Ask HN: Books you read in 2016? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#301

Post by adavis32 » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

Here is a partial list of the books I read this year. These are all books that stood out to me which I enjoyed:

Fiction Books:

* Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

* Homeworld, Out of the Black (books 3 & 4 in the Odyssey One series) by Evan Currie

* Furies of Calderon, Academ’s Fury (1 & 2 of the Codex Alera series) by Jim Butcher

* The Aeronaut’s Windlass also by Jim Butcher

* The Queen of Zamba by L. Sprague de Camp

* Giant of World's End by Lin Carter

* Batgirl of Burnside (graphic novel)

Non-fiction Books:

* Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle - the 1st of his books chronicling American soldiers in World War 2

* Vagrant Viking by Peter Freuchen - auto-biography of the Danish explorer/Nazi resistance fighter/writer/film-maker

* Voices of 1776 by Richard Wheeler - the Revolutionary war in the words of people who were there.

The non-fiction books surprised me because I really enjoyed all of them and I usually only read fiction or technical books. The Odyssey One books by Evan Currie also stood out to me because I found the first one for a low price on Kindle and I was blown away by the story.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#302

Post by gedrap » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 5:22 AM UTC

cholantesh wrote: post #211

gedrap wrote: post #22

- Introductory Statistics with R by Dalgaard, Peter. A solid introduction to stats, don't be scared by R bit in the title - it contains plenty of maths/theory so that knowledge is widely applicable. Brilliant introductory for everyone who wants to do something stats related. It's amazing how much can be done with no fancy deep learning algorithms, just plain simple stats. - Statistics Done Wrong by Alex Reinhart. Ple…

>- Introductory Statistics with R by Dalgaard, Peter. If one is new to R, would this text be a good intro to the language?

Yes, the first chapter or two is dedicated to the basics of R (syntax, etc).

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#303

Post by karan_dev » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC

Here is list of books i read in 2016 - https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2016/15676150

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#304

Post by noufalibrahim » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 7:00 AM UTC

1. Red Plenty (Francis Spufford) - Fascinating fictionalised account of the history of the USSR. Gets a little tedious at times but worth it.

2. Anils Ghost (Michael Ondaatje) - Drama with a war background. Nice read.

3. Financial intelligence for Entrepreneurs - Very useful now that I have a small company of my own.

4. How to Speak How to listen (Mortimer Adler) - Worth it. I enjoy public speaking and this was well written and quite useful.

2016's been a bad year for me as far as books go.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#305

Post by rekwah » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 7:41 AM UTC

I've created a goodreads list[0] for top-level comment recommendations. However, it appears a user may only vote for a max of 100 books per list[1]. So, additional contributors welcome!

[0] - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/106689.Ask_HN_Books_you_...

[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1060933-listopia-list-l...

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#306

Post by leandot » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 8:38 AM UTC

fokz wrote: post #266

leandot wrote: post #256

Tech: Relevant Search, Clojure for the Brave and True Personal: The Subtle Art of not Giving a f*ck Sci-Fi: Red Rising Fantasy: Powder Mage, Age of Myth And a plug, but on topic - book mentions on HN: http://hackernewsbooks.com

Is "The Subtle Art of not Giving a f*ck" good? In what way does it affect you?

I found it really good, if you haven't, just read it and experience it for yourself. For me couple of things really stuck:

- choose carefully what you give a f*ck about, but when you do, do it right

- there will always be problems, deal with them and move on, it's your own responsibility.

- the constant pursuit of a positive experience is in itself a negative experience, acceptance of a negative experience is a positive experience

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#307

Post by urza » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 8:57 AM UTC

Highlights:

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

When Three Worlds Collide

Permutation City

The Story of Human Body

Incognito: the secret life of your brain

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#308

Post by mullsork » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 9:21 AM UTC

gedrap wrote: post #26

mullsork wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the first one (Introductory Statistics) what would you say the pre-requisites are? I'm not much of a mathematician, in fact I might even need to brush up on high school math by now, but I've thought about statistics for a while now. Is it approachable or would I have to study up to college level?

It is very approachable. If you know the difference between mean and median then you know enough to study the book. It is written as a textbook for graduate biology students to help with their research, so it doesn't assume much mathematical knowledge. It also contains exercises (with answers) at the end of each chapter, really helps to consolidate the newly acquired knowledge.

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#309

Post by mullsork » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 10:40 AM UTC

tartuffe78 wrote: post #74

- "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke. I usually can't read a book after seeing the movie or show, but the BBC version was so good and I read reviews that they left out quite a bit. The book definitely had a lot more detail, and was even more entertaining. - "Flash for Freedom" by George McDonald Fraser. A part of series of historical fiction starring Harry Flashman, a cowardly degenerate who always end…

I want to plug the series "V Plague" by Dirk Patton if you're into post apocalypse stuff. Linguistically it might not be brilliant but I've not been stuck in a series of books like that since Harry Potter as a kid. They take about 4-5 hours to finish per book.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#310

Post by cholantesh » Fri, Dec 23, 2016, 1:45 PM UTC

gedrap wrote: post #302

cholantesh wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- Introductory Statistics with R by Dalgaard, Peter. If one is new to R, would this text be a good intro to the language?

Yes, the first chapter or two is dedicated to the basics of R (syntax, etc).

Great; thanks, will add it to the reading list. I took a statistics course this past summer, but it was poorly taught and used Minitab as a package. Hopefully self-study with this text will be better.