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Sylvain Tesson & Alexandre Poussin: The walk in the sky
In the 90s, the two authors decided to cross the Himalaya from East to the West, travelling light and relying on the hospitality of the people they were meeting along the way.
Fascinating book and must read particularly if you are feeling little down in life. I was initially skeptical of the genre, but one of the great books I have read.
2. 100 years of solitude - currently 70% through but the writing and story is superb.
3. Death in the Andes — another Vargas Llosa book. Not as good as Feast of the Goat in my opinion, but gives a good idea of the situation in Peru in the 1980s during the Shining Path insurrection, written after the author’s participation in a government investigation of the murder of several journalists in a remote Peruvian village.
EDIT: spelling
1) The Handmaid’s Tale
2) Off to be the Wizard
3) The Three-Body Problem
4) Good Omens
5) We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
6) American Gods
7) Ready Player One
I really enjoyed all of these, though the Neil Gaiman books are rather long-winded. Ready Player One in particular is something I’d recommend to any geek or 80s movies and music fan. I found myself watching lots of old movies and listening to old music so I’d understand those references I didn’t know.
I’m now quite eager to not read any more about virtual worlds though.
Graphic Novels / comics:
8) Monstress
9) Rat Queens
10) Saga
Monstress and Saga develop really amazing worlds with engaging stories. Read them both. Rat Queens is just good fun.
Coding:
11) Code
Still working my way through, but it’s pretty cool. It goes from Morse code and electrical circuits to more complex code as conceptual fundamentals.
I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but these are the ones that stand out.
- Complete Hyperion Cantos (incl. Endymion series)
- Bad Blood (Still churning through)
Bad Blood is a fascinating read. I'm still in the first quarter, and with this density, the events are well simply amazing to put it lightly.
1) Art of Unix programming - amazing book, lots of "ah-ha" moments. Enlightening is the word I suppose.
2) Mythical man month - very uneven. Some chapters are insightful, some are hopelessly outdated. It's short though so it's not too hard to finish.
3) Flowers for Algernon - meh
4) Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh - fun pop sci, enjoyed it
5) Whatever and Elementary Particles by Houellebecq - really liked them (especially Whatever), but I'm not sure I would recommend them since they're so... dark
Non-fiction: - Factfulness by Hans Rosling - The War on Science by Shawn Otto - Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell - A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan - The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier Fiction: - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson - The Magicians by Lev Grossman The non-fiction books were all incredib…
I'm interested in checking out Basic Economics, but I'm concerned it's very ideologically slanted compared to an undergrad economics textbook. I'm moderately well read in classical political economy (and Marx) but I've heard conflicting reviews over Sowell (the man) and his book.
I was always a Sherlock Holmes fan and really enjoyed the logical detective work. Hercule Poirot felt like just like a pretentious quirky old man, making denouements based on evidence that is flimsy and tenuous at best.
This year, I came across the novels, and boy are they different! The novels give more space for characters to develop and for us to observe the proceedings and deduce clues. Each book felt more like a Whodunit game wrought as a novel. I tried to play detective as the story proceeded. Often the ending was radically different from what I expected, a few were a letdown and a bit lacking in proper evidence. But always, there are entertaining and I had so much fun and I was even right once or twice.
Of course they were written a long time back, but I am happy to discover them now.
If HN community can give me point to even better literature in the same vein, it would be heaven!
1. Pride and Prejudiced by Jane Austen
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
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Brief Interview with Hideous Men - David f Wallace (better)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep -Philip K. Dick (better than I expected)
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick (even better)
The Goal, It's Not Luck, Critical Chain - Goldratt (OK, easy read)
The Phoenix Project - (bad prose, not inspired)
Grimus - Rushdie - (Amazing)
Autobiography of Mark Twain ( oscillating between amazing to boring, worth the effort)
Foundation (the whole series) - Asimov - (ok)
The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker - (Interesting, good read).