Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#21

Post by wenc » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:26 AM UTC

SubGenius wrote: post #14

I read through most of PG Wodehouse this year. 'Ukridge' is perhaps the funniest collection of stories ever written, it's magic. I love all the books set in Blandings. While the Jeeves books were not my favorite when I was younger, I really really enjoy them now.

I've always been a fan the Jeeves series -- Blandings not so much.

I also like the Psmith books. I need to try Ukridge.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#22

Post by yla92 » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:28 AM UTC

Finished reading The Three-Body Problem (Book 1) and it's such a fascinating read!

https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Remembrance-Earths...

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#23

Post by 2f0ja » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:32 AM UTC

yla92 wrote: post #22

Finished reading The Three-Body Problem (Book 1) and it's such a fascinating read! https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Remembrance-Earths...

book 2 (the dark forest) is probably my favorite piece of scifi of all time! stick with the series if you like it. there is also a canon 4th book written by a different author that puts a really nice bow on the series.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#24

Post by ajmurmann » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:32 AM UTC

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #12

Currently reading Accelerando[0] as a result of recommendations from prior HN book reading threads. Still in the first, Manfred Macx, section, but I look forward to settling down on the couch with it when I have the opportunity. [0]: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...

I loved the beginning and then liked it less and less as it moves not into three future and becomes more fantastical. I eventually stopped reading. The same thing happened to me with Rudy Rucker's Postsingular.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#25

Post by molsongolden » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:32 AM UTC

hsdropout wrote: post #10

The Water Knife. ISBN 978-0-385-35287-1 Dystopian-future novel with a backdrop of water scarcity in the western United States. A "water knife" is a name for a security contractor who enforces water rights...

The Windup Girl (also by Bacigalupi) is interesting too.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#26

Post by miqkt » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:35 AM UTC

The last impactful one on me was Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.

Definitely disrupted my perspective on work and the monotonous, sometimes futile, insanity that some of us subject ourselves to in order to make a living.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#27

Post by atomicnature » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:36 AM UTC

David Bohm's

- Thought as a System

- On Dialogue

These are great books for removing mental fog, confusion, about the nature of our existence. They have great healing value, allowing us to integrate the world around and within us. They can also help in dealing with practical challenges in how we run organisations, develop teams, and in general help people cooperate together. It is a kind of "red pill" to enter the matrix :)

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#28

Post by voisin » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:38 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #5

"Empire of the Summer Moon" https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful... This would make an epic miniseries!

It is an Apple movie coming out shortly with Leonardo DiCaprio, or am I mistaken?

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#29

Post by ajmurmann » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:40 AM UTC

Invisible China by Scott Rozelle. The book focuses on rural China and it's challenges. The gist of the book is that countries generally move from low to middle income by doing cheap labor. The move from middle to high income requires a educated workforce. If you don't have enough educated workers across the board you fall into the middle income trap where you have large structural unemployment and get high crime. This happened to Mexico and Brazil for example. China's rural population struggles with a low education level. The author investigated why. The answers come down to a mix of health issues, lack of education on how to raise babies, dysfunction in the education system and the houku system.

Short interesting read for anyone interested in China or development economics. The book does a great job composting to other countries and showing that way how development works and doesn't.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#30

Post by paragraft » Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 4:42 AM UTC

Somewhat (by a few decades) behind the times here, but I finally found a set of Robert Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson books at a 2nd-hand shop earlier this year. What a ride. I know it's a famous series, but I'm outside the US and so only recently became aware of its existence, and also therefore went in mostly blind as to the subject (I knew very little of LBJ prior). Am partway through the 2nd book now, with the conclusion of the 1948 Texan Senate Democratic primary, and my mouth just sort of hung open for pages at a time during that.

Caro's a talented writer, but what really shows through is just the sheer years of hard work he clearly put into the books. I don't know how one can focus for so many years on just one writing project.