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Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
Is there a book, paper, report or article etc. that really stood out?
- kickout 4y ago1492 by Charles Mann
- mkl 4y agoI'm guessing you mean either 1491 or 1493?
- 0x008 4y agoEverything’s on Andrej Karpathy‘s blog.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoRabbit Test by Samantha Mills [0] is the heavily researched, hard sci-fi that retains its close intimacy on the impact on regular people that I think science fiction should be going towards. It's realistic, heavy-hitting, and doesn't bullshit on the politics involved. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/ https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/
- paparush 4y agoHoly shit, that was a great read.
- dogline 4y agoOk, that story alone is a reason to get back into short stories. Great stuff.
- agentwiggles 4y agoNow _that_ was some good sci-fi. Hard hitting, fascinating, and damn does it make its point. Thanks for sharing.
- BasilPH 4y agoReading it right now, but I already think it's the test thing: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals I was (and still am) obsessed with productivity. But I more and more my tasks had felt like something I needed to get done, to afterwards finally be able to relax and profit from them. But this time never came and I just got busier. The book does a great job at explaining how much of our daily grind is based on a refusal to accept our finitude. And once we accept our finitude, we can get a lot more done in a happier way.
- legendofbrando 4y agoThis book was definitely one of my highlights. The number of times I exclaimed “I’m really not the only one that feels that?!” Was too many to measure. It really forces you to confront time in a way that I haven’t stopped thinking about since.
- BasilPH 4y agoI'm having the same experience. And what I love, is that he proposes solutions that work, without sugarcoating things. One of the biggest learnings from this book so far, is that a certain level of anxiety is inevitable. Especially when you're doing work that is meaningful to you. Being able to accept that anxiety and still continue is what makes all the difference.
- jen729w 4y agoThe audiobook, read by the author, is terrific.
- BasilPH 4y agoI can imagine. He has a short, spoken course on the Waking Up mediation app that closely mirrors the book and I found it amazingly well done.
- zw7 4y agoI also recommend his mailing list, "The Imperfectionist". He only sends out an essay maybe once a month but they aren't posted anywhere so you have to subscribe.
- gvedem 4y agoReincarnation Blues, by Michael Poore. Takes on some serious stuff but never takes itself too seriously.
- flobosg 4y agoRelated, from a few weeks ago: Ask HN: Best books read in 2022? – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33849267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33849267
- tayo42 4y agoand this thread also has the same comment in it. the same question was asked only a couple weeks before that one. I think hackernews could aggregate some of these types of repetitive questions and topics better?
- didsomeonesay 4y agohttps://hackernewsbooks.com/ https://hackernewsbooks.com/
- tayo42 4y agodidnt know about that, though one downside is that it doesnt encourage discussion of the book recommendations. Though idk how much of that actually happens anyway
- th33ngineer 4y agoYikes, missed that one! Thanks for sharing.
- raptor556 4y ago"The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee. If anyone can recommended some other "beginner" books for learning genetics I would really appreciate it.
- j7ake 4y agoThe gene machine (centres around nobel prize winning discovery of ribosome structure) Time love memory: influence of genes on time keeping, mating, neurobiology.
- lordgrenville 4y agoShe Has her Mother's Eyes is a good one. But of course if you want to learn properly you need something more comprehensive than books like these.
- pokstad 4y agoThree Body Problem trilogy. Most unique sci-fi I have ever read.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoIn the same vein of "interesting sci-fi thought experiments", I keep coming back to Hurley's The Stars are Legion as an amazing (and disturbing) exploration of what a society that used biology the way we use electronics could look like.
- ArcMex 4y agoNice! I have this on my 2023 TBR. Cannot wait. I read Netflix is picking it up for an adaptation?
- davnicwil 4y agoI'll tell you what I tell others when I recommend it - the trilogy is so good that I am jealous of your position of having not yet read it!
- arawde 4y agoHere's a few: * Matthew Klein & Michael Pettis - Trade Wars Are Class Wars * Bruno Latour - We Have Never Been Modern * Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (had never read it before, probably book of the year for me) and of course, Matt Levine's Money Stuff, which is good every year!
- coldpie 4y agoI subscribe to Asimov's bi-monthly (6/year) sci-fi short story magazine and there's always one or two stories that really stand out every issue. It's always a treat when a new one turns up in the mailbox. https://www.asimovs.com/ https://www.asimovs.com/
- Freak_NL 4y agoCollections of short sci-fi stories can be thoroughly refreshing. It gives the author the space to explore outlandish concepts (societal, philosophical, technological, etc.) that wouldn't work too well stretched out to a full novel. From recent anthologies to paperbacks collecting a bunch of stories around a theme from the seventies: there are gems in every one of them (misses too of course). I find it a good way to explore authors I haven't read anything by as well.
- zwieback 4y agoSea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.
- voisin 4y agoMight be worthwhile to read this after Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. While not a formal trilogy, there are a lot of connections and quite honestly they are each totally amazing. Last Night in Montreal, by the same author, is also great, and totally different from the above three.
- bobbiechen 4y agoI read Station Eleven after Sea of Tranquility, and I really liked the connection in that direction. So I don't think the ordering is so important. Really looking forward to reading The Glass Hotel as well! Emily St. John Mandel may be my new favorite author.
- rtrunck 4y ago"Einstein's Fridge" was great to learn about the history and development of thermodynamics at a fairly high level. "Good Inside" on becoming a better parent was also great and taught me a lot. "Every Tool's a Hammer" on becoming a better maker. "Crafting Interpreters" on learning about and building compilers. All were really great reads.
- boucher 4y agoAlso read Crafting Interpreters recently and enjoyed it.
- dsm4ck 4y agoRiver of the Gods by Candice Millard https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105189330/river-of-the-gods-captures-the-epic-quest-to-find-the-source-of-the-nile https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105189330/river-of-the-gods-...
- irtefa 4y ago"Slight Edge" by Jeff Olson was pretty good. Lessons from the book helped me make progress towards my bigger goals every day. You don't need to read the entire book to get value.
- hiidrew 4y agoLife After Lifestyle by Toby Shorin: https://subpixel.space/entries/life-after-lifestyle/ https://subpixel.space/entries/life-after-lifestyle/ Enjoy this piece and some of the themes in it, weird DTC brands, authenticity, manufacturing culture. It seems to make sense of the current moment we live in.
