Ask HN: Great books you read in 2018?

And for fiction:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746712

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746559

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18744462

"An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" by Hank Green was delightful and insightful on multiple levels. It is an excellent dissection of internet fame and punditry, while also being funny as hell.

'The Ends of the World' by Peter Brannen https://www.amazon.com/Ends-World-Apocalypses-Understand-Ext...

It's about the major extinction events of the past and their relevance to our current situation. There is so much history of life on earth before humans appeared, it's mind-boggling.

I discovered Claire North this year after she was interviewed on the Imaginary Worlds podcast. I picked up Touch, The Sudden Appearance of Hope, and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, all of which were wonderful.

I'll end the year at 83 or 84 books for the year (depends on what I choose to start once I get home from the day's festivities), and here were the highlights for me:

1. An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey, et al

An Everyone Culture profiles three high-performing companies that look very different, but all share the assumption that developing the company's people is not a contrary goal to developing the business, and is in fact a great path to getting you there. I read it with a group of my partners in my company, and we came out of it with an actionable pilot program that has gone incredibly well so far and has begun to expand. I read this one twice.

2. The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson

I avoided Sanderson because of the hype and book length despite years of recommendations from people who know what I find interesting in books. That was a mistake, and this year I fixed it, reading about twenty of his books. They're all in my top half for the year (and I consider the top 85-90% to have been worth reading), but The Stormlight Archive (beginning with The Way of Kings) comes out on top. Fantastic magic system, complex plot, and lucid writing. Check it out!

3. The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan

Think of this as a giant Less Wrong post by an economist on the value of education. Caplan explains his theory of the value of education (which he doesn't discount), and shows convincingly that much of the system as it currently stands is wasteful for society. I came in skeptical (having benefitted personally and professionally from my nineteen years of school), but I came out convinced. Highly recommended for anyone who reads SSC or Less Wrong and says "I'd love a book that argued a premise that carefully."

4. The Three-Body trilogy by Cixin Liu

Masterpiece of SF lit. For fans of hard SF only. The prose is not wonderful (as the author himself will tell you), but it's truly wonderful, and deserves all the considerable praise it's gotten over the years. I found the style fascinatingly different and refreshing, having never read much Eastern lit.

5. Measure What Matters by John Doerr

There's a reason this gets recommended so often, and I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to get to it. After reading I immediately worked toward implementing OKRs in part of my company, and will work towards pushing it throughout. It's a messy process at the beginning, but after a few months we're already seeing some improvements (and the process has revealed some weaknesses we could work on as well).

6. Letters to Lucilius by Seneca

I reread this periodically, and it always ends up in my top books of the year. Seneca's Stoicism bears none of the toxic asceticism attributed by its critics, and instead simply demonstrates how to live as better people.

7. The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

The authors took a careful look at the volatile nature of our public discourse, and set out to figure out how big of a problem it is and what might be contributing to it. I came in skeptical of the problem, but was thoroughly convinced to take it seriously. Haidt is, of course, amazing as usual.

Those seven (actually eleven) are the biggest standouts of the year. Looking forward to others' suggestions!