Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter Fiasco - Stanislaw Lem
Been wanting to read "Godel ..." for years. Care to elaborate a bit on why it's a favorite?
Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
21–30 of 231 posts
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#22House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall
How was Raw Shark? I heard it praised as being an ergodic piece, but the preview I read seemed fairly straightforward.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#23Technical: Paradigms Of Artificial Intelligence Programming by Peter Norvig
Fiction: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#24"Spies" by Michael Frayn, "Words and Music" by Paul Morley.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#25The Story of Civilization; 11 volumes of pure joy. Will and Ariel Durant will make you fall in love with mankind. The most humanist take on history I have read. I read them over 6 years and I still live under the Durants' spell. Exquisite and delightful read.
Muqadimat Ibn Khaldun. History, Sociology, Political Science, Scientific Empiricism, Theology, Superstition, Gossip, Leadership, Trivia .. it's everything. It feels like a collaboration between the Grim brothers, Karl Marx, Douglas Adams and Plato. People well versed in Islamic history will get the most out of it. It's a book written by a scientist for a religious and superstitious audience. You can see him walk the fine line, appeasing his princely sponsors while speaking his mind. It's full of code-language written for a better enlightened generation while accommodating the religious and cultural beliefs of his era. Read his biography and you should see bits and pieces of Rousseau; a hypocritical, pan-handling snob who makes his living saying one thing, and living his life doing another .. while still being a fucking genius :-D
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#26Nassim Nicholas Taleb -- The Black Swan Sun Tzu -- The Art of War Lao Tzu -- Tao Te Ching
I found the black swan to be unfinishable. It started very (even extremely) well, but then got a lot worse quite rapidly. His attempt to create a structure around anecdotes from his life (and of his acquaintances) does not really work and at times his writing is ego-centric to the point of vulgarity.
The main problem however is that it would be much better (for the reader) condensed down as a long essay. Although many books in the genre are essentially essays flanneled out into books, the problem is particularly acute in The Black Swan.
Sun Tzu, which edition/translation?
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#27"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes (the short story, not the novel)
"The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#28Best non-fiction book I've ever read: http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.com/
One of the best fiction books I've ever read: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Tuner-Daniel-Mason/dp/0375414657
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#29Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter Fiasco - Stanislaw Lem
Been wanting to read "Godel ..." for years. Care to elaborate a bit on why it's a favorite?
I first read it years ago, 1979 or 1980. It was the first time I ever thought about how math related to music, art and nature. I had never heard of recursion or self-reference, never programmed a machine to do anything, never thought about how it could be done, or why I might want to do it.
So the book opened up new worlds for me. It changed the way I think.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#30Nassim Nicholas Taleb -- The Black Swan Sun Tzu -- The Art of War Lao Tzu -- Tao Te Ching
2 == 3 for any sufficiently large value of '2' :)