Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

Cosmos - !!!

The Measure of Reality - How quantification has completely changed the face of society. Very interesting stuff. This has probably been my favourite read this year.

Nightfall - Interesting ideas of the role of religion in society and mass hysteria

Speaker for the Dead - Really fascinating book. I love sci-fi where there is an alien species that humans have trouble understanding for whatever reason

Books I unrecommend:

Heretics of Dune - Ugh. Tedious. I actually couldn't finish it. Didn't start Chapterhouse either.

Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Pretty basic. How many footnotes do you really need before you just include them in the text?

Was on maternity leave this year so there are quite a few. Those marked * are also recommended.

Guns Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond *

The Vital Question - Nick Lane *

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *

Convergent Series - Larry Niven *

Cosmos - Carl Sagan *

World of Ptaavs - Larry Niven

The Integral Trees - Larry Niven

The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

The Girl with Seven Names - Hyeongseo Lee *

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values - Robert M Pirsig *

The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace And Babbage (Comic) - Sydney Padua

The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 - Roger Zelazny

The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250 - 1600 - Alfred W. Crosby *

Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clark *

The Time Dweller - Michael Moorcock

Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card *

Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card *

Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible - Tim Gunn *

The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimon *

The Hugo Winners vol. 3 - Various

Between Planets - Robert A. Heinlen

The Martian - Andy Weir *

Perelandra - C S Lewis

Heretics of Dune - Frank Herbert (Unfinished, couldn't do it.)

Nightfall - Isaac Asimov *

Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov *

Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov *

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlen *

Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Corey Doctorow

Currently Reading

Engines of Creation: The Coming Era Of Nanotechnology - K. Eric Drexler *

Planets for Sale - A.E. van Vogt

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J. K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany (recommended for HP nostalgia)

Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance (recommended)

Shoe Dog - Phil Knight (highly recommended)

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (meh)

The Gene - Siddhartha Mukherjee (currently reading, recommended so far)

The Alchemist -- reread one of my favorites of all time

Candidate -- reread

Infinite Jest -- takes 300 pages to "get" David Foster Wallace's style and 500 pages to enjoy it, but well worth the investment. Probably one of my favorites of all time now.

The Brothers Karamazov (in progress) -- Have been wanting to read more Russian Literature and apparently Infinite Jest borrows many plot points from Brothers Karamazov. I just started it a few days ago...

* Non-Fiction *

String Theory -- another book by David Foster Wallace containing a few essays on tennis. Even if you don't like his fiction, I doubt anyone would argue that the eponymous essay isn't great.

Open -- Andre Agassi's autobiography

Inner Game of Tennis -- reread

Winning Ugly -- Read this twice in 2016 (reread in progress). My mental game is volatile to say the least.

My System (in progress) -- Aron Nimzowitsch's Chess study

In a Sunburned Country -- Bill Bryson's description of his trip to Australia

Sailing Made Easy -- ASA 101/102

Coastal Cruising Made Easy -- ASA 103

Buying Your First Sailboat

Open Water Diver Manual -- PADI Open Water Certification

Enriched Air Diver Manual -- PADI Nitrox Certification

Adventures in Diving Manual (in progress) -- PADI Advanced Open Water Certification

Shadow Divers -- Diver's in the 90's discover a German U-Boat just dozens of miles off the coast of New Jersey

Triple Your Reading Speed -- It definitely works, but its only applicable to simple texts like popular fiction and maybe news articles/blogs. I guess it probably does still benefit denser stuff though.

The Origin of Conciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind -- This is quite possibly the work of a crank, but there's some interesting ideas that seem not impossible. A lot of his arguments are clearly cherry picked and loads of sentences like, "The statue had a big ear, obviously an example of bicameralism".

Piano Handbook (in progress) -- Been working on the exercises in this and started learning the piano as an adult, two years ago. Just two chapters of eighteen to go...

Jazz Piano (in progress) -- Will focus on this once the above text is done

The Wine Bible (in progress)

Porsche: Origin of Species (in progress)

Millionaire Next Door (in progress) -- In strong conflict with the ideas presented in the text above...

* Technical Non-Fiction *

Functional Programming in Scala

Pro Git

Learning from Data

Optimization Models; Califiore, El Ghaoui (in progress)

Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets (in progress) -- Not great. Very little motivation to finish this one...

Had the goal of 30 books, at least 8 of which had to be textbooks. Not quite there, but there's some really dense stuff this year, so I'm not too worried. I had no idea how little fiction I was reading; will need to adjust that next year.