14 ms·
Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
Just wondering
I'm reading the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson
- lylejantzi3rd 3y agoCaravan of the Damned by Chuck Dixon. Conan the Barbarian as envisioned by the writer who created Bane.
- Seattle3503 3y agoBeen reading a lot of Romance books lately. They are like a cozy blanket. For a to be considered Romance, are required to have a "happily ever after" eg no sudden character death. It ensures the author isn't going to mess your day up. Also, a lot of them have sex, which is nice.
- ilvez 3y agoYou got me thinking about Bob The Skull in Dresden Files. :D
- drekipus 3y agoDo you have any recommendations?
- Seattle3503 3y agoIt depends on what kind of fiction you like, as romance is a kind of meta genre that spans every other genre. Knowing nothing about you, other than the fact you are on HN, I would recommend The Rosie Project. It is a contemporary comedy romance, one of the only works of fiction Bill Gates has ever put on his yearly recommendation list. Overall, your best bet is finding a community and lurking. Maybe asking for recommendations. Reddit has a number of communities. /r/RomanceBooks is the main one, but there is also /r/fantasyromance, /r/HistoricalRomance/, /r/ScienceFictionRomance/, etc... If you are a guy and kinda feeling out of place, there is also /r/Romance_for_men
- drekipus 3y agoThanks! Good places to start from!
- signalToNose 3y agoThe long good-bye by Ramond Chandler. I enjoy every sentence. He was a master at his craft and capture me with the language and the story telling.
- pythonbase 3y agoI have multiple books in my reading stack, picking up depending on the mood: - Fentanyl, Inc by Ben Westhoff - Arabs in Medieval Sindh by Rafi Samad - Rework by Jason Fried (re-reading it)
- bergie 3y agoJust finished “Heavy weather sailing” by Martin Thomas and Peter Bruce. Grim but good stuff. Now following up with Fatty Goodlander’s “Creative anchoring”. On the fiction side, read Arkady Martine’s “A memory called empire” recently, and about to start with the sequel.
- tobbe2064 3y agoA deepness in the sky - Vernor Vinge It's actually too good. I have a habit of reading before going to sleep, and this book is so hard to put down that I am becoming sleep deprived
- indigo0086 3y agoThis is on my audible queue. I bought it after a fire upon the deep. Great reader.
- tobbe2064 3y agoSo far its more interesting than fire. Really recommend it
- officehero 3y agoHaven't read deepness. Is it similar to Fire? Read Fire and rainbows end and I think Vinge has the largest 'interesting ideas per chapter' ratio, but not too keen on the presentation (too much random weirdness).
- tobbe2064 3y agoWell there are some recurring themes: - both have really vivid alien races - both explore how information shapes culture (this on in sub c, which is more interesting) The difference is that this one takes place in a more realistic universe and has a deeper focus on the role of human culture. Thats not to say its an entirely intellectual book, it is inface much more exciting than Fire
- Bermion 3y agoThe grapes of wrath, John Steinbeck. Still feels surprisingly relevant with regards to workers organizing and how we view migrants today.
- fsloth 3y agoSeveral books - but I really want to shout out Roger Zelazny’s ”Lord of light”(1967) I don’t think this book is as half as well known in the Sci-fi genre as it should be. When you start reading it, it becomes an obvious precursor to themes in so many modern books. Matrix and the Culture series of Iain Banks, as well as Rajaniemi’s ’Quantum thief’ come to mind. The central theme is semi-immortality - peoples minds are uploaded to a new body one after another. In a colony planet, far removed from Earth, an elite has taken control of this and lord it over everybody else. At some point superpowers emerge etc to make it ’more entertaining’ and some of that is a bit clunky - but get past that! This is a jewel waiting to be read (and not very long).
- cbeach 3y ago“Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson. It’s a balanced account of the most important industrialist of our generation. Refutes some of the “Elon Bad” groupthink myths too.
- theusus 3y agoSICP, apparently so far. It's just map, and reduce.
- jiggawatts 3y agoThe Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley, which feels very much like he mashed together a couple of Alan Dean Foster books with an Iain M Banks Culture novel. A key part of the story takes place on a planet-wide forest with giant trees and a Gaia-like sentience (Midworld), its maguffin is a galaxy-threatening superweapon (The Tar-Aiym Krang), and a significant character is a wise old floating robot/AI that uses fields to manipulate things (Culture drones). This reminds me of Interstellar, where I recognised the books that the authors had taken their influences from, such as Rocheworld by Robert L. Forward, which also features helpful robots that fold up with arms that have smaller-and-smaller subunits.
- itisme_b 3y agoStories of the Prophets, Ibn Kethir.
- itisme_b 3y agoStories of the Prophets, Ibn Kethir. A masterpiece
- cvhashim04 3y agoBased
- ilvez 3y agoDresden Files by Jim Butcher. Read few books of that, then switch to something other and then back. "Small Favor" at the moment. "Dead beat" has been favourite so far.
- curl_e 3y agoSteve M. Easterbrook Computing the Climate - How We Know What We Know About Climate Change Tom Deakin and Timothy G. Mattson Programming Your GPU with OpenMP: Performance Portability for GPUs
- kinow 3y agoHaven't read either, but both sound interesting! Thanks!
- radar1310 3y agoBlood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. - Brian Merchant
- ttoinou 3y agoIn Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki, about Japanese aesthetics
- forinti 3y agoI've just started a book by a brilliant Cuban author: Leonardo Padura. I would recommend his "The Man Who Loved Dogs", it's about the man who killed Trotsky.
