Manhattan For Rent, 1785-1850, by Prof Elizabeth Blackmar. Academic study of the rise of private property as an asset in the pre and post colonial era in Manhattan. Not that well written but extremely insightful. Private real property as an income producing asset has a LONG history of course- is the reason there is written history, really, to a first approximation- but Manhattan real property in this time saw a wholesale shift from abundance to deliberately managed scarcity, with all kinds of ramifications echoing even today, including why is there even a Donald Trump, what is driving back to work in COVID, why are housing prices what they are, and so on and so forth. Book is definitely not for everyone, and requires relatively intimate knowledge of Manhattan geography, but the financialization of real property is the F=ma of the human world. Book is a slog but super valuable.
Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
201–210 of 282 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#202Fiction - I started reading the Cosmere universe by Brandon Sanderson.
Mistborn Trilogy, Stormlight Archives, and Warbreaker.
Pick 1 - Start with Warbreaker or Mistborn.
I'm new to fantasy fiction and his writing totally hooked me. I think of "hard" fantasy as a puzzle. The world has a unique physics and the plot of the story is based around characters figuring out how to operate inside of those physics... what are the bounds, how can it be manipulated, etc?
What I've loved about Sanderson is the plot turns are never Ex Machina. Every new development fits inside the rules of the world and deepens your understanding of what can be.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#203Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series. As someone who read a lot of sci-fi, I'm surprised I've discovered it only now. It's considered the Dostoevsky of scifi, very different from golden age hard scifi. Already started books of the Long Sun. Disappointment of the year - The three body problem. Feels like buying on amazon a product with thousand of rave reviews only to realize its all fake Chinese reviews.
BotNS has a final volume that has been out of print for decades: Urth of the New Sun. I was lucky enough to stumble across a copy in a bookstore 20 years ago while on vacation; you can now find plenty of online listings for it. It wraps some things up and further obfuscates some others; in short, it’s Gene Wolfe. It’s less memorable than the main BotNS, but for those who have read that a few times it’s worth picking up.
Long Sun is my current favorite of his, but you should be warned that it’s a very different kind of writing and pacing. The entire first book takes place over the course of only two or three days, and you’re given even less context about the world than in New Sun. The reward for puzzling it out is even bigger IMO, but I’m in the minority here. (And I’ve by no means caught everything.)
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#204Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series. As someone who read a lot of sci-fi, I'm surprised I've discovered it only now. It's considered the Dostoevsky of scifi, very different from golden age hard scifi. Already started books of the Long Sun. Disappointment of the year - The three body problem. Feels like buying on amazon a product with thousand of rave reviews only to realize its all fake Chinese reviews.
Agree on the Three Body Problem. The Sci-Fi elements were interesting enough to finish the book. But the prose and characters are mediocre at best.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#205Pachinko, Three Body Problem
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#206Top 2 so far: * Washington: A life by Ron Chernow * The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson The Washington book is a very detailed by clear overview of his life. Easy to follow (even for complex situations) and very week written. The WW2 book is amazing. Compares the countries fighting in around 20 different areas (technology, leadership, geography, aircraft) and…
Ron Chernow is perhaps too reverential of Washington. Gore Vidal for example had a much more critical view of Washington. Some claim that the War of Independence streched out for many many years only because of Washington's incompetence.
He made some big mistakes at the beginning. What mistakes did he make in later years (I’m not too familiar with after 1776)
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#207- Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico by Hugh Thomas , because he brings history to life and the story of the Spanish and the Mexica is stranger than fiction, more subtle and terrible than you might think, and has many lessons on human behavior applicable to today. - Ecclesiastes by Qoheleth: In my opinion, superior to Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. "Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink you…
Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the bible. Timeless in the questions it poses.
Even post-Christianity, I still revisit it. Is everything actually meaningless?Even if so, it's still worth living life today.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once studied the map of Charon and asked myself who is Octavia Butler? Guess what Xenogenesis was about. Next I recalled Cherryh's Foreigner series and then searched my mind palace for the works of Le Guin and found The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World Is Forest.
Xenogenesis, now being published under the title Lilith’s Brood, is about colonization, coercion, identity. Missing all of that because sex—and more importantly the changing nature of the humans’ desires—plays a large role in the work is missing the forest for the trees.
Who told you I missed anything?
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#209I didn’t read a single book. I deployed to production nearly 2000 times instead.
Not sure I personally understand the point you're making. Are reading and deploying to production activities that are mutually exclusive in your life?
Time spent reading books is time not spent deploying. The only thing that matters is deploying.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?
#210Dune books 1-4 I tried reading book 5 (heretics of dune) but lost interest after around 100 pages due to the sheer number of different characters that I couldn’t keep track of!
I stopped halfway through book 4. Was content with the first sub-trilogy and found it lost a lot of the appeal as I got deep in. They started to feel like totally different books the further in I got.