Ask HN: What are the best books you've ever read? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are the best books you've ever read?

27 pointsiambateman49 comments

Over the last year I have gotten lazy with my evenings…wasting time on Twitter and YouTube.

I’m recommitting to use the hour before bed to read and so I need recommendations…what are the best books you’ve ever read?

It doesn’t matter what it was, just that it made an enduring impact on you.

Thanks!

View on HN

Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The most incredible, mind bending adventure I have taken, in a book.

(The Netflix show although generally true to story does not do the books justice)

The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt. Mearsheimer and Walt give a powerful explanation to the predicament of the United States' seeming unlimited commitment to the State of Israel.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion, in which she grieves the death of her forty-something daughter, just a few years after her abusive husband died suddenly from a heart attack.

The contrast between her gorgeous but also coldly precise writing, the grieving mother vs the lauded writer, the tension of watching her muse (very delicately, very distantly) on the nature of being an adoptive mother and wondering as a reader: what sort of wounds did Joan Didion pass on to her daughter and what wounds did her daughter inherit from her biological family, the contrast between the vibrant streets of New York and the cold hospital where her daughter was dying in a coma, knowing as a reader that this writer had just gone through the grief of losing her husband a few years earlier...

It was haunting, beautiful, and, naturally, a little voyeuristic by its very nature. I still think about it to this day.

I couldn’t relate to a single line in that book even though I’m a father to two daughters. Very directed towards women.

This is an interesting comment. I think part of the mystique of Joan Didion's persona and her autobiographical writing is the fact that she is a wildly, and fascinatingly, unrelatable person, regardless of the reader's gender.

The point of her writing generally isn't to reflect to reader. And what makes her autobiographical writing so compelling is the the way she dissects her own supremely unrelatable life and emotional landscape.

For the value of ‘best’ that includes (a) had a deep and long lasting impact on how I think about the world and (b) I consider beautiful pieces of writing in their own right, here are some in no particular order: The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein (These you might want to approach via a gentle introduction if you did not study Philosophy to degree level) The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R Searle Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh Diaries, Samuel Pepys Falling Off the Map, Pico Iyer A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor The Lonely Sea and the Sky, Francis Chichester The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope Bevis, Richard Jeffries The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon GrossSmith The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse

Hitch-22, essaysChristopher Hitchens Collected Essays, William Hazlitt Venice, Martin Gayford

The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch

Too obvious a list, perhaps, but some gems for all that! Happy reading.

Aargh, Formatting! Try 2 :

For the value of ‘best’ that includes

(a) had a deep and long lasting impact on how I think about the world and

(b) I consider beautiful pieces of writing in their own right,

here are some in no particular order:

The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke

Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein

(These you might want to approach via a gentle introduction if you did not study Philosophy to degree level)

The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R Searle

Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler

The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse

A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh

Diaries, Samuel Pepys

Falling Off the Map, Pico Iyer

A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor

The Lonely Sea and the Sky, Francis Chichester

The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope

Bevis, Richard Jeffries

The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon GrossSmith

The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse

Hitch-22, essays, Christopher Hitchens

Collected Essays, William Hazlitt

Venice, Martin Gayford

The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski

The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch

Too obvious a list, perhaps, but some gems for all that! Happy reading.

I remember reading The Selfish Gene as a teenager and being struck by how it made evolution seem almost obvious.

Wodehouse is an embarrassment of riches of course.

Good recommendations!

Thanks! Wodehouse is one of those writers who almost never produces a bad sentence. An astonishing talent.

1632 by Eric Flint - it became a series. I can read them over and over. - Alternate history, contemplative of everything that makes modern civilization possible and keeps it going.

The Art of Electronics - Horowitz and Hill - All the nitty gritty details you'll need if you're to be a good electronics designer

The adolescence of P-1 - Thomas Joseph Ryan - Introduced me to the idea of random walks leading to AI.

Computer Lib/Dream Machines - Ted Nelson -- Quite a bit of ideas about computers, I read it decades ago.

Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805 -- By Eric Sloane -- Early Americans really knew their shit, we tend to think of them as simpler people, this book dispelled me of that stupid notion.

Boys Second Book of Electronics - Alfred Morgan, 1957 -- Introduced me to the idea that I could make my own radio or anything electronic I wanted to make.

"Best" is always too hard - here are a handful that I love.

Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susannah Clarke

The Crow Road - Iain Banks

Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett

Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

Black Holes & Time Warps - Kip Thorne

The Inventions of Daedalus - David E H Jones

The Cuckoo's Egg - Cliff Stoll

I hope one or two of those float your boat!

PS my New Year resolution was to "do" more (reading counted) and doom-scroll less. Not 100% on track, but where I managed it I've been much more cheerful for it. I hope you find some nice bedtime reading - I see a lot of other good books being recommended!

>The Cuckoo's Egg - Cliff Stoll

This is such a nerd-snipe book, I absolutely loved it. A personal account of one of the first cases of (attempted) military espionage via the internet? A system administrator thwarting intruders with his keys? Government agencies not knowing who's responsible for network-based intruders? Hackers from the Chaos Computer Club spying for the Soviets? Written by the Numberphile guy who's selling all those Acme Klein Bottles? Sign me up.