- column 3y agoMost dedicated KGB agent ever. Spent 20 years in prison while maintaining his cover story. Kind of unreal his true identity was not uncovered until after his release.
- chadcmulligan 3y agoThe Thursday murders club by Richard Osman - a fun British murder mystery, lots of tea and biscuits. It's the first of a series.
- _Algernon_ 3y agoSeeing Like a State by James C. Scott
- mpitt 3y ago"Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul" by Giulio Tononi Having just finished "On the move", Oliver Sacks' autobiography.
- t0mislav 3y agoThe Only Way Is West by Bradley Chermside Book about Camino de Santiago. I like walking (and Camino is lot of walking), so this is interesting.
- lutorm 3y agoWhat I wish I was reading is book 9 of Joel Shepherd's "Spiral Wars" series. Unfortunately it's not out yet. But he's one of my new favorite authors, both the Scifi Spiral Wars and the more fantasy-like "Sasha" series are excellent.
- kaladin_1 3y agoFor tooling, I am currently reading Practical Vim by Drew Neil. Vim has been my primary editing tool for a couple of years now but I know that I am not close to maxing its capacity. I would like to supercharge my vim skill with more advanced macros and less keystrokes. Fiction: I am currently reading the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I love the way the book plays with logic in a fictional style. The dialogues with the little demon, Wormwood, are super interesting. More like psycho analysis in fictional form. It reminds me about reading Brothers Karamazov where you find a lot about you in characters in the book.
- Helmut10001 3y agoIPv6 Fundamentals: A Straightforward Approach to Understanding IPv6 It is the first "book" I bought to learn something, but after tinkering a while with ipV6 in my homelab, I saw no other way.
- codingclaws 3y agoHMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian, it's the 3rd novel in the Aubrey/Maturin series. It's the series that the movie Master and Commander is based on. It's about a ship captain and his doctor friend and their naval adventures in the early 1800s.
- fdgjgbdfhgb 3y agoAaj, I love this series! I just started the last book :^) it's quite a journey If anyone wants to pick it up, my main advice is to keep a cheat sheet of naval terms with you
- codingclaws 3y agoWow, the last one! I will get there some day!
- oumua_don17 3y agoRandom Walk Down Wall Street
- SwiftyBug 3y agoA Brazilian book called Ministério do Prazer (Ministry of Pleasure). It's an erotic fanfic featuring one of our Supreme Court ministers and the daughter of an alt-right senator. It's absolute trash, but it's hilarious. I suggest that anyone who can read Portuguese and has been following Brazilian politics should read this book. It costs something like BRL 1,99 on Amazon.
- besnn00 3y agoThe Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
- laserbeam 3y agoThe bible - am not a religious person, don't want to become one, and I mean no shade to religious people. However, as I now read it, I'm surprised by how much western culture references it. People use examples, names and scenes from the bible much more often than I realised and it helps to recognize that. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Oppenheimer was an ok movie, the book it's based on is better paced. A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. This is the first book I encountered on disaster sociology. That field of study sounds amazing! It's about how people become altruistic and how communities form right after a natural disaster.
- jmopp 3y agoThis, in my opinion, illustrates the value in studying classics: a lot of modern society is based on the stories we have been telling each other for thousands of years. Not just the Bible, though: also the Ancient Greek and Roman texts, and (if you're being adventurous) the Talmud, and the Quran + Hadith to see how the West's sister cultures developed. The modern atheist would do well to study religion.
- telotortium 3y agoI'm currently reading Plato's Republic right now - deservedly famous, and is the source of lots of generally known parables. It is much more than a utopian political text, as the title and its reputation might imply. In fact, it is religious in it's own way, but in an interestingly different way than the Bible.
- prashantsengar 3y agoLittle related - this is also why I started watching movies and TV shows that are popular. I didn't use to watch a lot of them earlier. Now I understand how much our culture is affected by them and how it affects our communication.
- globular-toast 3y agoI read the first few pages of Genesis many years ago and I was surprised that pretty much all the non-Jesusy bits I'd heard of were in the first few pages. It moves at a remarkably quick pace. Entire civilisations come and go in paragraphs. I had the impression all of this stuff was spread throughout like a novel. I was left wondering what the other 1000 pages are about (not enough to want to read them, though).
- davidjbain 3y agoFiction: Book 8 of The Expanse Non-Fiction: Radical Candor, and After Steve Next up: One of my Bill Bryson backlog, and Nothing But The Truth.
- unsungNovelty 3y agoMrs. Gandhi's last battle by Satish Jacob & Mark Tully. BBC journalists who reported the blue star operation after which lead to India's former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. If you wanna know about the history behind the current Canada vs India row, this is a good place to start.
- sebmnt 3y agoBall Lightning by Cixin Liu - A year ago I read The Three Body Problem by the same author and extremely loved his approach to storytelling and sci-fi. Since then I have bought his other famous books (Ball Lightning, The Dark Forest and Deaths End) and I am really loving Ball Lightning so far. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin - I'd like to call myself a creative (I produce music, paint and love cinema but all as a hobby). I recently read The Artists Way and found it really fulfilling in how to thing about creativity and nurturing your creative self. A friend lent me her copy of The Creative Act and after the first few pages I bought my own copy as I wanted to highlight and write notes in the book. Really recommend it for anyone who wants to think about how to think about creativity. Multiple papers on ANNs - I am working with ANN libraries such as FAISS, Annoy and HSNWLib as part of my job as an ML Engineer in recommendation systems and I want to properly understand how the internals of these approximate vector search indexes work. I stared reading `Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs` and it lead to a rabbit hole of different papers I have on my stack.
