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Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

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Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#111
I'm reading The Once and Future World by J.B. MacKinnon, and I'm reading extra slowly because I'm enjoying it so much.

It's about nature, how we're wired to think the wild landscapes we grew up with were pristine, how it's truly evolved through history in response to humans' presence and it's hard to really pinpoint a baseline, and how much wildlife and plant life has vanished so far in the last two hundred years (from whatever fuzzy baseline we can arrive at).

Earlier this year, I read Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows and on almost every page I was taking notes! A huge eye-opener and felt like a missing link across sciences and social sciences. Also extremely readable and engaging.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#112

The Overstory by Richard Powers: this book changed the way I look at trees. I'll be driving some days and out of nowhere notice a tree and appreciate it. This book inspired me to consider that there is an objective meaning to life. The Incerto Series by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: where to start...I started reading this series over a decade ago and I still think about it weekly. It can be very dense to get through as I to…

> Thought experiment: if you could take your dream vacation at no expense but would have no memories or photos/videos of the trip would you do it?

No. The photos and videos are not interesting, but .. no memories? Further, I am unlikely to take it if I also have to be alone. Experiences are, for me, to be shared because shared experiences are the coin that connect us to others.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#113

The Overstory by Richard Powers: this book changed the way I look at trees. I'll be driving some days and out of nowhere notice a tree and appreciate it. This book inspired me to consider that there is an objective meaning to life. The Incerto Series by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: where to start...I started reading this series over a decade ago and I still think about it weekly. It can be very dense to get through as I to…

"Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert is an excellent complement to "Thinking Fast and Slow". It explores how the mind works in regards to happiness, and the biases in that.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#114
I'll go against the question since I believe this is about elevating one's thinking and not merely about books.

Just like learning the math theorem is practically worthless without doing the exercises (at least to me), I'll advise to just do something in the domain you want to be elevated in. Of course this doesn't apply to things you can't hope to do: for example History's lessons; Invading another country all alone is quite resource-consuming.

Having your outputs to show the outside world is quite gratifying! You're not a pure function.

Self Help:

* Craft your own time management system (and write and sell a book about it)

* Create a blog in which you ponder about life

* Try to gracefully start a conversation with random people. You never know what you can learn

* Begin a new sport, like climbing

Tech:

* Write a silly website in Typescript + React, or WebGL

* Craft a new small language of your own

* Do an HTML parser in APL

* Port a concurrent library to Zig

* Like pg says, identify things you think are the future and do things with them

Misc:

* Try to decipher a latin text just from how the words resemble the words you know

Basically just give some ressource to that weird side project idea that keeps popping up in your head.

Do the mistakes first, and only then learn the theory of what can work. And iterate back and forth between exercises and theory. Let the exercises guide what you want to learn. It'll help you deal with failures and lack of results and might even give you the freedom of being weird.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#115
Hyperion cantos - sci-fi, basically 7 very different stories tied together explaining why things are happening and how characters are tied together. 1st book is excellent, 2nd is a must to understand how things continue. I liked all 4, I think it lost the steam slightly around 3rd book but all are excellent experience.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#116
"An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.

Before that I never really thought deeply about economics, but afterwards, it's almost like you have a deeper sense of predictions on cause-and-effect... there will always be second and third order effects (and higher harmonics so to speak).

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#117
post #108
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SICP is literally computer science 101 in LISP. Personally I found it less englightening than doing medium/hard leetcode problems.

Please take my word: come back in 5 years and look the videos again. Or in 10 years. I would really like to see what you have to say then.

I’ll take your word for it but I highly doubt implementing again a LISP in Scheme would blow my mind.

Also I didn’t mean it in an overly demeaning fashion, I unironically find a lot of leetcode problems cooler than they are getting credit for.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#118
The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt, Dave Thomas), The Manager's Path (Camille Fourier), How To Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie).

These books helped me to realize that many insecurities I had where "common" in Software Engineering field. The last one is especially good if you're looking for improve your relations with people.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#119
post #14

If I were to choose three fiction, those would make the cut. Fiction: The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem - It shed light on me in regards to microelectronics, swarm intelligence. Nothing ever eased my learning curve more for genetic algorithms like this short novel! It is also a good read in general. It also taught me that the difference in scientific vs force vs emotional approach to unknown. Would recommend as a sprin…

Ah, the Strugatskys! Absolutely highly recommended. That was my favorite book of theirs as well.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#120
post #50

I haven't read many books that I felt weren't worth "investing time in". Books are good for you. A couple of favourites anyway: - New Grub Street , George Gissing, 1891 - Crime and Punishment , Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1867 - Pride and Prejudice , Jane Austen, 1813 - Candide , Voltaire, 1759

I recently read Candide. What a story! Time well spent reading it, and some good lessons along the way. P.S. Just search for the title, there are a lot of free e-books available online.
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