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Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

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Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#41

Post by vaylian »

jstrebel wrote: post #18

Bill Gates - How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need Finally a book that approaches climate change from an engineering perspective and focuses on possible, constructive solutions.

I like the book as well. But I think it suffers a bit too much from technooptimism for answering the question "how to avoid a climate disaster". I appreciate Bill Gates's optimism, but it's a dangerous gamble to only talk about technical solutions and leave societal and cultural aspects off the table. With that in mind: It's still a very good book.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#42

Post by epolanski »

newsoul wrote: post #23
epolanski wrote: post #20

- The Way of The Superior Man. The only "self help" book I give any credit. It really boils down to encouraging people to have a purpose in life and accept ourselves. - The Stupidity Paradox. Ever feel the world works in a "stupid" way? That your organization keeps promoting stupid ideas? Read this book and get into the roots of functional stupidity. It's a bit repetitive, but extremely insightful book. - Structure a…

SICP. When do you recommend software devs read it? Beginning of their journey or mid journey?

Depends on what the journey looks like. If you're dead set on becoming a software developer it's a great and solid introduction to programming and computing.

But if you're not, I'd recommend resources targeting more popular and lower friction languages than scheme such as JavaScript.

I've read it after 5 years of professional experience and it was a very good read.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#44

Post by memling »

pjc50 wrote: post #29
Ligma123 wrote: post #15

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius Republic - Plato Laws - Cicero National System of Political Economy - Friedrich List Man and Technics - Oswald Spengler The Bible

The Bible is not exactly .. readable? Embarking on actually reading it all the way through and understanding the references is a serious project of literary archaeology, even armed with a concordance and a Greek lexicon. Then you run in to the various hapax legomenon: the words for which we have exactly one example in one sentence in the Bible, and are forced to guess the meaning of the word from context. Then three…

> The Bible is not exactly .. readable?

I can appreciate why people might say this, but modern translations are not that hard, and large parts are narrative and relatively straightforward. Probably a bit of an explainer is helpful, just like any other major work of literature.

As to whether OP would find it worthwhile reading, that obviously depends. But as others point out it is the most important book in shaping Western civilization as we know it...so there is probably some value.

On that subject Luc Ferry's Brief History of Thought has perspectives on several major thought streams. I don't know how accessible it is, but when I read it a few years ago, I found it reasonable, and I don't know much about philosophy.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#45

Post by benzin »

sgdpk wrote: post #10
gurjeet wrote: post #6

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 2. The Selfish Gene 3. Podcast: Kings of Kings https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings... Each one of these were worth every minute of read/listen. Edit to add: The world around us feels like it was created as we see it today. But these books and the podcast, combined, show us how we got here, where we are today. Wars, long periods of peace, pandemics, evo…

The Selfish Gene is great. The portions on Evolutionary Stable Strategies are particularly interesting. It shows how Darwinism can lead to a "steady state", where a population contains individuals with competing characteristics (selflessness VS selfishness), and why this not at odds with selection.

The jaw-dropping moment for this point is the section about bees, even if the author himself said it was very hard to understand. It reframed my understanding of a 'queen' bee at least.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#46

Post by microtonal »

tpaschalis wrote: post #31

- So Good They Can't Ignore You. Even though kinda 'self-help'-ish and repetitive at times, it played a role in shaping the way that I think about my career. - The Daily Stoic. A collection of snippets from stoic philosophers, tied with examples from modern living, it was a good and lightweight introduction to philosophy.

I have started reading the Daily Stoic, but I often find the commentaries underwhelming (obvious, predictable, not adding much insight).

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#47

Post by pchm »

Taleb's Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game).

Opens your eyes to a wide array of fallacies that govern our daily life (unknown unknowns, "experts" explaining past events as obvious in retrospect, the news, predictions, survivorship bias, confirmation bias, iatrogenics and a lot, lot more) — almost to a fault, i.e. if you take it too far, you'll see these fallacies everywhere and things like stories of success/failure, biographies (or history in general) etc. will no longer make the same impression.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#48

Post by lightmyst »

pjc50 wrote: post #29
Ligma123 wrote: post #15

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius Republic - Plato Laws - Cicero National System of Political Economy - Friedrich List Man and Technics - Oswald Spengler The Bible

The Bible is not exactly .. readable? Embarking on actually reading it all the way through and understanding the references is a serious project of literary archaeology, even armed with a concordance and a Greek lexicon. Then you run in to the various hapax legomenon: the words for which we have exactly one example in one sentence in the Bible, and are forced to guess the meaning of the word from context. Then three…

I think the bible and a lot of other such religious books are "comfort books". You don't really understand every single word or passage and you have your own interpretation of most of the book which might not have been originally intended by whoever the authors were. But it provides peace and comfort and that's good enough for most people.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#49

Post by jmcgough »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #8

From the pov of my career: Designing Data-Intensive Applications is the only technical book I've ever read that I felt was worth the time it took me to read it. It's excellent - I learned a ton, I keep going back to it, and if I'd read it as a fresh graduate it could have saved me a lot of trouble. I've read a few other of the popular programmer books eg Clean Code, Refactoring, the Pragmatic Programmer, Working Effe…

Reading DDIA right now and I second this - the best technical book I've read, still holds up well after five years.

Re: Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?

#50

Post by qwery »

I haven't read many books that I felt weren't worth "investing time in". Books are good for you. A couple of favourites anyway:

- New Grub Street, George Gissing, 1891

- Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1867

- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813

- Candide, Voltaire, 1759

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