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Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#121
post #4

Reading it right now, but I already think it's the test thing: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals I was (and still am) obsessed with productivity. But I more and more my tasks had felt like something I needed to get done, to afterwards finally be able to relax and profit from them. But this time never came and I just got busier. The book does a great job at explaining how much of our daily grind is base…

This book was definitely one of my highlights. The number of times I exclaimed “I’m really not the only one that feels that?!” Was too many to measure. It really forces you to confront time in a way that I haven’t stopped thinking about since.

I'm having the same experience. And what I love, is that he proposes solutions that work, without sugarcoating things.

One of the biggest learnings from this book so far, is that a certain level of anxiety is inevitable. Especially when you're doing work that is meaningful to you.

Being able to accept that anxiety and still continue is what makes all the difference.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#122
post #106

The two recent books by Madeline Miller, "Circe" and "The Song of Achilles" "Crossroads" Jonathan Franzen "Agassi" Andre Agassi - I don't normally read sports memoirs, but this one came highly recommended by a woman author that I have read recently so I gave it a try. As a tennis fan who pretty much alway routed for the other player when he played (except when he played Pete Sampras), I found the book totally engagin…

I was a big Sampras fan, curious on details of your exception. I don’t follow off the court/field drama so was he a huge jerk or something?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#123

The best works of fiction I read: - Count Belisarius by Robert Graves - The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell - The Expanse (all of them) - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir And the best books on software development were: - Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards and Neal Ford - Multithreaded JavaScript by Thomas Hunter II and Bryan English - The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Herman…

The Bone Clocks is fantastic - probably my #1 go-to when someone asks me for a book recommendation.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#125
Favorite Technical: The Pragmatic Programmer. This is something that I should have read much earlier.

Favorite Fiction: Pale Fire. Just pure astonishment. Left me speechless with how he made the language sing.

Also great (in no particular order):

- The Sewing Girl's Tale (non-fiction)

- The Odyssey (poem)

- Tropic of Cancer (novel)

- Tenth of December (short story collection).

- Endurance (non-fiction)

- The Billion Dollar Spy (non-fiction)

- Agent Sonya (non-fiction)

- Agent Running in the Field (novel)

- Little Dorrit (novel)

To be honest, I love most of the stuff I read this year. Only a handful of books I didn't like enough to read through.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#126
post #48

Fiction I discovered and read Blake Crouch this year - Dark Matter - Recursion - Upgrade - Pines I also discovered and read - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - Gravity by Tess Gerritsen - A Man by, At the End of the Matinee Keiichiro Hirano It's between Recursion and Project Hail Mary for me. I am leaning more towards Recursion. Non-fiction I discovered and read the following this year - Deep Work by Cal Newport - The…

Project Hail Mary was such a fun read. I burned through it in 2 days, and was sad when I finished it. 10/10 would recommend

It was way too short, but also just long enough.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#127
Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society - by Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/ra...

The book recommends radical changes to how we deal with private property, voting, immigration, large stock investors, AI stuff, and more. It felt like an honest overview of various economic policies across the past (pointing out how radical many changes were) and a set of reasonable proposals for how to improve our currently-broken system.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#128
Gene Wolfe.

The whole Solar Cycle (The Book of the New Sun, Urth of The New Sun, The Book of The Long Sun, The Book of The Short Sun), Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, There Are Doors, The Sorcerer's House ... .

Wolfe is a genius.

Before that I also finished Malazan.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?

#129

If you're into historical biographies, I highly recommend The Last Lion by McMasters on Churchill. Really puts things into perspective about how close Germany came to owning Europe. It's really 3 books, 5000+ pages, not a quick read but worth the effort.

Oh! I'm about 1/4 of the way through book II. Can't recommend enough for history nerds!
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