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Ask HN: Great book that you read recently?
- mindcrime 14y agoAtlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne Business Model Generation - Alexander Osterwalder
- klaut 14y agoHow To Get Rich - Felix Dennis Accidental Genius - Mark Levy
- mixonic 14y agoI don't tend to read biz books, but recently I've read a ton of great Russian texts. The Master & Margarita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita Goethe's Faust & the story of Pontius Pilate retold in 1930s Russia. Really, I mean really damn good. Very readable. Books 1 & 2 of The Gulag Archipelago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago An expansive history of the Soviet prison camp system, almost a folk history. Petersburg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_(novel) Think Joyce writing about a revolutionary plot in the Petersburg of 1910-something, involving patricide and a time-bomb set for 24 hours from now. Yeah. That and slowly working through Proust (book 5). I'm not sure if I really recommend it, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts from other smarty-pants HN people.
- yolesaber 14y agoPetersburg is exactly what I wanted to read once school ends. All this CS and math work makes me want to just discorporate myself into a ridiculous, subjective work. Which translation would you recommend? Also, if you enjoyed the darker parts of The Master and Margarita, I highly recommend Blaise Cendras' Moravagine (http://www.amazon.com/Moravagine-York-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590170636 http://www.amazon.com/Moravagine-York-Review-Books-Classics/...).
- mixonic 14y agoThis Maguire & Malmstad translation is what I read: http://www.amazon.com/Petersburg-Andrei-Bely/dp/0253202191 http://www.amazon.com/Petersburg-Andrei-Bely/dp/0253202191 And I found it pretty tolerable. The footnotes are in the back (I think?) which kind of stinks for your first read. Unless you're a serious student of Petersburg history, the footnotes are requisite for understanding half of the nuance. Bely is doing all these tricks shifting the geography of the city and playing off places and events, and that's lost to the modern reader without help. I'm eager to read it again without paying attention to the notes though. I'll take a look at Moravagine, it looks great. It's in line after Volume 3 of Gulag A. and Orlando Figes's history of the Russian revolutions. I need more context for all this pre-WWI stuff!
- latch 14y agoOld Man's War - John Scalzi
- robotmay 14y agoI'd highly recommend any Scalzi book. The Old Man's War trilogy is great, but if you're after something more light-hearted then The Android's Dream or Agent to the Stars are also great.
- brudgers 14y agoI'll put this in the recently read rather than great science fiction thread: Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson
- latch 14y agoI find Robopocalypse silly, and not just the title. SPOILER It seems to me that, despite how the turn of events are explained, we'd have no..none, zero, chance at winning that war.
- tchock 14y agoUnderstanding Media: the extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan
- jnorthrop 14y agoPractical Irrationality - Dan Ariely It changed the way I think about pricing, among other things, forever. He makes some wild conclusions then backs them up with scientific experiments. Its a fun read to boot.
- mixonic 14y agoI agree, a fun & informative read!
- steventruong 14y agoI think you meant Predictably Irrational. I haven't heard of Practical Irrationality.
- jnorthrop 14y agoOoops! You're correct but it's too late for me to edit the post now. Maybe Ariely has some explanation why I can't get his title right.
- omgsean 14y agoThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595581030 http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindn...)
- dtbx 14y agoThe Game, by Neil Strauss.
- aorshan 14y agoI just re-read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Always makes me laugh and is a great read.
- gyardley 14y agoJonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" was terrific.
- DanBC 14y agoShort story collection: This is not your city, by Caitlin Horrocks (http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your-City/dp/1932511911 http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your-City/dp/1932511911) "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson - he's really good journalist and writes well. This is an interesting read about the newish "psychopaths everywhere" meme.
- brudgers 14y agoI recently reread Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. I was prompted to do so by another book discussion. Not his best book - I think Blood Meridian and The Road are better - but McCarthy is a great writer. For nerd non-fiction, I just read Jim Lovell's Lost Moon which though not a great book, is a good solid book about greatness.
- semira 14y agoThe Monk and the Riddle - Randy Komisar
- xxiao 14y agosigh , i read HN all day long and have no time left for books. seriously though, i use books as a reference and just hack along, i mean technical books, for non-tech books, i have not read them for years.
- tiplus 14y agodaemon - daniel suarez, freedom - daniel suarez
- pg 14y agoDoris Stenton's English Society in the Early Middle Ages
- jdelard 14y agoBreakfast for Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
- blrsk 14y agoThe Startup Owner's Manual - Steve Blank Discours de la Methode - Descartes
- peterwiese 14y agoThe Strangest Man - Graham Farmelo A biography of Paul Dirac. Very good. --------------- The Fabric of the Universe - David Deutsch What picture can we paint of the universe if we take together the best theories we have about fundamental things like time, life, virtual reality, cosmology etc. Easily the best book i've read in recent years. Consider that Deutsch is a very distinguished scientist in the field of quantum cryptography/computing. He is really good at explaining things in terms that non-physicists and experts alike can learn a lot! --------------- Roadside Picnic - Strugatzky Soviet Science Fiction book about the first and only visit of earth by aliens. The approach is very unusual since there is never any direct contact between humans and the extra terrestrial intelligence. The book is more like a study of human society and how it could develop if suddenly there was some extremely advanced technology available to us which we are too primitive to understand/control.
- bugmenot 14y agoThe Man Without A Face (by Diana Hekman) was inspiring, and my daughter enjoyed it as well.