Fahrenheit 451
Animal Farm
The Gene: An Intimate History
The Martian
Currently reading Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. I would recommend all these books, if you're interested in the subjects they are written about.
Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
81–90 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#821. Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem - I've been on a giant math books kick. I really enjoyed Simon Singh's other book, The Code Book, so this one is awesome. 2. The Code Book - If you're really into the history of cryptography, this book is for you. 3. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Not a really a revelatory book by any sorts. But a fun read. 4. The Handmaid's…
"I've been on a giant math books kick" Any other math books recommendations?
Yup! Making my way through Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea right now. It's a little more "pop math" than Fermat's Enigma or The Code Book.
I also have The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and Elliptic Tales on my to-read list once I wrap up Zero.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#83- The Road to Character (David Brooks)
- Code (Charles Petzold)
- Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual (John Z. Sonmez)
- Zero Bugs and Program Faster (Kate Thompson)
- Daemon (Daniel Suarez)
- Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions (Brian Christian)
- How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (Leil Lowndes)
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#84This year I read: 1. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer - A steampunk graphic novel about Ada Lovelace and Charlie Babbage. Fun story with loads of research to back it up. Got even better when I got to go the UK and explore the places they worked at in their livetimes 2. The Hardware Hacker - A compilation of storis by bunnie focused on the hardware/maker(i…
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck is a cringy read, I couldn't get past the first chapter. Deep Work as a whole can be summarized in a sentence. My interpretation is: put away distractions and focus on getting things done. There's other advice there but none of it is anything you haven't heard of before. CODE is great on the other hand. Just skip the nonsense self-help stuff.
I agree with your assessment about "Deep Work" but I still recommend folks to read it, just to reiterate what you probably already know. I think it helps us remind ourselves to focus on our life, when there are so many distractions.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#85The full list: https://gitlab.com/rlease/Books My list lines up with a lot of books that people have recommended here, so I'll try to add a few favorites that haven't been mentioned so far. Fiction: 1. Ubik - I read a bunch of Philip K. Dick this year, but this was my favorite. It's delightfully mind bending and left me thinking about it long after the book was done. 2. All the Pretty Horses - Beautifully written. Mc…
That's impressive! How do you manage to read so much?
I plan to write a bit about that when I finish (Dec 27 will mark one year from when I started). Here are a couple things I noticed:
1) This was my big goal for the year. One book a week that I've never read, instead of getting in better shape, learning a new hobby, etc. Judging from prior experience, it felt difficult, but doable.
2) It was mostly about time management. This was either accomplished with reading incrementally (infrequent) or bingeing over a weekend (frequent). I think if I was going to do it over, I would shift most of the reading into the first couple months of the year where the weather is dreary and not conducive to being outside.
3) Cheating. I've had books (like GEB) on the list the whole year that I haven't gotten to because I knew that they would slow me down and ruin the average. When I would read something that I couldn't get through quickly, I would make up for that by reading books I knew I would plow through quickly. You can see that more towards the end of the year.
4) I truly enjoy reading, and it's something I'd rather do than many other forms of entertainment. This helps immensely when deciding to devote a large amount of time to it.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#86Here is my list: https://kirubakaran.com/bookshelf/ My 2017 favorites: scifi: https://kirubakaran.com/bookshelf/columbus-day/ nonfic: https://kirubakaran.com/bookshelf/data-science-from-scratch/ fiction: https://kirubakaran.com/bookshelf/everyone-burns/
Hi Kirubakaran, I'm going to give Columbus Day a try. What software do you use for your bookshelf? It does a good job. I've been tracking my reading habits via Goodreads for a few years too, although I just post a summary at the end of the year. https://www.michevan.id.au/tag/books/
Hi Evan, thanks! :-)
I use Hugo [1]. Like you, I too track my books on Goodreads. So I wrote a simple Python script to add an org file to Hugo, for each book. It is an easy set up. Please send me an email (in my profile) if you're interested and I'll share the script with you.
I strongly recommend the audiobook version of Columbus Day, if you can do that.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#87Pretty popular and not a niche book, but I enjoyed Give and Take by Adam Grant very much [0].
- [0] https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-give-and-take/
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#88This year I read 31 books. Only 8 were non-fiction. I'm hoping to finish another 2 before the year ends.
My top 3 were.
1. The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. This series did a good job of balancing big and little picture, while givings us a neat form of magic to learn about.
2. Stock Market Cash Flow from the RDPD series. In 2016 I had read several books on fundamental(or value) investing, and this book helped me bust out of the thinking that, that style is the only way to look at, and earn in the stock market.
3. Snow Crash. This book was just fun. The characters were enjoyable to watch, and there was some clever stuff in this book.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I've been on a giant math books kick" Any other math books recommendations?
Yup! Making my way through Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea right now. It's a little more "pop math" than Fermat's Enigma or The Code Book. I also have The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and Elliptic Tales on my to-read list once I wrap up Zero.
Awesome! I'll check them out. (Read The Man Who Loved Only Numbers already, it's great).
If you're looking for something else, "Journey Through Genius" is absolutely the best semi-pop-science Math book. It's premise is that it goes through about 10 of the most interesting proofs in mathematics, giving their history and context, then the actual proof.
It does what few other "pop" books attempt - it actually gives the real proof, taking you through all the steps. If you work it, you come away actually knowing how to prove the various things there. More interestingly, it gives the original historic proof, which is not what you always encounter. It even tends to explain the problems with the original proof, if any. And since it gives the history, you learn a lot.
It's by far my favorite non-textbook math book, and I can't recommend it more highly if you're into that sort of thing.
Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I finished Dune about 2 months ago, and I'm currently a quarter through Dune Messiah. It so far is a great compliment and progression, and I constantly fight the desire to look up what happens because I want to know now.
I had the same feeling with The Hunger Games. The first one is amazing, the second starts to be repetitive. Didn't manage to get to the third one.