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The Best Books I Read in 2015

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141–150 of 157 posts

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010, Bill Gates praised books by Vaclav Smil, a professor emeritus of environment and geography at the University of Manitoba.[1] It's true that Smil's books are packed with facts and ideas about ecology issues. But much before Smil, Buckminster Fuller had urged every engineer to ask the question 'How much does the structure weigh?' From that starting point, Fuller went on to design geodesic domes and other light…

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but these quotes make Smil seem almost neo-luddite.

Perhaps you work at Google, if you think that a proponent of innovation and advanced manufacturing is a neo-luddite. :)

The latest trends in IT tend to do very little in the way of advancing science, technology or society. Usually it seems to be the opposite. For instance Google Apps does poorly what native office suites did much better 20 years ago, not to mention touch screen vs. keyboard + mouse for productive work.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#142
post #4
post #3

Here are some other lists of 'Best books of 2015': Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2015 Amazon http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=13108091011 The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/entertainment/best-b... The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/books/review/100-notable-b... The Economist http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21679439-best-b...

The Goodreads top books list is just a popularity contest. People vote for the books they recognize.

Yeah it's like how there always seem to be a few too many films from the last 5 years in "top 10 best films of all time" lists when the public vote for them.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#144

I'm always sad that lists like this from tech people never contain any fiction. I have often seen the sentiment that everything you read should have some kind of educational value or it's just a waste of time. Does Bill Gates not read fiction? Perhaps he understands that he would be looked down on if he were to include some in his list.

This isn't a list from a tech person but a list from a ghostwriter for a retired billionaire businessman. Its going to have to be bland and vaguely uncontroversial. So it can't be fiction or biography and comedy is iffy.

Here let me try. On my non-fiction pile is Clojure for the Brave and True. Look how I'm signalling. I'm bland and inoffensive because its nonfiction. I'm playing the signalling game so you can play along with me. I'm quirky and interesting because its a semi exotic language and paradigm. I'm leading the pack because its new, or at least recently was kinda new, both the book and the language. I'm altruistic and all around nice guy (true story!) because buying the book basically funds the free website. Its a great book to signal because its common and popular enough that if I have to explain the book or its topic or its funding model to you, you probably don't belong on the site (nothing personal, of course, I'm just saying I donno how you'd be here without the common background). Its also a pretty good book. I like the author's writing style and I can signal my good taste to you all.

Now lets try some pseudonymous public declaration of biography. Two days ago I finished "Battle on the Loomba" which is pretty obscure so I'll explain it. This kid (literally a kid) gets drafted into the south african army in the late 80s, and participates in the craziest, most one sided, most dramatic, largest armor battle in Africa in half a century, second only to Rommel's actions in sheer size and intensity. And thats about it. I was slightly disappointed, as a biography of a kid it missed all the strategic / tactical goodness I like. I like wargames and hex based maps with chits all over them. Then again, as a short biography and memoir it was OK and interesting to compare his experiences to my own army service in the USA a couple years later. Now look how horrific the signalling is for this biography. First of all every race now hates me, because race was totally F'ed up in that conflict, so the S.A. govt he was fighting for is hated by the blacks and white progs for obvious reasons, yet the specific fight was to defend a neighboring black country against the Cuban invasion which on the surface appears dumb but the S.A. govt didn't want a failed communist state or civil war state right on their border, well anyway it was complicated and basically every race on the planet can cherry pick a side to hate and transfer that abstract hate of a historical event to me because I voluntarily read the book, which ironically almost never discusses race directly. Also I'm a warmongering bloodthirsty killer because I sometimes read military related books, which is about as stupid as claiming I'm a professional french chef because I've read a few cookbooks in my day, of course hatred and signalling are invariably irrational and illogical. Also its frankly only a so so book, I'd give it an honest 5/10 which means half the worlds books are worse, and that signalling makes me look like an idiot, people are only supposed to signal stuff they are 100% behind as fanatic supporters, so I'm some wishy washy lunatic with bad taste (may even be true!). All reviews "MUST" be either 10/10 or 0/10 rants, wtf can I even claim to be part of modern internet culture without applying that basic rule? Anyway the signalling sucks for biography and fiction, never ever discuss it in public. Ever. Even if you read it, or even if your ghostwriter thinks it would be interesting or great progressive signalling.

