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Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

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Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#111
Fiction, mostly.

Declare, by Tim Powers. Cold war espionage with black magic. Entertainingly bleak, and probably did a lot more weirdness with real history than I knew how to appreciate.

Producing Open Source Software (http://producingoss.com/), by Karl Fogel. A very thorough look into all sorts of practical matters in running a large open source software project.

The Engines of Light trilogy by Ken MacLeod. Entertaining, though a bit erratic. Makes a bunch of Forteana fit in a hard SF framework. Also the second MacLeod book I've read that has a weird pixie dust immortality treatment that seems incongruous with the rest of the technology level.

Matter by Iain M. Banks. Culture again after Algebraist. Still good.

The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett. Finally got around to reading this one. Was surprisingly fresh. It would have been interesting to see Pratchett write more science fiction after this and Strata around 30 years ago.

The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. Another old SF book. This one wasn't very fresh, seemed like two or three different novels stapled together, with bits and pieces that might work pretty well if it weren't for the other bits and pieces.

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. Not a lot of surprises, if you know what Warren Ellis tends to write. Basically a road trip novel through various degeneracies in America. Fun, but tends to go for gross-out warrenellisisms in favor of overall coherence.

Neuropath by Scott Bakker. A technothriller about all sorts of fun things you can do by directly rewiring peoples' brains with near-future neurosurgery. Bakker's chilly philosophical outlook doesn't pack quite the same punch in an already mostly rationalistic setting as it did in the Prince of Nothing fantasy books. Sticks with a single not particularly unsympathetic viewpoint character and therefore avoids the problem in Prince of Nothing where you'd often end up in the head of someone you really don't want to be anywhere near.

The Tao is Silent by Raymond Smullyan. Smullyan writes various essays inspired by Taoism. Quality varies, but Smullyan is generally fun to read.

On SF by Thomas Disch. Beautifully acerbic essays by someone who takes science fiction literature seriously and doesn't let it off easy. And just plain likes to insult people. Representative, though noticeably dated sample: http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472068968-1.pdf

Denner's Wreck by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Watt-Evans has an specific style of writing from what follows from the setting and premises rather than going for the most dramatically obvious plot. The results are hit-and-miss with his fantasy novels I've read, but work a lot better here, where the legends of a bronze-age civilization end up emerging from a science fiction setting. Watt-Evans' narrative style supports the plot where the traditional stories end up not really being what they seem to be.

The Official Book of Ultima by Shay Addams. It tells how Richard Garriott's obsession with programming in high school lead to the Ultima game series, which were one of the most notable computer games in the 80s and became the flagship product of Garriott's Origin Systems company. Also documents how the games grew from Ultima I being programmed by Garriot alone learning as he went along into Ultima VI developed by a large team. There is much detail about Ultima VI, which was being developed as the book was written. Much of it also conflicts with the game that ended up being released, and I ended up wondering whether this was about the game changing during production or just Addams getting his facts wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#112

I finally finished "Godel, Escher, Bach" in 2009, after starting and giving up on it a few times previously. A great book, but it does require a lot of time and some serious thinking with a pencil and pad to do some working out (or at least it did for me). The best book I read in 2009 (and possibly ever!) was "Fooled By Randomness" - a fantastic book that I can't recommend enough. I also read the sequel, "Black Swans…

I agree that Fooled By Randomness was a good read, but since then Taleb has become too wrapped up in self-aggrandizement, and he now thinks way to highly of himself and his abilities. He lost me when he started writing articles like Ten Principles for a Black Swan-Proof World ( http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/tenprinciples.pdf ). Isn't the point about Black Swans that they're impossible to protect against?

Agreed. I thought "Fooled..." and "The Black Swan" were great and I have a lot of respect for Taleb. But lately, he has become too self-aggrandizing.

He seems to take too much credit for saying that an unpredictable event could happen, a few years before a relatively unpredictable (or at least, unforeseen) event did happen.

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*eye roll

If I hadn't read Rand, comments like this one would make me want to, just to see how she managed to piss so many hipsters off.

I don't mind Rand so much. Just people who claim that we're living "Atlas Shrugged" because they have to pay taxes or some nonsense.

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#114
post #65

Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. He starts with a takedown of the dietary fat-heart disease hypothesis, moves on to the dietary fat-obesity link. Finally he makes a convincing argument that neither eating less nor exercising more are good ways to lose weight.

I read that 2 years ago, and I agree it is excellent. He goes well beyond the evidence against carbohydrates, but his claims for the politicization of diet recommendations is the best I have encountered.

As a side note, I tried an extremely low carb diet for a while after reading it, but noticed no real differences either pro or con. I similarly noticed no real differences many years ago, when I was vegetarian for a couple of years.

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#115
post #24

I basically discovered Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep , by Vernor Vinge A Deepness in the Sky , by Vernor Vinge The Peace War , by Vernor Vinge Marooned in Realtime , by Vernor Vinge Hyperion , by Dan Simmons Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt , a fun book about some math and physics problems

The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime are also in a one volume Across Realtime, which also includes his entertaining novella The Ungoverned which introduces some of the characters, including W W Brierson (sp?) of Marooned.

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#116
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*eye roll

It's the reaction everybody has with Rand. To be completely fair to her, she introduces a lot of people to ideas they haven't grappled with before. I'm still glad I read her, even if, three years after, I disagree with all but a strand of her ideas. I doubt it's worth having another HN debate about Rand, though. We've thoroughly exhausted that discussion.

I have major disagreements with a lot of Rand's ideas, but I agree more with her social descriptions/depictions/??(I can't think of a really good word) now, 23 years after first reading Atlas Shrugged, than I did three years after reading it.

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#118

Revelation Space , by Alastair Reynolds - Quirky sci-fi novel with a xenoarchaeology angle Hunters of Dune , by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - I'm not recommending this one on the basis of the writing. I'd recommend it only to those who read all of Frank Herbert's original Dune series and have been hanging in suspense ever since because the cliffhanger ending of Chapterhouse Dune was never resolved due to Frank'…

The Lost Symbol sucked - I was entertained by Vinci Code and Illuminati, even though some of the riddles seemed chilidish. But Lost Symbol adds an unnecessary esoteric, New Age angle ("Twitter is god"), and the riddles have become too ridiculous. One of them is turning some letters on their head to make them readable. Another thing were "magic squares" - so I guess because they have "magic" in the name they have to be something deep and conspirational...

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#119
Sperm Wars - A fascinating evolutionary biology book focusing on sperm competition.

Caesar by Christian Meier - Got totally hooked on this, wonderful read.

Happy Hour is for Amateurs - Novel by web author Philalawyer. Drugs, Alcohol and the Lawyering profession, written in a gonzo-style.

War of Art

Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?

#120
post #93
post #89

I got myself a Sony Reader mid-2009 and started reading about twice more than I had been before. 2009 was also the first year in which I wasn't too lazy to document which books I read (I'm really glad I wasn't). Here're some of the favourites this year: Classics: Kafka's The Process and America - both stunning novels that deserve to be read as much as his most famous, The Castle . Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in…

I'm amazed at the number of books you read in one year. Where do you get all the time ?

I read ~40 books in 2009, so maybe I can answer this as well: my commute to the office is a 30 minute train ride - it certainly helps having an hour each day to sit down and read while getting to work (and beats the hell out of driving).
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