- palashkulsh 4y agoThe sixth principle Farnham Street blogs
- wannabebarista 4y agoI just posted a list of articles earlier today.[0] Choosing one article and one book, I would go with - Stylized Facts in the Social Sciences by Daniel Hirschman - 1177 B.C. by Eric Cline [0] https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-articles-2022/ https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-articles-2022/
- the__alchemist 4y agoI re-read The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson; it represents what I love about Sci-Fi: Interesting ideas on the edge of plausibility; a speculative society based on their consequences; a clever story and setting. Leaves me with a "Could be build that?" feeling. It's inspiring one my current side-projects; a molecular and protein modeler/simulation.
- impish9208 4y agoPerhaps try The Baroque Cycle next if you haven't already.
- c54 4y agoI read Quicksilver and started on The Confusion this year but still haven’t felt like it’s grabbed me. When did it start getting more exciting for you?
- the__alchemist 4y agoI have; it was great fun!
- oceanghost 4y agoThis is my favorite book. I have a signed first edition. I'm super happy to see someone else appreciates it :-)
- baseballdork 4y agoI realize this isn't really the intent of the question, but I read "The Count of Monte Cristo" this year for the first time and it's now my favorite book. It's a classic that I just had never bothered with and the story sucked me in. The redemption, revenge, scheming, secrecy. It was phenomenal.
- muzaffarpur 4y agoI reread this book over and over. What a captivating masterpiece.
- wpietri 4y agoSuch a delight. And every time I reread it I wonder why the serial story (it was published in 18 parts over a year and a half) hasn't made a comeback given how desperate sites are for eyeballs.
- agentwiggles 4y agoThere's definitely stuff like that out there, generally the genre is called "web serials". Worm is a superhero type story that ran over a period of years and is probably the most widely known example. Another personal favorite is Scott Alexander's Unsong, which has a delightfully weird mix of religion and rationalism and science fiction/ fantasy. I think most of these kinds of things tend to lack mass appeal, but they're out there, and when you find one that tickles your fancy it can be pretty addictive!
- daltont 4y agoVery popular suggestion on Reddit. I'm looking to read the an unabridged translation.
- coldpie 4y agoAbsolutely one of my favorite books. The unabridged, modern (early 2000s, I think) retranslation by Robin Buss is the best English version, IMO. It's long, but worth every page.
- vmilner 4y ago
- marcusverus 4y agoNapoleon by Andrew Roberts. It's one of those rare works of history that is both highly informative and a real pleasure to read. It helps that Napoleon lived one of the most extraordinary lives in human history. Key takeaway, in the saucy words of the great man himself: "Fortune is a woman. The more she does for me, the more I will require of her."
- kwindla 4y agoBest is hard! But "Owls of the Eastern Ice," about fieldwork in Siberia studying owls, is definitely up there. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/22/owls-of-the-eastern-ice-by-jonathan-c-slaght-review-an-extraordinary-quest https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/22/owls-of-the-ea...
- weejewel 4y agoBuild by Tony Fadell (iPod, Nest).
- Epicism 4y agoThe end of the world is just the beginning by Peter Zeihan. It is an amazing walkthrough of the modern global economy and how it is changing based on changing demographics and politics. Highly recommended.
- legitster 4y agoI was not initially impressed with Zeihan. He's a bit of a know-it-all and is very fatalist with his predictions. That said, I've really come around on him lately. His predictions are broadly accurate, and it's very refreshing to see a version of the world that rises above political noisemaking.
- willsoon 4y agoMme. Bovary. First it just was an exercise to show to my wife how _descriptions_ are _action_. I was trying to improved her everyday writing, you know, memos from work, informal/formal letters. I'm reading French just a little as English. So we are doing this... _exercises_ based upon an Spanish translate. And there it was. Just like I used to be remember it: fabrics that suddenly becomes a living creature embracing Emma B. nee Rouault, feelings that forms heavy lakes falling upon her, light that is light and sound and it taste like aluminum. Sorry to inform: is not a novel about couples, not even about a couple, not even about Emma. It's all about how you can tell a thing, whatever thing, not thinking about it as static dead thing but a living, fiery, not a few times menacing, whatever.
- etrautmann 4y agoI cannot understand what you’ve written here.
- zwieback 4y agoI read Madame Bovary a long time ago because in the old days when we visited East Berlin from the west they forced you to exchange some money into the worthless Ostmark. The only thing worth buying were books and even those were printed on terrible paper. I ended up with Madame Bovary and absolutely loved it, depressing as it is.
- BlaisePascal 4y agoThe Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. It definitely lives up to its reputation.
- ArcMex 4y agoI have an audio-book of this! And a flight next week!
- trash3 4y ago
- jszymborski 4y agoSee, I love Bulgakov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but I really didn't get Karamazov (it's a personal failing, not attributing it to the work). There are some beautiful aspects of the book that will always stay with me. The Grand Inquisitor monologue is captivating, Alyosha is a deeply interesting character, Mitya's stories of gallivanting on a troika through Russia, and everything that is Grushenka... But as a whole, I can't say I understood it. I didn't understand how these characters came together, or how the ending tied these (albeit interesting!) stories together. Karamazov was the first Dostoevsky book I read. When it came to The Idiot, I was shocked by how different the writing style felt. It flowed more, the dialogue drove a lot of the narrative, and it generally was just a lot less dense. I'm hardly an English Major let alone a scholar of Russian Lit so I'm sure the thoughts here are pedestrian.
- nkh 4y agoI had a similar feeling after finishing the book. This YT video really helped frame the book for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UBOA00EAQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UBOA00EAQw
- jszymborski 4y agoThanks! I should seek out more analysis... Master & Margarita is my favourite book, but I don't think it'd crack Top 10 if it weren't for the end notes.
- chillydawg 4y agoJack Four by Neal Asher. sci fi first person mega action. impossible to put down. Close second would be Hail Mary by the guy who wrote the Martian.
- werber 4y agoParadais by Fernanda Melchor was the only book I literally could not put down till I finished. It’s a short book, but extremely visual. I read it maybe six months ago and the whole story has played through my head since then.
- lianna-vba 4y agoThanks for the recommendation, I just grabbed a copy. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut was that book for me this year. It's an odd blend of fact and fiction covering a handful of 20th century physics and math discoveries. Alexander Grothendieck, Einstein, Schrödinger and Heisenberg all appear.