- indigo0086 3y agoFinishing listening to the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons (read it the first time) and reading Olympos by Dan Simmons. I think I'm all Dan Simmons'd out though I want to read Carrion Comfort. I think I'm going to return to three body problem and dune for my next books. Not sure for audiobooks yet but the sequel to fire upon the deep is on my queue
- flopriore 3y agoElon Musk's biography written by Walter Isaacson.
- CapitalistCartr 3y ago"A City on Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.
- astromd 3y agoRight now I’m reading Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare.
- aprdm 3y agoThe handmaid's tale
- ptman 3y agohttps://wanderinginn.com/ https://wanderinginn.com/ Warning: there's quite a lot to read and it's not finished yet
- macrolime 3y agoJust finished Being You by Anil Seth and The experience machine by Andy Clark. Both great popular science book on current neuroscience and consciousness research.
- jklein11 3y agoI just finished reading "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick and immediately bought 2 other books by him. If you have ever had a customer conversation and left with a slightly empty feeling this is the pill you are looking for
- thrill 3y agoDungeon Crawler Carl audio.
- robbiejs 3y agoI am reading The Laws Of Human Nature by Robert Greene. I love everything that I have read from him.
- ladyprestor 3y agoThe Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. I loved The Three-Body Problem which I read last month, can't say I'm loving this one, just enjoying it, but I'm only at around 25%.
- mitchbob 3y agoPapert: Mindstorms Lem: Summa Technologiae Barber: Strong Democracy The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg
- fullstick 3y agoNonfiction: - Is Math Real? by Eugene Cheng - Here to There: Radio Wave Propagation by AARL Fiction: - Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy - Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
- hermitcrab 3y ago"Escape from earth: A secret history of the space rocket" by F Macdonald. Well written but focussed mostly on the people and politics of American rocketry after WWII (including the mad occult antics of Jack Parsons). I would have prefered something that focussed more on the tech.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ezekg 3y agoStarted with The Mote in God's Eye last month. Now I'm almost done with The Gripping Hand.
- darajava 3y agoI read The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. It’s only a 10 minute read, meant for kids, but it’s beautiful.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Mrirazak1 3y agoI’m currently reading: The art of explanation by Ros Atkins. Lovely book.
- HenryBemis 3y agoMalot - En Famille. I decided it's time to revisit some classics. I finished the "Sans Famille" a few days back. Those are quick/fast reads but with immense value/wisdom/philosophy. Next one is to re-read the "Hold on to your kids" by Neufeld & Maté.
- phlox 3y agoJon Fosse (this year's Nobel Prize winner in literature) - "Septology" I-II, a dreamlike maze of thoughts written in a way I haven't seen before. A hypnotic, meandering stream of consciousness slowly unfolding into an intriguing story.
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y agoAttention is all you need, still on page one.
- sircastor 3y ago“The Lost Cause” by Cory Doctorow I got an early copy at a conference he keynoted at. I’m enjoying it quite lot.
- elcazador 3y agoThe Recruiter by Douglas London (Rtd Senior CIA Operations Officer)
- 1905 3y agoThe ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, by Gary Keller Randomly heard about it on a podcast. Just started reading, not sure if I'll like it or not
- raajg 3y ago- An Indispensable Truth: How Fusion Power Can Save the Planet - Chen, Francis F. - Elon Musk - Isaacson, Walter
- michalu 3y agoOdyssey by Homer (just finished) Master and Margarita by Bulgakov (just finished) In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland Started by quit: Aeneid by Virgil (too much of Roman propaganda) Catch 22 by Heller (had it on the list because of recognition but, disliked it 5-10% in)
- kamphey 3y agoThe Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- breadchris 3y agosame!
- aspectmin 3y agoHe just released a new book. Design for a better world. Reading this now. https://www.amazon.com/Design-Better-World-Meaningful-Sustainable/dp/0262047950?nodl=1&dplnkId=87d242b2-a382-4616-afb0-2156978a9b3b https://www.amazon.com/Design-Better-World-Meaningful-Sustai...
- bcrosby95 3y agoPhantastes by George MacDonald
- SeanAnderson 3y agoI just finished reading Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky I'm currently reading Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences by Tynan Sylvester. A good friend of mine gifted me Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and I'm planning on getting into that one soon.
- titaniumtown 3y agoChildren of Time is a really good novel. Was scrolling through the comments to see if anyone was going to mention it.
- indigo0086 3y agoSeconded
- aprdm 3y agoIt is amazing ! I didn't like the 2nd book tho, didn't keep me interested
- alexmolas 3y agoRe-reading "A song of ice and fire" saga with the hope that "Winds of winter" arrives just when I finish
- unmole 3y agoMy sweet summer child.
- BlackjackCF 3y agoI don’t really hold onto any hope it’s coming out anymore… take this from someone who started the series as a preteen when A Feast for Crows came out. I’m now 30.
- bibinmohan 3y agoI'm reading 'Hooked'
- Toolbox1337 3y agoUnix and Linux System Administration Handbook. Over, and over, and over again.
- jamestimmins 3y agoWho would you recommend this for? Just for SysAdmins?
- jruohonen 3y agoWhy not APUE?
- nimbius 3y agoXi Jinpings four book set "The Governance of China."
- firstbabylonian 3y agoChinese Thought by Roel Sterckx
- keiferski 3y agoJust started Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sgbeal 3y agoWhatever the Humble Bundle is selling DRM-free. Currently the _Rick and Morty_ comic book series.
- netfortius 3y agoWhite Holes - Carlo Rovelli
- amjnsx 3y agoI read “The Bitcoin Standard” which I really enjoyed. However i’m not finding “The fiat standard” as interesting.
- quickthrower2 3y agoIs that the modern money mechanics book?
- listenupyall 3y agoI bought a copy of Ben Hur in a second hand store for 3 dollars. The book was printed in 1887 and you can se it has been read by a lot of people and has been repaired at least once. I am hoping I can stick with it and finish it. Wish me luck.
- stonecharioteer 3y agoI love Ben Hur! The book is slightly longer than the movie, and has angles not in the movie at all. That's not to say either is lesser. I think both of them are quite representative of the story. If you want to discuss this, I'm on twitter with the same ID.
- pbnjeh 3y agoI thought you were going to tell us it has an erratum on page 116. (A reference to the 1946 film version of "The Big Sleep", starring Bogie and Bacall. If you haven't seen it, it's an excellent movie. It even has a used bookstore.)
- vidyesh 3y agoGood luck! Please do pass long as soon as you finish it to people interested in reading it. I have old books in my native language and some other languages inherited from my parents and grandparents and I have to find people to pass along as libraries will not take it because they don't have space or demand for it. But when I find people who are interested in those topics, their eyes lit up when I pass along those books. I hope they cherish those books.
- collaborative 3y agoDialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu https://www.notbored.org/dialogue-in-hell.html https://www.notbored.org/dialogue-in-hell.html
- HideousKojima 3y agoMetro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky. There's a series of games based on the books but I'm enjoying the storytelling in the book far more. Basic premise is after nuclear war survivors have built a new society inside of the tunnels and stations of the Moscow metro system. There's mutants and other threats, but I don't want to spoil too much.
- all2 3y agoIsn't there also a video game but the same name?
- HideousKojima 3y agoYeah, it's based on the book.
- mholubowski 3y agoTolstoy
- ecliptik 3y agoThe Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard [1]. Ballard is science fiction in the sense he explores inner space instead of outer space. Some are kind of eh, and ones that have really stuck out for me, "Concentration City" - a giant infinitely expanding city ala Dark City or Blame!. "Studio Five, The Stars" - poetry is written by machines and only eccentrics write their own. Think AI generation of art but in 1961. "The Subliminal Man" - government uses subliminal messages to promote mindless consumerism - They Live but 1963. "Billennium" - Earth is vastly overpopulated and any semblance of personal space or privacy is non-existent. "The Garden of Time" - allegory of never ceasing approach of time no matter what you do to defend yourself from it. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Short_Stories_of_J._G._Ballard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Short_Stories_o...
- atombender 3y agoThat collection has a bunch of great stories. Some I particularly like: * "Report on an Unidentified Space Station" — shades of Lem, Borges, and Harlan Ellison as a crew explores an apparently infinite construct. * "A Question of Re-Entry" — post-colonialism á la Heart of Darkness by way of science fiction allegory; a beautiful companion to his apocalypse series (of which the best is The Crystal World; there's another story here, "The Illuminated Man", that Ballard used as the basis for that book). * "The Drowned Giant" — an odd fable about giant found washed up on a beach and how a cottage industry of scavenging grows around it. (There's a decent animated version of this story in Netflix's "Love, Death & Robots.") * "Dream Cargoes" — I guess I like Ballard the most when he's off in some tropical environment where nature is doing weird things, and this is one of them, and also because it's implied to be set on Vieques, an island that I love very much. There are a few duds, but what's interesting is the wide span of Ballard's focus. He doesn't do one type of story, but many. (Unfortunately his later career could have done with more of this type of imaginative variance; he spent his last couple of decades writing at least three (four, if you count Running Wild) about rich gated communities hiding dark psychological secrets, and they were not very good.)
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoJim Butcher's latest Cinder Spires book. Recently finished the last Brandon Sanderson secret project.
- joebergeron 3y agoI’ve been reading “Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich while slowly working my way through Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”.
- wolframhempel 3y agoLast three things I read (slightly all over the place): - Aleister Crowley by Steven Ashe: A biography of the British occultist. - Going Infinite by Michael Lewis: A (very well meaning) story of Sam Bankman-Fried - The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt: A book about "safety culture" on campus and it's implications at large.
- LoFiSamurai 3y agoI thought The Coddling of the American Mind was excellent.
- redhale 3y agoI recommend the "If Books Could Kill" podcast episode that covers this book.
- wolframhempel 3y agoYup. I've been looking for books that explain the underlying structures and dynamics of "wokeness" for a while. I feel "the Coddling" does a good job for some aspects of it. The best book I found so far in this regard is "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose. You read it and just think: "yeah, this is it". Unfortunately it's written like a PhD thesis, so not the lightest read.
- verisimi 3y agoJames Lindsay, new discourses, does the best analysis of woke I know of. Including reading books, analysis of academia, etc https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg
- QwertyPi 3y ago> I've been looking for books that explain the underlying structures and dynamics of "wokeness" for a while. Fear & fear of tolerance is a universal theme throughout history, there's not much to it. "Coddling" is a pejorative used by people afraid of tolerance.
- viewtransform 3y agoPerfume 'The Alchemy of Scent' by Jean-Claude Ellena - the art and business of creating perfume.
- novanavigator 3y agoThe Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology - Nick Cook.
- aspectmin 3y agoAny good?
- jeksn 3y agoI’ve been getting into Italo Calvino after reading Invisible Cities, which was great. Right now I’m reading The Baron in the Trees.
