The Odyssey, translation by EV Rieu. Made an effort to read a bunch of the Classics at the start of the year and the Illiad and Odyssey were very enjoyable.
Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
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Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#12Abraham Heschel, "The Sabbath" (1951)
“Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty” to remain independent of the enslavement of the material world. “Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem—how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent.”
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#13Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson presents a best case scenario for our future.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#14I guess you mean in 2021. Same question was asked 3 days ago: (14 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29634694
Fixed now. Thanks!
Is there not a semi-official (de facto) account that creates these? They always strike me as 'karma farming' since it's just a race to create something formulaic and known to be popular. Maybe it's not a problem.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#15I read the foundation series by Asimov. Its title of the best sci-fi series of all times isn’t a hyperbole.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#16"Injustice for All: How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice System"
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#17The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin.
It identified so many of the "edges" of society and how I think about and interact with the world, on a daily basis.
Without a doubt one of the best books I've ever read. Maybe even the best.
The only other book that came close this year was Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#18Since the last few years, I have made it a habit to write about the books[1] I read without trying to add my smart-a* comment but more as a way to come back later in life and read the articles. For this year, here are some of the books I liked (quite a few of them are re-reads);
- The Story of My Experiments with Truth, the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi (English Version)
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
- Ego is the Enemy, Stillness Is the Key, and The Obstacle Is the Way; all 3 books by Ryan Holiday
- Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher[2]
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#19Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre (1923). Inspired by the life of stock trader Jesse Livermore in the late 1800s to early 1900s. The narrator starts trading in bucket shops (antique equivalent of Robinhood), makes and loses several fortunes through various (often less than honorable) financial escapades. Was inspired to read this by the GameStop situation and was not disappointed.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#20438 days. A memoir of a Mexican fisherman that spent over a year drifting across the Pacific Ocean. I’m a sucker for a good survival story and finished it in a day.