- BirAdam 4y agoI've been reading the Foundation series, and it's quite good. Aside from that: "The New Right" by Michael Malice "The Storm Before the Storm" by Mike Duncan "The Anglo-American Establishment" by Carroll Quigley "Numbers Don't Lie" by Vaclav Smil Books that weren't good: "A Short History of Man" by Hans-Herman Hopper "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil "After Evangelicalism" by David P. Gushee
- wincy 4y agoSomeone on Hacker News recommended The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan. The audiobook is just fantastic, read by the author and you can tell how passionate and concerned he is about the subjects he’s talking about. It’s a long book but worth the read.
- sixo 4y agoFor some reason "Who We Are and How We Got Here" (David Reich on early human history via DNA) was just a delight, to have so many open questions be slammed shut. "The Need to be Whole", from Wendell Berry, is deeply thought-provoking in a sort of spiritual-political way, though far too long for how much it has to say, and questionable at times.
- dash2 4y agoI couldn't finish the Reich book. He knows so much but I thought it was very badly written - long sentences winding out of control.
- ducharmdev 4y agoThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
- kevstev 4y agoAn Elegant Puzzle- Systems Engineering Management. The content is great, and the design and typsetting are fantastic too. It helped formalize a lot of half thoughts I had floating around my head in regards to engineering management.
- scatterhead 4y agoSystems of Engineering Management. Leaving out the of makes it sound like a much more interesting book, IMO ;)
- jszymborski 4y agoEasily The City & The City by China Miéville. The premise is great, the characters are fun, the plot will keep you engaged. A noir detective story about a murder that happens in the space between two cities which are in superposition. That is, they share the same geographic space, but citizens are forced to live in only one of the cities by a seemingly omnipotent power called Breach that maintains the borders of the two cities.
- ArcMex 4y agoI have heard good things about this book. I have it on my Kindle and plan to read it next year.
- lianna-vba 4y agoBesides The City & The City I really enjoyed Kraken and Un Lun Dun by China Miéville. Kraken is the hunt for a giant squid after it vanished from a London museum. Un Lun Dun is a young adult story of two friends who end up in a whimsical version of London.
- jszymborski 4y agoI'll have to check them out! I was first drawn to TC&TC because I was told Disco Elysium draws from it, and boy howdy was that right. Something is so wonderful about a crime procedural in an entirely fantastic universe.
- lianna-vba 4y agoThat's funny, I just added Disco Elysium to my Steam wish list yesterday.
- jszymborski 4y agoYou will not be disappointed! Possibly my favourite game of all time.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
- ArcMex 4y agoFiction I discovered and read Blake Crouch this year - Dark Matter - Recursion - Upgrade - Pines I also discovered and read - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - Gravity by Tess Gerritsen - A Man by, At the End of the Matinee Keiichiro Hirano It's between Recursion and Project Hail Mary for me. I am leaning more towards Recursion. Non-fiction I discovered and read the following this year - Deep Work by Cal Newport - The Millionaire Fastlane by M.J. DeMarco - Zero to One by Peter Thiel - How to Start a Business Without any Money by Rachel Bridge - Creative Gene by Hideo Kojima - Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel - Show Your Work, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon - Press Reset by Jason Schreier I would say Deep Work and Steve Jobs had the biggest impact on me. Programming I am learning Elixir using Elixir In Action by Sasa Juric.
- ushercakes 4y agoProject Hail Mary was such a fun read. I burned through it in 2 days, and was sad when I finished it. 10/10 would recommend
- John23832 4y agoIt was way too short, but also just long enough.
- Archipelagia 4y agoIf you enjoyed PHM, you might also like: - For a more horror take, "There's no Antimemetic Division" https://qntm.org/scp https://qntm.org/scp. Without spoiling, it's about people trying to fight against a threat that's impossible to remember about. - Ted Chiang's "Understand". Again without spoiling too much, it's about a man whose intelligence rapidly increased. - Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality. Yeah, I'm serious, if you like the "smart character solves problem by thinking" it's amazing.
- SyzygistSix 4y agoEverything by Qntm that I've read has been great. Incredibly imaginative. I recommend Ra and Fine Structure in addition to the Antimemetics stuff.
- dymax78 4y agoThe First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. Grim and gritty, with phenomenal character development that hones in on the fallibility of people. The narration by Steven Pacey is incredible, if you'd like to go that route.
- agentwiggles 4y agoPacey is seriously incredible, they could not have possibly found a better voice for the series. I listened a few years back and loved it. I really need to get around to the other books in the setting, I read Best Served Cold right after the original trilogy and then moved on and never came back.
- odo1242 4y agoThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** by Mark Manson?
- anotherevan 4y agoI'm thinking the question mark at the end means maybe you do give a f**. :-)
- jjallen 4y agoBy far the best thing I’ve read in years is the blog about obesity and its mysteries, slimemoldtimemold.com. Can’t recommend it enough.
- AntoniusBlock 4y agoStarting FORTH by Leo Brodie - Written in a casual, funny, beginner friendly way, and even though I'm not a beginner I still enjoyed it immensely. Now if only Forth were more popular! Edit: realised OP said `thing' not `things' so I deleted some books.
- Alekhine 4y agoI recently had an idea for a spellcrafter game that uses forth. check back in several years?
- AntoniusBlock 4y agoWill do! Also, nice name. Alekhine's games have given me great pleasure over the years.
- ddritzenhoff 4y agolet's talk about owls with diabetes by David Sedaris. Never has a book made me laugh out loud more than this one. It's completely ridiculous and crazy, but I loved every minute of it.
- lynndotpy 4y agoThe Rustonomicon (WIP) made Rust things click in a way that really benefitted me: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/ https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/ Definitely in the running! I'd also recommend "The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work": https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-en.pdf https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-en.pdf
- LAC-Tech 4y agoYeah 2022 was the year in which rust transitioned (to me) from "frustrating waste of time language" to "wait a minute, the standard library is really good, the tools are really good, I could probably make useful software with this". Though curious why a book describing unsafe rust made rust click for you?
