I've begun reading The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, his first novel. It's left a very good impression so far. It's a fourteenth century murder mystery, set in a monastery, where the mystery is mostly an excuse for exploring the historical and cultural contexts, which are very interesting. Wikipedia has a nice summary: "an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory". Eco was a semiotician and a philosopher and he brings the best of that to the table in this book.
Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
151–160 of 335 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#152I just started Ulysses for the second time, see if I get further this time.
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#153Billion Dollar Whale - Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way - Will Kurt
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#154USMC Commandant's 2020 Reading List. This year I am finishing up the Harvard Classics and am looking for a new view point. https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1 Unfortunately, the military only publish on New Years Day (traditionally as a sort of holiday gift to those under command), so the 2020 list is not out yet. Every title is free via either the base library or the Navy Digital Library. Most ha…
I wouldn't bother with Ready Player One, which is an unrewarding story mostly written as an effort by the author to collect every bit of his 80s nostalgia in one place.
Instead I would suggest Speaker For The Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game and a remarkable novel.
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#155I 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…
Start with Guns, Germs, and Steel and/or Digital Minimalism ;)
A book to read immediately after Guns Germs and Steel is Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu.
It's also useful to know that Diamond does not have a degree in Geography and many geographers aren't particularly on board with his ideas.
I think of him the same way I do Malcom Gladwell, a good story teller but he does this by cherrypicking anecdotes more than by a robust assessment of reality.
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
Thanks for posting it! Definitely going to add a couple of those to my list.
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#157My top priority books: Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan Design Patterns - Gang of Four Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler Programming Pearls - Jon Bentley Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt CSS: The Definitive Guide - Eric A. Meyer, Estelle Weyl…
Based on your Best Books list, check out David Goggins book 'Cant Hurt Me'. I found him through a podcast he did with Joe Rogan and it resonated with me on a deep personal level. It ultimately inspired me to change my life: I lost 50 lbs since, got a raise and promotion at work and travelled more in 2019 than the last 5 years.
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#158I'm hoping to tackle this list in 2020, I've been wanting to read Caro's LBJ series for a while now. ===== Robert Caro - Lyndon B. Johnson series & The Power Broker S.C Gwynne - Empire of the Summer Moon Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Black Swan & Antifragile Graham Hancock - America Before Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel Safi Bahcall - Loonshots
The entire LBJ series and The Power Broker? Ambitious! Caro has a fantastic voice in his writing but by golly he sure does know how to fill a thousand pages!
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#159I just started Ulysses for the second time, see if I get further this time.
I did eventually get through it. I found that thinking of the chapters as individual books (which in a lot of ways they are) was helpful to enjoy the reading and to get through it.
Read one, take a break digest it. It's enjoyable. There are good accompanying books to read alongside it.
Re: Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?
#160Well here are the books I’m currently reading (physical, kindle, and audible). I bounce around a lot. Sometimes it takes me a week to finish a book, other times I take a few months. Sometimes I never finish. But these are the ones I have some progress on so far:
1. Faust by goethe
2. I am That
3. Book of why
4. The gift by hafiz
5. Simulacra and simulation
6. Candide by Voltaire
7. Meeting the shadow: the hidden power of the dark side of human nature
8. Nonviolent communication
9. After the ecstasy, the laundry
10. Watchmen
11. Noble heart by Pena chodron
12. Developer hegemony
13. Brothers karamazov