Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 211 posts

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

#201

Post by narrator »

przefur wrote: post #14

If I were to choose three fiction, those would make the cut. Fiction: The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem - It shed light on me in regards to microelectronics, swarm intelligence. Nothing ever eased my learning curve more for genetic algorithms like this short novel! It is also a good read in general. It also taught me that the difference in scientific vs force vs emotional approach to unknown. Would recommend as a sprin…

+1 for Roadside Picnic. I love how unbelievably melancholy that book is. The amount of smoking and drinking in every scene is kind of amusing too. It definitely hits that noir sci-fi vibe. Like what if the future goes kind of wrong, but not necessarily dystopian.

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

#202

Post by kashyapc »

westcort wrote: post #189
kashyapc wrote: post #188

I'll mention two of mine. NB: they demand sustained reading and require nontrivial time investment. The patient reader will be handsomely rewarded. - Behave , by Robert Sapolsky. Here's[1] my mini review from the past. I've also picked up various other fascinating books from Behave . - Seneca's all of 124 letters. A good English translation is key here. Get the edition published Chicago University; translated by Anth…

One of my favorite essays by Seneca is his letter to Serenus, three of my favorite quotations of which are here: What, then, is there to prevent your believing this strength of mind to belong to the wise man, when you can see the same thing existing in others, though not from the same cause?—for what physician is angry with a crazy patient? who takes to heart the curses of a fever-stricken one who is denied cold wate…

Thanks for sharing. The comparison of a wise man to a physician seems to be a common technique back then (Cicero also uses it). Seneca's essays are indeed outstanding. The above quotes sound like they are from "On th constancy of the wise man". As that's one of the 2 essays Seneca wrote to Serenus.

I love the other essay that he wrote to Serenus, "On the tranquility of the mind". I shared a quote (and a translation) here[1] in the past.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415296

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

#204

Post by qwery »

rambambram wrote: post #120
qwery wrote: post #50

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

I recently read Candide. What a story! Time well spent reading it, and some good lessons along the way. P.S. Just search for the title, there are a lot of free e-books available online.

Absolutely! I should have mentioned the fact that you can get all of these as free ebooks easily (because they are old and in the public domain) at e.g. Standard Ebooks[0] with a quick search.

[0] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks

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

#205

Post by jstx1 »

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #185
chiefalchemist wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my non-fiction reading habits, I believe this is true for 90% of the non-fiction books I've read. In fact, most can be broke down into a series of highlighs / quotes. That said, no pain, no gain. The higher bar creates a sense of dedication for the reader. A 5k and a marathon are both "just running", but it's the latter better sharpens the sword, so to speak.

"Thinking fast and slow" is like this, it's a bit dry and it makes for hard reading (I tried by the poolside) but it's sort of more rewarding to fight through it. 5 minute summaries are also forgotten in the same amount of time.

It might feel rewarding but most of the stuff past the system 1 and system 2 concept is a long list of studies that don't replicate presented as fact.

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

#208

Post by throwoutway »

madmax108 wrote: post #163
pchm wrote: post #47

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 t…

Maybe it's just me, but I feel nearly all of Taleb's books should be blog posts instead of full length books. I first read Black Swan a long while back, and two things popped out at me. 1) The author comes across quite snobby and high-handed in his writing (which has translated over time on his Twitter as well for those who follow him on there) and 2) The essence of the book was distillable into a much smaller novell…

This is true for many books. Publishers demand more pages though

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

#209

Post by diehunde »

throwoutway wrote: post #208
madmax108 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel nearly all of Taleb's books should be blog posts instead of full length books. I first read Black Swan a long while back, and two things popped out at me. 1) The author comes across quite snobby and high-handed in his writing (which has translated over time on his Twitter as well for those who follow him on there) and 2) The essence of the book was distillable into a much smaller novell…

This is true for many books. Publishers demand more pages though

It is true. But we also have to consider many people not only read books to learn and consume information as efficient as possible but also because they enjoy reading. It's like saying a 2 hr movie could have been reduced to a 10 min video that explains the story. You want to see development, different stories, jokes, etc. Even for non-fiction books (non-academic of course).

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

#210

Post by awestroke »

TheFreim wrote: post #143
euph0ria wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Agree with the bible, wildly underrated

It's quite unfortunate that this is the case. You can't really understand the modern western world in any meaningful way unless you know at the very least the gist of the Biblical narrative and Christian history.

Wow, that's a spicy take.
Post reply on HN