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Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

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Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#81

Post by fuzztester »

yannis wrote: post #48
zi_ wrote: post #11

"From the soil: Foundations of Chinese Society" by Fei Xiaotong. It is a book (accessible to non-chinese) that helps one understand a population of >1.4 billion in less than 180 pages. Wouldn’t one call this a bargain? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/134293.From_the_Soil

I am not sure about the bargain part. It is a window in the roots of Chinese society and mainly its relation to rural communities and villages (from a sociology perspective). I would recommend it to anyone trying to understand a society based on its people and not its politicians. Also anyone from a rural small town in the US or any other country, I think will enjoy it.

Your comment reminded me of this book:

The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, which I read many years ago, as a teenager or young adult.

I was quite moved by it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Earth

Excerpt:

[ The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a 20th-century Chinese village in Anhwei. It is the first book in her House of Earth trilogy, continued in Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. ]

It is only today that I got to know, due to googling for the links, that she won both the Pulitzer prize and the Nobel prize for Literature, partly for that book.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#82

Post by snapplebobapple »

edanm wrote: post #80
snapplebobapple wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't run into any others quite like him where the physics is hard enough that i dont get some of it, yet the stoeytell(ng is also decent enoigh i can connect with the charcters

Well not every author has helped develop actual mathematical proofs. :)

They shoyld really get on that eh

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#83

Post by Swalden123 »

ctrw wrote: post #79
n2dasun wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that htdp.org?

No that's sicp chapter 4 and 5. Again I have no idea why no one talks about those. They are the most mind bending parts of the book.

I’ve been looking forward to getting to that part.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#84

Post by md1348 »

"The Algorithm Design Manual" by Skiena to prep for algo interviews, in case hiring picks up again.

"The Two Towers" by Tolkien, I last read them in high school and wanted to revisit Middle-earth.

"Python Distilled" by Beazley - I'm using it to iron out some of my knowledge gaps with the language. It's well-written and informative!

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#86

Post by vidyesh »

andher wrote: post #77
vidyesh wrote: post #6

The Remembrance of Earth's Past has been on my list for some time now. Will you be finishing that trilogy? Actively reading: - Mistborn : Final Empire (~90% finished ding ) - 3rd novella in The Murderbot Diaries - Dive into Design Patterns - Fullstack D3 and Data Viz Passively reading: - The Design of everyday things (I don't think I will ever finish this book) - Bhagavad-Gita as it is - LOTR (mostly a re-read)

Yup, I intend to finish it. I've heard The Dark Forest may be the best in the series, so looking forward to the next one. How are the Murderbot books? I've been intending to pick them up

Thats exciting! I might read the Remembrance this year.

Murderbot is exciting! There is very little world building, you are thrown into the world and you slowly figure things out. Each novella is a new adventure, but as a whole(the series) its a lot more; an android seeing and understanding humans in a very different way.

It also explores how a world of robots would have various bots with each having a different personality(they develop) based on their lifelong assigned task.

The Muderbot itself is sulky, tired of incompetent humans and its dry behavior adds humor to the narration. Plus it addicted to watching soap operas so it has a very unique understanding of human creativity and reality.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#87

Post by punchclockhero »

senectus1 wrote: post #59

Guilty pleasure: I just finished the final book in the horus heresy series (warhammer 40k), and impulsively restarted the series from book 1 again. Its making me sad because I know what all these characters are going to go through again over next 64 books. But I highly recommend the book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/101438

Nice to see another 40K reader. Recently I realised there are new Inquisitor books so I binged Penitent. Felt like reuniting with old friends.

On to The Magos now, I usually get my Black Library fix from bundles, but I might make an exception for this one.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#88

Post by lofaszvanitt »

temeya wrote: post #35
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No starch books have a terrible track record... every superuser should know, is that book an exception?

I mean, so far, its helped make things a bit easier for me to understand. I've also read "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" by Al Sweigart, which as someone with a non-CS background, I found very helpful, even when going back as a reference.

Maybe you chose the proper books. I had a terrible experience with them.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#89

Post by tommymanstrom »

"Krigare: Ett personligt reportage om de svenska soldaterna i Afghanistan" (eng "Warriors") [1] by Johanne Hildebrandt[2].

A book about the FS19 deployment of Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan in 2010, written by an experienced war reporter. Some chapters reminded me about Generation Kill, with regards to lack of proper equipment (wrong colour, missing etc...) or purpose of deployment (too much bodyguarding of politicians visiting etc).

1. ISBN: 9789143510737, ISBN-10: 9143510736 https://books.google.se/books/about/Krigare.html?id=LpJjAgAA...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanne_Hildebrandt

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

#90

Post by abbadadda »

andher wrote: post #75
abbadadda wrote: post #7

I started listening to "The Unicorn Project" on audiobook. It is not as good as "The Phoenix Project" audiobook, but it does a decent job of describing problems from the software engineer's perspective. The problem is I need a version of these books from Sarah Molton/Steve Master's point of view (a novel about being a product manager or CEO?) to better understand what motivates that side of the org. I have been mired…

I read The Phoenix Project a while back and really liked it, have been intending to pick up the The Unicorn Project for some time now. Did you think just the audiobook wasn't better or in general it wasn't as good as The Phoenix Project?

> Did you think just the audiobook wasn't better or in general it wasn't as good as The Phoenix Project?

I listened to both audiobooks. Something about the paperbacks I couldn’t get in to. Now that I think about it, I don’t want to read a novel about work when I’m not at work. Also, audiobooks lend themselves really well to a commute.

At any rate, the narrator of The Phoenix Project is male and the narrator of the audiobook for The Unicorn Project is female. But that’s not why I liked The Phoenix Project more. The male narrator _really_ got into the voices of the different characters, which I appreciated.

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