nuclear war survivors have built a new society inside of the tunnels and stations of the Moscow metro system. There's mutants and other threats, but I don't want to spoil too much.

Isn't there also a video game but the same name?

Yeah, it's based on the book.

I am reading Deschooling Society [1] by Ivan Illich, published in the early 1970s. Even though I do not agree with everything he says, he does make some compelling arguments.

[1] https://archive.org/details/DeschoolingSociety

Took a glance and it seems very interesting. Thanks for sharing! The first paragraph speaks with such truth as to universal education being an impossible but at the same time mentions some clearly far-left thinkers. Can't wait to read how he reconciles such seemingly opposite ideals.

Also, I know a story of someone persecuted by McCarthyism in the US went to live to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Did not know this was part of a broader pattern...

Last week I finished "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig, it's about having regrets for the things you did or didn't do in your life and how those things could have turned out if you made different choices, pretty good book. Currently I read "Healing back pain" by John E. Sarno I'm halfway through and think it's interesting so far, yesterday I also started "Eversion" by Alastair Reynolds, can't say much about it because I only read 10 pages, but Reynolds' books are mostly pretty good.

Last three things I read (slightly all over the place):

- Aleister Crowley by Steven Ashe: A biography of the British occultist.

- Going Infinite by Michael Lewis: A (very well meaning) story of Sam Bankman-Fried

- The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt: A book about "safety culture" on campus and it's implications at large.

I thought The Coddling of the American Mind was excellent.

Yup. I've been looking for books that explain the underlying structures and dynamics of "wokeness" for a while. I feel "the Coddling" does a good job for some aspects of it. The best book I found so far in this regard is "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose. You read it and just think: "yeah, this is it". Unfortunately it's written like a PhD thesis, so not the lightest read.

> I've been looking for books that explain the underlying structures and dynamics of "wokeness" for a while.

Fear & fear of tolerance is a universal theme throughout history, there's not much to it. "Coddling" is a pejorative used by people afraid of tolerance.

Far left woke people aren't really tolerant though. At least not universally

Sure, but that's just Popper's old paradox of tolerance: tolerating hateful people makes a hateful society. Anyone who is fine tolerating hate isn't working towards a tolerant society, they're working towards a hateful society. You don't need to look any further than e.g. the contemporary indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians to see this. Or the deep fear and lack of empathy americans have towards the poor.

The problem is in how you judge hate, seems to me they don't judge it very well. And their reaction to what they consider hateful is also hateful which I don't agree with.

I remember listening to stories about a black preacher that converted a KKK leader and he did it through tolerance and compassion not by screaming hateful things back through a megaphone

> I remember listening to stories about a black preacher that converted a KKK leader and he did it through tolerance and compassion not by screaming hateful things back through a megaphone

The fact is, nothing in society was won by polite persuasion, but the compulsion to make people comfortable is the core of white supremacy. You might want to check your own judgement on hate if tolerating hateful people is your litmus test.

> but the compulsion to make people comfortable is the core of white supremacy.

Sorry, what? Then woke people are just white supremacists by your account. What's the point of the comical micro aggression complaints if it isn't to make woke people comfortable?

"I'm sooo not like those white supremacists!"

Sorry to break it out to you, both them and you are in the common pursuit of comfort and safety. One from the edgy teenager, I'm-totally-not-like-my-parents point of view, the other from I'm-totally-not-like-those minorities.

The fact is, you want to be treated in comfortable ways by them. Assuming you are a minority. If you are not, well, how's mom? And why was she so emotionally unavailable?

James Lindsay, new discourses, does the best analysis of woke I know of. Including reading books, analysis of academia, etc

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg

Then definitely don't miss its forefather. Writing with such insight

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

I recommend the "If Books Could Kill" podcast episode that covers this book.

A deepness in the sky - Vernor Vinge It's actually too good. I have a habit of reading before going to sleep, and this book is so hard to put down that I am becoming sleep deprived

This is on my audible queue. I bought it after a fire upon the deep. Great reader.

So far its more interesting than fire. Really recommend it

Haven't read deepness. Is it similar to Fire? Read Fire and rainbows end and I think Vinge has the largest 'interesting ideas per chapter' ratio, but not too keen on the presentation (too much random weirdness).

Well there are some recurring themes: - both have really vivid alien races - both explore how information shapes culture (this on in sub c, which is more interesting)

The difference is that this one takes place in a more realistic universe and has a deeper focus on the role of human culture.

