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Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#151
post #52

>(Read in 2018) * Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215758.Shake_Hands_with_... Still reading it every few weeks and its hanging over my head to finally finish it. Not something you want to read, but a book like few i have read before.

Oooh. Added to my list. I read Man's Search for Meaning this year and man that's a bleak, hard-hitting book. Just such a gripping experience reading that. I've recently bought a copy of The Gulag Archipelago which is a historical account of the Gulag in Soviet Russia. Will definitely add Rwanda to the list. I think these books are so important to read. They're absolutely horrifying, but lest we forget where those ide…

If you're interested in these kinds of books, I'd recommend you to Svetlana Alexeivich's "Unwomanly Face of War" in particular, if you haven't yet encountered it (and her body of work, in general).

They're more bite-size than Solzhenitsyn's behemoths, and perhaps more literary than documentary, but address some similar atrocities from a very unique and human point of view. In particular, her very humble voice for the feminine experience (one that's historically absent from political and "military" histories) is enlightening and provocative. It also helps that she's a fantastic story-teller – fitting neatly into a long genealogy of excellent Russian storytellers.

I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment. The world might be a better place, if only every person in a position of power spent some period of their life ruminating this tragic corner of world literature.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second Libby. You can get just about any of the books recommended on this thread for free. Additionally, for me, I like to get my books from the library since it gives me a reason to read them before I have to return them.

I have not tried Libby yet but recently started checking out eBooks from my local public library (via Overdrive) to read on my Kindle. I am pleasantly surprised how convenient and straightforward that process is. And all that without spending any money.

Libby is the new and somewhat flashier version of Overdrive. My old Android tablet doesn't handle it as well as the old overdrive app, but it works. I think it also has better support for multiple library cards than overdrive, but I haven't tried that yet.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#153

Breaking news : the remaking of journalism and why it matters now – Rusbridger, Alan From the editor of The Guardian for the last 20 years, a fascinating look at the move from traditional print to online news. --- The perfect weapon : war, sabotage, and fear in the cyber age – Sanger, David E. The subtitle says it all. From that I’m now reading ‘Click Here to Kill Everybody’ by Schneier. Enjoying it so far. --- The w…

Yes I Did ny MBA studies there. Incredible place.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#154
1. David Hume - An Enquiry Regarding Human Understanding. Although I’ve been listening to Prof. Peter Millican’s online lectures “General Philosophy for some time and also met him in Oxford, somehow I’ve avoided reading Hume. He is a Hume “evangelist”, the latest edition of “An Enquiry” was published by Oxford Uni Press with his introduction, which is itself an eloquent narrative of science, religion, and philosophy. Nonetheless the book is quite small and somehow might make animpression of insignificant, 2 hour read, it indeed isn’t. Sometimes I read 2-3 pages and then think for 15-20 minutes. It turns my unserstanding of self upside down or perhaps “downside up”. Totally recommended.

2. Psychology by Dimitri Uznadze (Georgian scholar), which is a major work in psychology written originally in Georgian. He lived and worked in really dark times: WW I, annexation of the country by the Red Communist Army,(Bolsheviks), The Great Terror(30s) when hundreds of thousands were executed or were exiled to Siberia my grand-grandpa among others, WW II. He went through all these major gifts of the first half of 20th century Georgia. And I did really wonder how he managed to pull this off and lived life of a revolutionary scientist in those times. Well, the book is a bit overwhelmed with quotations by Marx and Engels but perhaps that was the way togo through censorship and even save your own career and life. It’s a 700 page definitive guide to Psychology, which goes against Freud, Jung, Lacan and it’s speculative contemporaries.

3. The Book of Why - Judea Pearl. The colleague mentioned the book upon working on a new recommender system at job, then I ordered 2 copies for both of us. Haven’t dived deep yet, but Judea Pearl is one of the fathers of modern AI, he asks tough questions and tryies to guide the revolution to the next level, where AI system will be able to reason about the result and answer to the question - why. “The Correlation is not Causation”.

Well, these are the major ones that stood up this year. Also In terms of fiction 2018 was quite classy: The Iliad by Homer, Faust by Goethe, The Sleepwalkers - Herman Broch, re-reading The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (one of my favourite work of literature of all time).

I’ve found out after creating soc. media accounts last year,(After being off for 3 years) my reading habits have degenerated and yesterday I got rid of them again, feels like I’ve pulled out a huge empty inflated balloon off of my brain.

Happy Holidays!

P.S. Apologies for awkward English, haven’t had much practice of writing/speaking English this year.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#155

12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson.

The review I read in the Guardian barely talks about the content of the book, and mostly talks about Peterson's ideology instead (in a negative way, which reflects how bad the left-right chasm is. This is not a book about politics)

Probably a good book to read to understand why Peterson has a lot of fans.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#156
post #37

Favorites that I read in 2018: * Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep ) * Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude ) * Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss (…

“Never Split the Difference” was fantastic. Still it was super weird that unlike the advice in the book, some of the book comes across as bragging. Also, Chris Voss does not perform the audiobook although in the book he discusses his mastery of voice, his smooth radio jockey voice and covers different speaking techniques. Still, one of my favorites of 2018.

I found the constant bragging intolerable and ended up stopping reading after two or three chapters.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#157

* The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt Tries to explain the reasons behind all the "triggering" and safe spaces phenomenon on college campuses * Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm WWII as the outset, one of the topic discussed why people in a democracy would turn to authoritarian figures.

Great picks. I started Coddling this week - I've learnt so much already. Incredibly insightful. Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis was the best book I'd read in a while, also highly recommended. It's about much more than just happiness, but how our mind/self/consciousness/emotions work.

Escape from Freedom (also known as Fear of Freedom) is great, as are a lot of Fromm's books. He's my favourite psychologist, and by a long way favourite Frankfurt School writer. I also love Man for Himself, The Sane Society, To Have or To Be, The Art of Loving. He's wonderfully BS-free, combining insights into psychology, society, work, politics etc.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#160
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read all of these?

FWIW my library account shows me as having loaned 28 books this year. I’d say I finished 80% of them. Don’t watch too much television, don’t read too much crap online. There’s plenty of time in life to read.

Also there are apps to block social media while reading: Offtime app works great.
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