- lynndotpy 4y agoIt made me better understand how Rust works and how it is designed, and in doing so, it really untangled how borrowing/ownership works. I liken it to paint a tree, full of leaves which obscure its branches. I might never paint the branches, but understanding how the branches are shaped will help me draw a better tree. This was in tandem with reading the Rust book, being active in the IRC, and writing programs to learn! The Rustonomicon just happened to have what I needed.
- gocartStatue 4y agoRe-read „It’s Not Luck” by Elijahu Goldratt; maybe it’s not „epiphany”, but very good instruction on tackling seemingly „impossible” projects.
- arthurjj 4y agoFiction: Gideon the Ninth - which was both funnier than expected, given it's about necromancers, and also a great view of how very technical discussions appear from the outside Non fiction: Probably "Becoming Trader Joe" really shows how business decisions are path very situational and path dependent. i.e. the whole store brand schtick of Trader Joe's started because of alcohol regulations
- lianna-vba 4y agoGideon the Ninth was hilarious. Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy and Martha Wells' Murderbot series have a similar mix of great storytelling and snark.
- woodruffw 4y agoI finally read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down[1], which has been on my list for years. Cultural/anthropological journalism tends to fall into a handful of traps (fawning over "exotic" cultures, or dismissing them as backwards), and this is one of a small handful of books that avoid those errors. I highly recommend it to anybody who's interested in medical anthropology, or more generally to anyone looking to understand (a tiny fragment of) the immigrant experience in the US. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609.The_Spirit_Catches_You_and_You_Fall_Down https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609.The_Spirit_Catches...
- tayo42 4y agoI read "Crucial Conversations" this year. It feel like it has the potential to be life changing. Need more time to tell what impact it really has. It introduced me to a new topic, which is analyzing social situations and apply problem solving skills to them. Something that never occurred to me for some reason. I now realize there are smart people working and having interesting thoughts and conclusions in this topic. So much more to explore. (Open to recomindations too!) The book also seems to give more useful information about how to handle difficult social situations. I was pretty down on work and becoming cynical (still am though hah!) The advice I often get is stuff like be agreeable, don't rock the boat, dont say anything with passion ("corp speak"), to get ahead and get what you want. This feels bad to me. Often it appears in corporations the only people that are getting ahead are those types of yes people. I feel like this book gave me the tools to have differing opinions and express them successfully. I also liked the book shows that a lot of these difficult conversations are actually in your control. Most people seem to have terrible communication skills I'm learning. Often I would write off a bad conversation as the other person just being an asshole or difficult or something. after reading this it seems like it is possible to handle a lot of these a lot better. Disjointed thoughts off the top of my head, but I found the book pretty enlightening. Id recommend it if you struggle with expressing your opinions in emotional conversations.
- BigHatLogan 4y agoBuying this off the strength of your recommendation. That sounds exactly like what the doctor ordered. I'm getting worse at expressing myself the older I'm getting, and I'm finding it impairing my personal life, work life, social situations, etc. Will give this one a read--thank you!
- Archipelagia 4y agoLikewise – it's been on my to-read list for ages, will schedule it as my Christmas reading thanks to OP's comment.
- adolgert 4y agoWhen I find myself nervous about a meeting, I go back to this book and outline the steps it suggests, not just the gist of it, but I walk through the steps. It's like having a colleague who wants to help you be a better person.
- Eric_WVGG 4y agoquick shout-out to https://literal.club/ https://literal.club/ as a hopeful successor of GoodReads, which has been in a state of disrepair if not abandonware for several years now. Literal is a terrific product and I hope it gains traction. as for my own entries… - Lapvonia by Moshfegh and Hollow by Catling are both sort of magical-realism set in medieval European villages, which would normally be considered "fantasy" but I assure you are very much not fantasy novels as any normal reader would consider. They are rather stories about the medieval setting set from the perspective of how people a thousand years ago understood and perceived their real world. - and also on that medieval-tales motif, The Mere Wife by Headley is a contemporary retelling of Beowulf (the hero is a cop named Ben Wolff), great fun and well-styled. - Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Beaton is winning tons of awards and deservedly so. - Termination Shock and Ministry for the Future are stabs at possible approaches for solving climate change by very prominent SF writers, which miss the mark for various reasons, but worth a look as they're the dominant themes for the next few years of science fiction.
- trynewideas 4y agoThere's also BookWyrm, which is ActivityPub-federated and has less of the library-management focus in favor of the now reading/just finished status updates: https://docs.joinbookwyrm.com/ https://docs.joinbookwyrm.com/
- stinos 4y agoquick shout-out to https://literal.club/ https://literal.club/ as a hopeful successor of GoodReads Before I sign up: does it do 'people who liked this book also liked...' ? And/or are the recommendations based on previous books I put in there myself ok?
- ptman 4y agoIt's "free" for the user, so how do they make money?
- stank345 4y agoAs a perfectionist in recovery, this book was extremely illuminating: https://www.newharbinger.com/9781684038459/the-anxious-perfectionist https://www.newharbinger.com/9781684038459/the-anxious-perfe... I often felt like they were describing me to myself as I was reading... Highly recommend if you deal with perpetual dissatisfaction with your performance or achievements and would like to learn how to accept yourself for who you are and live a "lighter" existence.
- teekert 4y agoAre you linking to another book or is the tile wrong?
- ushercakes 4y agoMeditations - Marcus Aurelius. This year and every year. It is kind of a stereotype though of tech dudes to be into stoicism, but whatever, this book really just puts me in such a good frame of mind any time I open it.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> kind of a stereotype though of tech dudes to be into stoicism I like this book but completely disagree with your stereotype. In fact, I find the tech dude stereotype to lack perspective, resort easily to anger and personalization, stew in thought, and accuse others for their suffering.
- ambrose2 4y agoI think both of you might be right, as my impression of the stereotype is more that the tech dude is “into” stoicism, but falls short in practice.
- SyzygistSix 4y agoWhich means we need it that much more.
- HEmanZ 4y agoIf you like older wisdom books like this, I’d recommend the essays of montaign. Marcus wrestles with being a man, montaign wrestles with being a human.
- scottndecker 4y agoThe Guns of John Moses Browning. One of those where you didn't realize how someone you likely don't know much about has impacted every human on the planet.
- trynewideas 4y agoI was late by a year to it, but Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun was both fascinating and, typical for Ishiguro, almost lethally concentrated melancholy. A literary take on AGI and religion from the cleverly written perspective of an AI assistant device, mixed with a coming-of-age story and a meditation on the disposability of modern technology.