- pdinny 3y agoI'm a big Calvino fan and can thoroughly recommend Cosmicomics as a great collection of shorts. If you enjoy Calvino you may also enjoy Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.
- jeksn 3y agoFunny enough I bought Ficciones by Borges at the same time and will read it next.
- electricant 3y agoCalvino is one of my favorite writers. Let me recommend also: The castle of crossed destinies (the book that got me into tarots)
- jeksn 3y agoThanks, putting it on the list.
- jen729w 3y agoBeen sitting in the garden all afternoon reading Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire. So far: terrific. About a quarter the way in. Space opera with political intrigue.
- marojejian 3y agoloved this and thought the sequel was even better.
- jemmyw 3y agoI really enjoyed both books in this series. It was much more politics than space opera though.
- pleb_nz 3y agoRed Mars.
- kshitij_libra 3y agoThe Great Mental Models - Shane Parrish
- tstack 3y agoA Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.
- LoFiSamurai 3y agoThree Felonies a Day by Silverglate Make Something Wonderful by Steve Jobs A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine
- geoffbp 3y agoDune series A philosophy of software design
- neontomo 3y agoI struggle to stay interested in one book until the end because many books that are designed to teach you something have made their point in the first chapter and then spend the rest of the book hammering it in. Currently been reading Make It Stick for a year and I'm probably going to drop it because it's not that interesting. Also have these opened: - The Hobbit - A Philosophy of Software Design - Bhagavad Gita
- nicbou 3y agoThis is why I prefer fiction, or anecdote-dense non-fiction. I love Bill Bryson just geeking out about things, or Antony Beevor making world war two come to life. I do not love a 150 page recap of a blog post.
- fzil 3y agoyeah, I couldn't stick with Make it Stick either. Idk, something about the book just made it feel like a chore.
- neontomo 3y agoSame. I went on a date recently that asked what I was reading, and when I said Make It Stick she said, "so you're a marketer...", haha. It hurt a little bit but she was right about something, this book is for people looking for an edge in selling ideas and not for the people geeking out on human behaviour.
- adibzadeh 3y ago[dead]
- Sjeiti 3y ago'Red rising' series
- ilvez 3y agoI'm also picking it up, probably next.
- TMWNN 3y agoReading: Craig, The Fall of Japan Price, Battle of Britain Day: 15 September 1940 Pratchett, Discworld series (finished four volumes) Recently finished: Craig, Enemy at the Gates MacGregor, Checkpoint Charlie Jones, Colossus (Incredibly prescient 1966 novel predicting ASI; the 1970 film adaptation is better, but the novel has more insights into the AI's similarity with LLMs) Suarez, Daemon Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940 Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 Pascal, Showstopper: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT
- electricant 3y agoAn introduction on marketing and how to set prices for goods and services. Also not a book but highly recommended: Maus by art spiegelmann
- brightsize 3y ago"Stop Time" - a 1967 memoir by Frank Conroy. [1] Next up, "Inequality In An Age of Decline" by Paul Blumberg (1980) [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-Time [2] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/paul-blumberg/inequality-in-an-age-of-decline/ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/paul-blumberg/i...
- ranprieur 3y agoPhysics as Metaphor by Roger S Jones. I've never seen a better explanation of how time and space are constructed out of perceptions.
- smokel 3y ago"Journey to the Edge of Reason, The Life of Kurt Gödel", by Stephen Budiansky. Even though it contains an introduction to his proof of the Incompleteness Theorems, you won't learn all too much about logic or mathematics, but it sure paints an interesting picture of the people involved at the start of the 20th century. "Silas Marner" by George Eliot. Has redefined humor for me. "Reinforcement Learning and Stochastic Optimization" by Warren B. Powell. I'm still not entirely sure what to think of his claims about unifying many scientific disciplines, but it sure is packed with a lot of information and theory.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 3y agoEliot was a genius. If you haven't read it yet, Middlemarch easily earns its claim to be one of the greatest novels ever.
- edschofield 3y ago“The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes”, by Zachary D. Carter.
- JSavageOne 3y agoElon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson Adam Grant - Hidden Potential
- Animats 3y ago"Fourth Wing", by Yarros. Soon to be an Amazon Prime video. Re-reading McMaster's "Battlegrounds" (2020). His predictions are pretty much on track.
- readthenotes1 3y agoCounterweight; Djuna. Good sci Fi. The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon; Hammett. Good books behind excellent movies.
- newswasboring 3y agoJust got finished reading "What the Dormouse Said", not a phenomenal read due to the density of characters but definitely worth it for the exploration of early thought on computers. I had never read extensively about the work of Englebart and the Augment project and it was fascinating to see things we take for granted about human computer interaction slowly form amongst a community. I feel like I had lost touch with the idea of computers as extensions of human brains. It's a small shift in thinking, but not thinking of a computer as a separate thing opens up completely novel thought patterns. On a lighter note I was expecting a lot more drugs than politics in this book. Oh well, we should appreciate things for what they are and what we want them to be.
- Quinzel 3y agoDetermined A science of life without free will by Robert Sapolsky.
- ValtteriL 3y agoThe DevOps Handbook, second edition
- mannyv 3y agoAmerican Nations, by Colin Woodword. A different take on the US.
- mannyv 3y agoJust finished re-reading a couple of the old Bolo tank series books by keith laumer. Wow those were hard to find.
- Lamad1234 3y ago"A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East". Started reading it before the current crisis, but it's only more relevant now. Kinda dense with too many "characters" and events.
