I really enjoyed Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway. (Future Crime Noir with a pinch of sci-fi/cyberpunk)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710281/titanium-noi...
Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
221–230 of 532 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#222The Wandering Inn [1], Stories of an alternate world somehow connected to a certain innkeeper of the said inn. Features extensive world building, character building, Lots of fleshed out characters, contains humour as well as serious stuff, has dragons, fae, aliens, time travel, hiveminds, automatons, cute pets, cosmic horrors, history lessons, magic, alchemy and steampunk engineering. It's a bit longish and not finis…
> It's a bit longish
You don't say.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#223I’ve had the pdf of “Almost Perfect” by Pete Peterson [0] on my cloud for a while and like reading it in bits and pieces and rereading it when I’m stuck somewhere without data. It’s the story of WordPerfect and while desktop software is very different than today’s software the organizational dynamics is fascinating to me. And I like how what to me is a very technical thing- writing excellent software- is designed and run by a “non-technical” person. And feeds my anxiety and imposter syndrome that maybe I’m not a tech person but a business person who knows enough technology to make a living.
I also keep referring to “An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments” by Ali Almossawi [1] as it’s fun and seems to me to be technically correct. I recently had to look it up to remember if it’s “natural fallacy” or “naturalistic fallacy” or something else. It’s not covered in the book but I did get to read about others with sepia animal drawings. I’ve also found it useful for introducing critical thinking and avoiding logical fallacies to young people.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#224The Goal. It's a book from the 1980's about operational management. In particular, it focuses on physical manufacturing. It's in the form of a fictitious personal tale. A plant manager struggles to save his plant from closure, and his marriage from falling apart. The lesson is about lean management. My main takeaway is the realization that when we try to optimize something, we focus on how to do something more effici…
Great recommendation!
The book is mainly credited with introducing the Theory of Constraints [1], which asserts that any manageable system's throughput is limited by exactly one bottleneck.
He goes on to encourage us to instantiate operating (and thinking) processes whereby we repeatedly discover and mitigate this bottleneck as each mitigation may result in a migration of the constraint.
The main observation is that most of us are inclined and almost always incentivized to focus on local optima (our area, our lane, our discipline) and that this striving is a great way to destroy any given system, or at best, do nothing useful. Any small experience in the world of business will illustrate this quite clearly, IME.
The sequel to The Goal is also quite good and is called, "It's Not Luck." This book takes the same characters into a larger organization where the constraints are in how their products are marketed, rather than produced in order to more fully demonstrate how the Theory of Constraints is not limited to activities on a factory floor.
As mentioned elsewhere, the narrative and writing style can be distracting, but the concepts are timeless and extremely powerful.
I have re-read or re-listened to both books at least once every year or two since the early aughts and I learn something new and relevant with each pass.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157385.It_s_Not_Luck
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#225Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The titular Ishmael is a gorilla who learns to communicate with humans (telepathically) and seeks to teach humanity how to see the underlying cultural narratives that we are captive to, and that define our entire worldview. It's set up as a Socratic dialogue so the character of the pupil can be a bit annoying in his boneheadedness (a device used by the author to advance his points) but otherwise an excellent read.
Its main lesson is that culture tells us there is only one way for civilization to act in the world and that we cannot examine this imposition -- because of the "fish asks 'what's water?'" situation we're in -- until we really unpack what narratives are driving people to act and think in the ways they do. These narratives were never independently developed by the people acting through them but rather largely inherited from what is said (how topics are conceptualized) and what's not said (how topics are avoided) that keeps these narratives self-propagating through society.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#226The Road by Cormac McCarthy. He passed away in June 2023 and I read this shortly after for the first time. A powerful work that, despite the world building, focuses on the love between a father and son. It's a shocking novel in many ways, but ultimately I found it profoundly hopeful. Even in the direst of circumstances love gives strength to endure.
Since his death, I've been reading (or re-reading) all his books.
Rarely I have enjoyed so many books from a single author. I also think Blood Meridian is one the greatest books of all time.
According to [1] "his list of great novels stops at four: Ulysses, The Brothers Karamazov, The Sound and the Fury and his favorite, Moby-Dick".
They all are a good addition to this thread.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140629023902/http://74.220.215...
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, so how do you approach evaluating that for a server that manages a database?
Isn't most performance problems down to the CPU waiting for something? (network - disk - memory - cache)
And almost all the rest are due to the CPU doing unnecessary work.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#228I really enjoyed Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway. (Future Crime Noir with a pinch of sci-fi/cyberpunk) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710281/titanium-noi...
Me too. And I think I learned of it from a previous HN thread and is an example of successful book finding serendipity.
It was a short audiobook and I found it fun and entertaining look at the near future in a way that I hadn’t read before. What if immortality/bio hacking made you 20% bigger every time it reset you to 25 years old. I wonder if there will be more physical signs of wealth and immortality and we’re sort of starting to see that in 60-year-old Bezos seems healthier than 40-year-old Bezos.
I’ll also add that I’m not a Noir or detective fan and almost didn’t read it because of that aspect. But I’m glad I did.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#229I recently started reading House of Leaves, I'm not done with it but I'm captivated by it so far. It's a very weird horror/love story that is unlike anything I have ever read before.
You may also like Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Currently reading that. It's interesting. Love the detail.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#230I read through most of PG Wodehouse this year. 'Ukridge' is perhaps the funniest collection of stories ever written, it's magic. I love all the books set in Blandings. While the Jeeves books were not my favorite when I was younger, I really really enjoy them now.
Wodehouse is amazing. Tied with Pratchett for the best humorist writer in my opinion. I've searched a lot to find more humorist writers but it's a very limited genre. Most comedy writing is too cynical for me. By contrast Wodehouse and Pratchett manage to be funny while also being uplifting. Does anyone have any recommendations for not-too-cynical humorist authors beside these two?
Douglas Adams is pretty similar to Pratchett, humour wise.