Thats not to say its an entirely intellectual book, it is inface much more exciting than Fire

Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh.

I really like it. There are lots of popular science books out there, but very few popular math ones. I am grateful that this exists.

Read the author's Code Book before. Liked that one, too. I was also taking Cryptography and Cybersecurity as one of my Master's electives.

This book does not cover the journey of solving the Fermat's Last Theorem narrowly, but broadly covers a lot of history of mathematics in a very nice way. The writing is superb.

That reminds me that I have enjoyed all of Singh's books. But I recall he was sued for his last one and has not published in over 10 years?

Yes, the vicious lawsuit by chiropractors may have been enough to turn him off publishing. I sometimes hear him as a radio guest. It seems he went on to work on STEM policy and founded a couple of educational math paths. It’s a shame he seems to have discarded his website.

Undergraduate Ambassadors Scheme https://uas.ac.uk/about-uas/

Parallel https://parallel.org.uk/

My son did the free weekly parallel.org.uk questions for several years, which I thought were excellent. I think it definitely helped with his interest in STEM (he is now planning to study aerospace engineering at Uni). Would recommend Parallel to anyone with a child who is or might be interested in maths/science/engineering.

He won the case in the end. But he must have had a few brown trouser moments along the way, UK libel being what it is. IIRC it also ended with some UK reforms to libel law.

He did say in an interview somewhere that good ideas for books only along once in a while.

The BBC has a good program on iPlayer about Andrew Wiles work on FLT:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074rxx/horizon-19951...

I struggle to stay interested in one book until the end because many books that are designed to teach you something have made their point in the first chapter and then spend the rest of the book hammering it in.

Currently been reading Make It Stick for a year and I'm probably going to drop it because it's not that interesting.

Also have these opened:

  - The Hobbit
  - A Philosophy of Software Design
  - Bhagavad Gita

yeah, I couldn't stick with Make it Stick either. Idk, something about the book just made it feel like a chore.

Same. I went on a date recently that asked what I was reading, and when I said Make It Stick she said, "so you're a marketer...", haha. It hurt a little bit but she was right about something, this book is for people looking for an edge in selling ideas and not for the people geeking out on human behaviour.

This is why I prefer fiction, or anecdote-dense non-fiction.

I love Bill Bryson just geeking out about things, or Antony Beevor making world war two come to life.

I do not love a 150 page recap of a blog post.

I can see that being fun, and I'm going to check out your recommendations, however the primary reason I read is to learn skills! Finding books that are packed with information and zero fluff is a challenge.

I read for fun. The whole point for me is to wind down and relax.

I’m reading two very interesting books right now.

- Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann; comprehensive study on data models.

- 9 Pints by Rose George; it’s 9 stories/anecdotes about blood. Supremely enjoyable non-fiction writing.

Designing Data Intensive Applications is really good, because it gives you an good overview of data systems. I had the feeling I don't have to understand all the details yet I would learn a lot.

Are there other books like this?

The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. I actually randomly read Look to Windward years ago after being lent a copy. It stuck with me and recently started the series from the start. I'm up to Excession now. It's possibly the most "colourful" thing I've ever read. Often amazing, sometimes disturbing. The writing is second to none.

If you like Bank's writing try 'The wasp factory'. It's rather dark, but quite brilliant with an amazing twist at the end. It's not sci-fi.

I’ve been getting into Italo Calvino after reading Invisible Cities, which was great. Right now I’m reading The Baron in the Trees.

I'm a big Calvino fan and can thoroughly recommend Cosmicomics as a great collection of shorts. If you enjoy Calvino you may also enjoy Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.

Funny enough I bought Ficciones by Borges at the same time and will read it next.

Calvino is one of my favorite writers. Let me recommend also: The castle of crossed destinies (the book that got me into tarots)

Thanks, putting it on the list.

I’ve been reading “Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich while slowly working my way through Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”.

I have just finished “World of yesterday” by Stefan Zweig, probably one of the best books I have ever read, it gives you a picture how the world was at the beginning of 20th century and how despite of cultural and technological advances of the world, Europe turned to madness.

Now i am starting “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace.

I believe that book was the basis for the movie “The Grand Budapest Hotel” with Ralph Fiennes.

Just got finished reading "What the Dormouse Said", not a phenomenal read due to the density of characters but definitely worth it for the exploration of early thought on computers. I had never read extensively about the work of Englebart and the Augment project and it was fascinating to see things we take for granted about human computer interaction slowly form amongst a community. I feel like I had lost touch with the idea of computers as extensions of human brains. It's a small shift in thinking, but not thinking of a computer as a separate thing opens up completely novel thought patterns.

On a lighter note I was expecting a lot more drugs than politics in this book. Oh well, we should appreciate things for what they are and what we want them to be.

Several books - but I really want to shout out Roger Zelazny’s ”Lord of light”(1967)

I don’t think this book is as half as well known in the Sci-fi genre as it should be. When you start reading it, it becomes an obvious precursor to themes in so many modern books. Matrix and the Culture series of Iain Banks, as well as Rajaniemi’s ’Quantum thief’ come to mind. The central theme is semi-immortality - peoples minds are uploaded to a new body one after another. In a colony planet, far removed from Earth, an elite has taken control of this and lord it over everybody else. At some point superpowers emerge etc to make it ’more entertaining’ and some of that is a bit clunky - but get past that! This is a jewel waiting to be read (and not very long).

HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian, it's the 3rd novel in the Aubrey/Maturin series. It's the series that the movie Master and Commander is based on. It's about a ship captain and his doctor friend and their naval adventures in the early 1800s.

Aaj, I love this series! I just started the last book :^) it's quite a journey

If anyone wants to pick it up, my main advice is to keep a cheat sheet of naval terms with you

Wow, the last one! I will get there some day!

The bible - am not a religious person, don't want to become one, and I mean no shade to religious people. However, as I now read it, I'm surprised by how much western culture references it. People use examples, names and scenes from the bible much more often than I realised and it helps to recognize that.

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Oppenheimer was an ok movie, the book it's based on is better paced.

A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. This is the first book I encountered on disaster sociology. That field of study sounds amazing! It's about how people become altruistic and how communities form right after a natural disaster.

This, in my opinion, illustrates the value in studying classics: a lot of modern society is based on the stories we have been telling each other for thousands of years. Not just the Bible, though: also the Ancient Greek and Roman texts, and (if you're being adventurous) the Talmud, and the Quran + Hadith to see how the West's sister cultures developed. The modern atheist would do well to study religion.

I'm currently reading Plato's Republic right now - deservedly famous, and is the source of lots of generally known parables. It is much more than a utopian political text, as the title and its reputation might imply. In fact, it is religious in it's own way, but in an interestingly different way than the Bible.

Little related - this is also why I started watching movies and TV shows that are popular. I didn't use to watch a lot of them earlier. Now I understand how much our culture is affected by them and how it affects our communication.

I read the first few pages of Genesis many years ago and I was surprised that pretty much all the non-Jesusy bits I'd heard of were in the first few pages. It moves at a remarkably quick pace. Entire civilisations come and go in paragraphs. I had the impression all of this stuff was spread throughout like a novel. I was left wondering what the other 1000 pages are about (not enough to want to read them, though).

I usually have a couple of books on the go at the same time. So, right now I’m reading “A Month By The Sea” by Dervla Murphy. It’s a fascinating account of a month she spent in Gaza. I’m also reading “The Plague” by Camus.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Also got a few print issues of Lapham's Quarterly, so checking those out.

Seveneves was really good. Almost feeling the urge to read it again!

Steve M. Easterbrook Computing the Climate - How We Know What We Know About Climate Change

Tom Deakin and Timothy G. Mattson Programming Your GPU with OpenMP: Performance Portability for GPUs

Haven't read either, but both sound interesting! Thanks!

"No time to lose" a book by Pema Chodron. Its a translation and commentary of a Buddhist manuscript on basically how to become enlightened. I found the sections on how humans all suffer from past emotional memories (kleshnas) really interesting. As was the discussion on rage and forgiving people cruel to oneself. I followed it up with another of her books "when things fall apart". Again very good.

I'm now reading a Witcher fantasy novel. Blood of elves.

Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu - A year ago I read The Three Body Problem by the same author and extremely loved his approach to storytelling and sci-fi. Since then I have bought his other famous books (Ball Lightning, The Dark Forest and Deaths End) and I am really loving Ball Lightning so far.

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin - I'd like to call myself a creative (I produce music, paint and love cinema but all as a hobby). I recently read The Artists Way and found it really fulfilling in how to thing about creativity and nurturing your creative self. A friend lent me her copy of The Creative Act and after the first few pages I bought my own copy as I wanted to highlight and write notes in the book. Really recommend it for anyone who wants to think about how to think about creativity.

Multiple papers on ANNs - I am working with ANN libraries such as FAISS, Annoy and HSNWLib as part of my job as an ML Engineer in recommendation systems and I want to properly understand how the internals of these approximate vector search indexes work. I stared reading `Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs` and it lead to a rabbit hole of different papers I have on my stack.

Been sitting in the garden all afternoon reading Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire.

So far: terrific. About a quarter the way in. Space opera with political intrigue.

I really enjoyed both books in this series. It was much more politics than space opera though.

loved this and thought the sequel was even better.

A seemingly endless list of descriptions of open positions, just to be disappointed by "remote within US" buried somewhere within each and every one.

Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook. Over, and over, and over again.

Who would you recommend this for? Just for SysAdmins?

Why not APUE?

I just started Daemon from Daniel Suarez.

Very cool techno thriller.

This is the only tech related fictional book I recommend anyone ever. Great read. I might have to reread it soon.

Didn't work for me. It was too frivolous with technical details.

The Thursday murders club by Richard Osman - a fun British murder mystery, lots of tea and biscuits. It's the first of a series.

A Brazilian book called Ministério do Prazer (Ministry of Pleasure).

It's an erotic fanfic featuring one of our Supreme Court ministers and the daughter of an alt-right senator.

It's absolute trash, but it's hilarious. I suggest that anyone who can read Portuguese and has been following Brazilian politics should read this book. It costs something like BRL 1,99 on Amazon.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

same!

He just released a new book. Design for a better world. Reading this now.

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Better-World-Meaningful-Sustai...

Mrs. Gandhi's last battle by Satish Jacob & Mark Tully. BBC journalists who reported the blue star operation after which lead to India's former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination.

If you wanna know about the history behind the current Canada vs India row, this is a good place to start.

Been reading a lot of Romance books lately. They are like a cozy blanket. For a to be considered Romance, are required to have a "happily ever after" eg no sudden character death. It ensures the author isn't going to mess your day up.

Also, a lot of them have sex, which is nice.

You got me thinking about Bob The Skull in Dresden Files. :D

Do you have any recommendations?

It depends on what kind of fiction you like, as romance is a kind of meta genre that spans every other genre. Knowing nothing about you, other than the fact you are on HN, I would recommend The Rosie Project. It is a contemporary comedy romance, one of the only works of fiction Bill Gates has ever put on his yearly recommendation list.

Overall, your best bet is finding a community and lurking. Maybe asking for recommendations.

Reddit has a number of communities. /r/RomanceBooks is the main one, but there is also /r/fantasyromance, /r/HistoricalRomance/, /r/ScienceFictionRomance/, etc... If you are a guy and kinda feeling out of place, there is also /r/Romance_for_men

Thanks! Good places to start from!

The Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley, which feels very much like he mashed together a couple of Alan Dean Foster books with an Iain M Banks Culture novel.

A key part of the story takes place on a planet-wide forest with giant trees and a Gaia-like sentience (Midworld), its maguffin is a galaxy-threatening superweapon (The Tar-Aiym Krang), and a significant character is a wise old floating robot/AI that uses fields to manipulate things (Culture drones).

This reminds me of Interstellar, where I recognised the books that the authors had taken their influences from, such as Rocheworld by Robert L. Forward, which also features helpful robots that fold up with arms that have smaller-and-smaller subunits.

Just finished “Heavy weather sailing” by Martin Thomas and Peter Bruce. Grim but good stuff. Now following up with Fatty Goodlander’s “Creative anchoring”.

On the fiction side, read Arkady Martine’s “A memory called empire” recently, and about to start with the sequel.

I just finished reading "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick and immediately bought 2 other books by him. If you have ever had a customer conversation and left with a slightly empty feeling this is the pill you are looking for

Surely You Can't Be Serious - an oral history of how the Airplane movie got made. Got it on Audible and no idea how it might work as a regular book as the audiobook has so many different cameos and narrators. Great stuff.

"Stop Time" - a 1967 memoir by Frank Conroy. [1]

Next up, "Inequality In An Age of Decline" by Paul Blumberg (1980) [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-Time

[2] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/paul-blumberg/i...

Determined A science of life without free will by Robert Sapolsky.

Actively reading:

- The Fountainhead

- Project Hail Mary

- Learning TypeScript

Passively reading:

- The Design of Everyday Things

- Dive into Design Patterns

Considering to read - This is mostly for anyone who has read them and would like to give their opinion about it.

