Thinking fast and slow, and Principles. Both live up to their reputation.
Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
151–160 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#152I read "Crucial Conversations" this year. It feel like it has the potential to be life changing. Need more time to tell what impact it really has. It introduced me to a new topic, which is analyzing social situations and apply problem solving skills to them. Something that never occurred to me for some reason. I now realize there are smart people working and having interesting thoughts and conclusions in this topic.…
Buying this off the strength of your recommendation. That sounds exactly like what the doctor ordered. I'm getting worse at expressing myself the older I'm getting, and I'm finding it impairing my personal life, work life, social situations, etc. Will give this one a read--thank you!
Likewise – it's been on my to-read list for ages, will schedule it as my Christmas reading thanks to OP's comment.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#153Favorite 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 Billio…
+1 for Endurance, and if you enjoyed that I also recommend The Terror (which is historical fiction but had a similar feel to me)
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#154The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. The Sword in the Stone is probably my favorite Disney movie so I was delighted to discover the movie was based on a book which was even better.
One of my favourites of all time. The singing Cockney hedgehog is such a gem.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#155Easily The City & The City by China Miéville. The premise is great, the characters are fun, the plot will keep you engaged. A noir detective story about a murder that happens in the space between two cities which are in superposition. That is, they share the same geographic space, but citizens are forced to live in only one of the cities by a seemingly omnipotent power called Breach that maintains the borders of the…
Great book. I read it a few years ago and still think about it often, especially when I’m walking by a homeless person on the street
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#156Fiction 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
If you enjoyed PHM, you might also like:
- For a more horror take, "There's no Antimemetic Division" https://qntm.org/scp. Without spoiling, it's about people trying to fight against a threat that's impossible to remember about.
- Ted Chiang's "Understand". Again without spoiling too much, it's about a man whose intelligence rapidly increased.
- Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality. Yeah, I'm serious, if you like the "smart character solves problem by thinking" it's amazing.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#157Isaacson's biography of Da Vinci. Beautiful man. The biography went really deep into his art and pointed out what made it so special. As someone who knows nothing about art, this gave me a wonderful new perspective both on Da Vinci and on art in general.
You might enjoy Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane if you enjoyed the Isaacson biography. Fantastic writing and a very very interesting man as well as incredible artist.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#158Fiction 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…
Newport's work led me to read 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, which I regularly think about. It's a refreshing read on time management.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#159I was late by a year to it, but Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun was both fascinating and, typical for Ishiguro, almost lethally concentrated melancholy. A literary take on AGI and religion from the cleverly written perspective of an AI assistant device, mixed with a coming-of-age story and a meditation on the disposability of modern technology.
How did you feel it compared with some of his other works? Personally I enjoyed it, but to me it wasn't quite on the same level with some of his other books like the buried giant or remains of the day.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?
#160Favorite 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 Billio…
+1 for Endurance, and if you enjoyed that I also recommend The Terror (which is historical fiction but had a similar feel to me)
I also recommend Lost Moon (which is sometimes published as Apollo 13). I've joked with people it's the same story, except in outer space. If by "story" you mean getting the feeling every 20 pages or so of "they are dead now for sure," then it's not really that much of a joke.
I read both of these around the same time and loved them both.