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Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

#161

Post by jdshaffer »

plants wrote: post #146
jdshaffer wrote: post #132

I've read over fifty books this year (I read a lot). The ones I've enjoyed the most are: * The MurderBot Series (Wells) - So good I read them all twice through * The Interdependency Series (Scalzi) - Creative and fun, but I didn't like the wrap-up and ending. * Project Hail Mary - Surprising fun! jazz hands * Old Man's War series (Scalzi) - First three were great, last three were so-so * Anne of Green Gables - My dau…

Awesome list, thank you for sharing! Curious, though - how do you structure your weeks so that you can consume 50 books a year? That would take me a while!

I read in fits and spurts. I read a bit after work, sometimes at lunch, and definitely before bed each night. Weekend, if I'm not otherwise busy, I'll read for a couple hours as well.

Even in fits and spurts it adds up quickly!

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

#162

Post by tuffacton »

Probably some of my favorites this year have been the Greek mythology audiobooks written and narrated by Stephen Fry. I could listen to Stephen read the phone book, but he also does an incredible job giving you a narrative primer of all the Greek myths and makes both historical and contemporary observations of how these myths influenced and were influenced.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

#163

Post by azmodeus »

chrisshroba wrote: post #159
plants wrote: post #153

I’m sure not everyone came here to hear tech book recommendations, but I will add another vote for Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman. It’s one of the best tech reference books I’ve ever read. It manages to explain SO much while requiring so little prior knowledge from readers. Another book that is relatively new that I loved was Designing Machine Learning Systems by Chip Huyen. I worked in prod…

I finally read DDIA this year and loved it. If anyone has any more suggestions for similarly enlightening books, I'd love to hear them!

Could you share some examples of what you liked about it? I struggle with reading tech books when I am not sure what I can get out of them

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

#164

Post by RockyMcNuts »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #44

Non-Fiction / Self-Help: No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model IFS for short. Written for normal people, not psychologists/psychiatrists. It has a very valuable core philosophy/teaching about who we are underneath all the masks of our personality(s). It closely resembles something I experienced during an Ayahuasca retreat in 2018, about the soul / inner child/god…

on a similar topic, people might like The Body Keeps The Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. although it's written at a high level for both practitioners and well-educated normies which might fit HN.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

#165

Post by alexilliamson »

kormosi wrote: post #88

Memories of Ice, by Steven Erikson. It is the third instalment in his epic fantasy decalogy, The Malazan Book of the Fallen. To say that I've shed a couple of tears during the finale of the novel is an understatement. The thing with the whole series for me is that the books don't feel consistently good throughout. However, the endings are often heart breaking and the more I read, the more I am drawn into the history…

I was so happy to see this mentioned. I'm on book 8 which is shaping up to be my favorite so far. I wanted a new epic series after Hyperion, so this has been the year of Malazan!

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

#169

Post by chrisshroba »

azmodeus wrote: post #163
chrisshroba wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally read DDIA this year and loved it. If anyone has any more suggestions for similarly enlightening books, I'd love to hear them!

Could you share some examples of what you liked about it? I struggle with reading tech books when I am not sure what I can get out of them

I'd suggest searching HN for other reviews of the book since it comes up pretty frequently in these threads, but personally I liked that it covered a lot of ground quickly and fairly deeply, and the content remained engaging for me throughout. Some specific things I liked about the book were its coverage of SQL isolation levels and how they work, different ways to coordinate separate systems when you want atomicity (like 2pc and queue-based synchronization), failure modes to keep in mind when dealing with distributed systems (like unbounded network delay and split-brain situations), and references to a whole bunch of production-ready software that solve distributed computing challenges in various ways depending on the trade-offs you're looking for.

Overall I felt better equipped to make intelligent decisions about systems design after reading it.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

#170

Post by mharig »

curious16 wrote: post #154
mharig wrote: post #128

Paul Wade: Convict Conditioning Less intellectual than most of the books mentioned here, but more healthy. [Edt]

You are a calisthenics enthusiast? How long have you been training? What is your routine?

I'm no enthusiast for nothing (don't tell my wife! :-). I find the authors approach very convincing, and his self-praising very annoying. The 10 levels of each exercise allows a comfortable entry for everybody. Calisthenics in addition is very cheap.

I'm training for 3 weeks, on level 1 to 6, depending on the exercise, and I feel a lot fitter and happier.

I made my own training plan, traing just every second day.

I'm old, so progression ist not fast, but I have no interest in that. If I'm on level 10 in every exercise in 10 years, I will be very happy.

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