- Algorithms to Live By

- Name of the Wind

- Malazan Book of the Fallen

- Good Girl's guide to murder

- The Paradox of Choice

- Moonwalking with Einstein

- The Boron Letters

- Storyworthy

Re: Name of the Wind. I read the first book in the series and enjoyed it but didn't continue after finding out that the author has stalled indefinitely with the third volume. I understand that mental health issues are serious, but there's so many good finished series out in the world that I don't get why people keep recommending this guy's books.

There was also some drama surrounding the author due to some charity donations. He had agreed to release the first chapter of book 3 if some donation threshold was passed, but it has now been over a year and he still hasn't released it afaik.

I'm a guy who recommends the first book to almost all newcomers to fantasy, even though I know that Rothfuss is never going to finish it. The reason I recommend NotW so much is because it probably has the best prose in all of fantasy. And it's not like the plot is bad too. Rothfuss is still talked about in the fantasy books community, sometimes more so than other authors who are still writing like Mark Lawrence. Hell, he has more Goodreads followers than Brandon Sanderson!

Thank you about all the other information related to that. People rave about NotW when it comes to fantasy novels. But rarely everything else around it is discussed in recommendation sections/forums.

> but there's so many good finished series out in the world that I don't get why people keep recommending this guy's books.

I see your point and I tend to agree lately, there are many DNF books in my list I used to regret but not anymore as I think there is a lot good out there to read and not much time, its better to enjoy what we can than to worry or feel not satisfied by certain read.

I'm reading Algorithms to Live By at the moment. It's very interesting and definitely worth reading.

Thank you. I plan to add it to my reading list soon.

Is it too technical? I don't want to end reading another algorithm book with a small footnote of its practical use.

Malazan is amazing, possibly the best fantasy series I've ever read after Stormlight Archives (KKC would be on the list if not for the author's attitude towards the 3rd book). That said, it's really common for newcomers to the series to abandon the book even after a couple hundred pages.

Think of it as being akin to being dropped in a completely foreign country, with no kind of guidance or language experience. The 1st book is the hardest to really "get" but if you do manage to get into it you'll have a really great time.

Dude! Thank you. But slow down for me will you?

Do you mean to say The Stormlight Archive are better in your opinion than the Malazan book of the Fallen series? And KKC is the best of those three series?

Sidenote: Reading about KKC from other comments, seems like I might drop the idea of reading it for reason you too highlighted.

I also checked out the Malazan Book for Fallen series properly, I was aware it was a series of 10 books but just now discovered Steven Erikson is a beast, that series including the prequels is a set of possibly 26 books! That is so exciting!

Okay so I ask again, worth getting into? And some advice to survive the 1st book as you mentioned its the most difficult read?

OR is The Stormlight series easier or first to read?

Stormlight is significantly easier to read than Malazan and, at least in my opinion, significantly simpler in almost every way.

Malazan is really a narrative tour-de-force with an extremely satisfying way of bringing a number of storylines together and to conclusion in each book. It's also an interesting meditation on history, regret, and the arc of empires over time. The complexity and in media res nature of the beginning throws a lot of people off but you just have to keep reading. It's written in a way that has no handholding; the world is already built and ancient and you're dropped into it, while Sanderson, honestly, seems to be kind of making it up as you go along. (This is, in part, because Erikson had the entire Malazan world as a tabletop RPG before writing the books.)

Sanderson's books, in comparison, are more like Marvel movies. They're entertaining, but I don't find that they reinvent the wheel or do anything too interesting. Stormlight is also much less grim and mature in many ways than Malazan, which is either a pro or a con for some people.

Thank you. I think I am getting the clear picture of what to expect from Malazan.

But I guess I will consider starting with Stormlight then, I haven't read epic fantasy in a while.

Interesting, I read that Sanderson's book are more like each book is concluded by the end like you described for the Eriksons'.

Would I be at a disadvantage of not knowing anything about Malazan world or its tabletop RPG?

> Would I be at a disadvantage of not knowing anything about Malazan world or its tabletop RPG?

No. My understanding is the RPG world was entirely private and there is no published campaign or book about the specific RPG world at all. It was just what Erikson made before he started the Malazan series. It's not required at all.

Malazan is decidedly more demanding as a reader though than Stormlight. I would say if you find Stormlight complicated or demanding then you might not enjoy Malazan, which is operating on a fundamentally more complex (on sheer number of characters, for an example) and mature level than Stormlight on almost every level. There is a reason Malazan is often brought up when discussing the greatest fantasy series of all time.

