Summer Reading List • Hacker News Board

Re: Summer Reading List

#181

Post by ctw » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

filiwickers wrote: post #137

If you struggle to get diverse voices inside your field, maybe you should read from diverse voices outside your field. I understand it is hard and I also gravitate towards comfortable reading, usually meaning from people that look like me. This is the problem. Start being accountable to yourself about it. 2 of 19 the books in the list are by female authors (both recommended by women). Looking for some good books from…

I couldn't get through "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". There's probably one or two semi-interesting points I took away from the part I got through, but something about the way it was written made it way too difficult for me to get through, far more difficult than was worth it in my opinion.

Re: Summer Reading List

#182

Post by to_bpr » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #160

filiwickers wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me either, and that's exactly the issue. Look at any top books list and it is mostly white males. Either men have an easier time getting published or men are inherently better writers. I believe the former is the case. By seeking out female writers and other diverse voices we can start to tip the balance. Historically, men were the only ones that had the opportunity to write, so any books from older centuries are goi…

Isn't the content of the book more important than the author? Jane Austen and Frederick Douglass are widely read because of what they wrote, not their gender or race. Most ancient authors were male, but not many would fit the modern profile of racial privilege.

No, the content between the covers is essentially irrelevant in the mind of the OP.

They're asking us to judge a book strictly by its cover, and to reject it should it not meet their strict criteria of having not been written by a white person or most especially not a white man.

It is 2017, after all.

Re: Summer Reading List

#183

Post by nateberkopec » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

kentt wrote: post #97

I'd consider Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection to be fiction as well. Too long, shouldn't read: if you believe, your back pain will go away. I'm surprised to see the anti-scientific pseudoscience promoted.

Reading Sarno's book cured my RSI and my friend's RSI as well. If it works, it's not stupid.

Re: Summer Reading List

#184

Post by joaomacp » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

dsplittgerber wrote: post #106

jackschultz wrote: post #81

I know this is a technical site, but for all of these I always get a little sad with how few fictional books are listed on these types of posts. Going over it, seems like there's just one, "The Nix" (may be more where I just missed them). I like seeing fictional books since I can relate to the people writing them. If I enjoyed some of the fictional books that people talk about, then I'll go along with their non-ficti…

I'm interested in your argument to why fiction is not time "wasted"! Would you mind discussing? I have thought about this a lot and personally only read non-fiction, but am always interested in other viewpoints.

It's important to think about what is or isn't wasted time. I think about it a lot, because to me, time is the most precious resource - I won't be alive for that long, my time being young is almost over...

To make the most out of my time as a human in this planet, I seek novel things, that will enrich my experience. Doing the exact same things today that I did yesterday is wasted time, because I will feel the same way, and I will be repeating the experience.

Reading good fiction improves my experience as a human. The feeling of the places, the characters and the occurrences is always unique, and (with a good book) I gain new insights of what being a human means.

Non-fiction books are also good, but I don't really get the same feeling for them. The best way of explaining it is also the most boring: It's like watching a good movie vs a good documentary. I get a totally different feeling from a movie, and given the choice, I will almost always go for the movie.

Re: Summer Reading List

#185

Post by toufka » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:55 PM UTC

b_emery wrote: post #157

padobson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction is a petri dish for all of those ideas you're consuming in non-fiction books. Have you ever had an idea that you thought could change the world? Write a short story about it. When you are really forced to create different viewpoints in your head, put those viewpoints into characters, and then have those characters come into conflict with one another, you're subjecting your idea to scrutiny that costs nothing…

You're making a compelling argument for writing fiction - but not for reading it.

Reading is the 10 hour version of the above multi-year exercise - as all books are. Instead of deriving Newton's laws, you read what Newton spent a lifetime to come up with. Instead of deriving the implications of a situation where sentient alien races can communicate between stars, read about the solution arrived at when they spent years thinking about. Sure, it's not as technically difficult (nor probably rewarding) as synthesizing the ideas themselves, but still valuable to ingest - especially given the investment/reward ratio.

