Ask HN: Books you read in 2015? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#31

Post by HCIdivision17 » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

"The Long Earth" - Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - First in trilogy about parallel worlds; the combination of those two authors makes it both fanciful and grounded, which is a bit odd.

"Clockwork Rocket" - Greg Egan - First in the Orthagonal trilogy; An alien story where physics is different.

"Seveneves" - Neal Stephenson - Goes great with the recent hard sci-fi space movies.

EDIT: "What-if" - Randall Munroe - Saw this on another list and need to make sure is shows up as often as possible. This is the thing to hand every kid as part of their back-to-school pack.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#32

Post by g_delgado14 » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

necessity wrote: post #29

Philip K. Dicks's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?": Liked the movie (Blade Runner) better, but not bad. Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms": While reading it I found it extremely boring, though there was this feel to it that still made it pleasant to read. I can't really describe it. Plutarch's "Lives" from the main figures from the end of the Republic (Penguin Classics collection): By far the best books on…

That's exactly how I would describe my experience reading a Hemingway book.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#33

Post by mziel » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

Not-technical

"The World's Toughest Endurance Challenges" - Very nicely illustrated

"Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words" - Extremely enjoyable. People here certainly are aware of xkcd and it's type of humor.

Technical

"Functional programming in Scala" - good read for Scala beginners, especially after "Scala for the Impatient"

"Learning Spark" - the best book on Spark so far

"Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification" - couple of interesting ideas for ML and Data Science

"Neural Network Design" - Quite basic, but I like the flow and introducing mathematical concepts just before they're needed.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#34

Post by hkmurakami » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

KhalilK wrote: post #21

hkmurakami wrote: post #16

"Shopgirl" - Steve Martin - short and poignant. Recommended. "Madame Bovary" - Gustave Flaubert - Considered to be one of the masterpieces of literature, but it's so long that I can't really recommend it. "The Sales Acceleration Formula" - Mark Roberge - I'd recommend this to any entrepreneur. "Status Anxiety" - Alain de Botton - A pretty good pop scienc-y psychology book. "Zero to One" - Peter Thiel - A philosophy b…

>it's so long that I can't really recommend it. Tell that to the teacher who made us read it at the age of 14. A masterpiece nonetheless.

Yeah I think it's a book that you pick up when the time is right for you. Thus, I too think it is a great book, but at the same time, I wouldn't exactly "recommend" it to anyone. Same with Great Expectations.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#35

Post by bargl » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

musgravepeter wrote: post #8

"Leaving Orbit - Notes from the last days of American spaceflight" - pleasantly sentimental view of the wind down of the shuttle program. "The Dark Forest" 2nd installment in Three Body Problem series. Quite clever. "This Changes Everything" - triggered by a quote from the doc on the radio about trying not to think about climate change and whether it's possible to be bored by the end of the world. Lots of good info (…

I loved the Dark Forest. The whole series is awesome.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#36

Post by baby » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

to kill a mocking bird: it was refreshing, looking for more simple books like this one

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#37

Post by thelonelygod » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

Pretty terrible data viz of everything I read this year: http://ruparel.co/book-viz/

TL:DR is I read too many comic books.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#38

Post by fmax30 » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

I had read zero books by April 2015. Have read the following since then.

1. 1984 by Orwell

2. Animal Farm by Orwell

3. 40 Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

4. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

5. The Man in the high castle by Philip k Dic

6. Tuesdays with morrie by Mitch Albom

7. Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie

8. The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell

9. Veronica Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

10. The Little Prince by antoine saint exupery

11. A Monster calls by Patrick ness

Books that I am currently reading very very slowly ( 1-3 chapters per week )

1. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking

2. The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Murakami (I am really enjoying the slow reading here)

3. Zen and art of motorcycle by Robert Pirsig

Edit: Formatting

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#39

Post by ckpwong » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

dcolgan wrote: post #23

Some of the books I enjoyed the most and found most helpful: - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain - Helped me better understand myself and others, highly recommend - The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey - Advice on mastering the mental part of doing anything, not just tennis - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo - actually maybe the most importan…

I read all these books this year too, except for Models.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#40

Post by garysieling » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

These are the ones I've liked best

Neal Thompson - "Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR"

Dee Brown - "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"

Nicholas Johnson - "Big Dead Place" - about living in Antartica

Mark Noll - "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis"

David Halberstam - "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War"

Stanley Karnnow - "In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines"

Esmerelda Santiago - "When I was Puerto Rican"

Lara Pawson - "In the Name of the People" (about Angola)

Marc Benioff - "Behind the Cloud" (surprisingly good for a business book)

Keith Anderson - "The Digital Cathedral" (book a friend of mine wrote, hard to describe, but suprised me at how good it is)

Adam Hochschild - "King Leopold's Ghost" (how the Congo became a colony)

Jessica Livingston - "Founders at Work"

"The Singapore Story: The memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew" (a little dry / long at points, but otherwise very instructive)

"Listening spirituality, Vol. 1: Personal Spiritual Practices Among Friends" (a book about Quakerism that was surprisingly good)

Michael Fogus - "Functional Javascript"

David Shi - "The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture" (traces the historical movements in the U.S. that value "simplicity" as a virtue, this was an interesting way to look at history)

A.J. Swoboda and studies, "Blood Cries Out" (recommended to me by someone I know who is in seminary, this is Pentacostal theologians writing about ecology)

Frank Moraes - "The Importance of Being Black" (an Indian journalist in the 60s who took a tour of Africa and wrote a book; his books are hard to find though)