(I still would put neither Malazan or Stormlight as really complex books though. They're fairly straightforward compared to more creative and formally interesting books like Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, for instance. In general people who read fantasy tend to be rather hyperbolic when it comes to how complex the books are.)

The Paradox of Choice is good, but imo it is a blog post turned into a book. Unless you're really, really into the subject, just read a summary.

Thank you. Will look for a summary, I think that book reference came out of a blog post which was discussing the psychology of choice and discussed some interesting research conclusions.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

Reading:

Craig, The Fall of Japan

Price, Battle of Britain Day: 15 September 1940

Pratchett, Discworld series (finished four volumes)

Recently finished:

Craig, Enemy at the Gates

MacGregor, Checkpoint Charlie

Jones, Colossus (Incredibly prescient 1966 novel predicting ASI; the 1970 film adaptation is better, but the novel has more insights into the AI's similarity with LLMs)

Suarez, Daemon

Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

Pascal, Showstopper: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT

I’m on a bit of a “Big American Corruption” spree after finishing Succession so i’ve started “The Dark Side of Camelot” about the dirty dealings of the Kennedy family.

Xi Jinpings four book set "The Governance of China."

Fulfillment winning and losing in one click America. - investigative journalism, Uses stories of the lives of those within Amazon's ever increasing orbit to illustrate the reality of the increasing financial divides. Impressive stats reminds me of the more compelling British alternative 'hired' six months in low wage Britain- i'd recommend that.

The dispossessed - sci-fi, surprisingly nuanced conversation of roles and society.

Odyssey by Homer (just finished)

Master and Margarita by Bulgakov (just finished)

In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland

Started by quit:

Aeneid by Virgil (too much of Roman propaganda)

Catch 22 by Heller (had it on the list because of recognition but, disliked it 5-10% in)

The long good-bye by Ramond Chandler. I enjoy every sentence. He was a master at his craft and capture me with the language and the story telling.

Just finished The Song of the Cell, currently reading Gravity’s Rainbow (lol) and starting The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.

Gravity's Rainbow is just a shadow of Pynchon's best work by a large margin, Mason & Dixon. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's probably the best novel I've ever read.

I absolutely love Inherent Vice, both book and film. Really good fun, like The Big Lebowski's edgier cousin.

Fiction: Book 8 of The Expanse Non-Fiction: Radical Candor, and After Steve Next up: One of my Bill Bryson backlog, and Nothing But The Truth.

"Elixir in Action" by Saša Jurić. The first and second chapters are excellent. However the third chapter (on Control Flow and Pattern Matching) isn't as well written, apparently it is important to know that Elixir doesn't assign values to variables but rather 'binds' the values to the variable. It feels a bit like having 11 on a volume knob.

The grapes of wrath, John Steinbeck. Still feels surprisingly relevant with regards to workers organizing and how we view migrants today.

Finishing listening to the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons (read it the first time) and reading Olympos by Dan Simmons. I think I'm all Dan Simmons'd out though I want to read Carrion Comfort. I think I'm going to return to three body problem and dune for my next books. Not sure for audiobooks yet but the sequel to fire upon the deep is on my queue

I'm learning about US history as a non-American, for no particular reason other than I found some books in a second hand store.

- "1776", by David McCullough - a combination of American Revolution history with telling of leadership in times when defeat seems inevitable.

- "Team of Rivals", by Doris Kearns Goodwin - just started, reading about the pre-Civil War politics.

As an American, I highly recommend "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen.

And since you are reading 1776 then you might also like "John Adams" by David McCullough.

Blindsight by Peter Watts and I’ve just finished the sea of rust by C. Robert Cargil.

Both are good, sea of rust was a quick read, informative on the world building with a fast enough plot that kicked in early enough to keep me read more.

Blindsight, is a bit unique so far. Definitely interesting but it’s the two parter firefall im reading which combines the second book too.

I thought Firefall by Watts was a very interesting read.

Re-reading "A song of ice and fire" saga with the hope that "Winds of winter" arrives just when I finish

My sweet summer child.

I don’t really hold onto any hope it’s coming out anymore… take this from someone who started the series as a preteen when A Feast for Crows came out. I’m now 30.

Comics! I recently finished Wanted (which made for a shitty movie, but a decent comic) and Watchmen (I despair I hadn't gotten around to it sooner).

