Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

news.ycombinator.com

191–200 of 434 posts

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#191
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, this critique of the book is worth a read: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

Disappointing... That book has been highly recommended ad infinitum on HN, to the point that it was sounding like gospel. Maybe that should've been a hint, heh. Has Walker responded to that critique?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#192

The best books in the past decade, that's a hard one! It's also hard to pinpoint what I learned where, but I'll just list the most memorable ones. I read a lot of software engineering books to learn language X or technology Y. But that's just o'reilly books and probably not that interesting to list here. - Jobs by Walter Isaacson. To learn about the Apple and Steve Jobs himself. I thought it was great - Zen and the a…

Will have to check out Jobs. I enjoyed his Leonardo DaVinci.

Now I'll have to go check out his DaVinci one :)

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#193

1. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg 2. The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek 3. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell 4. An American Life by Ronald Reagan 5. The Rust Programming Language by Steve Kablink

Interested in why you consider liberal fascism one of the best books of the decade - it left me very disappointed. He had me going with how Wilson and FDR were fascists, but then he got to recent history, and used the same arguments to make the case that Clinton was a fascist. I lived through Clinton - that’s when I realized that Goldberg was telling one side of the story - it was the usual partisan BS.

Such a shame to do that much research, and then use it not to inform, but to score political points.

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#195

- Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style - Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think - The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake - Sherlock Holmes: The definitive collection

Factfulness and Enlightenment Now utterly transformed my outlook on life and the state of the world. These two books turned me from a cynical complainer into an optimist. Cannot recommend them highly enough.

Noticed multiple recommendations of Factfulness and decided to read a sample from Amazon. While I'm fully onboard with the material, the writing style put me off: it felt very egocentric and self-congratulatory.

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#197
A few stand out:

- Vagabonding (Potts): made me travel more than ever

- Steve Jobs (Isaacson): amazing life story, beautifully described

- The Mom Test: required reading for any young founder/PM IMO, I've gifted this more than any other book

- It doesn't have to be crazy at work (DHH/Fried): best advice on how to run a company in a sustainable way to maximize team happiness & output

- Masters of Doom: epically entertaining, super nostalgic

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#198
post #64

Brain 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/

What a great critique. I'd like to see a similar treatment of Jason Hickel's "The Divide", which feels both terribly important and very biased and sloppy.

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#199
Overthrow, by Stephen Kinzer really changed the way I perceive the US position in the world and made me question a lot of things I learned in school.

I also really enjoyed Manufacturing Consent, which is prime reading right now for anybody in the US because it's about media manipulation in free society.

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#200
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, no. You don't get a free pass of some single shared reality. There is an infinite bunch of realities, and the one you see is defined by your own experience only. In other words, what you perceive is what that you are. Or that you can't perceive that what you can't accept. Hat tip to Douglas Adams who described this idea that obvious.

Haha, no to you. Except that the majority of people perceive realities that are highly, highly similar indicating that they are all perceiving a singular thing outside of their own experience. There's a reason why people who deviate too far from the norm get locked up. There's also a reason why you understand the reality that I am describing to you right now. Likely because we are both perceiving the same thing. In o…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN