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

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

#291

Post by s_Hogg »

dinofacedude wrote: post #257

Dune and Lord of the Rings. Both have such detail to their worlds that is rarely done well in other works. On top of the world building, I enjoyed the internal struggles that both Paul and Frodo had to go through to become better people and achieve their goals

It's amazing how Dune is becoming more and more relevant. Not because of any dystopia thing, but because the fundamental issues it talks about (unstable power systems, ecology and power, the right to sovereignty) are becoming more and more mainstream. If they make another movie, I think it could potentially do quite well.

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

#292

Post by croo »

akavel wrote: post #50

Not 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 throu…

Shogun by James Clavell is another great book with the same side effect.

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

#293

Post by armitron »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #183
lstodd wrote: 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…

How do you know that the realities the majority of people perceive are highly highly similar? Language alone cannot be used to deduce this since perceiving and constructing realities is rooted in the domain of qualia and the psyche.

How do you now there are people for that matter other than brain(s) in vats ?

The fact that you are willing to assume so much does not invalidate parent’s argument, merely exposes the flaws in yours.

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

#294

Post by pjc50 »

richk449 wrote: post #193
fortran77 wrote: post #107

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…

Reading that FDR, leading America against Hitler, was a fascist should probably have made you question the book a lot sooner. There's a much more reasonable argument that he was anti-semitic, based on opposition to Jewish immigration during the war, but there are counter arguments and it was endemic in US politics at the time.

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

#295

Post by croo »

zwilliamson wrote: post #261

The Three-Body Problem series by Chixin Liu * The Three-Body Problem * The Dark Forest * Death's End Expanded my perception of life, death, love, time and our potential purpose, via some very well written fiction (space opera style). Chixin Liu nailed it!

My problem was with the books is the lack of depths of characters as the story moves forward - at the end they become mere tools to tell the impossible future. But there are astoundig amounts of fascinating ideas and theories in the books it's well worth the read - it became one of my favourite sci-fi next to Solaris.

If you can, read it without any previous info - there are big spoilers in almost every description of the book.

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

#296

Post by techer »

guzey wrote: post #263
biophysboy wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to give this a more thorough read, but so far this critique strikes me as done in bad faith. I read the book. I'm also in the middle of a biophys PhD, so I like to think my opinion is "extra super special". Here are my comments: Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Anot…

Hi, I'm the author of that critique. >Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Another thought I had: metabolism and longevity go hand and hand. I mean, I just read a brand new paper from George Church's Harvard lab, showing that they reversed several chronic ailments in mice by ins…

Thank you.

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

#297

Post by techer »

folli wrote: post #264
pmoriarty wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll second the recommendation of The Count of Monte Cristo . There's a user on HN who learned French just so he could read it in the original, and I can see why. If you read it, make sure to read the unabridged edition, and not any of the many abridged editions, which are often targeted at children and are a travesty to the mature themes in the original. I can personally recommend David Clarke's reading of it on Lib…

Counterpoint: I prefer the abridged version. Dumas was originally paid by number of pages and it shows IMO.

Which one would you recommend?

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

#298

Post by sharcerer »

gpanders wrote: post #121
surfsvammel wrote: post #61

- 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.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb thinks it's BS. There's been a lot of debate on Pinker's book.

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/21/8635369/pinker-taleb

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

#299

Post by martingoodson »

biophysboy wrote: post #209
w1ntermute wrote: post #85

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/

I'd like to give this a more thorough read, but so far this critique strikes me as done in bad faith. I read the book. I'm also in the middle of a biophys PhD, so I like to think my opinion is "extra super special". Here are my comments: Point 1: the chart bottoms out at 7, which falls within the range the book recommends. I'm fairly sure he recommends 7-9, and that the required amt varies from person to person. Anot…

'Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature.....'

All of this is completely irrelevant to Guzey's point, which is that sleep deprivation is a known treatment for depression. You are going off on a tangent about the genetics of depression, while failing to engage with the topic under discussion.

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

#300

Post by sorokod »

tajd wrote: post #287
palerdot wrote: post #227

The Count of Monte Cristo - This is one breathtaking epic. I have been putting off reading this novel for quite some time and occasionally see this name popping up in HN too, but never gave a serious thought for giving it a go. Was I wrong! This is an epic in its true sense, and you will feel a sense of amazement as you progress through the novel. I'm quite a reader, and I have not experienced such amazement when rea…

The Master and Margarita is one of the best novels I've read this year too. It is funny and is so fresh with its humour, despite being several decades old.

I guess it's a testimony of how fresh it feels, the book has been written in the 1930s
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