Now I'm planning to read V for Vendetta, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, and some more. I've finally come around to comics as an art form, and I couldn't be happier!

Watchmen the movie isn't bad either.

If you're getting into comics, I can strongly recommend Transmetropolitan, The Invisibles, Saga, and the original Sandman books (there are a tonne of new ones now, and none have really clicked).

I'm also part way through Supergods by Grant Morrison. It's not a comic, but an autobiography-cum-history of the superhero genre. Worthwhile.

"Escape from earth: A secret history of the space rocket" by F Macdonald. Well written but focussed mostly on the people and politics of American rocketry after WWII (including the mad occult antics of Jack Parsons). I would have prefered something that focussed more on the tech.

Malot - En Famille.

I decided it's time to revisit some classics. I finished the "Sans Famille" a few days back. Those are quick/fast reads but with immense value/wisdom/philosophy.

Next one is to re-read the "Hold on to your kids" by Neufeld & Maté.

Right now I’m reading Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare.

Ways of being. It's about different kinds of intelligences out in the wild. It starts a bit slow but it's very interesting and has a lot of interesting anecdotes and stories.

Before that I couldn't put down Stasiland, a book with stories about Stasi employees and the people they persecuted.

Jon Fosse (this year's Nobel Prize winner in literature) - "Septology" I-II, a dreamlike maze of thoughts written in a way I haven't seen before. A hypnotic, meandering stream of consciousness slowly unfolding into an intriguing story.

Caravan of the Damned by Chuck Dixon. Conan the Barbarian as envisioned by the writer who created Bane.

What I wish I was reading is book 9 of Joel Shepherd's "Spiral Wars" series. Unfortunately it's not out yet. But he's one of my new favorite authors, both the Scifi Spiral Wars and the more fantasy-like "Sasha" series are excellent.

“The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes”, by Zachary D. Carter.

Counterweight; Djuna. Good sci Fi.

The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon; Hammett. Good books behind excellent movies.

https://wanderinginn.com/ Warning: there's quite a lot to read and it's not finished yet

The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, by Gary Keller

Randomly heard about it on a podcast. Just started reading, not sure if I'll like it or not

Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu

https://www.notbored.org/dialogue-in-hell.html

Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Read few books of that, then switch to something other and then back. "Small Favor" at the moment. "Dead beat" has been favourite so far.

IPv6 Fundamentals: A Straightforward Approach to Understanding IPv6

It is the first "book" I bought to learn something, but after tinkering a while with ipV6 in my homelab, I saw no other way.

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. I loved The Three-Body Problem which I read last month, can't say I'm loving this one, just enjoying it, but I'm only at around 25%.

I've just started a book by a brilliant Cuban author: Leonardo Padura. I would recommend his "The Man Who Loved Dogs", it's about the man who killed Trotsky.

Most dedicated KGB agent ever. Spent 20 years in prison while maintaining his cover story. Kind of unreal his true identity was not uncovered until after his release.

"Fourth Wing", by Yarros. Soon to be an Amazon Prime video.

Re-reading McMaster's "Battlegrounds" (2020). His predictions are pretty much on track.

Just finished Being You by Anil Seth and The experience machine by Andy Clark. Both great popular science book on current neuroscience and consciousness research.

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England. Not sure what I'll read after. I was at a bit off a loss after reading race after technology.

"A City on Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.

Basically

https://arxiv.org/list/cs/pastweek

a few hours every day.

SICP, apparently so far. It's just map, and reduce.

The Software Engineer's Guidebook by Gergely Orosz

Do not read any of the books that came out after Stieg Larsson died.

If you must read the first one, partially, allegedly based on notes left my Stieg Larsson

The Millenium triology was published after his death. He never got to know how successful he would become.

Attention is all you need, still on page one.

Physics as Metaphor by Roger S Jones. I've never seen a better explanation of how time and space are constructed out of perceptions.

"Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul" by Giulio Tononi

Having just finished "On the move", Oliver Sacks' autobiography.

The Only Way Is West by Bradley Chermside

Book about Camino de Santiago. I like walking (and Camino is lot of walking), so this is interesting.

The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Hermans

- "Going Infinite", by Michael Lewis

- "Speed & Scale", John Doerr

- "Superintelligence", by Nick Bostrom

All great reads, strongly recommended.

James Clear, Atomic habits. I really enjoy it.

I read The Power of Habit by Duhigg and it was pretty good.