- powerset 4y agoHow did you feel it compared with some of his other works? Personally I enjoyed it, but to me it wasn't quite on the same level with some of his other books like the buried giant or remains of the day.
- kjellsbells 4y agoKazuo Ishiguro's entire career revolves around memory: remembrances, sometimes unreliable, and always moving. If you like Ishiguro can I recommend W.G. Sebald? Rings of Saturn is like nothing I've ever read before.
- slybootz 4y ago"The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann" by Ananyo Bhattacharya
- amusingimpala75 4y agoThe Bible (ESV)
- Nathanael_M 4y agoThe Bible (NASB95)
- Barrin92 4y agoFiction: The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. Very fun novel somewhere between sci-fi and literary fiction, best read without having spoiled anything about it. Non-Fiction: The Bright Ages - Matthew Gabriele. Very nuanced well written popular history of the medieval period Journalism: Not from this year but I read it this year the first time: Largely photographic piece about the drug war in the Phillipines: (warning, very disturbing/gory) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/07/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-drugs-killings.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/07/world/asia/ro...
- awesomegoat_com 4y agoThe news that lockdown ends.
- philip1209 4y agoHaruki Murakami's "Novelist as a Vocation" has been inspiring for me. It's a memoir about his path as an author. I find that his discussions of topics such as writers block relevant to my technology work.
- gravypod 4y agoI really enjoyed this Dan Luu article https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ It's something I had been thinking about for a while but didn't have the knowledge required to put it into words. I end up linking it a bit.
- smlavine 4y agoJohn Green's "The Anthropocene Reviewed" was surprisingly a great joy to read. It was a light in the dark for me. He makes me feel thankful and appreciative of being a part of the human race without coming off as cheesy or contrived. And it's funny, too.
- scoofy 4y agoI second this. I listened to the audiobook. I cannot recommend it enough. The depth of intimacy is unparalleled. It seems, to me, to be a brilliant and vulnerable satire of modern social rating system and social networks. The way I am near tears listening to some of the most private moments about this man's life, followed up by "I give Academic Decathlon 4 out of 5 stars" is a hilarious reminder that the rating systems we use online are so deeply detached from the experiences they represent.
- sAbakumoff 4y agoChildren of the Arbat(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Arbat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Arbat) Pretty scary book about Russia circa 1930-1940
- RunSet 4y agoThe Once and Future King, by T.H. White. The Sword in the Stone is probably my favorite Disney movie so I was delighted to discover the movie was based on a book which was even better.
- dash2 4y agoIt's a super book. Remember the first meeting of Arthur and Merlin, when Merlin says "how long since we met?" and then has a tear in his eye? He also wrote The Goshawk which I can recommend.
- hothead334 4y agoOne of my favourites of all time. The singing Cockney hedgehog is such a gem.
- cunningfatalist 4y agoThe best works of fiction I read: - Count Belisarius by Robert Graves - The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell - The Expanse (all of them) - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir And the best books on software development were: - Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards and Neal Ford - Multithreaded JavaScript by Thomas Hunter II and Bryan English - The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Hermans
- thor_molecules 4y agoThe Bone Clocks is fantastic - probably my #1 go-to when someone asks me for a book recommendation.
- hardlianotion 4y agoThe Bone Clocks is what killed David Mitchell's work for me. Really like Count Belasarius though, but I have always liked my heroes heroic, especially the historical ones.
- cunningfatalist 4y agoAre there some books that you can recommend?
- hardlianotion 4y agoOf course. Not looking at a bookshelf or doing much effort to recall, but enjoyed the Baroque Cycle by Neil Stephenson, almost anything by Gore Vidal. On the nonfiction side, I will always recommend books by Nick Lane, especially the first one I read: Oxygen - it made me wish that I had continued my Biochemistry studies into university.
- throwaway6734 4y agoI've been listening to the history of Byzantium podcast and Count Belisarius is on my list of things to read. Great to hear that it's good!
- _alexander_ 4y agoThe Inner Game of Tennis
- tumeo 4y ago"The Beautiful Tree: a personal journey into how the world's poorest people are educating themselves" by James Tooley. It's a very interesting book about low-cost private education.
- actinium226 4y agoIsaacson's biography of Da Vinci. Beautiful man. The biography went really deep into his art and pointed out what made it so special. As someone who knows nothing about art, this gave me a wonderful new perspective both on Da Vinci and on art in general.
- hothead334 4y agoYou might enjoy Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane if you enjoyed the Isaacson biography. Fantastic writing and a very very interesting man as well as incredible artist.
- LAC-Tech 4y agoBest paper I read was "Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (2011)". https://pages.lip6.fr/Marek.Zawirski/papers/RR-7687.pdf https://pages.lip6.fr/Marek.Zawirski/papers/RR-7687.pdf CRDTs get a lot of hype on HN, 95% of the time it's for collaborative editing. But they're much more than some JS library to build an app around - they're a formalism of distributed systems that are strongly eventually consistent. What this means is if the mathematical properties [0] of CRDTs hold, there's no conflicts, no rollbacks, no user intervention - provided the same data is received by every node (in any order, mind you), they will all be in an identical state without a consensus. For me this is massive, and I'm convinced this has big industrial applications, ie distributed systems in domains where the source of truth is most naturally modelled as append only events. In this scenario, the whole database is a single CRDT. Also - and I hope I'm not outing myself as a pleb here - but each time I re-read it I discover new things, stuff I might have glossed over, didn't fully understand, or didn't appreciate before. So yeah, have to hand it to this paper. It's really broadened my horizons. [0] way less scary than you think. If you're comfortable with first year abstract algebra, operations, sets, relations etc you'll be fine.
- random_sequence 4y agothanks for sharing this. Was looking to read about the space.
- scatterhead 4y ago> In this scenario, the whole database is a single CRDT. But why? These ideas are elegant but usually not practical. Performance usually ends up forcing us back to ole faithful (mutability).
- LAC-Tech 4y agoIn this scenario I am talking about an append only data model. I admit to not understand the concept of an immutable database.
