81–90 of 165 posts
Unfortunately I am quite a bit behind the goal I gave to myself (14/25 at the moment).
The Inner Game of Tennis
Impro by Keith Johnstone
Seeing Like a State
The Timeless Way of Building
Linear and Geometric Algebra by Alan Macdonald
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (read this one thrice)
The Tao of Pooh
Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd
The Drama of the Gifted Child
Interaction Ritual
What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
Of niche use:
Mathematics: its Content, Methods and Meaning - mostly useful for figuring out what math you don't know. I recommend reading it at a fairly decent pace, and noting what subjects don't sound like an overview of something you've already learned.
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.
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 b…
"If you are male and between the ages of 13 and 21 this book should be considered harmful and potentially dangerous. If you are high achieving academically but socially awkward you should not read this book as it may exacerbate anti-social personality disorders."
The Sports Gene by David Epstein - how genetics may affect sport performance (and not only that); a bit of a counterpoint to Gladwell's Outliers - probably my favorite book this year.
The Martian by Andy Weir - a guy tries to survive on Mars - found this one rather bland. I would have liked to see more psychology and less calculations, and I am not sure how I feel about its presentation of the scientific community.
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 on…
I read Blindsight before Permutation City. The way he describes the situations and the way his characters are often extremely confusing. But you get used to it at some point along the way. The story line itself and the Aliens are somewhat off the left field which makes the story very interesting. I personally liked it.
Permutation City is, on the other hand, simply boring as hell. Drier than ye olde Abstract Algebra textbook.