I'd have to recommend 'A deepness in the sky' and 'A fire upon the deep' by Vernor Vinge. Both really good science fiction books where your initial perception is slowly shown to be incorrect as more details appear about the characters, and with great storylines. Despite being thick tomes with small print, I got through both reasonably quickly as they were so addictive to read - 'just one more chapter', etc...
Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
81–90 of 307 posts
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#82"Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter
A beautiful multidisciplinary dive into number theory, self-reference, consciousness art and much more. It's written in the spirit of Lewis Carroll. Really enjoying it right now
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#83Cory Doctorow: Little Brother. It shows what kind of dystopian surveillance world we might live in few years and how to fight back.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#84I personally hate self improvement books/management, so here are some narrative books that I loved and got lost in 1) The tiger's wife - To me it has a brilliant full universe. Its comprised of a overarching narrative broken up with lots of short stories. 2) night watch/ making money / going postal - terry pratchett Fun stories with full characters. 3) THe pigeon tunnels - john le carre, Again composed of short stori…
I just read "A hat full of stars" yesterday evening. I can recommend all discworld books. But this one was especially moving. Now that I know that Terry was a advocate for assisted dying, I finally understand the alegory at the end of the book. Moved me to tears.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#85Strange not to found it here yet:
Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
What's better than to have a good laugh, even if already read it, is always a nice book. And if you finish it fast, you have the rest of the series ahead.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#86It is already 6 years old. I had a great time reading it when a friend recommended it to me about 3 years ago: The Circle by Dave Eggers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel) And do yourself a favour, never watch the movie version from 2017. The end has been butchered which ruins the whole message of the story.
Didn't realise it was a novel, but I second not watching the movie.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#87Perhaps the most important book I've ever read is Difficult Conversations, by Douglas Stone. It's possible that my life is 10-20% easier since I read it, with zero hyperbole. It's not a breezy quick read, but my favourite sci-fi is always likely to be Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson.
Is Cryptonomicon even sci-fi? I mean, Stephenson is known for the genre, and certainly it will appeal to genre fans, but it's not actually set in the future... I totally second the recommendation, though.
One of the characters is actually an immortal alchemist - though that might not be obvious just from Cryptonomicon.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#88Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett.
It's actually a triology (Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus). It comes in omnibus format now but will not take a long time to get through.
Not a difficut or life changing read - just a good time, with good characters, doing things you haven't read about before.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#89I recently decided to do all my presentations (work related) by drawing/sketching (No slides). People love the clarity and interactions. A really good friend and business partner suggested me Dan Roam and his books. I'm loving it. Check out his books https://www.danroam.com
This sounds really interesting — do you mean on a whiteboard in the meeting room or bringing pre-prepped material?
Yes on Whiteboards, I usually carry a bunch of whiteboard markers (many colors). In special cases, I include post-it notes.
I also tend to sketch/scribble a lot during meetings. They usually end up being the meeting notes. People take pictures of them to relate back later.
Re: Ask HN: Recommend one book I need to read this summer?
#90In the wake of new attempts to "ban encryption", I'd recommend reading Crypto by Steven Levy (2001). https://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto
The Code Book [0] by Simon Singh (1999) is another famed popular science book that offers a non-technical introduction to cryptography and its history, there's also an indie game [1] Cypher by Matthew Brown (2018) inspirited by the book.