- strls 4y agoCRDTs are useful to be aware of, but they are not a silver bullet they might appear based on the paper and online sources. They are conflict-free only because they hide conflicts by forcing a consistent order on concurrent updates. How do they do it? By using logical clocks to version events. A logical clock is not magic. It orders concurrent events arbitrarily. Is this correct? In practice, probably not, meaning that more recent updates can be lost in favor of less recent updates. What does 'recent' mean? For a user it means latest in physical time. Just because the system doesn't know any better than to arbitrarily order a pair of events (that appear concurrent), doesn't mean the user doesn't know which event comes first. This is why not everything is implemented as a CRDT and conflicts will always exist in use cases where updates must never be lost.
- Eumenes 4y agoAlways with Honor (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55807906 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55807906) Memoir from the leader of the White Army during the Bolshevik revolution. Sparked an interest in Russian history for me.
- jonvaljonathan 4y agoThe Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman So simple and clear. I listen to it once or twice a year. How to Fight a Hydra by Josh Kaufman A heroes story about doing hard things. Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday I didn't actually finish this one. I just go back to it for about 20-30 minutes every time I need a boost. I save it for when I feel overwhelmed and it snaps me right out of it. Clean Code, the Clean Coder, and Clean Architecture by Robert C Martin Amazing. I am better for reading these. Venture Deals by Brad Feld Saved me a lot of time and heartache The Metaverse by Matthew Ball The first real definition of the Metaverse I've ever heard. Loved it.
- tptacek 4y agoI finally got around to reading The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which was pretty great. Also the Richard Burton movie (read the book first). Best paper, easily: https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/ https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/
- bwanab 4y agoThe two recent books by Madeline Miller, "Circe" and "The Song of Achilles" "Crossroads" Jonathan Franzen "Agassi" Andre Agassi - I don't normally read sports memoirs, but this one came highly recommended by a woman author that I have read recently so I gave it a try. As a tennis fan who pretty much alway routed for the other player when he played (except when he played Pete Sampras), I found the book totally engaging. Highly recommended.
- conductr 4y agoI was a big Sampras fan, curious on details of your exception. I don’t follow off the court/field drama so was he a huge jerk or something?
- bwanab 4y agoSampras was a great player, but I never really liked his style of play. As a baseliner, I far preferred Courier and Agassi. As a serve and volley player, I far preferred Edberg and Rafter. Maybe it's unfair to compare him to the best of given styles since he was competent all around. Agassi, though he's careful to give Sampras his due as an opponent, has some very interesting observations about him as a person in the book.
- conductr 4y agoCool. Good points that I never really realized. I was young and pretty newly minted tennis fan at the time so I think his style just stood out to me as different and seemed dominant. I didn't get much of the nuance you mention, but I remember thinking of him as a "power player" compared to others who tended to be more quick and nimble.
- setgree 4y agoCryptonomicon. A classic but deservedly so.
- paparush 4y agoFiction -------- Termination Shock - Neal Stephenson Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel Shards of Earth - Adrian Tchaikovsky Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir Gnomon - Nick Harkaway The Gone Away World - Nick Harkaway The Apollo Murders - Chris Hadfield Nonfiction ---------- Mindf*ck - Chris Wylie 1776 - David McCullough Apollo 8 - Jeffrey Kluger
- madmax108 4y agoBook: You Are Not Expected to Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World by Torie Bosch [1] Came across this book randomly on Twitter and picked it up. The book is broken into 26 essays about significant pieces of code (defined vaguely), ranging from the Morris Worm to Pagerank to the popup window and the 1x1 invisible gif and how these shaped the modern tech landscape. Lovely read overall, and really shows how pieces of code you work on today can end up having long lasting impact on how society perceives technology as a whole. Best of all, it's not a heavy read, but offers a lot of concise info that can send you down wormholes of wikipedia. Paper: Amazon DynamoDB: A Scalable, Predictably Performant, and Fully Managed NoSQL Database Service [2] Database systems have always been a passion of mine, and the paper from AWS about how DynamoDB works internally is an incredible look into what makes a NoSQL DB platform capable of serving 89 million requests per second _(this is in the intro)_ which is incredible scale. Always good to see how engineering decisions shape products, and it's been interesting to see Dynamo take shape over the last decade _(though I recommend most folks to stay away from it because of it's mad pricing)_ [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60254955-you-are-not-expected-to-understand-this https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60254955-you-are-not-exp... [2]: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/atc22-elhemali.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/atc22-elhemali.pdf
- shivenigma 4y agothe dynamo db paper was a great read. I was reading it repeatedly just for the fun of the numerous topics/choices it introduced to me.
- misiti3780 4y agoIf you're into historical biographies, I highly recommend The Last Lion by McMasters on Churchill. Really puts things into perspective about how close Germany came to owning Europe. It's really 3 books, 5000+ pages, not a quick read but worth the effort.
- paparush 4y agoOh! I'm about 1/4 of the way through book II. Can't recommend enough for history nerds!
- Frotag 4y agoBeen getting into sci-fi novels recently. Favorite has been stuff by Adrian Taichovsky [1]. A lot of it is premised on "what if animals were (engineered) smarter". His novels usually explore how cognition / language / culture would evolve over millenia for different species. (minor spoilers) For example, one story describes bees that form a hivemind. Another describes how language would work with only colors. Another describes how society would evolve if knowledge was genetically inherited. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Tchaikovsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Tchaikovsky
- mmphosis 4y agoStolen Focus, by Johann Hari
- powersnail 4y agoFavorite Technical: The Pragmatic Programmer. This is something that I should have read much earlier. Favorite Fiction: Pale Fire. Just pure astonishment. Left me speechless with how he made the language sing. Also great (in no particular order): - The Sewing Girl's Tale (non-fiction) - The Odyssey (poem) - Tropic of Cancer (novel) - Tenth of December (short story collection). - Endurance (non-fiction) - The Billion Dollar Spy (non-fiction) - Agent Sonya (non-fiction) - Agent Running in the Field (novel) - Little Dorrit (novel) To be honest, I love most of the stuff I read this year. Only a handful of books I didn't like enough to read through.
- powerset 4y ago+1 for Endurance, and if you enjoyed that I also recommend The Terror (which is historical fiction but had a similar feel to me)
- mariodiana 4y agoI also recommend Lost Moon (which is sometimes published as Apollo 13). I've joked with people it's the same story, except in outer space. If by "story" you mean getting the feeling every 20 pages or so of "they are dead now for sure," then it's not really that much of a joke. I read both of these around the same time and loved them both.
