Ask HN: What Books Are You Reading? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What Books Are You Reading?

52 pointsKhalilK80 comments

Just finished Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

You?

I just devoured Blindsight by Peter Watts[1]. It's a fascinating bit of SF that explores some really fascinating ideas about how consciousness works.

I've also been dipping into Daily Rituals: How Artists Work[2]. Lots of brief summaries of how various famous creators have broken up their workday; it both inspires me to get off my ass, and makes me feel better about the days when absolutely nothing happens.

Oh, and I've been slowly picking at Thee Psychick Bible[3], a collection of the majgickal documents of Genesis P-Orridge. Not sure it's really got any ideas I haven't seen in my other mystical readings. But there sure is a lot of it.

1: http://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm 2: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009Y4I4OM/ref=oh_aui_d_det... 3: http://www.amazon.com/THEE-PSYCHICK-BIBLE-Apocryphal-Scriptu...

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Col. Chris Hadfield

Hadfield's description of the massive preparation that astronauts must go through to be cleared for space flight really shows how seemingly insurmountable tasks can be accomplished by determined individuals. I think it's valuable to understand that becoming an astronaut (or any other high skill profession) isn't through some magic process but is the result of years of keeping your nose to the grindstone.

It's full of many pragmatic life lessons (visualize failure, aim to be a zero) that are contrary to what many 'life gurus' espouse. A wonderful sigh of realism.

I'm in the middle of Assembling California by John McPhee. It's a richly written exploration of where the land that is now California came from and how it got here. It examines the geologic history of the state as well as the discovery of plate tectonics and more recent California history such as the Gold Rush.

It's the last in a series exploring the geologic history the country along Interstate 80.

I just started When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery[1]. The author is a neurosurgeon and an excellent writer.

The last book I read was Abdel Haleem's translation of the Qur'an[2]. For an ancient religious text, it's rather short. Total reading time was maybe 16 hours over the course of a week. I'm not religious, but it was interesting to get a better idea of what Muslims believe and why. That said, the whole thing reads like a 7th-century version of Time Cube. I came away with the impression that the author was a schizophrenic who knew of parts of the Bible.

The most useful book I've recently read is Steve Blank's Four Steps to the Epiphany[3]. It's a more structured version of a lot of the stuff I learned in YC.

My favorite books of the past year are Confessions of a Yakuza[4] and Infidel[5]. The subjects of each book are as different as can be, but their stories are quite captivating. Both survived immense suffering and managed to thrive afterwards. Reading those books reminded me of how lucky I am and how insignificant my problems are.

1. http://www.amazon.com/When-Air-Hits-Your-Brain-ebook/dp/B006...

2. http://www.amazon.com/Quran-Oxford-Worlds-Classics-ebook/dp/...

3. http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank-ebook/...

4. http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Yakuza-Junichi-Saga-ebook/...

5. http://www.amazon.com/Infidel-Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-ebook/dp/B000N...

The Qur'an translation you've mentioned is the best one I've found.

Just got a major literary hangover from finishing http://parahumans.wordpress.com/ .. not really a book, more an online series. Be warned - it is long, addictive (and sometimes a grind/confusing/difficult to suspend belief [only occasionally though]), but the world building & range of characters is astounding.

Thinking about doing a mind flush with either a short Kurt Vongegut or Terry Pratchett then on to tackle The Origin of Wealth, by Eric Beinhocker

>You?

Just finished reading Straight Dope Tells All (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35107.The_Straight_Dope_T...) and Mahabharata Vol 5 (http://www.amazon.com/Mahabharata-Vol-5-Bibek-Debroy-ebook/d...)

In other words "please tell us the names of books that you're not ashamed for people to know that you are reading".

Is anyone here reading some absolute trash like Dan Brown, or do we only read "good" books?

I'll start. I've just read "Full Assault Mode" by Dalton Fury. The action is good, but the account of hacking a nuclear power station using iPhones is completely risible.

I'm now reading I, Claudius which is a lot better.

I just finished Alan Dean Foster's "Taken" Trilogy and really enjoyed it. It's probably "not as bad" as Dan Brown (opinion only, possibly), but it's what most here would just classify as escapist trash.

