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Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

#101

Post by Nahmag »

ronyfadel wrote: post #80
kidintech wrote: post #23

My compiled list for 2020, as suggested by friends I respect and HN: General ==== - Master & Margarita (w reader's guide) - Why we sleep - The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion - The wisdom of insecurity - The denial of death - The three body problem (friend's advice: slow burn, stick with it) - The dubliners - The devils (Dostoyevski) - The name of the rose - Enten-Oller (Kierkegaa…

Can someone tell me why Master and Margarita is a masterpiece? I’ve read it this year and it was a slow read, of basically (possibly) the author’s dreams or long mescaline trip.

Many years ago I was especially excited about how the author managed to circumvent Soviet censorship restrictions :-)

Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

#102

Post by agentultra »

Going to finish Crime and Punishment, Year of the Monkey (Patti Smith), The Children of Húrin (along with many cross references and letters) (Tolkien), re-reading A Game of Thrones for fun... as for 2020 I might read Slaughterhouse 5 again and work through George Sand.

Technical things I am working through are the:

- https://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative/a... along with the Artin text, writing proofs out by hand and in Lean.

- Seven Sketches in Compositionality: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05316

Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

#104

Post by criddell »

bloudermilk wrote: post #78
criddell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How to Read a Book has been on my list for the longest time. I might have to finally give it a go. Is the book very dense? I think one of the reasons I've held off is because I have a suspicion that it could probably be distilled down to the length of a magazine article... I read a decent amount and enjoy it, but I feel in the end I don't get much from it. The time doesn't feel well spent. FWIW, I try to alternate fi…

Anne-Laure Le Cunff just published a blog post that appears to be a summary of the book, which you might find interesting. https://nesslabs.com/how-to-read-a-book

Thanks for the link! Have you read the book? Is the article you linked to a decent summary of the book?

Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

#105

Post by gen220 »

ronyfadel wrote: post #80
kidintech wrote: post #23

My compiled list for 2020, as suggested by friends I respect and HN: General ==== - Master & Margarita (w reader's guide) - Why we sleep - The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion - The wisdom of insecurity - The denial of death - The three body problem (friend's advice: slow burn, stick with it) - The dubliners - The devils (Dostoyevski) - The name of the rose - Enten-Oller (Kierkegaa…

Can someone tell me why Master and Margarita is a masterpiece? I’ve read it this year and it was a slow read, of basically (possibly) the author’s dreams or long mescaline trip.

It’s mostly a masterpiece because of when and where it was written, and who it was written about. If you’re lacking the context of the author and the times (most people are), it can take a long, hard time to appreciate.

Specifically, it’s written for a Soviet audience at a time when the censor was hard to get past. So the only way you could publish controversial thoughts or critiques about society was to couch it in metaphor, sarcasm, and double entendres, in a way that requires a lot of cleverness and courage on the author’s behalf. Master and Margarita is considered to be one of the peaks of this genre, because the story it tells manages to have an interesting plot and narration style, even if it’s just there to prop up the incessant jabs at contemporary soviet elites and norms.

It’s sort of like reading a comedy in another language, that’s been translated to English, but all the jokes are region specific, satirical slant rhymes that are explained in the footnotes. It’s very good, but hard to enjoy in its, originally intended, viscerally funny delivery.

Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

#106

Post by techstrategist »

pjmorris wrote: post #98

I hilariously overestimate the number of books I can get through when I make these lists, but my current list for 2020 is as follows: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution Book of Proof Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems Seeing Like a State: How Certa…

Depending on your current habits, starting with Digital Minimalism will help get through the others in one year.

Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

#108

Post by cryoshon »

Loughla wrote: post #92
john-radio wrote: post #90

"And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin "This Is How You Lose The Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar "Priestdaddy" by Patricia Lockwood "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" by Marlon James "Consider Phlebas," and maybe the rest of The Culture series of novels, by Iain Banks

>"Consider Phlebas," and maybe the rest of The Culture series of novels, by Iain Banks Oh man, this will start a shitstorm, because it's so subjective, but Consider Phlebas isn't the best intro to the culture series. I would start with Either Player of Games or Use of Weapons. Now let's hear from everyone who disagrees with me.

agreed re: consider phlebas. i'd agree with your choice of starting points -- player of games is probably the best way to understand what the culture is in contrast with other cultures in one book. definitely leave inversions for after you've read three other books, imo, as it's quite subtle.

Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

#109

Post by kaypro »

branweb wrote: post #97
kaypro wrote: post #74

The Body - Bill Bryson Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Rovelli, Carlo Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment - Robert Wright Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari

The only one on this list I disliked was the Wright book, mainly because it's not a scientific justification of Buddhism. It's really about how evolutionary psychology explains stuff like road-rage and dieting struggles and how insight meditation (Wright's brand of secularized Buddhism) helps us manage those emotions. Which is fine. Only he's not an evolutionary psychologist and almost all the evidence he puts forwar…

Really appreciate that feedback.. thank you!
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