I really enjoyed Kevin Kelly's 'What Technology Wants'.
Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
101–110 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#102Riyria Revelations trilogy - quite good. Follows two thieves for hire. Read the books in publication order
Ready player one - liked it
samurai's garden
Expanse series by James Corey entertaining
Steelheart and Firefight by Sanderson- good but like Mistborn better
Worm online serial parahumans good
Nonfiction I read: Delivering happiness, Drive, Power of Habit, Power of full engagement
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#103Philip K. Dicks's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?": Liked the movie (Blade Runner) better, but not bad. Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms": While reading it I found it extremely boring, though there was this feel to it that still made it pleasant to read. I can't really describe it. Plutarch's "Lives" from the main figures from the end of the Republic (Penguin Classics collection): By far the best books on…
Reading "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was such a disappointment to me because I loved the movie so much. I would like to revisit it - maybe I would understand the parts about the empathy boxes and the wife's mood thing better now.
I think it's important to recognise there is a minimal relationship between book and movie. If one keeps them mentally discrete it is much easier to enjoy both. Do Androids Dream... is a very spiritual book. The movie doesn't / can't capture that element and wisely creates a totally different experience from the same elements...
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#104The Memory Book - Fantastic, maybe not always practical unless you have a lot of practice, but extremely useful to at least understand some of the strategies to memorizing strings
Understanding Weatherfax - for an attempted (and failed) circumnavigation
Sail Power
Kon Tiki
Shogun
Art of the Sailor
Business Adventures
Metamorphoses (by Ovid, not Kafka)
Guns, Germs, Steel
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - this book had so many rave reviews. it has a tremendous hook and style for the first 50 pages, but overall I thought it was terrible
Cryptonomicon -- fantastic
Simulacra and simulation -- started, but I need to start over. this is not an easy read...
Predictably Irrational -- another book with great reviews, but reading this book was not time well spent. the author just summarizes psychology experiments with pages of dumbed down explanations and tedious anecdotes
The Alliance -- read this on my last day at my old job, a good reminder on the social contract between you and your employer and how it should be mutually beneficial, lots of boring filler though
Triple your reading speed -- I wanted to take a speed reading course when I was in elementary school, but my dad thought it was a waste of time. I think I really missed out on something, but late is better than never.
Siddhartha -- rereading of one of my favorite books of all time
The Alchemist -- rereading of one of my favorite books of all time
Jazz (by Leveaux)
The Jazz Piano Book
Mastering the Piano
Big Blue Book of bicycle maintenance
Probability (by Pitman) -- its embarassing statistics/probability isn't a required course in many programs
Elements of Statistical Learning
Advanced Analytics with Spark -- feels like this book was published only 80% done
Optimization Models (by Calafiore and El Ghaoui) -- going to finish this is 2016
Functional Programming with Scala -- going to finish this is 2016
Linux Programming Interface -- going to finish this is 2016
Finished 18 books cover to cover in 2015, 6 of which were textbooks/academic texts. Currently have 7 in progress, 2 of which are piano workbooks and 3 are textbooks.
Goal for 2016 is 30 books cover to cover, at least 8 textbooks/academic texts.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#105Here are all the ones I read this year A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara Dead Wake: The Last Cro…
What is your opinion on The Guns of August? I'm still looking for a good book on World War I.
How about All Quiet on the Western Front.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#106Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#107Dune by Frank Herbert- I'm one of the few people on Earth who enjoys the David Lynch adaptation so I finally had to get around to reading the book. Kind of awkward stylistically and structurally but a lot of fun.
Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen - It's seemed to me that there are political philosophies that focus on economic needs and those that focus on personal freedom. This is the best I've read at uniting those concepts.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - A blast to read and great insight into the thinking of a great mind.
The LA Quartet by James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz) - Really the pinnacle of dark gritty noir. If you like that I can't recommend highly enough.
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett - I like a lot of Hammett's other work but this seemed to have a lot of wheel spinning.
City of Quartz by Mike Davis - As an Angeleno this gave me so much insight into the city I love. I have no idea if it would be of any interest to an outsider.
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb - Nassim Taleb is great and I've definitely been influenced a lot by his ideas, but he's getting too in love with the smell of his own farts.
Various books/textbooks on programming and databases - Nothing thrilling in this category. Gotta eat your vegetables.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#108Here are all the ones I read this year A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara Dead Wake: The Last Cro…
What is your opinion on The Guns of August? I'm still looking for a good book on World War I.
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark already seems to be a classic. Didn't read it yet, though.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since you liked Gene Wolfe's work, have you read R.A. Lafferty?
I have, actually this year too (missed it in the list because it didn't come from Amazon). I read the collection Nine Hundred Grandmothers . I thought it was pretty uneven, but the highs were very high. There were 4 or 5 stories in that collection that were just amazing, of the "how the hell does he DO that" kind. Some others were kind of preachy, or little more than sketches. Going to read more Lafferty next year, I…
Lafferty has his own niche ... some of his stories won awards, http://www.ralafferty.org/works/collections/honors/
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?
#110The Child of Time : Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg
Liked it.