Victor Hugo ~ Les Misérables
An amazing book. Read it twice already, and the 3rd time isn't too far away I think.
Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
81–90 of 313 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#82The Art of War - Sun Tzu
Seriously? I've often seen this book recommended, but I just can't figure out what people find in it. Care to share?
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#83I was so incredibly tempted to put 'Twilight' down and wait for the lynch mob, but then realized that the Reddit color scheme is different. This year was solely devoted to pleasure reading. Neal Stephenson's REAMDE was quite good, although I imagine everybody on HN has read it, as Neal is practically a Valley institution. The original 'Starship Troopers' by Ray Bradbury was also a good read, and easy to miss if you'r…
Did you mean Robert Heinlein? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
Damnit, yes, thanks. I now feel a bit stupid. I dug through a mixed stack of Bradbury, Heinlein, and Niven earlier in the year, so who-wrote-what is a bit mixed up in my brain.
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#84Born to run by Christopher McDougall
Read it in the beginning of this year when I was starting to run, very inspiring. And look, I'm still running!
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#85"The 4-Hour Body", by Tim Ferriss.
Because of that book, within 3 months I went from running completely out of breath after 2 minutes of running, to finishing a half-marathon in 2 hours. And during the prior 3 months, I had lost 15 kilos by following the "slow-carb diet" described in the book.
Reading it seemed to flip a switch in my brain: before, I would think of my body as something I had little control over, while after, I saw it as not only something I had full control over, but as something I could hack. I've also followed up on quite a few of the product recommendations in the book (e.g. Inov-8 trainers, Aqua Sphere goggles, etc), and have yet to be disappointed.
That said, the book does come with a heavy dose of Tim's pointless boasting, half-assed chapters (e.g. the polyphasic sleep or the baseball batting ones), and far more conjecture than a book of that sort should have.
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#86I enjoyed "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, an anthropoligical look at the history of money, morality and the nature of debt.
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#87The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind - Julian Jaynes
Very Powerful Read!
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#88It has to be Java Concurrency in Practice. Even though it has Java in its name I think every programmer should read this.
Other books I absolutely loved are Effective Java 2 and Programming Interviews Exposed. I'm waiting for Amazon to ship me the second edition of the latter.
Hackers and Painters is a classic I default to whenever I'm looking for inspiration.
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#89I can't really decide, but here are a few of my favorites.
* Song of Ice and Fire series. I never really liked fantasy but this series is wonderful. The TV-series (Game of Thrones) is okay but a far cry from the books.
* The Pragmatic Programmer. The best programming book I've seen. A must read for programmers I'd say.
* Introduction to Algorithms. Haven't really gone through it but so far it's been great.
Re: Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
#90Onward by Howard Schultz
Howard has returned to CEO post at Starbucks just before the crisis of 2008. A great story about turnaround effort.