Finally got around to reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Blew me away. So much better than the film adaptation.
I think that the screensaver adaption is just right, though :)
Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
21–30 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#22The Bet by Anton Chekhov
You can read it here: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml
It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes. It's so fantastically misanthropic, I cannot recommend it enough.
The prisoner's polemic against society at the end is just legendary.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#23Finally got around to reading some Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina.
It was terrific. Great book!
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#24I basically discovered Vernor Vinge.
A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge
Marooned in Realtime, by Vernor Vinge
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt, a fun book about some math and physics problems
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#25Death of a Salesman. This is yet another book that you are forced to read prematurely in middle or high school. At the time, it was a frustrating exercise; upon rereading it at age 25, I thought it was fantastic.
I also enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It was very creative.
Sadly, I had no books that yielded a personal intellectual epoch this year.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#26Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. A sad story about a guy named Zeitoun in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places by Paul Collier. Someone smart thinks about how to move failed states toward democracy in such a way that it sticks.
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. A good memoir, but particularly interesting because he wrote it before he was famous.
Cliff Walk by Don Snyder. An English professor gets fired and becomes a carpenter. Great if academia irritates you.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#27I'm a fan of reading biographies and Open, Andre Agassi's biography, was a very intriguing, enjoyable, and surprisingly well-written book.
The only other book I read this past year that stood out to me was GK Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday. I thought this was a very well written allegorical spy novel that had some very quippy dialogue.
Next on my reading list I would like to read some Vladimir Nabokov since I've never read any of his work. Has anyone else here read any of his books?
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#28The Machinery of Freedom (David Friedman) -- Great book on a potential anarcho-capitalist society and how we could push the US government in that direction. The Game (Neil Strauss) -- See nopassrecover's response; he explained it well. Little Brother (Cory Doctorow) -- A fantastic novel about freedom and technology. Makers (Cory Doctorow) -- A great novel about people who create, whether technology or business models…
I'm a huge Stephenson fan, but I felt let down by the Diamond Age's ending. It felt like it was missing 30 pages.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#29Started and finished Super Freakonomics on a flight just recently. I enjoyed it a lot.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#30Atlas Shrugged - finally got around to reading it after dozens of recommendations from good friends. Shocking how relevant and prophetic it is, especially with respect to the events of 2009.
*eye roll