As a scientist, authors like William Gibson, Borges, Bradbury, Ramez Naam, Asimov, Clarke, Richard Morgan, etc. have provided me with rapid access to very real and useful perspectives inaccessible in non-fiction form. Such stories are long-form versions of Einstein's 'gedanken' [1] - thought experiments such as those he relied on to conceive of relativity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

Re: Summer Reading List

#186

Post by protomyth » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:55 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #54

Do americans only read books on summer?

No, but it comes from two different traditions. The first, and most common, is the Summer Reading List many schools give their students for reading over the summer break. I knew people who had assigned reading, but our school didn't bother. The other was the family vacation and the "beach books" that were once part of the stereotypical beach vacation. Gotta do something while the kids play in the water. Summer books are still a topic.

Re: Summer Reading List

#187

Post by gradys » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #173

orthoganol wrote: post #67

Sapiens is a very preachy, low-on-citations work... the Goodreads reviews are interestingly divided ("Dude it changed my whole world!" to "This is not a serious work."), but the early sections on pre historical humans are still interesting to read, and seemed mostly correct from what I remember from my college anthropology class.

Any recommendations for a book about the same subject matter, but more on the academic side?

Why the West Rules for Now - broad coverage of human history, starting with pre-human hominids. Loosely guided by looking for an account of why in 20th century so much power was concentrated in the West compared to the East, but that guiding question only comes up occasionally. It's mostly a plain history book.

I've also heard Our Kind recommended for this kind of thing, but I haven't read it myself.

Re: Summer Reading List

#188

Post by nateberkopec » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

makmanalp wrote: post #2

Every time I see Sarno's book recommended, it's always controversial, with the "woo-woo" camp and the "it worked for me so I don't care" camp, though I think the people-who-I-respect-who-recommend-this ratio is way higher than most crank books, so it's interesting in that regard. Thoughts? (I haven't read it)

I'm in the "it worked for me so I don't care camp".

I can't believe people think it's woo-woo or anti-scientific, though, after reading it. Sarno's thesis is basically "we haven't found a physical cause for most chronic pain conditions, so why not the brain?".

Anxiety sufferers can fool themselves into thinking they're having a heart attack and hyperventilate. Why is it crazy or anti-scientific to think that the same can cause other symptoms?

Re: Summer Reading List

#189

Post by ashark » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

ioddly wrote: post #175

ashark wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider time experiencing any art to be wasted? I find it to: enhance empathy; expose me to new ideas and perspectives (both of background and state of mind); improve my writing; allow me to experience the beautiful and the sublime, which I'd count as among the least-wasteful uses of time; act as a kind of therapy by letting me see that my struggles both great and mundane are, without exception, not only my o…

> Granted few or none of these things may result if we're talking about trash fiction, which isn't better than any other time-waster one may choose (TV, say—though both are fine if one's goal is simply entertainment). I think there's an argument for reading as entertainment, regardless of quality, as a form of non-productive entertainment that is less harmful than other forms of entertainment. I've taken to switching…

> I think there's an argument for reading as entertainment, regardless of quality, as a form of non-productive entertainment that is less harmful than other forms of entertainment. I've taken to switching off my devices at night and just reading books (fiction and non-fiction) before bed.

That's a good point. I was over-broad in my post—the form by which one experiences otherwise low-nutrient entertainment can have its own benefits. Reading even so-so fiction's not the same as watching so-so TV or compulsively refreshing online news aggregators, for example.

Re: Summer Reading List

#190

Post by michaeloblak » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

desireco42 wrote: post #162

HomoDeus is really most excellent continuation of already epic Sapiens. If you didn't read any of those, they are long but well worth the time.

Totally agree. It's in the very similar tone to the Sapiens. Reading is entertaining and light. I really like how he approached the topic. Although, the part about the religions was a little bit too long IMO.

Any other suggestions about similar books where author is wondering what might happen next? I'm mostly interested in the tech part of it. Recently, I started reading Superinteligennce by Nick Bostrom. So far it's very good.