- skoocda 4y ago+1 for The Odyssey. I started it during an off year, almost as an intentionally-irrelevant book to pick up and forget about, but it ended up being a genuine gem; one I remember fondly, and often.
- therealdrag0 4y agoI was blown away by Lolita, but couldn’t finish Pale Fire. The poetry felt like satire to me. And reading online about it I found mixed opinions on that!
- powersnail 4y ago
- yboris 4y agoRadical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society - by Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/radical-markets https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/ra... The book recommends radical changes to how we deal with private property, voting, immigration, large stock investors, AI stuff, and more. It felt like an honest overview of various economic policies across the past (pointing out how radical many changes were) and a set of reasonable proposals for how to improve our currently-broken system.
- kovrik 4y agoGene Wolfe. The whole Solar Cycle (The Book of the New Sun, Urth of The New Sun, The Book of The Long Sun, The Book of The Short Sun), Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, There Are Doors, The Sorcerer's House ... . Wolfe is a genius. Before that I also finished Malazan.
- gnuhack 4y agoThe Gene Wolfe's novels are outstanding. I think it should be more well-known. I just heard of him by coincidence in a blog post that appeared in my RSS feed, and no one that I know had ever heard of him.
- mrslave 4y agoI fizzled on Malazan. Despite warnings that the first book isn't that great - but the series is! - I really enjoyed it. However I subsequently found the second book to be an unsatisfying grind and then so was the third where I stopped half-way. I have just started The Book of the New Sun and am hopeful it will be a better experience.
- atlasunshrugged 4y agoI reread Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, which despite having been published ~50 years ago, still seems prescient and with relevant commentary on modern life
- powerset 4y ago"When We Cease to Understand the World" was fascinating historical fiction, which felt more like fiction because the stories were so out there and well-written. Many times I looked up the wikipedia entry on some character or event, only to discover that some of the more bizarre and out-there parts of the story that I had assumed were fiction were actually fact. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4462913650 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4462913650
- yboris 4y agoThe Precipice by Toby Ord https://theprecipice.com/ https://theprecipice.com/ An amazing nonfiction book that at times reads like science-fiction. A grand overview of various existential risks humanity faces and what we can do to decrease the chances. As it stands, the author estimates humanity's survival chances to be 5/6 per 100 years, given today's state of things. This is equivalent to playing a Russian roulette - not something we can maintain for the long term. So now is one of the most important times in history of humanity: preventing our not-unlikely total destruction.
- gnuhack 4y agoThe Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe. Absolutely astounding, the best book I've read in my life. Gene Wolfe has become my favorite author ever. Each time I reread the book I discover a million things I didn't notice before.
- jamincan 4y agoI discovered Patrick Radden Keefe's writing this past year, and loved his writing style enough to immediately pick up a second of his books. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty I've also been listening to a lot of audiobooks and was really impressed by Rosamund Pike's reading of The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan (Book 2 of the Wheel of Time series) for Audible; enough that I'm waiting to listen to Book 3 to when her reading of it is released next summer.
- empiricus 4y agoThe erogamer. For all its flaws, it has many amazing moments. It made me think about life and how people change as they age.
- lowbloodsugar 4y agoThere is No Antimemetics Division by qntm [1]: An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it. Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams... But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war? Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not your first day [1] https://a.co/d/hqdu0We https://a.co/d/hqdu0We
- benjaminwootton 4y ago“Man’s Search For Meaning” made me think a lot.
- toomanyrichies 4y agoThis book was a revelation for me. Logotherapy, or the idea of finding meaning in one’s trials and tribulations as a path to therapeutic recovery (and even becoming grateful for them), got me out of a lifelong spiral of self-pity and resentment.
- sharadov 4y ago"So good they can't ignore you" - the book has a contrarian viewpoint on how you don't look seek out the field that you are most passionate about, but rather you work at getting good at something and the passion finds you. Makes so much sense! "Do hard things" - title is self- explanatory, real growth happens under pressure. "The Snowball" - this is such an important book - not just great financial advice, but also filled with life advice from the sage of Omaha. It's over 1000 pages long, but it's so honest.
- greenie_beans 4y ago- a collection of lydia davis short stories - 'on earth we're briefly gorgeous' by ocean vuong - latest noon magazine - lorca poems - 'dirty work' by larry brown
- theptip 4y ago"Stories of Your Life and Others" by Ted Chiang (from 2002). Contains the short story that the movie Arrival was based on, and a bunch of other cool stories as well. Definitely the best SciFi I've read in a long time.
- netfortius 4y ago"The Idea of the World", by Bernardo Kastrup. A complete departure from my materialistic view of the world, and - in spite of certain arguments made in the book, with which I disagree - offered me the chance to learn something that now requires more reading on the topic.
- jen729w 4y agoNeville Shute's novel 'On the Beach', from 1957. I won't spoil it -- Wikipedia has a synopsis if you want -- other than to say it's end-of-times dystopia. But from 1957. It's delightful. My friend Tim: > Just finished On the Beach. Simple and profound. Just need some Zoloft and I will be great. Thanks for the recommendation.
- nbernard 4y agoIf you like old movies, don't miss the 1959 adaptation!
- jen729w 4y agoI looked it up, but this from Wikipedia put me off: "Nevil Shute was displeased with the final cut of the film, feeling that too many changes had been made at the expense of the story's integrity. After initial collaboration with Kramer, it was obvious that Shute's concerns were not being addressed; subsequently, he provided minimal assistance to the production. Gregory Peck agreed with Shute but, in the end, producer/director Stanley Kramer's ideas won out. Shute felt that [SPOILER REMOVED] ruined a central element of the novel, that is, [SPOILER REMOVED]." So I'm not going to bother. I'll leave the book's memory as it is.
- Scarblac 4y agoAfter Terry Pratchett's death in 2015 I started rereading all of Discworld in publishing order, I had read about half of them before. This year's batch included _The Fifth Elephant_ and later _Night Watch_, and they're really fantastic. The pinnacle of the series? I have about ten books left to find out. Also _The Loom Of Life_ (in Dutch, its Dutch title translates to "Why are there so many species") and it was a nice dense introduction to biodiversity and ecology. And others less worth mentioning.
- zemidz 4y ago
- tptacek 4y agoOh, I'm sure Michael O. Church will be OK with whatever you choose to reveal about this book. Tell us more!