- specproc 3y agoThat's the middle east. I've lived there and read a lot, but can remember very little of the history. Line in the Sand is a good one.
- kristopolous 3y agoBasically https://arxiv.org/list/cs/pastweek https://arxiv.org/list/cs/pastweek a few hours every day.
- harry_ord 3y agoThe Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England. Not sure what I'll read after. I was at a bit off a loss after reading race after technology.
- vidyesh 3y agoActively reading: - The Fountainhead - Project Hail Mary - Learning TypeScript Passively reading: - The Design of Everyday Things - Dive into Design Patterns Considering to read - This is mostly for anyone who has read them and would like to give their opinion about it. - Algorithms to Live By - Name of the Wind - Malazan Book of the Fallen - Good Girl's guide to murder - The Paradox of Choice - Moonwalking with Einstein - The Boron Letters - Storyworthy -
- redhale 3y agoThe Paradox of Choice is good, but imo it is a blog post turned into a book. Unless you're really, really into the subject, just read a summary.
- vidyesh 3y agoThank you. Will look for a summary, I think that book reference came out of a blog post which was discussing the psychology of choice and discussed some interesting research conclusions.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoRe: Name of the Wind. I read the first book in the series and enjoyed it but didn't continue after finding out that the author has stalled indefinitely with the third volume. I understand that mental health issues are serious, but there's so many good finished series out in the world that I don't get why people keep recommending this guy's books. There was also some drama surrounding the author due to some charity donations. He had agreed to release the first chapter of book 3 if some donation threshold was passed, but it has now been over a year and he still hasn't released it afaik.
- vidyesh 3y agoThank you about all the other information related to that. People rave about NotW when it comes to fantasy novels. But rarely everything else around it is discussed in recommendation sections/forums. > but there's so many good finished series out in the world that I don't get why people keep recommending this guy's books. I see your point and I tend to agree lately, there are many DNF books in my list I used to regret but not anymore as I think there is a lot good out there to read and not much time, its better to enjoy what we can than to worry or feel not satisfied by certain read.
- hiddew 3y agoThe series Darkover from Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's more science fiction than my normal pick of fantasy, but nice reads.
- mortylen 3y agoH. P. Lovecraft
- nbonaparte 3y agoJust finished The Song of the Cell, currently reading Gravity’s Rainbow (lol) and starting The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.
- QwertyPi 3y agoGravity's Rainbow is just a shadow of Pynchon's best work by a large margin, Mason & Dixon. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's probably the best novel I've ever read.
- specproc 3y agoI absolutely love Inherent Vice, both book and film. Really good fun, like The Big Lebowski's edgier cousin.
- guiambros 3y ago- "Going Infinite", by Michael Lewis - "Speed & Scale", John Doerr - "Superintelligence", by Nick Bostrom All great reads, strongly recommended.
- AJRF 3y agoI’m on a bit of a “Big American Corruption” spree after finishing Succession so i’ve started “The Dark Side of Camelot” about the dirty dealings of the Kennedy family.
- lepisma 3y agoSeveneves by Neal Stephenson. Also got a few print issues of Lapham's Quarterly, so checking those out.
- renke1 3y agoSeveneves was really good. Almost feeling the urge to read it again!
- multilinear 3y agoI'm learning about US history as a non-American, for no particular reason other than I found some books in a second hand store. - "1776", by David McCullough - a combination of American Revolution history with telling of leadership in times when defeat seems inevitable. - "Team of Rivals", by Doris Kearns Goodwin - just started, reading about the pre-Civil War politics.
- itronitron 3y agoAs an American, I highly recommend "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen. And since you are reading 1776 then you might also like "John Adams" by David McCullough.
- andrewinardeer 3y agoBluey: Camping When Bluey is on a family camping trip, she meets a new friend, Jean Luc. Join them as they plant a tree, hunt a 'wild pig' and learn about the magic of friendship.
- tobbe2064 3y agoWhat!? I never realized there are bluey books
- sircastor 3y agoThey’re really just breakdowns of episodes. This is common in tv adapted to books. Great for kids who are being read to or learning to read.
- devchix 3y agoThis episode broke my heart with its wholesomeness! I'm a grown ass adult and I watch Bluey unashamedly. I don't even have a kid companion to provide cover. It's such a layered show, with themes that resonate with adults as well. Cafe, where Bluey as a kid makes friends immediately with another kid, and Bandit and the other kid's dad were very cagey about how fast is too fast. Puppet subtext is as serious as any Ridley Scott Maker/Creature theme. Space is about revisiting traumatic events in one's past, and a gentle advise on how to deal with it. "I am Magic Claw. Magic Claw has no children. His days are free and easy." Hilarious and true.
- sircastor 3y agoI do have a kid, but I’ll sneak some Bluey even when they’re not around. It’s a great show with good lessons about life. Even good those of us who don’t quite fit the demographic.
- Staple_Diet 3y ago[dead]
- pplonski86 3y agoJames Clear, Atomic habits. I really enjoy it.
- all2 3y agoI read The Power of Habit by Duhigg and it was pretty good.
- graposaymaname 3y agoI’m reading two very interesting books right now. - Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann; comprehensive study on data models. - 9 Pints by Rose George; it’s 9 stories/anecdotes about blood. Supremely enjoyable non-fiction writing.
- hknmtt 3y agoMagicians of The Gods by Graham Hancock. But I will not finish it. It is boring and long-winded and he's more a travel journalist than researcher or scholar, so no real breakthroughs and a sprinkle of Daniken-like sensationalism while stretching the facts quite a bit. But what killed the book for me eventually was his unfounded attack on Sitchin. The previous book I read from him was Fingerprints of The Gods, that one was better but still had similar issues. I would like to finish reading Hitler's Mein Kampf. I had it for years, started it twice but never finished it. I have no other books to read so I think this will be my next.
