Ask HN: Great book that you read recently? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Great book that you read recently?

13 pointsthunga27 comments

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I don't tend to read biz books, but recently I've read a ton of great Russian texts.

The Master & Margarita

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita

Goethe's Faust & the story of Pontius Pilate retold in 1930s Russia. Really, I mean really damn good. Very readable.

Books 1 & 2 of The Gulag Archipelago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

An expansive history of the Soviet prison camp system, almost a folk history.

Petersburg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_(novel)

Think Joyce writing about a revolutionary plot in the Petersburg of 1910-something, involving patricide and a time-bomb set for 24 hours from now. Yeah.

That and slowly working through Proust (book 5). I'm not sure if I really recommend it, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts from other smarty-pants HN people.

Petersburg is exactly what I wanted to read once school ends. All this CS and math work makes me want to just discorporate myself into a ridiculous, subjective work.

Which translation would you recommend?

Also, if you enjoyed the darker parts of The Master and Margarita, I highly recommend Blaise Cendras' Moravagine (http://www.amazon.com/Moravagine-York-Review-Books-Classics/...).

This Maguire & Malmstad translation is what I read:

http://www.amazon.com/Petersburg-Andrei-Bely/dp/0253202191

And I found it pretty tolerable. The footnotes are in the back (I think?) which kind of stinks for your first read. Unless you're a serious student of Petersburg history, the footnotes are requisite for understanding half of the nuance. Bely is doing all these tricks shifting the geography of the city and playing off places and events, and that's lost to the modern reader without help. I'm eager to read it again without paying attention to the notes though.

I'll take a look at Moravagine, it looks great. It's in line after Volume 3 of Gulag A. and Orlando Figes's history of the Russian revolutions. I need more context for all this pre-WWI stuff!

Practical Irrationality - Dan Ariely

It changed the way I think about pricing, among other things, forever. He makes some wild conclusions then backs them up with scientific experiments. Its a fun read to boot.

I agree, a fun & informative read!

I think you meant Predictably Irrational. I haven't heard of Practical Irrationality.

Ooops! You're correct but it's too late for me to edit the post now. Maybe Ariely has some explanation why I can't get his title right.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank

Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Business Model Generation - Alexander Osterwalder

Doris Stenton's English Society in the Early Middle Ages

Short story collection: This is not your city, by Caitlin Horrocks

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your-City/dp/1932511911)

"The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson - he's really good journalist and writes well. This is an interesting read about the newish "psychopaths everywhere" meme.

I recently reread Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses.

I was prompted to do so by another book discussion. Not his best book - I think Blood Meridian and The Road are better - but McCarthy is a great writer.

For nerd non-fiction, I just read Jim Lovell's Lost Moon which though not a great book, is a good solid book about greatness.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindn...)

The Game, by Neil Strauss.

How To Get Rich - Felix Dennis

Accidental Genius - Mark Levy

The Monk and the Riddle - Randy Komisar

I just re-read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Always makes me laugh and is a great read.

Old Man's War - John Scalzi

I'd highly recommend any Scalzi book. The Old Man's War trilogy is great, but if you're after something more light-hearted then The Android's Dream or Agent to the Stars are also great.

I'll put this in the recently read rather than great science fiction thread:

Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson

I find Robopocalypse silly, and not just the title.

SPOILER

It seems to me that, despite how the turn of events are explained, we'd have no..none, zero, chance at winning that war.

The Startup Owner's Manual - Steve Blank

Discours de la Methode - Descartes

Understanding Media: the extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan

Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" was terrific.

Breakfast for Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

daemon - daniel suarez,

freedom - daniel suarez

The Strangest Man - Graham Farmelo

A biography of Paul Dirac. Very good.

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The Fabric of the Universe - David Deutsch

What picture can we paint of the universe if we take together the best theories we have about fundamental things like time, life, virtual reality, cosmology etc. Easily the best book i've read in recent years. Consider that Deutsch is a very distinguished scientist in the field of quantum cryptography/computing. He is really good at explaining things in terms that non-physicists and experts alike can learn a lot!

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Roadside Picnic - Strugatzky

Soviet Science Fiction book about the first and only visit of earth by aliens. The approach is very unusual since there is never any direct contact between humans and the extra terrestrial intelligence. The book is more like a study of human society and how it could develop if suddenly there was some extremely advanced technology available to us which we are too primitive to understand/control.

sigh , i read HN all day long and have no time left for books.

seriously though, i use books as a reference and just hack along, i mean technical books, for non-tech books, i have not read them for years.

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