Not saying this is true but what if Gates's favorite books are the only books he may have read in 2016. It would be nice to see a full run down of his list including the ones he did not like.
My Favorite Books of 2016
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Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#82Shoe Dog might have been my favorite read of the year, its a very inspiring and highly entertaining story. Regardless of what you think of Nike you can learn a lot about determination and grit from this book. I would recommend it to anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit.
Shoe Dog is amazing. The honesty is amazing.
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#83It would be great if a similar list be curated from HN, if not every month, every quarter. The community here has a much diverse interests and we get to glimpse into different genres.
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed: nobody is interested in everything. If someone was talking about the 19th century Slovakian art movement, I'd probably zone out. But there are some complex systems that form the basis of civilization that just cannot be simply dismissed as "mundane", at least in my opinion. Systems that, without their presence and correct end-to-end operation, would result in absolute collapse of civilization. Systems that ha…
I am interested in everything - even 19th century Slovakian art movements. I love talking to people who are interested in anything other than themselves - it really doesn't matter what as long as they are interested in something enough to have learnt and thought about the topic in some depth. The real shame is so few people are interested in anything at all.
Honestly, that's an awesome attitude to have, as people nowadays have a much shorter attention span (myself included!).
And yes, I agree: it's getting harder and harder to hold a deep conversation with someone on a technical topic, even in a professional setting. Or perhaps I'm just not looking correctly?
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#85It would be great if a similar list be curated from HN, if not every month, every quarter. The community here has a much diverse interests and we get to glimpse into different genres.
There are a couple of projects that do this. I think they require the book recommendation to also have a link to one of the booksellers.
(I noticed that I was skewing some of the results because I tend to always include Amazon links when I mention a book.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365693
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#86A humorous observation: Ever look at an HTML page created by Microsoft Word? Quite a bit of code goes into what should have been a simple HTML document.
Now try viewing source of Mr. Gates' web page here: 6873 lines, the HTML
content starts at 5816 and goes for 9 lines to describe the 4 books plus the bonus, for a whopping total of 9 lines of content, 6864 lines of behavior and presentation... Wow.
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed: nobody is interested in everything. If someone was talking about the 19th century Slovakian art movement, I'd probably zone out. But there are some complex systems that form the basis of civilization that just cannot be simply dismissed as "mundane", at least in my opinion. Systems that, without their presence and correct end-to-end operation, would result in absolute collapse of civilization. Systems that ha…
I am interested in everything - even 19th century Slovakian art movements. I love talking to people who are interested in anything other than themselves - it really doesn't matter what as long as they are interested in something enough to have learnt and thought about the topic in some depth. The real shame is so few people are interested in anything at all.
I am the same way. Sometimes, when I hear someone get excited/interested about something I know a lot about, I try and shut up and just listen to them talk about it. It is really a great experience.
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#88Shoe Dog is absolutely incredible. When you hear the back stories about the name Nike, the swoosh, Phil's original business plan... Fascinating.
I do recommend that people are generally careful with blindly taking everything as a straight truth, especially when an author seems "trustworthy". It is a known tactic to sneak in lies or exaggerations among the truths.
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#89Side topic: Does anyone know any good podcasts that fit his genre of “Podcasts About Mundane Stuff That Are Actually Fascinating"?
Econtalk. Russ Roberts is a fantastic interviewer, with only a few weak performances in his decade of weekly podcasts. He probably skews a bit libertarian for the typical HN'er to agree with, but he gives voice to a lot of points of view, and he brings on good guests. At least half of the podcasts have sufficiently interesting titles that they could be easily voted to HN front page, and the depth of discussion is goo…
It's pretty good, but sometimes boring. Do you have a few
"must-listen" episodes to recommend?
Re: My Favorite Books of 2016
#90A humorous observation: Ever look at an HTML page created by Microsoft Word? Quite a bit of code goes into what should have been a simple HTML document. Now try viewing source of Mr. Gates' web page here: 6873 lines, the HTML content starts at 5816 and goes for 9 lines to describe the 4 books plus the bonus, for a whopping total of 9 lines of content, 6864 lines of behavior and presentation... Wow.
If you were ever wondering why Google started AMP, this is it. 5k+ LOC of inlined Javascript, 2.6MB of data and a 13 second load time.