Hacker News Reader

Comment by dyukqu | Hacker News Reader

# Catch-22 (by Joseph Heller) - had been seeing it mentioned on HN (and other sites) for years, I finally read it and it was one the best novels I've ever read.

# The Universe and Dr. Einstein (by Lincoln Barnett) - recommended for anyone who is interested about Einstein's thought process that gave birth to two great theories.

# What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (by Haruki Murakami) - it's my first book from H. M. and I really liked it. It's kind of a memoir and made me like Murakami and now I plan to read his novels too.

# How to Build a Car (by Adrian Newey) - that famous F1 car designer... Great read. Gives readers a chance to glimpse into both (technical) thought process behind designing a race car and human side of it.

# Basic Mathematics (by Serge Lang) - not *reading* exactly, working through it (to brush the rust off of my math fundamentals).

View on HN

Someone recommend H.M. To me a few weeks back. Started w/ Kafka by the Shore and then finished Norwegian Wood a few days after that. Couldn’t put them down, both were terrific.

Murakami’s fiction novels are extremely different from “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”. If you want to try another non-fiction book of his check-out “Underground : The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche”, I loved it. If you go the fiction route “Kafka on the Shore” and “A Wild Sheep Chase” are a good starting point. Avoid some of his longer works unless you enjoy his style.

Norwegian Wood is far superior to his magical realism.

He’s a great writer of prose, but I feel it’s wasted on magical realism. He could have been one of the true greats.

Thank you for your recommendations. I am aware that his novels will be different. The (memoir) I mentioned just made me like the guy, so his other writings interest me now.

Its funny, I've tried with Catch-22 a few times. I just can't get on with it.

I think that its all just one ginormous side note, and that Yossarian is a shit, means I can't enjoy it.

I also suspect that I am not american enough to pick up on the satire references.

I suspect I feel what americans feel when they read jeeves and wooster.

Looked up for "jeeves and wooster", so, you're British then. This makes this little conversation interesting for me, because I'm not American, not even European and so our exposure/approach to this novel is very different then, I guess. Even the language was a little over my head, since English is not my native tongue. However, I really enjoyed it. I liked Heller's style (prose?) and wit. About Yossarian...yes, he's not a "perfect hero", but he is very human with all his earthly desires (I would say) and his struggles for staying righteous at the same time. The chapter about thoughts crossed his mind & feelings he experienced while he was wandering in the cold, damp streets at night was peak for me. I might re-read that very chapter nowadays.

> you're British

correct!

>English is not my native tongue.

Aha, interesting

I think the thing that trips me up is that it feels like a collection of unrelated short stories mashed together. Worse (for me) is that those stories contradict each other.

I've only read one Murakami novel but I loved it. Hard-Boiled Wonderland.

Catch 22 is just fantastic isn’t it. I might re-read in 2026!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com