- krishna0902 4y agoThinking fast and slow, and Principles. Both live up to their reputation.
- p0pcult 4y ago"The Ministry For the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson and "Termination Shock" by Neal Stephenson provide compelling approaches to dealing with climate change, in the form of thriller novels.
- Archipelagia 4y agoSadly, Porn by Edwars Teach (better known as The Last Psychiatrist). He has a very opinionated style, so if it doesn't work for, you'll hate it. At the same time, I've found it extremely insightful about human nature and it forced my to face some parts of myself that I wasn't aware of and didn't like. Very much love-or-hate read, but worth trying. Just maybe check out his old blog first to see if his style is bearable for you.
- jimiray 4y agoBusiness: Team Topologies Non-Fiction: Be Love Now Fiction: The Lost Metal
- maskull 4y agoThat Hideous Strength
- sockaddr 4y agoThe Bobiverse
- jules-jules 4y agoThe meta-crises framework co-developed by Daniel Schmachtenberger https://consilienceproject.org/ https://consilienceproject.org/
- HEmanZ 4y agoI finally got around to reading Moby Dick this year. I found it to be about 100x better and more approachable than I expected, and there’s so much to meditate on while reading it that I am excited to read thru it a second time. Also, 2 new Cormac McCarthy novels just came out and I re-read the boarderlands trilogy and blood meridian this year to prep myself. I can’t recommend these enough, even tho it was my second time reading
- kevmarsden 4y agoFour novels stood out: - Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner The novel explores aging, careers, and relationships. As I plod further into middle age, I felt like it was written for me. Amor Towles is a brilliant writer. I enjoyed all three of his novels: - A Gentleman in Moscow - Rules of Civility - The Lincoln Highway
- Teknoman117 4y agoI read the first two fiction books I'd read in a long time this year: - Children of Time - Children of Ruin (the sequel)
- jwsteigerwalt 4y agoIt was Matt Crump’s saga about his cheating students at crump lab.com. It was taken down, but it was a great read.
- jackhalford 4y ago« Axiomatic » sci-fi short stories by Greg Egan. I think it’s the first time fiction has clicked for me. It’s hard sci-fi so the science is accurate and that helps a lot. And the fact that they’re short stories helps because of my modern day short term attention span…
- publicdaniel 4y agoWhy Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective by Ken Stanley and Joel Lehman. This book was a fascinating read for anyone with ambitious objectives (or an interest in optimization algorithms). Ken is such a deep thinker, I love when he's on podcasts or gets interviewed, and reading his book was a real treat.
- apocalypstyx 4y agoSex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein by John Launer. What Is a Minor Literature? by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari.
- bberenberg 4y agoAnna Karenina by Tolstoy The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- caterwhal 4y agoInjustice by Brad Nelsen Fascinating execution on a fun sci fi idea: intergalactic prison from the inside. Delightful and creative character development and a cathartic conclusion!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jackgolding 4y agoFinally finished the "Gervais Principle" essay, was real high quality.
- anthomtb 4y ago"Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician" - Morris Kline. An oldie but a goodie. Don't expect a gripping writing style. Actually, don't expect to read more than a few sections at a time. But if you get through it you will come away with a much better mathematical intuition. "The Body Keeps the Score" - Bessel Van Der Kok. tl;dr on this one is: the DSM V is woefully inadequate.
- ldbooth 4y agoBill Browser's Red Notice and then Freezing Order. They read like fiction and gave me a whole new appreciation for how Russia works, plus international politics and investing.
- antman 4y agoA few suggestions on the heavier side since I had an interesting year. Attached, The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find--and Keep-- Love: Why do people ghost, lovebomb or keep long term relationships. There are a few reddit groups that are incomprehensible if you have not read this, afterwards you see things differently. Not a happy book regardless of the title. Thais Gibson therapist on youtube that also suffered personally has good content. The body keeps the score: Read this second, it describes the physical effects of various mental health related events. People swear by this again and again. Complex PTSD, from surviving to thriving: If you need to read this you are at the point that you have figured out that something has gone very wrong with you or someone close tou you. Thr chapter on cptsd emergency is very chacteristic. Also read the respective reddit threads. The topics above are very to the point and the situations they describe affect in a subtle way a lot of people. The first also assist in understanding parent children relationships.
- shostack 4y agoThe Stormlight Archives by Brandon z Sanderson. I'm on book 4 now eagerly awaiting the release of 5. Easily one of if not the best series of his. Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.
- hhjinks 4y agoOne of my colleagues wrote a thesis on medical applications of machine learning in leg rehabilitation. He was also a big Stormlight Archives fan, so the foreword of course contained Dalinar's answer to the most important step a man can take.
- kamaal 4y agoThis book: https://www.amazon.in/Heavyhands-Ultimate-Exercise-Leonard-Schwartz/dp/0316775576/ https://www.amazon.in/Heavyhands-Ultimate-Exercise-Leonard-S...
- voisin 4y agoWhat was your takeaway?
- lofaszvanitt 4y agoThe Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley
- b3nji 4y agoThe same two books I read every year. 7 Habits of highly successful people How to win friends and influence people. Both books seem to be used in thousands of newer books, borrowing the same themes.
- jstrebel 4y agoStrugatsky - Roadside picnic A small sci-fi novel where a fantastic premise is explored. The most interesting part is the description of the role of the different characters in relation to the mystery (which is not explained in the book). See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
- adamhp 4y agoI finally got around to reading Neuromancer, and it was pretty stellar. Not the best story, but man, Gibson's prose is phenomenal in my opinion.
- jrib 4y agoI love the opening line of Neuromancer: > The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
- theRealArgherna 4y ago2 books: The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism & The New Traditional Woodworker. Both of these I read separately and in the end became convinced that they are indeed unintentionally related.
- sonisonali23 4y ago[dead]
- snapplebobapple 4y agoThe road to serfdom and the constitution of liberty by fa hayek. Really nails home why the individual is the moat important organizational block of society and how to protect that. Why nations fail and the narrow corridor by daron acemoglu were also excellent and gave more practical ideas on how to make institutions that work well (and also protect individuals). Wanting by luke burgis was also a really good jntro to rene girards ideas that like drive social interraction.
- RMPR 4y agoI read "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" this year, and the authors make great points. The ones that stuck with me the most are those regarding Kant's scepticism.