The books you mention can be of any genre and from any discipline of life. The important criteria is that they were helpful to you in whatever way you think.
Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
1–10 of 211 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#2I am going to list two books.
Fiction: Jurassic Park by M Crichton. Just for the world build up and writing
Non-Fiction: The Machinery of Life by David Goodsell. I fell in love with biology again after reading this book. The wonderful illustrations make the book come alive.
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#3Nim in Action - a language book with syntax and the like of course, useful, but also one that tries to teach concepts from first principles.
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#4As an atheist, Seneca's Moral letters to Lucilius is my bible. My compass when life gets hard.
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#5Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner is probably the best nonfiction book I've ever read. It not only contains profound philosophical insights, but presents them in a concise and approachable manner. Every chapter ends with a recapitulation of the chapter's contents (why isn't this standard?). The book is short and deals with a single topic. It gets to the point rather than beating around the bush, and completely avoids invoking metaphysical explanations or political implications. I truly cannot praise it enough.
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#61. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
2. The Selfish Gene
3. Podcast: Kings of Kings
https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings...
Each one of these were worth every minute of read/listen.
Edit to add: The world around us feels like it was created as we see it today. But these books and the podcast, combined, show us how we got here, where we are today. Wars, long periods of peace, pandemics, evolution, human adaptability, luck, there are so many things that brought us where we are today. It's not a given, and we can lose it all and be pushed back to stone age, or further back, if we take our current progress for granted.
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#7What Every Body Says. It's about understanding body language, I feel like it has helped me understand others better sometimes.
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#8From the pov of my career: Designing Data-Intensive Applications is the only technical book I've ever read that I felt was worth the time it took me to read it. It's excellent - I learned a ton, I keep going back to it, and if I'd read it as a fresh graduate it could have saved me a lot of trouble.
I've read a few other of the popular programmer books eg Clean Code, Refactoring, the Pragmatic Programmer, Working Effectively With Legacy Code, and I didn't get much value from any of them. They're not bad, it's just that they didn't teach me much that I hadn't already picked up on the job, and I didn't feel like a book was the best way to learn their lessons as opposed to just picking up what you need to know from Google, colleagues, etc, over the years as you gain experience.
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#9Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?
#101. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 2. The Selfish Gene 3. Podcast: Kings of Kings https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings... Each one of these were worth every minute of read/listen. Edit to add: The world around us feels like it was created as we see it today. But these books and the podcast, combined, show us how we got here, where we are today. Wars, long periods of peace, pandemics, evo…
The Selfish Gene is great. The portions on Evolutionary Stable Strategies are particularly interesting. It shows how Darwinism can lead to a "steady state", where a population contains individuals with competing characteristics (selflessness VS selfishness), and why this not at odds with selection.