- hknmtt 3y agoI forgot I also have all the sherlock holmes novels/shorts so i want to read them all.
- louismerlin 3y agoI just started Daemon from Daniel Suarez. Very cool techno thriller.
- arketyp 3y agoI'm reading Against Method by Paul Feyerabend. It makes the case for more anarchy in science, that observations are shaped by the paradigm and that therefore new theories sometimes require respite from a lack of support in current evidence. It's a refreshing critique of Popper coming from within the analytic school. Like a Foucault light.
- cyberstuff 3y agoThe Software Engineer's Guidebook by Gergely Orosz
- lessbergstein 3y agoVarious auto generated content from large language models
- shever73 3y agoI usually have a couple of books on the go at the same time. So, right now I’m reading “A Month By The Sea” by Dervla Murphy. It’s a fascinating account of a month she spent in Gaza. I’m also reading “The Plague” by Camus.
- docdeek 3y agoSurely You Can't Be Serious - an oral history of how the Airplane movie got made. Got it on Audible and no idea how it might work as a regular book as the audiobook has so many different cameos and narrators. Great stuff.
- aEJ04Izw5HYm 3y agoFulfillment winning and losing in one click America. - investigative journalism, Uses stories of the lives of those within Amazon's ever increasing orbit to illustrate the reality of the increasing financial divides. Impressive stats reminds me of the more compelling British alternative 'hired' six months in low wage Britain- i'd recommend that. The dispossessed - sci-fi, surprisingly nuanced conversation of roles and society.
- mo_42 3y agoThe Programmer's Brain by Felienne Hermans
- dottedmag 3y agoA seemingly endless list of descriptions of open positions, just to be disappointed by "remote within US" buried somewhere within each and every one.
- sidkhanooja 3y agoComics! I recently finished Wanted (which made for a shitty movie, but a decent comic) and Watchmen (I despair I hadn't gotten around to it sooner). Now I'm planning to read V for Vendetta, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, and some more. I've finally come around to comics as an art form, and I couldn't be happier!
- dizhn 3y agoWatchmen the movie isn't bad either.
- specproc 3y agoIf you're getting into comics, I can strongly recommend Transmetropolitan, The Invisibles, Saga, and the original Sandman books (there are a tonne of new ones now, and none have really clicked). I'm also part way through Supergods by Grant Morrison. It's not a comic, but an autobiography-cum-history of the superhero genre. Worthwhile.
- __rito__ 3y agoFermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh. I really like it. There are lots of popular science books out there, but very few popular math ones. I am grateful that this exists. Read the author's Code Book before. Liked that one, too. I was also taking Cryptography and Cybersecurity as one of my Master's electives. This book does not cover the journey of solving the Fermat's Last Theorem narrowly, but broadly covers a lot of history of mathematics in a very nice way. The writing is superb.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoThe BBC has a good program on iPlayer about Andrew Wiles work on FLT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074rxx/horizon-19951996-fermats-last-theorem https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074rxx/horizon-19951...
- mongol 3y agoThat reminds me that I have enjoyed all of Singh's books. But I recall he was sued for his last one and has not published in over 10 years?
- robga 3y agoYes, the vicious lawsuit by chiropractors may have been enough to turn him off publishing. I sometimes hear him as a radio guest. It seems he went on to work on STEM policy and founded a couple of educational math paths. It’s a shame he seems to have discarded his website. Undergraduate Ambassadors Scheme https://uas.ac.uk/about-uas/ https://uas.ac.uk/about-uas/ Parallel https://parallel.org.uk/ https://parallel.org.uk/
- hermitcrab 3y agoMy son did the free weekly parallel.org.uk questions for several years, which I thought were excellent. I think it definitely helped with his interest in STEM (he is now planning to study aerospace engineering at Uni). Would recommend Parallel to anyone with a child who is or might be interested in maths/science/engineering.
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- tapanjk 3y agoI am reading Deschooling Society [1] by Ivan Illich, published in the early 1970s. Even though I do not agree with everything he says, he does make some compelling arguments. [1] https://archive.org/details/DeschoolingSociety https://archive.org/details/DeschoolingSociety
- piuantiderp 3y agoTook a glance and it seems very interesting. Thanks for sharing! The first paragraph speaks with such truth as to universal education being an impossible but at the same time mentions some clearly far-left thinkers. Can't wait to read how he reconciles such seemingly opposite ideals. Also, I know a story of someone persecuted by McCarthyism in the US went to live to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Did not know this was part of a broader pattern...
- asimpletune 3y agoXenophon’s Hellenica!
- cesidio 3y agoLes Miserables by Victor Hugo
- ThinkBeat 3y agoDo not read any of the books that came out after Stieg Larsson died. If you must read the first one, partially, allegedly based on notes left my Stieg Larsson
- mongol 3y agoThe Millenium triology was published after his death. He never got to know how successful he would become.
- nemo8551 3y agoBlindsight by Peter Watts and I’ve just finished the sea of rust by C. Robert Cargil. Both are good, sea of rust was a quick read, informative on the world building with a fast enough plot that kicked in early enough to keep me read more. Blindsight, is a bit unique so far. Definitely interesting but it’s the two parter firefall im reading which combines the second book too.
- hermitcrab 3y agoI thought Firefall by Watts was a very interesting read.
