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Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
41–50 of 434 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#42Deep Work by Cal Newport was great.
If only I could actually apply its principles at my job in an open office with an IM chat system.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#43* Elements of Statistical Learning - Hastie, Tibshisrani * (Lot's of machine learning books to list: PRML, All of Stats, Deep Learning, etc.) * Active Portfolio Management - Kahn, Grinold * Thinking, fast and slow - Kahneman * Protein Power (the Eades') / Why we get fat (Taubes) * Why we sleep (Walker) * Deep Work / So Good They Can't Ignore You (Newport) * Flowers for Algernon (Keyes) * Getting to Yes (Fisher)
A strong upvote for Thinking Fast and Slow. I think it should be required reading in school, or at least parts of it.
Keep in mind that the findings in Chapter 4 have NOT been replicable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Replic...
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#44Less, by Andrew Sean Greer. A really wonderful, light-hearted, hilarious novel about self-worth. The writing reminds me of David Sedaris.
I read Less as part of my "read all the Pulitzer prize for fiction novels" and I also enjoyed it quite a lot. "the road" might have been my favorite novel on the list of pulitzer prizes in my lifetime.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#45"Invention of Nature"; nonfiction; about the life of Alexander von Humboldt; Darwin said of him "if it hadn't been for AVH, I would have never stepped foot on the HMS Beagle"; profoundly important to modern science, an adventurer, yet little known in modern times
"Stoner" by John Williams; fiction; this book knocked me on my butt and I read it all in almost one sitting; about an English professor who refuses to relinquish his integrity in the face of great adversity
"Light Years" by James Salter; fiction; inexpressibly beautiful novel that takes place largely on the Hudson River above New York
"Narcissus and Goldmund" by Hesse; fiction; a fun yet literary adventure novel about the importance and fun of living life with integrity
"When Things Fall Apart" by Chödron; non-fiction; Chödron proposes that leaning into suffering, experiencing it as directly and fully as possibly and without resistance paradoxically leads to profound relief from suffering
"Enlightenment Now" by Pinker; non-fiction; proposes, convincingly, that life nhas drastically improved for nearly everyone on earth due to a shifting philosophical orientation towards enlightenment values; proposes that although much is problematic, there is reason for great hope, too
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#46I wrote a book on tmux, if you are interested in getting into the shell more: https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read (free to read online) While it may not be the most important, if you've been meaning to up your terminal game and want a bit more dexterity when shuffling between panes, tmux and vim are a good area to invest time in [1] Personality theories: Textbooks in this area. Affordable on Amazon if you get th…
I’ve yet to find a better workflow than tmux + vim + other terminal tools. The work I put into it has paid off a thousand times. I’d really like the whole os gui to work like tmux.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#47“Radical Markets” by Glen Weyl and Eric Posner
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#48Mating in Captivity - Esther Perel
She takes a post-modern stance on creating relationships that work rather than just following society’s prescribed path.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#49* Elements of Statistical Learning - Hastie, Tibshisrani * (Lot's of machine learning books to list: PRML, All of Stats, Deep Learning, etc.) * Active Portfolio Management - Kahn, Grinold * Thinking, fast and slow - Kahneman * Protein Power (the Eades') / Why we get fat (Taubes) * Why we sleep (Walker) * Deep Work / So Good They Can't Ignore You (Newport) * Flowers for Algernon (Keyes) * Getting to Yes (Fisher)
Reading "Why we sleep" right now and enjoying it very much. It covers a lot of research, and Walker manages to tell a story and get you the bird's eye view of what the research means. Definitely recommend.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#50Not sure if decade, as I don't have good memory for such stuff (sorry!), but certainly at least for last year, the following book that had a really huge impact on me:
Gai-Jin by James Clavell
It showed me how different cultures can have very different "codes", how they can see others as "barbarians" purely based on that; more specifically, helped me look more critically on (part of) European culture and history through "foregin eyes", and better understand some aspects of Japanese culture taking them nearly all the way from "weird" to "natural". While at the same time being just a super entertaining and engrossing story!