Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 333 posts

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#61

I've been reading through the Discworld series and I've really liked the commentary on various social structures throughout.

If any of the people here who read Pratchett are interested in paying hommage to him: http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/

I think some of his writing made parts of who I am, and it's a nice, simple, way of paying him back.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#62
I read 54 books (might be 56, there's still time!) in 2016. Here's the ones I recommend:

Fiction:

- Owner's Share by Nathan Lowell

I forget who recommended I read the Solar Clipper series several years ago, but I have been following them for a long time and look forward to it. It's part of a series, so start with the first one (Quarter Share) and continue from there.

- Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno

Non fiction:

- Programming Beyond Practices by Gregory Brown.

- Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed by Henry S.F. Cooper Jr.

For the rest of the books I read this year: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/3965760

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#63

I've been reading through the Discworld series and I've really liked the commentary on various social structures throughout.

Had some downtime last week and started the "first three books" edition I got over a year ago. Very nice read, already ordered two more that sounded very compelling. The wit and humour is absolutely terrific.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#66
Fiction, mostly:

- Reamde, by Neal Stephenson. What a let down, very formulaic.

- Vortex, by Robert Charles Wilson (sequel to Spin and Axis). Spin is a must-read, Vortex was quite pleasant and brings a satisfying closure to the series.

- Permanence, by Karl Schroeder (re-read). Lots of awesome tidbits (property, rights, AR, anthropocentrism) scattered through an entertaining semi-hard sci-fi space opera.

- La Zone du Dehors, by Alain Damasio. A spiritual sequel to 1984.

- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (finally!)

- The Affinities, by Robert Charles Wilson

- La Horde du Contrevent, by Alain Damasio (in progress). A fantastic, ontologic, poetic story about the wind.

As well as a couple non-fiction:

- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! This is made of pure awesomesauce and perfectly captures the kind of spirit at the root of hackerdom.

- Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan (in progress). Humbling.

- Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. Surprised me in many ways.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#68

An add-on to this question if people dont mind. What medium are you reading these books on? Physical, ebooks, pdf, kindle?

I read mostly on my kindle, I also read a few technical books as pdf on my laptop.

I read two physical books this year (~25 on kindle).

I read a lot of books at the same time so I find e-readers to be very convenient because I don't have to carry a lot of books as I used to do before.

EDIT: clarification

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#69
This is mine:

- Summae Technologiae by Stanislaw Lem

- The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem (reread)

- Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

- The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

- The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

- Embassytown by China Mieville

- The Vegetarian by Han Kang

- Perchance to Dream (stories) by Charles Beaumont

- Highrise by J.G. Ballard

- In a Glass Darkly and Other Stories by Sheridan Le Fanu

- The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling (checkout my openly annotatable edition https://hc.selectedintelligence.com)

- All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan

- New American Stories edited by Ben Marcus

- This is The Way by Gavin Corbett

It's been a very fictional year. I guess I wasn't enjoying reality enough to read about it.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#70
In science fiction:

The Wayfarers books The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit were quite good. Fantastic world building and characters, although the plots seem to meander about with not too much purpose.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/170872-wayfarers

Recently ploughed through The Expanse series.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/56399-the-expanse

Dark Matter was a good read if you like parallel universes.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833670-dark-matter

The Rho Agenda series was a surprisingly good read.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-agenda

Quantum Night was something a bit different from Robert Sawyer.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25734179-quantum-night

Farmer in the Sky is one of those books I re-read every few years.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50851.Farmer_in_the_Sky

And Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard would probably have to be rated my favourite for the year.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25667916-barsk

Horror:

Not really a horror fan, but stumbled into the I Am Not a Serial Killer series by accident a few years ago and love it. Read the forth and fifth in the series this year. If you’re more a psychological thriller than horror fan, give it a go anyway. (Shame about the awful movie adaptation.)

https://www.goodreads.com/series/49883-john-cleaver

Crime/Thriller:

Fool Me Once upholds Harlan Coben’s usual good quality reads.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26109394-fool-me-once

Memory Man and its sequel were good reads. Must chase up more by this author some time.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/150209-amos-decker

The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29154543-the-wrong-side-...

According to my goodreads list I’ve ready sixty books this year (so far). Although looking back through them while compiling this list, some of them were short stories. It will be interesting to see what my page count is when I do my yearly reading stats in a couple of weeks.

Post reply on HN