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Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
621–630 of 651 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#622The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Best scifi I've read in awhile; a really nice one in the first-person-nonhuman genre.
Great series. Have you also read the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir?
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#623I'm just finishing Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor and I have enjoyed it immensely. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486-breath I have previously taken courses in the Wim Hof Method and marvelled at the dramatic increase in energy that it gave me, not to mention an increased ability to be warm when I want to be and to tolerate the cold, something which being a relatively stationary softw…
Maybe i need to give it another go but I couldn't finish this book; found it tiresome due to all the "personal anecdotes/narratives" forming the backdrop for the book. It could also be that i am somewhat well-read on this subject due to my interest in traditional Yoga/Pranayama/Martial Arts and hence felt underwhelmed. What i had hoped to find in the book was a catalog of techniques (based on tradition or modern) fro…
Ah, I can completely see why you would find it frustrating—I enjoyed the anecdotes and it made for very light holiday reading, but then it was indeed light on detail.
If you go to the end of the book, just before the Notes section there is a short chapter which lays out the basics of most of the breathing techniques. I've found that to be enough to experiment a little and while brief it's enough as a starting point.
Sadly I don't have any recommendations for breathing techniques outside of those espoused by Wim Hof, which are based in part on Tummo.
Given that this book (Breath) has been published and the recent increase in popularity the topic is seeing I am hopeful that we will see some follow-on works (if they don't exist already) that will break these techniques down in more detail. As it stands it feels necessary to piece together elements from different books to get a more complete picture regarding how these techniques work and what is possible. I would certainly be interested to see a collation of results seen in athletes.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#624PERMANENT RECORD
by Ed Snowden
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
Project Hail Mary was special because it was so straightforward. It didn't try to beat you over the head with some grand message about society. It's just a science teacher doing cool stuff in space. Refreshing, in my opinion.
The thing I found the most funny about project hail Mary, was that the bits that most broke my immersion were the political bits. (WARNING: minor spoilers follow) In a story about someone travelling to another galaxy and investigating other life forms, the thing that I struggled with the most was that the entire planet unilaterally put their faith in one person and there wasn't a giant amount of infighting and countr…
Agreed, the geopolitics was very simplistic. I was always looking forward to the next space scene.
I also read Ministry for the Future which was pretty heavy on politics. It didn't grab me the way Project Hail Mary did, though.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question and would love to better my understanding : why do you say so? Any sources?
There are some really questionable claims from both an anthropological and political perspective. John Sexton's summary mirrors my own opinion: > The book is fundamentally unserious and undeserving of the wide acclaim and attention it has been receiving. But it is worth considering the book’s blind spots and flaws — the better to understand the weaknesses of the genre and the intellectual temptations of our age. [0]…
Thank you for sharing a counterpoint. IMO this act of skepticism is the most important trait of the HN culture.
That being said, I read through the counterpoint article and found it pretty hollow. In fact it seems to strengthen my belief that Sapiens is a valuable book. I kept expecting the author to point out where Harari’s assertions were wrong, but each section more or less boiled down to Harari is either not funny or not clever. The author even contradicts his article’s own thesis partway through:
“Nonetheless, his version of human history involves moral judgments that suggest he is not so thoroughly reductionist, or as cynical about the human condition, as he appears to be at first glance.“
+1 for Harari
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#627That would be either 'Red Rising' by Pierce Brown, or 'All Systems Red' by Martha Wells. Though I have to add a cautionary remark: I found the books in Wells' "Murderbot Diaries" to be short enough and gripping enough that it is very hard not to trade a night of sleep for finishing them in one setting.
Red Rising is great, I love the whole capture-the-flag esque storyline - it might be my most favorite out of the whole series.
I agree! One of the few books I picked up and knew after the first few pages that I'd like it a lot.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also like Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith for people-centered science fiction.
I love Cordwainer Smith. I vividly remember reading "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" as a teenager in the 60's. It had a huge effect on me, and I still have that copy of Galaxy magazine.
I just read that story based on your recommendation - thank you! I might be just a tiny bit better as a person now than I was before reading it.
For fellow fans of le Guin, Sturgeon and Smith looking for more authors, I would recommend Lois McMaster Bujold. Space opera adventures on the surface, but with subtle depths and insights into human nature. Or for something more recent, Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series; we have solved world hunger, achieved gender equality and invented flying cars, but what are the implications for world politics and human interactions?
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#629I read Sapiens by Yuval Harari this year. It was long and fascinating, incredibly well researched, and easy enough for "light reading" that I had time for between writing research papers. A couple things that stuck with me were stories of giant land mammals that used to exist, many more than I realized, alongside humans. Wherever humans colonized, the large mammals were killed off soon after. This happened in Austral…
You might also like Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist (2009). I read that first and was struck by his many insights into how human society has prospered by collaboration and exchange. Reading Sapiens after that book gave me the feeling of reading a somewhat watered-down and much more pessimistic take on the same millenia-long story.
On the topic of wheat for eaxmple Ridley, who is originally a biologist, tells it as how humans created wheat for our own benefit - modern wheat simply does not exist as a wild plant. (Have you ever seen a wheat weed?)
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#630The new Graeber, Dawn of Everything Completely tears apart recent trendy anthro books like Sapiens for ignoring both old and very new research and tries to set a new framework for understanding humanity’s potential
I'm interested in anything that tears Sapiens apart, partly because I loved that book so much and need something to temper my enthusiasm.
Try Ridley’s The Rational Optimist, as I mentioned above.