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Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

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Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#131

Post by grinnick »

rayalez wrote: post #123

Here are the best books I've read over the last few months: - Lost and Founder - the founder of Moz shares his advice and experience from building a 40M/year company. I found the things he says about building a startup extremely insightful and practically useful. Reading it feels like having a dinner with a friend who shares with you the things he has learned in a very honest, down to earth way. Highly recommend it.…

Hacking growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Browne?

Just want to check I'm buying the right book!

Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#132

Post by jboynyc »

I recently read The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, and will continue reading her stuff over the summer for sure. It's really great. (HN discussion about her obituary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16218439)

The other day I started Pictures of a Gone City, a book about the Bay Area by critical geographer Richard Walker. It was recently discussed here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17473141). I'm only about fifty pages in, but I can tell this is going to be worthwhile.

I'm also still finishing Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials by Malcolm Harris. It's a very compelling account of the crises and pressures confronting today's young adults (among which I can still, just barely, count myself).

Other books I've got lined up for the summer:

• The Boy Kings: A Journey Into the Heart of the Social Network, by Kate Losse. This memoir by an early Facebook employee came out a few years ago, and I finally want to read it.

• Social Creature, by Tara Isabella Burton. Recently published novel that's been getting rave reviews. It's been described as "a literary novel about social media."

• Surveys, by Natasha Stagg. A novel about microcelebrity/instafame that came out in 2016.

PS: LitHub runs a "Rotten Tomatoes for Book Reviews" site at https://bookmarks.reviews/ that I'm finding to be a useful resource to discover new books coming out. That's how I found out about the Burton and Stagg books.

Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#133

Post by subhajeet2107 »

I set a goal to read atleast 3 books a month, so this is my July list: - A mind at play: halfway through ,good read so far Shanon is a legend - The subtle Art of Not Giving a FK : Refreshingly good - Measure What Matters : Using this as a reference for everything now on, good read

Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#134

Post by baxtr »

subhajeet2107 wrote: post #133

I set a goal to read atleast 3 books a month, so this is my July list: - A mind at play: halfway through ,good read so far Shanon is a legend - The subtle Art of Not Giving a F K : Refreshingly good - Measure What Matters : Using this as a reference for everything now on, good read

How do you accomplish reading three books a month while maintaining a job and a family (assumption)? I struggle with that and would love to learn some clever strategies

Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#135

Post by rayalez »

grinnick wrote: post #131
rayalez wrote: post #123

Here are the best books I've read over the last few months: - Lost and Founder - the founder of Moz shares his advice and experience from building a 40M/year company. I found the things he says about building a startup extremely insightful and practically useful. Reading it feels like having a dinner with a friend who shares with you the things he has learned in a very honest, down to earth way. Highly recommend it.…

Hacking growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Browne? Just want to check I'm buying the right book!

Yep.

Oh, and if you're interested in the subject, I can also recommend "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, it's a really neat outline of traction channels.

Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#137

Post by vbsteven »

baxtr wrote: post #134
subhajeet2107 wrote: post #133

I set a goal to read atleast 3 books a month, so this is my July list: - A mind at play: halfway through ,good read so far Shanon is a legend - The subtle Art of Not Giving a F K : Refreshingly good - Measure What Matters : Using this as a reference for everything now on, good read

How do you accomplish reading three books a month while maintaining a job and a family (assumption)? I struggle with that and would love to learn some clever strategies

Make reading a scheduled part of your day. Just like you would schedule school runs, gym, work, cooking, etc

Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#138

Post by csomar »

msadowski wrote: post #60

Can anyone recommend some book about Africa? I would like to gain some insights about life there, ideally fact based, maybe some history? Doesn't need to be the whole continent as well, would love to start with any particular country. This year I decided to read at least one book a month the ones I found most inspiring were: * Factfulness - how we can misinterpret the data and how most of us have a wrong idea about t…

The north, the central and the south are very different. Like different climate, ethnics, religions, languages, and economies.

Africa is also the center of the Arab world (Cairo + 2/3 of the arab world population is there) although the popular belief is that the middle east is.

What are you looking exactly for? I'm from the north so I can answer some questions about that part.

Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?

#140

Post by stochastic_monk »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #103

I'm going to do something a bit different from everyone else and suggest some poetry. 1) Songs of Innocence and of Experience from William Blake. 2) The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde 3) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge I've started to enjoy reading poetry again. The education system managed to extinguish any love I had for poetry. It's been a bit over half a decade since I was in sch…

Excellent choice with Blake, and of course, there’s nothing quite like Reading Gaol. The latter is some of the best written word art ever created.

I would point others to Robert Browning’s Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came. It’s a late romantic poem about the time after Camelot’s glory has faded and all hopes have been dashed by man’s weakness and the inexorable hunger of time. A fitting poem for those of us who live in an age whose greatest promises lay unfulfilled. These were not the robots we were promised.*

*Tagline stolen from a truly stellar Op-Ed from last year available here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/opinion/sunday/household-...

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