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Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#111

Post by yesenadam »

ttctciyf wrote: post #104

Severely underappreciated (IMO) is British psychiatrist Marion Milner's A Life of One's Own [1] (1934, as "Joanna Field") - an extraordinary recounting of the author's subjective yet diligent observational study of her own awareness and mental processes from first principles and with as few assumptions as possible. The results were unexpected! > As soon as I began to study my perception, to look at my own experience,…

I came across A Life Of One's Own as a teenager, and she became one of my heroes in courage and self-exploration, a great inspiration. The sequels An Experiment in Leisure and On Not Being Able To Paint are also excellent. On Not Being Able To Paint initially didn't seem as interesting, but I picked up my copy again 20 years later and found that what she'd learnt about art was almost exactly what I'd learnt from 5 years of writing orchestral music! It had gone over my head the first time.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#112

Post by neonate »

TheGallopedHigh wrote: post #101

Stoner by John Williams. It is a slow burner, but it’s worth the effort. It’s novel about an average person living an average life, but the prose captures the emotion of life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)

That book is very widely known.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#113

Post by kkwteh »

mellosouls wrote: post #12
mellosouls wrote: post #8

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban is not unknown but not hugely popular. Post apocalyptic novel written in a made up language (think Clockwork Orange). Poetic and deeply moving account of a boy's journey through a world where scientific knowledge has devolved to primitive ritual and incantation; and his dawning realisation that we lost everything . I've never read anything else like it. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/R…

Here's how it starts off, be warned: On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and c…

Reminds me a bit of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, which is an incredible book.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#114

Post by ttctciyf »

45ure wrote: post #73

Aquarium by Viktor Suvorov. The "Aquarium" of the title is the nickname given to GRU headquarters in Moscow by those who work there. "What sort of fish are there swimming there?" asks Suvorov of his boss when he learns about it. "There's only one kind there—piranhas." ─ Wikipedia. Book: https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovAquariumTheCareerAn...

Nice!

My "best unknown" in the espionage topic would be Gordon Winter's Inside BOSS[1] which tells of the author's stint in the employ of South African intelligence during the apartheid era.

Sample passage:

> I asked [Intel chief] H. J. van den Bergh how on earth British intelligence could obtain all the names of people who voted Communist in British elections. Surely the vote was secret. H J laughed and said any voter attending a polling station automatically had his name checked on the voters’ roll, which naturally gave his residential address. And when he voted he was given a numbered counterfoil. His voters’ roll number was written on the counterfoil stub which bore the same number.

> ‘It is therefore possible for the voting slip to be related to the counterfoil stub, which then gives the man’s number on the voters’ roll,’ explained Van Den Bergh.

> ‘But all the voting slips are locked in big black metal boxes and locked away after the elections, so how do British intelligence get to them?’

> H. J. van den Bergh shook his head sadly as if he was sorry I was such a simpleton.

> ‘That’s the answer the British authorities will always give if anyone claims that ballot papers are secretly scrutinized. But let me ask you some very simple questions. First, you agree that the voting slips are placed in boxes and then filed away in some official building somewhere?’

> ‘Yes,’ I answered.

> ‘And presumably those boxes are placed in a room?’

> ‘Yes.’

> ‘Does that room have a door?’

> ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

> ‘Does the door have a lock?’

> ‘I should imagine so.’

> ‘Is there a key to that lock?’

> ‘Yes, there must be.’

> ‘Then,’ said H. J. van den Bergh triumphantly, ‘somebody must look after the key.’

> Only then did I realize what he was getting at.

1: https://archive.org/details/INSIDEBOSS/page/n5

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#115

Post by zokier »

I did enjoy The Transylvania (or Writing on the Wall) Trilogy by Bánffy. It has similar feeling to Tolstoy (Anna Kareina, War and Peace) but bit less high-concept and more grounded to reality, maybe bit closer to Il Gattopardo by Lampedusa. One nice thing about Bánffy is that it gives insight on a period and setting that was so important, but not that well understood, in (European) history; the just before fall of Austro-Hungarian empire that eventually then led to triggering first world war. The books are fictional, but the author was an actual count from that era which lends certain degree of authenticity to it. Of course it also means that there are some nostalgic elements to it, but that just gives it bit more charm imho.

This is the article that introduced it to me; I don't know it counts as "unknown" if it has a Guardian story written about it.. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/aug/05/writ...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#116

Post by richev »

I can really recommend Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint[1]. Written by Robert Gaskins, inventor of PowerPoint, I found it enjoyable and interesting to learn the history and design decisions behind a product most take for granted, and some object to the overuse of.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Sweating-Bullets-Notes-Inventing-Powe...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#117

Post by awwx »

bordercases wrote: post #41

Foundations of Decision Analysis by Hubbard. Most people here may have scraped work on decision theory. But Hubbard turns the field into a coherent skillset. Otherwise you're just sitting around talking about decision models instead of using and practicing with them, for everyday living. This is what Hubbard gives you. "Smart Choices" is a book which may be better known but complements FoDA nicely as an entry-level s…

Smart Choices by John S. Hammond?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#118

Post by yesenadam »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #60

The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory by Elisabeth Lloyd has had an outsized effect on my thinking, even though I do not work in that field. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691000466/th...

I decided to investigate feminist philosophers of science a few years ago, since I'd heard they write postmodern garbage, and randomly picked Elisabeth Lloyd first. I ended up reading everything I could get my hands on, all her books, papers, talks, webpages. Totally admirable. She is awesome, and responds to critics with tireless patience. 'Feminist science' as she does it is just good science. A lot of it points out blind spots in the ways various scientific fields have operated, because of things taken for granted.
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