211–220 of 459 posts
Been a year of re-reads and some classics I never started b/c of thickness. Standouts for me were “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Norwegian Wood.” “Kafka on The Shore”, “Norwegian Wood” - Haruki Murakami “A Tale of Two Cities” - Dickens “Count of Monte Cristo” - Alexandre Dumas LotR, “Hobbit” - Tolkien “World Atlas of Coffee” - James Hoffmann “Anathem”, “Diamond Age”, “Termination Shock” - Neal Stephenson “A Timeless Way…
Been a year of re-reads and some classics I never started b/c of thickness. Standouts for me were “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Norwegian Wood.” “Kafka on The Shore”, “Norwegian Wood” - Haruki Murakami “A Tale of Two Cities” - Dickens “Count of Monte Cristo” - Alexandre Dumas LotR, “Hobbit” - Tolkien “World Atlas of Coffee” - James Hoffmann “Anathem”, “Diamond Age”, “Termination Shock” - Neal Stephenson “A Timeless Way…
The Gulag Archipelago is on my shelf, when I rotate back to Russian authors (big fan of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov) I will hopefully get to it. Here's my log for 2025, most recent at the top. Currently I am slogging my way through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" which I'm not a fan of. Halfway done with it though! Gabrielle Zevin, "The Hole We're In" (not my usual genre, enjoyed this though) Robert A. Heinlei…
I read the whole series as a teenager, and loved it - especially the way he was able to wrap up the entire series at the end.
> The Gulag Archipelago I did read it a few years ago, that's very though and it describes in a very technical way how gulags worked. In hindsight I'm not sure it was the best way to do it. If you liked it tho, id suggest the two kravchenko books on the trials, Rudolph Hess book (very interesting), Simon Sebag Montefiore book on Stalin. I can provide many more about this kind of subject, I found that fascinating for…
While We're Young - KL Walther's gender-flipped Ferris Bueller-like, picked up on a whim during a minor existential crisis (it's completely different from my usual fare). What it says on the tin. The sex scene at the end is only slightly less uncomfortable than the one at the end of Contact Harvest. However, combined with a read-through of Edward Bloor's Tangerine, there's a fascinating comparative lit angle to approach them from. They feature starkly different illustrations of the American suburb, perhaps a useful analogue of the real-life and fraught disconnect between the stable and comfortable and uprooted and desperate Americas. Both stories feature intertwined families; one story is focused on matters of love and the other is focused on matters of violence. Perhaps I was just touched by my personal experience with both dynamics.
Death of the Demon (a Hanne Wilhelmsen novel by Anne Holt) - Really enjoyed this Scandinavian Ghost in the Shell fanfic.
I haven't, but has anyone read "If anyone builds it everyone dies"? I'd be interested in a HN discussion on it.
Hank Green had an interesting discussion with one of the authors, Nate Soares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CKuiuc5cJM
side-note: i wager that the engagement bait title of the video was generated by AI, which is humorous to me in this context
Outlive by Attia - wouldn’t take everything he says as gospel but he helped me focus on what is really important in health and fitness and why
I am a Strange Loop by Hofstadter - trying to get a grasp on Gödels incompleteness theorem, but this book is a lot more. I particularly enjoyed the bits about Albert Schweitzer, and the chapter on his late wife, how we host the souls of others crudely on our own hardware. Helpful book in the age of AI.
The Man from the Future by Bhattacharya, a Von Neumann biography. Really helped understand the context of this great man’s achievements.
On the Edge by Silver. The signal and the noise was a lot better (which I read last year)
Benjamin Franklin by Isaacson. Fascinating renaissance man, interesting tour through US history
Can’t Hurt Me by Goggins. This book helped me through some emotionally difficult times and has some really great life advice (mixed with some really self-destructive behavior)
The Misbehavior of Markets by Mandelbrot, Hudson. Currently reading this, so far pretty fascinating
Sci-fi nerd recommendations follow. I binged the entirety of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The cover, & the fact that it was on Kindle Unlimited, made me think it was probably cheap crap, but I was impressed with how well-written it was, and how much I empathized with the characters. (I probably should have read it slower; by the last two books, I was just flowing with the text, not paying as much attention to the…
The payoff is worth it, IMO.
Abundance (great)
Anxious generation (great)
Ishmael (great)
Who we are and how we got here (great)