The author shows up here from time to time, too.

The Count of Monte Cristo. I rarely get this absorbed by a book. It was a very satisfying read.

Grapes of Wrath stayed with me for a very long time. The Jungle too.

This is how you lose the time war. It was just damn unique and pleasant. Everyone who reads it loves it.

Cryptonomicon, another very entertaining read that every geek loves.

The Count of Monte Christo is a wild read! The first half if about how he gets double crossed by all his friends. The second half is about how how he exacts his meticulous and glorious revenge.

Count has gained popularity recently and I’m glad it has.

Quite possibly the best fiction piece ever written.

Paradise Lost, Gravity's Rainbow, Middlemarch, and 2666.

edit: The short stories which have stuck with me the most over the years are probably Joyce's "The Dead," O'Connor's "Good Country People," and a solid half of Borges's "Ficciones."

”The Count of Monte Cristo”, one of my favorites. It’s a classic the general story being jailbreak/revenge. A little slow paced at times but the writing is fantastic.

If you enjoy fantasy novels I would recommend ”The Wee Free Men” by Terry Pratchett, it’s outstanding.

PTerry wrote so many that everyone has a different favourite ;)

Can second this! Read Monte Cristo last year and still think about it.

I’m also working my way through discworld chronologically, just read “Eric”. Highly recommend this series :)

These aren't "The best" or whatever, but they're very good:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Summer_Book

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_on_a_winter%27s_night_a_tra...

- I'm currently reading Pyotr Kropotkin's autobiography, it's interesting.

A few that haven’t been mentioned:

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford is a historical fiction story about the mathematicians and engineers who tried to optimize the Soviet economy.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende is much deeper and more interesting than any of the theatrical versions. Reminiscent of the Matrix sequels, the Childlike Empress threatens to crash Fantastica with a stack overflow (via infinite recursion) to force Bastian to give her a name.

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin goes into much more detail than the film (Oppenheimer).

The Overstory by Richard Powers - an intertwining of lives, as witnessed by the oldest beings on Earth, putting things into a rather different perspective.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - compassion and redemption, set in a terrifyingly plausible near future where the oil and tech companies have been replaced by gene and agro conglomerates. Calories or joules, it’s just energy.

Weaveworld by Clive Barker - a dark, fantastical yarn of vivid (sometimes grotesque) imagery, spinning a new take on the oldest tale, that of good vs. evil.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

I ended up staying up all night reading most of the book

It's a bit too bleak for me, but it's certainly beautifully written.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings both stand alone as unparalleled fantasy novels. Buy a version with no foreword or footnotes and just, immerse yourself.

Great recommendation, thanks!

Unfortunately for me, they’re probably my favorite books of all time. :)

Cheers!

If you never listened before, can I recommend (to both of you) the lovely BBC radio dramatization of it? The cast is excellent and it plays out over multiple hours so they didn't have to chop it about too much.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(1981_...

The tragicity of the virtuous Justine. Warning r18 book that's pretty messed up.

There was a quote about how the wealthy can easily proclaim themselves virtuous and their actions will cost them nearly nothing. But for others, acting such a way will cost everything.

Never was the same afterwards. Especially as I also read all of the books referenced in Psycho Pass anime s1 as well.

Here are books I recommend to everyone and got me interested in economics and philosophy:

- The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner

- The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes by Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein

- Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

- A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

The Children's Hospital https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/the-childrens-hospital

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself - Michael Singer

It had such a deep impact on me that I ended up using it as a "holy" book to take my oath of Canadian citizenship.

Some books that changed me: R. W. Emerson's Essays, The Bastiat Collection (the why of free trade), Boortz's Fairtax books.

A Deepness in the Sky, hands down. Also worth reading is its companion A Fire Upon the Deep. Both are the pinnacle of SciFi.

Permutation city, Greg Egan

Dictionnaire philosophique, Voltaire

The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek

The ICU Book, Paul Marino

Romeo and Juliet

he Blue Castle: a novel by L. M. Montgomery

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Fiction:

Taipan, by James Clavell

The Navigator, by Morris West

Non-fiction:

The Upanishads (not a single book, but a bunch of them)

The Bhagavad Gita

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges probably tops the list for me.

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig)

- Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Hofstadter)

- Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Penrose)

- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki)

- Demian (Hesse)

- The Stranger (Camus)

- Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)

- Another Roadside Attraction (Robbins)

I have read many books that have had an impact on me for a time, but these are the books that have had an enduring impact going on now for decades.

And yes, one of these books, Another Roadside Attraction, is unlike the others. You can substitute any Tom Robbins book, or read them all!, but this is the book that started it all for me. Tom Robbins' books taught me to not take life so seriously.

Demian and The Stranger may be fiction, but let's just say their purpose is to get across a philosophical point.

Finally, with regards to Slaughterhouse-Five, you'll just have to read it.

Enjoy!

The only book. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.

It’s amazing, as is his Hourglass By The Sign of the Sanitorium.

The Mist - Stephen King

Cannery Row - Joseph Steinbeck

Post Office - Charles Bukowski

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Gene Wolfe’s Solar Cycle and Gravity’s Rainbow

The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Cypronomicon is a pretty fun read

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Sartre's Nausea

Reply on news.ycombinator.com