Also Scott Meyer released a sequel to his "Off to be the Wizard" book (Spell or Highwater) and I finished reading it soon after the Taken trilogy. It's a great series too.

I bought the "Everything is Bullshit" book and I'm on a plane tomorrow, so I'll probably finish it during the flight.

Yeah, I shouldn't have said bad, maybe "non high-brow" or something.

I also just worked my way through all the Cato and Macro Simon Scarrow books.

I'm currently reading This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works, a regretfully titled yet excellent book. [0]

Edge.org, in its annual question to prominent scientists and 'thought leaders', asked them "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" My favorite ones so far include the many offshoots of natural selection and evolution, plus all of the stuff about the brain.

I recently finished The Cold War: A New History, a great primer to how we got to the geopolitical situation we are in now (at least the major western/eastern powers), and A Short History of Nearly Everything, which was an awesome birds-eye view of modern science. ★★★★☆ to both.

My next book is going to be about AI; let me know if you have any recommendations. (I'm not sure I'm ready for GEB.)

[0] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062230174/

I started The Martian by Andy Weir about 3 days ago and I'm really enjoying it. It's a really entertaining book that I highly recommend!

Last week I finished The Paradox of Choice and Zero Day. I enjoyed both of them, although I don't think I'll be reading any of the sequels to Zero Day.

Before that I went through The Maze Runner trilogy, those were entertaining reads.

Some other books I've read recently that I can remember off the top of my head are the Divergent series of books (eh), How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen (great read), Ready Player One (loved, loved, loved this book), Starters (didn't bother reading any more in the series) and Moon walking With Einstein (I enjoyed it).

Just read The Martian recently. It was recommended to me as extremely detail-oriented.

It is extremely detail-oriented. :-)

Fun and engrossing if you like super-hard science fiction. (I sure seemed to, although I glossed over a few of the details in the middle.)

I was going to say that Kerbal Space Program fans would probably like it, but actually now I really want to say that NetHack fans would probably like it. (What is the effect of breaking a +6 wand of oxygen scrubbing? What happens if you dip a cursed ring of radiothermal generation into a blessed potion of liquid nitrogen? How much nutrition can you get from a partly eaten food ration?)

I've added it to my list of books to inspire my kids. So if they ever come to me and say, "Dad, what is chemistry good for?" I can just give them The Martian and say, "read this and you'll know"

Calculating limiting reagents as if your life depended on it!

I am curious to know what other books are on that list.

Currently reading Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley and The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive by Brian Christian. Just finished No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald, My Real Children by Jo Walton, The Martian by Andy Weir, and Toki Pona: The Language of Good by Sonja Lang (the official reference to her conlang, which I had already studied extensively from online references).

Waiting for new chapters in the serial Ra by Sam Hughes. Possibly about to read Engineering a Safer World by Nancy Leveson.

* Computer Organization and Architecture [1]

* Algorithms [2]

* The 50th Law [3]

* Applied Predictive Modeling [4]

When I get a breather from school...

* Cibola Burn [5]

1: http://amzn.com/013293633X ; 2: http://amzn.com/032157351X ; 3: http://amzn.com/006177460X ; 4: http://amzn.com/1461468485 ; 5: http://amzn.com/031621762X

I caved and started reading A Song Of Ice And Fire after Game of Thrones S4 finished broadcasting. First book was good, and I'm just starting the second. I've also been binging on cheap self-published horror and apocalypse ebook collections from Amazon (just can't resist those 99p anthologies), and my ongoing 'serious' book is Work by Studs Terkel. Like a couple of other books mentioned in this thread, this is a real eye-opener that reminds me how lucky I am.

About to start A Theory of Fun for Game Design.

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449...

I have no interest in making games, but this comes highly recommended to understand applied intrinsic motivation (which I am very interested in). Grabbed it from the worrydream book list.

http://worrydream.com/#!/Links

Just started Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach. Pretty entertaining so far.

Apparently when you're eating, your experience of flavor is about 80 percent olfactory!

