Ask HN: End of Year Book Recommendations

Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police

https://search.worldcat.org/title/39256274

This book going into extreme detail about the East German surveillance state. People tend to hyperfocus on the Nazis due to a morbid fascination with bodycounts, but the GDR was closer in time in both history and comopositions. They had faxes, computers, and many other technologies that made them similar to us, and I worry we forget the lessons of that regime. I read his book during a middle school in school suspension and it was a formative read.

Another good book is "Eichman in Jerusalem", which details the trial of one of the architects of the Holocaust and his claims he was "just following orders... the book examines the "banality of evil".

https://search.worldcat.org/title/385389

Finally, to lighten things up, my most recent new favorite book that's fiction was Convenience Store Woman, about a woman who's been working at a 7/11 for 18 years. I read it during COVID and it's stuck with me as a favorite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convenience_Store_Woman

1. Die Wand (1963, Germany). The Wall. Marlen Haushofer.

An excellent novel, simple, yet moving. Why do we live and what is our connection to nature?

2. Fifth Business (1970, Canada). Robertson Davies.

I've read thousands of novels, so I'm always glad to read something new and unpredictable, but still based on the best premise: interesting characters.

3. Sostiene Pereira (1994, Italy). Pereira Maintains. Antonio Tabucchi.

My favorite book this year. A deep and smart and tense plunge into the Portuguese life of a few decades ago. Italian literature has so many gems.

1. Differential Privacy (2025) by Simson Garfinkel

A readable but thorough introduction to differential privacy.

2. Tales of the Weird: An Uncanny Introduction (2023)

A collection of short stories from the British Library to introduce the many flavors of weird fiction.

3. An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (1980) by John R. Pierce

A fun survey of information theory with great anecdotes about Bell Labs in mid-century.

See my full list here: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2025/

>I've read at least two articles authored by historians that thought this book was full of factual errors and misunderstandings.

Feel free to provide these citations if you dislike the book

>It may be good read, but don't expect the book to be fair or truthful.

It's creative nonfiction -- a literary telling of a factual event. And no one is required to be "fair" to anyone, especially Nazis. Some things don't have "both sides".

Childhood’s End was not bad, but it didn’t leave an impression on me. I thought that it was dated (the Spanish watching a bullfight when the aliens came, oh c’mon!). What did you like the most about it?