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Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

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Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#71

Post by lmcnish14 »

A few books I read for fun this year:

- Armada: Ernest Cline - Very disappointing and predictable

- Library of Souls: Ransom Riggs - Easy but engrossing book

- Ruby Under a Microscope: Pat Shaughnessy - I find his style of explaining things very accessible

- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End: Atul Gawande - It's a hard subject to think about but helped me to understand that prolonging life and continuing treatment shouldn't necessarily be the end goal for every case.

- Go in Action: William Kennedy - A must if you're learning Go lang

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#72

Post by walterbell »

anatoly wrote: post #63
anatoly wrote: post #62

Non-fiction, best to worst: Henry Marsh, Do No Harm . A brilliant memoir by a neurosurgeon about his work, the nature of his profession, successes and mistakes (especially the latter). Frequently touches or verges into the personal. Not morbid, but often sad. Keith Johnstone, Impro for Storytellers . Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theater Two very good books about improvisation, although Spolin's is too dry and…

[cont'd] Michael Frayn, Democracy. A compulsively readable play about an episode in the politics of West Germany in the 1970s, a subject I didn't know could be made so interesting to me. Superb. Michael Flynn, Eifelheim. Excellent and profound SF/historical novel about aliens crashing in the Germany of the Middle Ages, and how that would work out. Avoids cheap tricks, very strong on historical research and verisimili…

Since you liked Gene Wolfe's work, have you read R.A. Lafferty?

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#73

Post by Pietertje »

n3on_net wrote: post #26

There are several books I read, still want to increase my reading amount: 1. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", nice bio about Feynman 2. "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future", inspiring biography and business book. 3. "Apollo" by Catherine Bly Cox. Awesome book about Apollo Programm. Goes even in some technical details. 4. "Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies". Very go…

I can vouch for the first two of these books: 1. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", fun bio, made me buy the Feynman lectures as well. Really glad I did. 2. "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future", Very inspiring indeed.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#74

Post by stuxnet79 »

Hortinstein wrote: post #41

I read quite a few others that have been mentioned here, but I finally read two that hard sci-fi books that should appeal to the Hacker News crowd Permutation City: People can run simulations of themselves or entirely migrate their consciousness into computer programs, but existence is often limited to the amount of computation that you can afford, leading to slow existences that stretch time into fractions of realti…

Permutation City has a brilliant premise but I found sections of it mostly unreadable and I can't say I enjoyed it very much. Egan would have been better served presenting the content in an essay format.

Egan's more unforgiving stories are an acquired taste IMO. I started out with his short stories and found them enjoyable when there wasn't so much pretentious info-dumping and preaching. Permutation City felt like one of his harder to parse short stories stretched to the length of a novel.

Blindsight is on my Kobo right now, but after reading Permutation City I'm scared to start reading it because I don't want to reach halfway and want to chuck it like I did Permutation City.

On a more positive note, I just want to say that I liked how prescient the novel was in foretelling AWS.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#76

Post by jndsn402 »

Jach wrote: post #42

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius -- A fine classic I enjoyed. Might count, might not, since it finished in March but was going on before. I loved Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - Eliezer Yudkowsky - http://hpmor.com/ Loved Masters of Doom - David Kushner I liked Worm - Wildbow - https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/ -- but it falls short of overall greatness and I don't think it's worth its 22…

HPMOR was fantastic - very well done re-imagining of Harry Potter with Harry as a rationalist, challenging long-held beliefs about magic. Plot, pacing, etc. were great. Really influenced how I think about my own beliefs as well.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#77

Post by ycom13__ »

Here are all the ones I read this year

  A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin
  A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin
  The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth
  House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender
  George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade
  Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  Finders Keepers: A Novel by Stephen King
  The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
  Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
  The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
  Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute by Emma Craigie
  The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  Robopocalypse: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by Daniel H. Wilson
  Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson
  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
My 5 favorite ones from that list are

  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#78

Post by Pietertje »

I'll skip some mentioned already by others. Books I really enjoyed this year:

The Wright Brothers, David McCullough - wonderful book on the Wright Brothers, easy to read, shows that persistence and logic thinking pays out. 5/5

The autobiography of Malcom X, Malcolm X - Nice bio, a bit repetitive sometimes. 3/5

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - Although the book has more than 1200 pages it really kept me going. I read this book to get a better understanding of the ideology of some republicans. Fun read. 4.5/5

Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt - Levitt studies all kind of different everyday questions using economics. 4/5, short, easy to read

Guantanamo Diary, Mohamedou Ould Slahi - Diary of a Guantanamo prisoner who has been imprisoned since 2002. The US has never charged him with a crime. Profound and disturbing. 5/5

No place to hide, Glenn Greenwald - Story on Edward Snowden, probably read by most of HN. Enjoyed it, that's it. 4/5

How to lie with statistics, Darrel Huff - Short book on statistics, easy to read and fun. 4/5

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#79

Post by anatoly »

walterbell wrote: post #72
anatoly wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[cont'd] Michael Frayn, Democracy. A compulsively readable play about an episode in the politics of West Germany in the 1970s, a subject I didn't know could be made so interesting to me. Superb. Michael Flynn, Eifelheim. Excellent and profound SF/historical novel about aliens crashing in the Germany of the Middle Ages, and how that would work out. Avoids cheap tricks, very strong on historical research and verisimili…

Since you liked Gene Wolfe's work, have you read R.A. Lafferty?

I have, actually this year too (missed it in the list because it didn't come from Amazon). I read the collection Nine Hundred Grandmothers. I thought it was pretty uneven, but the highs were very high. There were 4 or 5 stories in that collection that were just amazing, of the "how the hell does he DO that" kind. Some others were kind of preachy, or little more than sketches.

Going to read more Lafferty next year, I'm pretty sure.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?

#80

Post by Pietertje »

ycom13__ wrote: post #77

Here are all the ones I read this year A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara Dead Wake: The Last Cro…

What is your opinion on The Guns of August? I'm still looking for a good book on World War I.
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