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Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

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Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#41

Post by atulatul »

gadders wrote: post #19
atulatul wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to add a few lines about Sapiens? Plan to read it. But only tentatively.

How would you read it tentatively? Just a couple of pages at a time and then stop?

:) I was rather hoping that reading a single page (instead of a couple of pages) and then stopping would qualify.

Anyway, what I meant was that the plan was tentative. (I have read Guns, Germs and Steel and a few reviews seemed to liken Sapiens to that book. So was looking for some other perspectives.)

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#42

Post by egonschiele »

calebm wrote: post #30

* The Unconsoled (Kazuo Ishiguro) * Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) * Influx (Daniel Suarex) * Sputnik Sweetheart (Haruki Murakami) * Apex (Ramez Naam) * One Second After (William R. Forstchen) * Anna Karanina (Leo Tolstoy) * Neuromancer (William Gibson) * A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway) * Crux (Ramez Naam) * A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) * Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World (Haruki Murakami)

Seconding Murakami. The Remains Of The Day is the best book I read this year. It talks through a lot of ideas I see get mentioned on HN.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#43

Post by atulatul »

alexwilde wrote: post #22
atulatul wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to add a few lines about Sapiens? Plan to read it. But only tentatively.

Sapiens opened my eyes to social constructs and human behavior and forced me to think about the vast timeline of humanity and how small our time is within it. Personally it provoked a re-visit to the philosophical questioning of life.

Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#44

Post by legohead »

* Currently reading: Edgedancer

* Flowers for Algernon

* Going Rogue: Spells, Swords, & Stealth

* Split the Party: Spells, Swords, & Stealth

* NPCs

* Children of Time

* Death's End

* The Shining

* IT

* All 7+1 books of The Dark Tower

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#47

Post by jamestimmins »

Recommend:

1) The Power Broker - About Robert Moses, the most powerful city planner in New York from the 1930s to the 1960s. Great if you're interested in city planning, how people gain and exercise power, and the real politik of government.

2) The Jungle - Remembered as an exposé of meatpacking, but really more than that. Phenomenal story about early 20th immigrants to Chicago trying to take part in the American Dream but struggling to survive. Surprisingly relevant today.

3) The Big Con - Fascinating look at con artists in the first half of the 20th century.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#48

Post by fragmede »

These are all hard sci-fi, and much like Dark Mirror, given today's troubles, it's simultaneously entertaining while being intellectually stimulating, but in a way that feels relevant, even if not immediately actionable.

The first is what got me hooked, and back into reading.

The Wages of Humanity, is a short story by Liu Cixin. The short story used to be available by itself on Amazon, but now it's been disappeared[1]. It can be found as the last story in The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection.[2]

An assassin is being offered exorbitant sum to kill the three poorest people for some reason, and the book explores why, to a thrilling conclusion.

Since I found it as a stand alone story I cannot comment on the rest of the books in that collection. From there I read into The Three Body Problem[3], and Dark Forest by Liu Cixin; first two books of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The only reason I don't mention I have not (yet) finished reading the third book.

[1] This link now returns a 404: https://amazon.com/dp/B00CSW0UZI but it's what the URL my Kindle points to. Search does not find the stand alone edition.

[2] https://amazon.com/dp/B00CXUKNA2

[3] https://amazon.com/dp/B00IQO403K

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#49

Post by Scalestein »

jasonkester wrote: post #34
kiddico wrote: post #11

I finally got around to reading Dune. I burned though it pretty quickly and loved it. For some reason I can't get into the other books in the series. For now they mock me from their spot on my bookshelf...

It's still openly debated, but the generally accepted Best Order to read the Dune Novels is as follows: Dune, followed by a 1-5 year pause, followed by Dune. Repeat until death. You may, if you wish, throw in the first hundred pages of a different Dune novel every ten years or so, just to remind you of the correct sequence.

Oh man, I feel like Dune Messiah (dune 2) is such a fantastic compliment to the original. It is about half the length and has such a different tone that makes the original even better.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?

#50

Post by arkades »

jasonkester wrote: post #34
kiddico wrote: post #11

I finally got around to reading Dune. I burned though it pretty quickly and loved it. For some reason I can't get into the other books in the series. For now they mock me from their spot on my bookshelf...

It's still openly debated, but the generally accepted Best Order to read the Dune Novels is as follows: Dune, followed by a 1-5 year pause, followed by Dune. Repeat until death. You may, if you wish, throw in the first hundred pages of a different Dune novel every ten years or so, just to remind you of the correct sequence.

I feel like you wrote this in jest, but just happened to be 100% correct.
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