Not that much fiction in this thread, so I will add A Fine Balance by Rohintin Mistry. It's the saddest book I've ever read but incredibly beautiful. I couldn't stop thinking about it for months
Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
81–90 of 434 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#82https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif... Nonviolent Communication. I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.…
The co-author of this book is (seems to be) Deepak Chopra who acquired quite a fame for his liberal use of quantum physics terminology (quantum woo-woo) and for producing thoughts and ideas which typically turn out be not very coherent under a closer scrutiny ( https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra ), i.e. for "sounding deep while saying nothing" I wonder how his co-authorship affects contents of the book. I bo…
“Foreword by Deepak Chopra” is hardly co-authoring.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo. Politics is the continual friction between individuals and various groupings of people.
> various groupings of people. why isn't left/right a valid grouping then?
Because there is no logical consistency to the attributes used to define each grouping. They're just a hodgepodge of loosely related (at best) ideas. So a lot of people simply don't fit in either category.
For example: I am absolutely pro-choice on the abortion issue. I am also rabidly pro-gun on the second amendment issue. So do I fall into the "left" bucket or the "right" bucket? The answer is "neither".
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#84why has nobody said superintelligence by nick bostrom yet? You all need to read this because it describes what happens and how an AI will eventually start taking over the world(s)
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#85Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina, because it made me a better father; Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, because it taught me of the importance of something that I’d occasionally dismiss as a nuisance; Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC by Pete Egoscue, because it completely changed the way I understood posture, pain, and how repetition influences my body; and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, because it…
Re: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, this critique of the book is worth a read: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#86Fooled by Randomness.
i picked it up from my friend's dad's bookshelf in 2010/2011 by pure chance. Best decision ever.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
The co-author of this book is (seems to be) Deepak Chopra who acquired quite a fame for his liberal use of quantum physics terminology (quantum woo-woo) and for producing thoughts and ideas which typically turn out be not very coherent under a closer scrutiny ( https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra ), i.e. for "sounding deep while saying nothing" I wonder how his co-authorship affects contents of the book. I bo…
“Foreword by Deepak Chopra” is hardly co-authoring.
The amazon book page is confusing, it lists him as a co-author. The book's cover says it's just a foreword, so I guess you're right.
Still, not to surrender in this thread completely, letting such type of person to write a foreword for a book is not a very good initial signal in itself - it casts doubt on the main author's judgement with regard to whom she considers an authority in matters of communication (or, in any matter other than producing confusing statements).
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#88Why evolution is true. Coyne.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> various groupings of people. why isn't left/right a valid grouping then?
Because there is no logical consistency to the attributes used to define each grouping. They're just a hodgepodge of loosely related (at best) ideas. So a lot of people simply don't fit in either category. For example: I am absolutely pro-choice on the abortion issue. I am also rabidly pro-gun on the second amendment issue. So do I fall into the "left" bucket or the "right" bucket? The answer is "neither".
You sound rather liberal, in the literal sense.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#90On The Shortness of Life by Seneca.[1] Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is also excellent.[2] [1] - https://tripinsurancestore.com/4/on-the-shortness-of-life.pd... [2] - https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/...
It seems Frankl has been somewhat exposed/debunked. I loved his book too as a teenager; it pained me to read sources mentioned on his wikipedia page. Would you believe he was at Auschwitz for only a few days, performed medical experiments on Jews himself, and it appears his main thesis about attitude mattering above all else for survival in the camps is simply false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl#Contro…
Frankl’s work always seemed like cultishness and apologia from what I had elsewhere read on the history of the Holocaust. But I was unprepared to learn that he was a card-carrying fascist who inserted meth into the skulls of people who had killed themselves in rebellion against Nazism...
> In his "Gutachten" Gestapo profile, Frankl is described as "politically perfect" by the Nazi secret police, with Frankl's membership in the Austro-fascist "Fatherland Front" in 1934
> None of Frankl's obituaries mention the unqualified and unskilled brain lobotomy and trepanation medical experiments approved by the Nazis that Frankl performed on Jews who had committed suicide with an overdose of sedatives, in resistance to their impending arrest, imprisonment and enforced labour in the concentration camp system. Operating without any training as a surgeon, Frankl would voluntary request of the Nazis to perform the experiments on those who had resisted and once approved, published some of the details on his experiments, the methods of insertion of his chosen amphetamine drugs into the brains of these individuals, resulting in at times an alleged partial resuscitation, in 1942, prior to his own internment at Theresienstadt ghetto in September later in that year