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The Best Books I Read in 2015

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81–90 of 157 posts

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#81
I can't read any of that because I'm distracted by the mental image of Bill telling someone the best books he read, with some conversation, and that person asking some questions while writing notes, then spending hours in front of his laptop, emailing a draft to someone else, who asks Bill a few more questions then returns a draft to someone else who finalizes it and publishes on "GatesNotes" written as if he sat down on his blogging backend and typed it out in a textfield.

I have no idea the process behind this website, but it seems unlikely enough that he'd sit down and write it himself that I can't take it seriously. From what little I read, it doesn't sound like something produced directly from him without first passing through others, at least for formatting and correction.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#82
post #18

Anyone who refers to David Brooks as "the insightful New York Times columnist" has lost me as a reader. I can't remember the last time he had an original, or even accurate, thought. http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-brooks-i... Here are two good books: * The Korean War: A History - Little known fact: The US took the wrong side in the Korean War by putting the former officers of the Japanese imperial…

That article is brutal--thanks for the laugh and the book recommendations!

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#83
post #18

Anyone who refers to David Brooks as "the insightful New York Times columnist" has lost me as a reader. I can't remember the last time he had an original, or even accurate, thought. http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-brooks-i... Here are two good books: * The Korean War: A History - Little known fact: The US took the wrong side in the Korean War by putting the former officers of the Japanese imperial…

The following are three of his less partisan articles and their top-voted comment, plucked from Brooks' most recent articles [1]

Communities of Character

"Pop sociologist Professor Brooks is at it again...."

Tales of the Super Survivors

"It certainly does, Lord Brooks..."

The Evolution of Simplicity

"If only excessive materialism and manifold opportunities were the problem in this country. I think Mr. Brooks tends to project his own affluent angst on society at large..."

This is the force, imposed by readers, to homogenize ideologically. The deluge of criticism is to be expected when a high delta exists between a columnist's ideology and their platform's. In an ideological battleground, where vilification trumps truth, I think the burden of assessing quality lies on the reader.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/column/david-brooks

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#84
post #48

Is The Three-Body Problem worth reading?

It's terrible sci-fi but the sci-fi bit is only there to draw moralistic parallels between aliens and the Chinese. Some gruelling stories about China's culturual revolution that were pretty interesting but otherwise it's pretty bad. I'm sure the quality of the writing is lost in translation so I'm not complaining about that - just talking about the story.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#86

Gates has also reviewed all of these books in more detail on gatesnotes.com. Here's the link to the Thing Explainer review (which I ordered today) - http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer Others Below: Eradiation: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Eradication Mindset: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-o... The Road To Character: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Road-to-Character Bei…

Randall Monroe is currently doing a book tour so you can hear him speak and get a signed copy if you're in the right place at the right time.

He was at NASA in Houston today.....

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#87
post #61
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's entirely ad-hominem. This is actually a fairly accurate description of his output: "...He has been a reliable producer of out-of-touch, tissue-thin pronouncements on the perils of our secularized, technologized 21st century lives, virtually all of which rightly can be interpreted as passive-aggressive nostalgia for what Family Circus comics told him “outdoors” might have been like when he was a kid…

There are few things as satisfying to read as a witty denouncement. Sometimes the accuracy (which I have no knowledge of) can rightly take a backseat to the theater, as long as you remember to not take it too seriously.

This is a sentiment that makes no sense to me. Instead of remembering to not take it too seriously and enjoying the theater (regardless of accuracy), why not remember that the target of such articles is a real person and not an abstract object to be harmlessly ridiculed. Why celebrate meanness?

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#90

I was once berated for posting a blog article on how to build a multitude of data structures, in 3 different programming languages. The reason for this was because "This is hacker news, and this article is first year computing science stuff." - Yet Bill gates reads a book about Richard Nixon, and suddenly it is the top item on here, even though it is in no way related to anything technical. I'm out, this place is mos…

It might be that people see this headline and are interested in returning later to skim the book list and all of the other lists linked here in the comments. Upvoting Bill's book list might not mean they like his list, think it belongs at the top of HN, or that they even read the blog post. The top-of-front-page ranking could just be the result of a large number of readers upvoting in order to have the discussion sho…

Conversely, the list of most saved stories seems more useful than most upvoted.
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