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Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

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Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

#211

Post by endgame »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #169
iandioch wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just on the final few pages of The Cuckoo's Egg, and was planning on finishing it tonight. I too would say that it is a fantastically written page-turner, and it has taught me a lot about the old-school networking scene. How do the other two books you mentioned compare?

Ghost in the Wires compares favorably, also being a personal memoir, although from the other side of hacking. Exploding the Phone takes an ousider's perspective, having been written by a relative outsider, and the information having been gathered from interviews with those involved. However, I would say it's better than Ghost in the Wires , being a better told story overall. It's also pretty much the definitive histo…

I found The Cuckoo's Egg second-hand for 50c. Easily the greatest enjoyment:price ratio of anything I own. Exploding the Phone is also phreaking awesome. I devoured that book over the space of a few hours.

Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

#212

Post by dahart »

AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #14

Douglas Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach

FWIW, I received this book as a gift. It's a fantastic book, but I probably wouldn't give it to someone studying or practicing programming or computer science today. For a high schooler with a budding interest, or for people who like to ponder math, science, philosophy and CS but haven't studied CS directly, it'd be a great gift. For a college or post college CS major, GEB spends so much of its time explaining topics that are now well known and well covered in class that the delight of discovery in the book is a bit lost and wasn't as exciting to read as it could have been if I'd read it earlier.

Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

#213

Post by sneak »

davewasthere wrote: post #151

The most: Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Think I've bought almost a dozen copies over the years. Although that book wasn't really a gift, more a loan I never got back. Others: Lord of the Rings - I gave this to the guard who detained me in Russia. I thought it was the best revenge. The life changing magic of tidying - to my partner. We're both messy. I've read it, she hasn't... neither of us have changed. 1Q84 by…

Make an effort to pirate Ender's Game versus spending money on it; the author is a notorious bigot who uses his money to destroy equal human rights.

Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

#215

Post by endgame »

Gift? Not quite, but I enthusiastically offer my copies of Simon Singh's books up for loan when anyone sounds vaguely interested. "The Code Book" is a great history of cryptography and "Fermat's Last Theorem" is a good history of the problem and its eventual solution.

Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

#216

Post by tvural »

old-gregg wrote: post #52

"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" by William L. Shirer. It's a classic history book of our century which, despite its title, primarily focuses on Hitler's raise to power in the early 30s and the long, painful and ultimately futile international attempts at avoiding WW2 in the late 30s. It's a book I wish everyone would read, particularly everyone in a public office and the media. It's…

"It's a shame that comparing politicians and their actions to Hitler has became a cliche everyone now is quick to ignore."

The trouble is that whenever person Y puts person X and Hitler in the same sentence, there will be news headlines that say, "Y compares X to Hitler". At that point it looks like Y suggested X would do something on the level of the Holocaust. If Y really just meant that X and Hitler provoked distrust of minorities, that nuanced message will get lost. Examples:

https://www.google.com/#q=+sam+altman+compares+trump+to+hitl...

https://www.google.com/#q=meg+whitman+compares+trump+to+hitl...

https://www.google.com/#q=glenn+beck+compares+trump+to+hitle...

Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

#218

Post by kelukelugames »

nabusman wrote: post #175
SwellJoe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a more correct book that is similarly concise and similarly well-written? I would love to read it, if so. Edit: I found this blog post that lists some alternatives http://thewritingresource.net/2011/09/22/forget-everything-s... About half of the titles are punny or plays on words, which I'm somewhat suspicious of (even though I like puns). And, all are at least twice the size of Strunk and White. I understan…

On Writing Well by William Zinsser was a great book on writing. Though it's a bit more conceptual than Strunk and White.

On Writing Well is entertaining on top of being instructive and informative. Very short read too. Every should get a copy.

http://amzn.to/2aT5qJw

Re: Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

#220

Post by moyix »

omaranto wrote: post #127
SwellJoe wrote: post #28

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. I've given it to just about everyone I've known who seriously wanted to be a writer, journalist, etc. as well as some folks who just wanted to write better. It's a small, beautiful, book about writing better. This is the book I've gifted the most. Several scifi books have also been gifted to friends, mostly Asimov (both the Foundation and Robots series), Herbert's Dune , and…

With Strunk & White I think you should ignore their advice which is often confused or nonsensical and just imitate their prose which is delightful. This review explains it better than I could: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549...

I tend to think of Strunk and White like training wheels: eventually you should take them off and break the rules (as George Orwell said in his similarly-maligned "Politics and the English Language", "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous") in pursuit of clear, beautiful prose, but for a beginner the rules can be a lifeline. If nothing else, their constraints provide a new writer a framework on which to hang their thoughts, and force them to think carefully about how their prose is constructed. The experience of thinking about one's writing structurally, and how that structure can be used for stylistic effect, is something that I suspect does not come naturally to new writers, and it's what I found most valuable about Strunk and White when I was taught it in high school.

I also, someday, would love to try my hand at teaching writing style using Freddie de Boer's technique:

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/12/07/teaching-style-to-freshm...

But being a CS professor I doubt I'll have that opportunity any time soon :)

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