Just finished Zero to One a few days ago. It's pretty much Peter Thiel's talks summarized into one book. Not really an 'action' book, more of a "here's what a different view of the startup world is like" (not that it's really different from my personal views)

Also, here's a list of books I read and recommend in 2014: http://blog.chewxy.com/books/

Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas - I discovered this via my volunteering with @codeclub teaching primary school children to program using scratch

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind — Shunryu Suzuki [1]

Body by Science — Doug McGuff, MD and John Little [2]

1. http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Shunryu-Suzuki/dp/1...

2. http://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength-Trainin...

I just finished reading The Signal and The Noise by Nate Silver. It was an interesting read, but it felt a bit shallow in it's analysis.

I was feeling the need for some fiction, so I picked up Vladimir Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin. Not sure what to think about it yet, but it's interesting reading Nabokov's analysis and seeing into his mindset a little. Sheds some light on his work as well.

Coincidently, I just finished reading The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver too. I found it interesting and not too technical. It covered lot of ground.

Now, I am reading Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. It is more in depth and technical than Nate's.

I will take a look at Innumerancy. A more technical exploration of the same topic sounds right up my alley. Thanks!

Half way through Don Dunstan: Intimacy and Liberty. It's about the things that people didn't explain to their kids when I was growing up in Adelaide. It might provide some relief for those disillusioned by current American politics.

I'm working through Calculus on Manifolds. Partly as mathematical weight training, partly because the aspect of quantum field theory that trips me up is usually the field bit.

The Adventures of Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan - ancient Syrian mystical tale of a man on a mission to capture a magical book. Many parallels to the Legend of Zelda. The poetic form isn't preserved in the English translation.

Great Museum Homes of the Western United States - The great houses of the Western US, who built them, how the owners got their fortune, details into their businesses, etc

"48 Laws of Power" and "No More Mr Nice Guy".

Laws of Power: Not for everyone but the book is damn useful if you're ambitious and can translate examples and vague concepts into your own situations in life.

No More Mr Nice Guy: Not very far into it but it's almost cathartic if it applies to you and I feel like its a huge step in social/emotional development for me.

I've read No More Mr Nice Guy and helped me big time with my emotional development as well.

Pitch Anything!> http://pitchanything.com/book/

BOOM Big Idea to share with you. No matter your functional role, there's solid research here on how people receive and respond to information. This is one of the best books on sales presentation and positioning I've read in ages.

Just finished Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. It was quite the eye opener.

Now I'm on Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Very funny book so far. The main character, Ignatius, is such a piece of work. I was slightly annoyed at first, but he's so odd and unique that it kept me captivated. Now everything is just really funny.

Confederacy of Dunces was a very good read. I recommend this to all of my friends, but few ever bother. I'm not entirely sure why they are so put off.

I am reading 'Autobiography of a Yogi'. While reading Steve Jobs biography I got to know that he had read this book many times. http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Complete-Edition-Paramah...

I just finished "Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment" by George Leonard.

It approaches the topic of attaining mastery from the angle of Aikido, but I found it strongly resembling my feelings in the programming domain. I'm still pondering it, and will likely re-read it soon (it's a very short book).

I've been working on the Wheel of Time series for a while now. I just got through book 11, which means I'm out of the books that Robert Jordan wrote and into the home stretch of books that were finished by Brandon Sanderson.

Overall, the series has been good, if not a little long-winded and a bit repetitive at times.

The Art of Thinking Clearly, Write Portable Code by Brian Hook, Thomas Mann's The magic mountain, The mythical man month, Intellectuals by Paul Johnson and Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, by Ernesto Laclau are on my table right now.

But I don't think reading many books in parallel is a good strategy...

>But I don't think reading many books in parallel is a good strategy...

I think if you got a system, it works - for example, I usually read one non-fiction and one fiction book at a time, possibly with a book of short stories. As long as I don't neglect any of the books for so long that I forget what they're about, and when the switches between books are in logical locations like at the end of a chapter and not in the middle of the text, it works out for me [1]. For that e-readers are good - they let you easily switch between books.

[1] It has failed exactly once, when I didn't open a book for a few months and had to re-start from the beginning

I also started Gödel, Escher, Bach. Have yet to finish the preface.

Discover Meteor: a book for the Meteorjs framework. Good book if you want to learn the framework.

I read a lot of fiction I guess. Now I am reading American Gods, and before that, Dune. Before Dune I read the 2 released books of The Kingkiller Chronicle.

