Some while ago I reread Richard Dawkins's The Extended Phenotype, which he has referred to as his favorite work. You could say it's the logical follow up on The Selfish Gene, quite technical and expert-oriented, but Dawkins is such a talented and lucid writer that anyone with enough intellectual thirst can follow the arguments. I regard it a piece of philosophy as much as a textbook about evolution.
Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
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Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#62Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - 3 or 4, including very recently. The latest time I appreciated his background as a writer and the stories behind the story much more. They’re worth a reread as adults. On the business side I read Deming’s Out of the Crisis several times. The ideas are profound but the writing is mediocre so it took a few times for it to stick.
Check the commentary on LoTR military tactics, hardware, etc on https://acoup.blog/, it's a hell of a rabbit hole to fall into :)
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#63Good Night Moon - 187 times The Cat In The Hat - 200 times The Very Hungry Caterpillar - 85 times But seriously, im on my third re-read of Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, In my opinion its the best book about leadership ever written.
The secret of writing childrens' books is to write something that an adult can read 200 times without going insane. You've got to put in something that the adults will smile at.
For slightly older children, try "The Bravest Ever Bear".
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#64Anna Karenina, 3x in two translations
Skunk Works
Intelligent Investor
Man Who Was Thursday
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#65When I've needed to laugh I've read and reread:
Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" and "Roughing It" as well as many short stories, esp. "My Watch", "Political Economy", "Journalism in Tennessee"
Also short stories from others: J.S. Perelman's "Strictly From Hunger", Alex Atkinson's "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You"
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#66The book I've read the most times is Three Little Pigs or "the wolf book" as my son used to request it just about every night for an extended period of time. Children's books dominate my most read list. And they are very important books because what's important about reading a book is mostly the experience of reading and less about the content.
The content of a book isn't static. The content is a collaboration between the words on the page and the churning and whirring in the reader's head which isn't just churning and whirring because of the book and so varies from moment to moment and varies a lot from decade to decade.
Which is why children want to hear the same story every night and why young readers often read Harry Potter several times rather than always seeking novelty in new books. Which was how I was as an early reader of science fiction.
Then for several decades I sought the novelty of new books mostly. Largely because that's how I thought of myself as an adult reader...and then one day I read The Hobbit for the umpteenth time, but the first time since I was a child and out loud because my child was a child. It reads aloud very well and that inspired me to start rereading LoTR (for the O(n * umpteen)th time and it's the literary equivalent of a 200 slide slide deck...but I digress.
The big thing is rereading is not reading the same book because of how much I've changed. I'm a much more experienced reader. Even excluding children's books I've probably read close to a hundred books through more than once.
I read Blood Meridian cover to cover and then immediately reread the whole thing on two separate occasions about twenty years apart.
All four times it was different.
To me that's a good proxy for importance.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#67The Underachiever's Manifesto: The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great
and
The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#68Catch-22. It's not at all related to tech, but it's the funniest book I've ever read and I feel it helps keep me grounded.
I second this one. A book good both for laughs and for a cynical but not entirely inaccurate look at organizations and human behavior.
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#69All the Ian M Banks Culture series.
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Re: Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?
#70Good Night Moon - 187 times The Cat In The Hat - 200 times The Very Hungry Caterpillar - 85 times But seriously, im on my third re-read of Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, In my opinion its the best book about leadership ever written.
HAHA yes!
add Gruffalo, Room on the broom and Snail and the wale for me