- itronitron 3y ago"Elixir in Action" by Saša Jurić. The first and second chapters are excellent. However the third chapter (on Control Flow and Pattern Matching) isn't as well written, apparently it is important to know that Elixir doesn't assign values to variables but rather 'binds' the values to the variable. It feels a bit like having 11 on a volume knob.
- mikub 3y agoLast week I finished "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig, it's about having regrets for the things you did or didn't do in your life and how those things could have turned out if you made different choices, pretty good book. Currently I read "Healing back pain" by John E. Sarno I'm halfway through and think it's interesting so far, yesterday I also started "Eversion" by Alastair Reynolds, can't say much about it because I only read 10 pages, but Reynolds' books are mostly pretty good.
- number6 3y agoThe End and the Death Volume II but that's a guilty pleasure of mine. The second book I am reading is Behave written by Sapolsky
- nicbou 3y agoWays of being. It's about different kinds of intelligences out in the wild. It starts a bit slow but it's very interesting and has a lot of interesting anecdotes and stories. Before that I couldn't put down Stasiland, a book with stories about Stasi employees and the people they persecuted.
- SunlightEdge 3y ago"No time to lose" a book by Pema Chodron. Its a translation and commentary of a Buddhist manuscript on basically how to become enlightened. I found the sections on how humans all suffer from past emotional memories (kleshnas) really interesting. As was the discussion on rage and forgiving people cruel to oneself. I followed it up with another of her books "when things fall apart". Again very good. I'm now reading a Witcher fantasy novel. Blood of elves.
- randsp 3y agoI have just finished “World of yesterday” by Stefan Zweig, probably one of the best books I have ever read, it gives you a picture how the world was at the beginning of 20th century and how despite of cultural and technological advances of the world, Europe turned to madness. Now i am starting “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace.
- mjklin 3y agoI believe that book was the basis for the movie “The Grand Budapest Hotel” with Ralph Fiennes.
- PaulRobinson 3y agoMy non-fiction pile is very peculiar to me (maths, probability, gambling, Rust and Elixir books, a backlog of a load of recent Humble Bundle deals), but I have some solid fiction recommendations: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is the sort of novel where you start to get sad as the weight of unread pages in your right starts to lighten. A novel about some friends who build some games (set in the 1990s and 2000s, with references to games of that era), it's really about friendship, social awkwardness and creativity. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke can't really take a review. When I first of it in Literary Review, the reviewer refused to disclose any plot for fear of providing spoilers, and I'm the same. I can just tell you, it's lovely. Her writing has got even better since she wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and it's a really, really solid novel. Yesterday, my Dad messaged me about a current read I'll share here as a warning, and because his style is just hilarious: I treated myself to a copy of "A Stroke of the Pen" by Terry Pratchett: short stories unearthed after his death. Very disappointing. If I were you, I would wait until it is available at your local library and then you could scrawl cuss words inside it without damaging your personal copy. Solid advice that, I hope you'll agree.
- riquisimo 3y agoI can't for the life of me understand Piranesi. I've read so many good reviews but I just couldn't stay focused reading it. It was very slow for me.
- PaulRobinson 3y agoIt's a slow fantasy. Maybe. There are lots of different ways of reading a book. I err towards looking at the use of language, the turn of phrase, at least as much as I do the plot. Piranesi suits me, if you're more plot oriented, it might be quite a jarring story.
- hermitcrab 3y ago>short stories unearthed after his death. Very disappointing Perhaps that is why he never published them?
- Scarblac 3y ago_Regenesis_, by George Monbiot. About how we can realistically feed everyone on the planet long term, in a way that doesn't destroy nature, keeps soil healthy and more able to deal with climate change, and is also affordable. Very good. Very well sourced, sceptical of romantic ideas that just don't scale. Given that we currently use 60% of our agricultural land to feed livestock, that we then use to produce 12% of our calories (and 40% of the land for the other 88%), and that methods of agriculture that leave the ecology healthier have lower yields than current industrial methods, he takes as a given that we'll have to do without most of the livestock.
- padjo 3y agoI really don’t understand how so many smart people don’t understand this and continue to consume animal products regularly.
- sigilis 3y agoPeople still smoke cigarettes despite decades of clear evidence that they will lead to a horrible death in many cases. Society has built so many disincentives to doing so, and yet they persist. Animal products will continue to be consumed no matter how obvious it is that their production is morally repugnant and environmentally destructive. I am sorry to say that I am one of those consumers despite knowing better.
- padjo 3y agoAs a former smoker and meat eater I know smoking was far far harder to give up than meat since there is a physical addiction component. Meat eating is just habit and something you can easily enough wean yourself away from.
- sigilis 3y agoIt’s on the list of things I want to change about myself. I’m a work in progress. Dietary control is not something I have been able to exercise in the past. I’m attempting to obtain pharmaceutical help on that front, so maybe I will be able to execute on being a better person in that dimension in the coming months.
- globular-toast 3y agoThe Culture series by Iain M. Banks. I actually randomly read Look to Windward years ago after being lent a copy. It stuck with me and recently started the series from the start. I'm up to Excession now. It's possibly the most "colourful" thing I've ever read. Often amazing, sometimes disturbing. The writing is second to none.
- hermitcrab 3y agoIf you like Bank's writing try 'The wasp factory'. It's rather dark, but quite brilliant with an amazing twist at the end. It's not sci-fi.
- srvaroa 3y ago“The investigation” by Stanisław Lem “Neuromancer” by William Gibson “A fire on the moon” by Norman Mailer