Just finished "Contagious: Why Things Catch On" which is great for understanding the triggers you can build into your product to build an inbound gravitational pull for potential and current customers.

Now I'm about to tackle "Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love"

Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull (Pixar-fame) and The Atlantis Gene by A.G. Riddle (sci-fi'ish)

Did you like The Atlantis Gene? I've almost pulled the trigger at Amazon a couple times but the reviews seem hit or miss and my reading list is already so long.

I tried the first book but could not choke it down. It's crap, and I say that as someone who usually doesn't mind iffy writing if the story is entertaining.

I enjoyed it. I also finished the other two books in the series which ties it all together. I can see where the reviews would be very binary though. It brings up some possibly controversial scenarios which requires some suspension of disbelief. It's almost Fantasy more than Science Fiction in that regard.

Yeah I like it. Good entertainment that doesn't require too much of the reader.

Just finished Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman, which I liked a lot and now finishing "Eight Engineering Stories" by Bill Hammack...both of which are really good at explaining complex physical / engineering concepts in a simple way

If you are looking for some good SF read I can't recommend "Dune" enough, this thing is a masterpiece. As far as right now goes, I just started "The girl with the Dragon Tattoo", too early to give an opinion.

Dune is great, but don't stop there. Read the rest of the series (I don't care for any of his Son's books though, so not going to recommend those, but there are those that like em).

Saving the Season By Kevin West. Yes it is a cookbook, but it has some fabulous essays about everything from fruit, vegetables, history of preserving, all sorts of things.

Plus the recipes look crazy amazing. I rarely say that.

Finished 'House of Leaves' 2 months ago (Danielewski), a fantasy/terror thing, and he is in the same league with Lovecraft. The postmodern apparatus is more nice than silly.

GEB is a good book to finish, congrats. Unless you're exceptionally brilliant and got it all on the first read, plan to read it at least once more though. But let it sink first :)

I felt overwhelmed by the metaphorical meanings!!

Definitely going to let it sink in first before taking another plunge as well ;)

Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People

I'm about to read /The Rhesus Chart/ by cstross. If you aren't up to date, don't start there, start with /The Atrocity Archives/.

Just finished "The Second Machine Age",not bad for a quick read and some framing of tech trends, but definitely not very technical/thorough.

Just finished "Railtown: The Fight for the Los Angeles Metro Rail"... and I now know why rail has had such a bastardized upbringing in LA.

Experience Design: A Framework for Integrating Brand, Experience, and Value by the founders of Method, an Experience Design firm in NYC, SF...

pretty great so far

Current recently finished/upcoming list: four hour workweek, getting results the agile way, rich dad poor dad, the talent code

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (no relation to author :p) and For Whom the Bell Tools by Ernest Hemingway.

(On a fiction binge)

i just finished listening to brandon sanderson's "words of radiance" as read to me by my digital personal assistant during my work commutes. in the ivona amy voice, of course as she's pretty good with crazy names like "urithiru".

moving on to his "warbreaker" now. apparently, they're all tied together in an uber-epic.

Chaos: Making a new science, James Gleick

Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty Learn You a Haskell A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin

The Great Tranformation by Karl Polanyi, wikibooks.org/wiki/An_Awk_Primer, and just finished Anne of Green Gables

Reading Simpsons and their mathematical secrets this week. The book is both entertaining and informative.

I just started reading * Shambala - The Sacred Path of the Warrior * The PayPal Wars * Founders at Work

Just finished The Glasshouse by Charles Stross, really great sci-fi

Now reading Neil Young's autobiography

Montesquieu: Considerations on the Causes of The Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline

REMOTE. A very intriguing book I have ever read. By Jason Fried and David HH.

Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party

Iron Druid Chronicles - Shattered Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!

Halfway into The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"Zero to One" by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

The better angels of our nature - Steven Pinker.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Gone with the wimd Pride and prejudice

No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald

Moby Dick... About time.

Hotel by Arthur Hailey.

Is God a Vegetarian? Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights by Richard Young[1].

Behold, it was very good[2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Is-God-Vegetarian-Christianity-Vegetar...

[2] Gen 1:31

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