Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020? • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by vo2maxer » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

Some of the books in my 2020 to be read basket:

Cultural Amnesia by Clive James

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Silver, Sword & Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story by Maria Arana

The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy

Alice And Bob Meet The Wall Of Fire edited by Thomas Lin

Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald

Big Bang by David Bowman

White Noise by Don DeLillo

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann

A House for Mr. Biwas by V. S. Naipaul

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

On The Abolition Of All Political Parties by Simone Weil

Collected Stories by Bruno Schulz

On Being The Right Size by J. B. S. Haldane

Bela Tarr, The Time After by Jacques Ranciere

La Vida Breve by Juan Carlos Onetti

The Clown by Heinrich Boll

Memoirs From Beyond The Grave by Francois-Rene De Chateubriand

Blood Dark by Louis Guilloux

The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling

Cuentos Completos by Juan Carlos Onetti

Balcony In The Forest by Julien Gracq

Historia De España Contada Para Escépticos by Juan Eslava Galán

Diez Lecciones Sobre Los Clásicos by Piero Boitani

Waiting For The Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

97,196 Words by Emmanuel Carrere

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

El Zafarrancho Aquel De Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda

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

#252

Post by dlivingston » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

douglaswlance wrote: post #73

My 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…

As someone who approximately has their life figured out and is approximately in a good place, would you still recommend Peterson's 12 Rules for Life?

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

#253

Post by alkylketone » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

habnds wrote: post #155

yboris wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm curious what you think of The Narrow Corridor, also by Acemoglu and Robinson. I finished Nations recently, not sure I should jump right to Corridor next?

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

#254

Post by haileris » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

I feel like I'm way behind on fundamentals so mostly textbooks. I'm focused on CS, maths, and finance mainly, not sure I'll achieve this in a year, kind of my perpetual read this within 10 years list. I'm also interested in literature but prefer reading to enrich my knowledge and skills as opposed to reading for leisure :

Maths:

James Stewart's Precalculus

Spivak's Calculus

How to Solve It

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

I Am a Strange Loop

Introduction to Linear Algebra

Euclid's Elements

The Principia: The Authoritative Translation and Guide: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

CS:

The Algorithm Design Manual

Finish SICP

Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Persepctive

C Programming: A Modern Approach, 2nd Edition

Operating Systems: 3 Easy pieces

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

Lions' Commentary on Unix

TCP/IP Illustrated

Finance/Econ/Business:

Liar's Poker

Investor Z (Manga)

Trading & Exchanges

Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options

Python for Finance: Mastering Data-Driven Finance

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it

Alpha Masters

Fooling Some of the People All of Time

Dark Pools

When Genius Failed

Advances in Financial Machine Learning

Algorithmic Trading

Other:

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free productivity

Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Chaos: Making a New Science

Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World

Data and Reality: A Timeless Perspective on Perceiving and Managing Information in Our Imprecise World

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

#255

Post by douglaswlance » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

king_panic wrote: post #157

douglaswlance wrote: post #73

My 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.

I love Goggins! That's a great book. So hard to believe, but there's documented evidence for his achievements. Unbelievable.

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

#256

Post by samtechie » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

renjimen wrote: post #231

matsemann wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I still read them almost every christmas. At least a few of them. I'd also recommend Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn series is very good, and Stormligh Archive is good so far. I really like his world-building, and I think the way he uses magic is something most HNers would approve of. It's often well defined, and the characters try to exploit it the same way a reader would.

I’ll add The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss to this, having recently gotten into Brandon Sanderson. Probably my favourite fantasy series. Lots of similarities to the Mistborn Series.

Kingkiller Chronicles is hands down my best fantasy series but its unfinished and the last book has taken over 8 years now with the author constantly pushing the release date. There are rumours that it will be released in 2020 but they have been saying this for years.

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

#257

Post by douglaswlance » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

dlivingston wrote: post #252

douglaswlance wrote: post #73

My 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…

As someone who approximately has their life figured out and is approximately in a good place, would you still recommend Peterson's 12 Rules for Life?

>As someone who ... is approximately in a good place

Are you going to be happy on your death bed that you lived "approximately" a good life?

I can definitely recommend the book. It could reveal to you those aspects of your life that you feel are off the mark.

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

#258

Post by sartethought » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

Capital Volume I By Karl Marx

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

#259

Post by voisin » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

Check out Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Worth a read.

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

#260

Post by lghh » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

renjimen wrote: post #229

lghh wrote: post #126

Leisure Stuff: Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga Of Oklahoma City, It's Chaotic Founding... by Sam Anderson Midnight In Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham Dune by Frank Herbert The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (tried it this year and stopped, want to give it another go) Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just finished Exhalation and I think it's great) An Ursula K. Le Guin novel, have not picked one out yet A…

Some good ones on in your leisure list that I have really enjoyed recently! I also took two attempts for The Three Body Problem. Gotta say, I don’t understand the hype. Maybe something was lost in translation but it seems like another poorly written SF novel carried by a few interesting ideas. Not in the same league as Dune, Ursula Le Guin or some of Ted Chiang’s shorts.

Agreed. I was told it's slow going and worth the payout, but I generally have low tolerance for books like that. Several friends who know what I like think it'll be worth my time though so I'm trying again.