Comedy is 50/50. XKCD from the link is safe, but if it was George Carlin or Bill Cosby the race baiters would be out in force. "Yeah Cosby was funny but you know what he, and now by extension, you, did to those young women?" etc etc.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I can get my fix of fiction via TV and movies which is probably close to one hundred hours per month, perhaps more. More fiction is not what I need right now. I suspect most people's media consumption follows mine. Books are great for learning while TV/movies are great for storytelling. Yes, I understand the benefits of the novel, but its value proposition for me from a time perspective is very poor, espe…

Every time is see a post like this I get the urge to pretentiously rant about the ongoing decline of appreciation for aesthetic values. Tech culture often seems completely tonedeaf on artistic issues. Talking about the "value proposition" of the novel is borderline comical. If the fiction books you've read could be edited down to novella length, you should read better fiction books. I have no idea how we got to a pla…

At my age I've already read those authors and pretty much all the celebrated classics. I'm not sure why you think I haven't. Also, to be completely honest, many/some of those classics are fairly over-rated.

>Every time is see a post like this I get the urge to pretentiously rant about the ongoing decline of appreciation for aesthetic values.

Everytime I meet someone like you I poke into their true reading habits and its a lot of YA stuff, chick-lit, top 20 pop-culture junk, etc. Just because you read a classic once doesn't mean that the entire medium known as books gets free pass. Sturgeon's law applies to all art if we're being honest with ourselves.

The fact that fiction comes at the cost of reading non-fiction cannot be swept under the rug. Its a completely valid concern. Those in my peer group can tell me all about $popular_scifi and $popular_chicklit but not much else.

Its pretentious to think that fiction is magically superior to all other forms of communication. I think we'll look back at how incredibly overly-entertained we are today and wonder how we lived such shallow lives. That's a narrative no one talks about: how much fiction we're constantly consuming and the incredibly low quality of it all. Most people have the information consumption habits equal to eating junk food for every meal and yet they have the gumption to pretend they're mighty intellectuals on the mountain barking wisdom to us idiots below because they falsely assume consuming carefully crafted fiction designed to sell is some strange esoteric intellectual pursuit. No, its the kid reading some tech manual and building something original who's doing something intellectual and esoteric, not the girl downing Hunger Games, Twilight, and Divergent trilogies on the bus and giving snide looks to the "nerds" around her who don't get "literature." Then she goes from the bus to the boob/youtube and zones out for hours until bedtime then back to work/school. That's a sad life and if you're honest with yourself, you'd agree with me.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#146

If you like fantasy, there are three series you need to read: The Blade Itself (3 books) The Kingkiller Chronicle (waiting on third and final book) The Stormlight Archive (waiting on third and final book)

The 3rd book in The Stormlight Archive series will not be the last. It is planned to be a 10-book series

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#147
post #79
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is bad why? At least for me, it's a bigger chance that I would enjoy a book from that list than from a list made by some professional critic.

Speaking for music best-of lists, as compiled from votes of critics: I've found these lists are not very helpful in finding music I actually care about. It's frustrating, because there seems to be so much utility there. I've explained it like this: To get on the list, something has to be considered at-least-good by a lot of people, and this tends to reward (1) herd mentality; (2) lowest-common-denominator. The list s…

I remember a counter-example to this (which may be a fluke) a few years ago when Burial got album of the year on metacritic for a spacey, ambient dubstep record. Maybe not super-niche but definitely not mainstream.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#148

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…

You are paying too much attention to one internet rando's disapproval.

I wish that were the case, except there were over a hundred comments, about how it didn't belong on here because it isn't of a high enough standard for hacker news. I still write a well known advanced programming blog, but I don't share links here as a result - I have found better outlets for content which actually concerns people in tech circles, as opposed to things like : "Why I scrapped X and did Y", "X is broken, we are fixing it", "Bill Gates read a book, Click here to see what it is! - You will never believe number 3!"

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#149

Cheatsheet, without the affiliate links (another commenter posted these with affiliate links then deleted it after being called out): The Road to Character, David Brooks - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081299325X Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544668251 Being Nixon: A Man Divided, Evan Thomas - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812995368 Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Ope…

I'm curious, why is it that people dislike affiliate-backed links if the link is relevant, useful, interesting and of equal quality to the normal link? Seems irrational.

Re: The Best Books I Read in 2015

#150
post #73
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is bad why? At least for me, it's a bigger chance that I would enjoy a book from that list than from a list made by some professional critic.

It's not necessarily bad, but "best" books should be judged on rating, not recognition. With this rating system a book with 1000 reviews rated at 3.5 stars would score higher than a book with 500 reviews rated at 4.5 stars.

I used to balk at anything on the "best-sellers' list," assuming the majority would be poorly-written beach read material, but I realized that there can be compelling reasons to read beyond the literary merit of a particular work. Pop literature can help us understand and analyze the culture we're living in, tap into the zeitgeist, participate proactively. It can lead to moments of cognitive dissonance, for sure, but that's healthy.
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