1–9 of 9 posts
I'll read just about anything, so what are some of your favorite books, both fiction and nonfiction?
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=read#!/story/forever/0/read
Or this:
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=books#!/story/forever/0/books
Or this:
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=papers#!/story/forever/0/papers
Or this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=books%20...
My specific response to a similar query:
Good to Great, by Jim Collins (and all his other books)
How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh
Peak, by Chip Conley
As far as books I find entertaining and stimulating, but not necessarily actionable, anything by Michael Lewis or Malcolm Gladwell.
It's a helpful book, perhaps maybe even more so than your typical self-help book. I would have liked for such a book to have existed when I was a teenager.
I like Nate Silver's book, "The Signal and the Noise." If you read it, you shouldn't focus on the scenarios he describes specifically. You should try to take his mindset, walk away from the book, and try to decode the signal from the noise everywhere. It's a helpful book, perhaps maybe even more so than your typical self-help book. I would have liked for such a book to have existed when I was a teenager.
Mindstorms and The Children's Machine by Seymour Papert
Privacy on the Line by Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men by Donald McCaig
How Children Learn the Meanings of Words by Paul Bloom
A good example of this is The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. I read it a good 20 years ago as part of an English literature assignment. It wasn't too hard to read, but I didn't think much of it at the time. I re-read it last year, and was blown away, not only because I read a lot more on the Great Depression/Dust Bowl period, but also because of the writing style of Steinbeck. Hemingway: the same. The tone, the rhythm, the choice of words... pure art. Like this gem from The Great Gatsby (it's about turning 30): "Thirty: the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthousiasm, thinning hair". One sentence, perfectly describing the anxiety of turning 30... I could go on forever, but all I want to say is: don't forget the classics!
Not only will you see a slight fathom of the concepts behind a successful chain of best-selling books, you will also have a great narrative of things which are in no way possible yet seem so extremely likely to exist.