Papert: Mindstorms

Lem: Summa Technologiae

Barber: Strong Democracy

The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg

Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott

An introduction on marketing and how to set prices for goods and services.

Also not a book but highly recommended: Maus by art spiegelmann

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

Three Felonies a Day by Silverglate Make Something Wonderful by Steve Jobs A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine

I read “The Bitcoin Standard” which I really enjoyed. However i’m not finding “The fiat standard” as interesting.

Is that the modern money mechanics book?

I read The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. It’s only a 10 minute read, meant for kids, but it’s beautiful.

“The Lost Cause” by Cory Doctorow

I got an early copy at a conference he keynoted at. I’m enjoying it quite lot.

The series Darkover from Marion Zimmer Bradley.

It's more science fiction than my normal pick of fantasy, but nice reads.

Started with The Mote in God's Eye last month. Now I'm almost done with The Gripping Hand.

Perfume 'The Alchemy of Scent' by Jean-Claude Ellena - the art and business of creating perfume.

I am reading The Laws Of Human Nature by Robert Greene. I love everything that I have read from him.

The End and the Death Volume II

but that's a guilty pleasure of mine.

The second book I am reading is Behave written by Sapolsky

Whatever the Humble Bundle is selling DRM-free. Currently the _Rick and Morty_ comic book series.

The DevOps Handbook, second edition

The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology - Nick Cook.

Any good?

Jim Butcher's latest Cinder Spires book.

Recently finished the last Brandon Sanderson secret project.

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. - Brian Merchant

Nonfiction:

- Is Math Real? by Eugene Cheng

- Here to There: Radio Wave Propagation by AARL

Fiction:

- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

- Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

Phantastes by George MacDonald

The Recruiter by Douglas London (Rtd Senior CIA Operations Officer)

Random Walk Down Wall Street

“The investigation” by Stanisław Lem

“Neuromancer” by William Gibson

“A fire on the moon” by Norman Mailer

American Nations, by Colin Woodword. A different take on the US.

Just finished re-reading a couple of the old Bolo tank series books by keith laumer. Wow those were hard to find.

I haven't read Bolo novels in a long time. You're making me itch to dig some up again.

For some reason "For the honor of the regiment" got stuck in my head and I went and dug it up (along with the rest of the bolo stories).

"Stand and be judged." - motto of the 39th.

In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki, about Japanese aesthetics

Various auto generated content from large language models

Stories of the Prophets, Ibn Kethir. A masterpiece

Based

Just started Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo.

I’m currently reading:

The art of explanation by Ros Atkins.

Lovely book.

The Great Mental Models - Shane Parrish

Stories of the Prophets, Ibn Kethir.

I'm reading 'Hooked'

Chinese Thought by Roel Sterckx

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

'Red rising' series

I'm also picking it up, probably next.

Dungeon Crawler Carl audio.

White Holes - Carlo Rovelli

The handmaid's tale

Dune series

A philosophy of software design

Xenophon’s Hellenica!

H. P. Lovecraft

I have multiple books in my reading stack, picking up depending on the mood: - Fentanyl, Inc by Ben Westhoff - Arabs in Medieval Sindh by Rafi Samad - Rework by Jason Fried (re-reading it)

- An Indispensable Truth: How Fusion Power Can Save the Planet - Chen, Francis F.

- Elon Musk - Isaacson, Walter

Magicians of The Gods by Graham Hancock. But I will not finish it. It is boring and long-winded and he's more a travel journalist than researcher or scholar, so no real breakthroughs and a sprinkle of Daniken-like sensationalism while stretching the facts quite a bit. But what killed the book for me eventually was his unfounded attack on Sitchin. The previous book I read from him was Fingerprints of The Gods, that one was better but still had similar issues.

I would like to finish reading Hitler's Mein Kampf. I had it for years, started it twice but never finished it. I have no other books to read so I think this will be my next.

I forgot I also have all the sherlock holmes novels/shorts so i want to read them all.

Red Mars.

Tolstoy

Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson

Adam Grant - Hidden Potential

“Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson.

It’s a balanced account of the most important industrialist of our generation.

Refutes some of the “Elon Bad” groupthink myths too.

Elon Musk's biography written by Walter Isaacson.

"A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East". Started reading it before the current crisis, but it's only more relevant now. Kinda dense with too many "characters" and events.

That's the middle east. I've lived there and read a lot, but can remember very little of the history.

Line in the Sand is a good one.

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