Ask HN: Book recommendations? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Book recommendations?

I know this comes up from time to time, but I'm looking for some summer reading, and was wondering if anyone would care to recommend one or two good works of fiction, as well as one or two good works of non-fiction.

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I always recommend, to anyone who hasn't already read them, that they read Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars and The Civil Wars.

One of the greatest generals and leaders of all time personally wrote amazing war journals, and they survive mostly intact today. Nothing else like these exist.

Grant's memoirs are very well worth reading, too.

I'm reading this one, and it is pretty good (It is just a month old, I think)

http://www.amazon.com/Give-Take-Revolutionary-Approach-Succe...

During the summer I go on holiday to a remote island in the mediterranean where I sit on my patio atop a hill overlooking the sea and read for about a week. The only electronic devices I have are my e-book reader and a charger. Here's some of the best summer reading I've gone through:

The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski - http://www.amazon.com/Painted-Bird-Jerzy-Kosinski/dp/0802134...

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini - http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Splendid-Suns-Khaled-Hosseini...

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - http://www.amazon.com/Brave-World-P-S-Aldous-Huxley/dp/00617...

Burmese Days - George Orwell - http://www.amazon.com/Burmese-Days-Novel-George-Orwell/dp/01...

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway - http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Also-Rises-Ernest-Hemingway/dp/074...

Catch 22 - Joe Heller - http://www.amazon.com/Catch-22-50th-Anniversary-Joseph-Helle...

The Road - Cormac McCarthy - http://www.amazon.com/Road-Oprahs-Book-Club/dp/0307387895

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee - http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Mockingbird-Harper-Lee/dp/0446310...

The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger - http://www.amazon.com/Catcher-Rye-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769487

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway - http://www.amazon.com/Whom-Bell-Tolls-Ernest-Hemingway/dp/06...

For non-fiction it really depends on what you're looking for but I really enjoyed Joel Bakan's The Corporation and Mark Thomas' As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela.

I'm reading Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century by James R. Flynn,

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1107609178

the latest nonfiction book by an expert author, and I'm really liking it a lot. I highly recommend at least one book by Flynn for your summer reading.

I would recommend the following book:

Bruce Schneier - Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Fear-Thinking-Sensibly-Uncertai...

White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, is of the funniest books I have ever read and it contains the most important lesson about getting to the root of a problem that I have yet seen articulated: "The shit is not the shit. The pigeon is the shit."

Here are the first books that crossed my mind. The Road. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. How to Read a Modern Painting: Lessons from the Modern Masters. The Sun Also Rises. The Wind Up Bird Chronicles. Reamde: A Novel. 1984.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson for fiction.

The Jeffersonion Transformation (the first and last chapters of a much longer history) by Henry Adams, selected and introduced by Gary Wills.

I love everything by James Gleick. I recommend Faster, The Information, and Chaos.

Science Fiction:

* Walter Tevis: Mockingbird

* Karin Boye: Kallocain

Non fiction Computing:

* John Markoff: What the Dormouse Said

* Jef Raskin: The Humane Interface

Non fiction society:

* P.M.: Bolo'bolo

Infinite Jest is a great book to tackle over a summer. Highly recommended.

Over an infinite summer : http://infinitesummer.org/

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