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

Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 532 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#231

Post by thecopy »

progbits wrote: post #191
yla92 wrote: post #22

Finished reading The Three-Body Problem (Book 1) and it's such a fascinating read! https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Remembrance-Earths...

I have mixed feelings about it, the premise is interesting but the writing is very bad in my opinion. The pacing is all over the place and the dialogue is like aliens trying to imitate normal human conversation... I would still recommend it to sci-fi fans, just don't expect a literary masterpiece.

Fully agree. Especially regarding the dialoge. Although it is an interesting concept.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#232

Post by JoeDaDude »

Embracing Defeat by John Dower. The history of Japan's defeat in World War II is well known, but less known is how Japan transformed from a quasi-theocratic military dictatorship to the liberal democracy it is today. This book looks at the events, both cultural and political, that were occurring during the American occupation and how the Japanese adjusted to their defeat and created a new vision of the Japanese nation.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#233

Post by prepend »

loxias wrote: post #181
mrexroad wrote: post #74

Diaspora [0] by Greg Egan. A fun dive into post-human civilization published in late ‘90s. Great read if you like hard sci-fi. Tao of Wu [1] by RZA. Because, perspective. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Wu

Woo! Diaspora! The opening of that book is such a well put and apt description of... that, I've forced it on plenty of my friends. Schild's Ladder also fantastic (yet similar.. like 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt? Still fun, but kinda "i've seen this before"). I think Permutation City was overrated. I haven't read any of his other novels, have you? Iain M Banks (Excession), Greg Egan (Diaspora, Dark Integers), and Charles…

> The opening of that book is such a well put and apt description of... that, I've forced it on plenty of my friends.

I think the opening of that book stuck in my head as that is how digital beings and digital identity WILL BE DONE. It makes so much sense to me.

Although oddly, I remembered it being cryptographically sound and describing a way for the individual to have secure private keys to prove they are them (even to themselves) but I can’t find it when I reread the intro. I thought it was some distributed secure escrow with the Polis but I have have dreamt it.

Neal Stephenson’s “Fall; or, Dodge on Hell” goes into this a bit with the PURDAH but I think it’s more hand waving and tied to “the body has some unknowable thing that can be captured in a digital mind version.”

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#234

Post by dsr_ »

loxias wrote: post #158

"This is how you lose the time war". It's by two authors. Light read. I bought it because it was inexpensive and I the title was a "me-shaped" hook. :) I chuckled after a few pages, after about 1/3rd I couldn't put it down, or read it fast enough. Challenging, as it started to rain during my walk to work (as evidenced by the dozen wrinkly pages towards the end). The next day as I read, I was pacing around my apartmen…

It went up for a number of awards, and won three majors including a Hugo and a Nebula, so obviously lots of people like it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_How_You_Lose_the_Time_...

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#235

Post by prepend »

lumb63 wrote: post #198

The Power of Habit has been fascinating to me. It has helped me to understand how I operate and also how others operate. It is amazing how much of our behavior is dictated by processes far beneath our conscious mind.

I just finished it and don’t regret it, but I feel like it could have been a pamphlet as most of the book seemed like padding to me. I mean I admire Rosa Parks but it seems like a lot of time spent saying that Rosa Parks habits made the difference in that civil rights milestone. Same for the examples of people convicted or acquitted of their crimes based on habits.

Aside from reinforcing what I already knew that habits are really powerful, the concept of micro habits stuck out to me and I’m going to try the snowball and stacking approaches to starting positive habits (putting out shoes the night before as a tiny habit to kick start the big habit of running, etc).

I feel like I really just needed to find the right podcast and would get the same info.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#236

Post by mattw2121 »

xeonax wrote: post #201

The 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…

This sounds like a great series and one I'd definitely be interested in. Rothfuss (even more than Martin) has me shying away from starting another, currently unfinished, series.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#239

Post by prepend »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #12

Currently reading Accelerando[0] as a result of recommendations from prior HN book reading threads. Still in the first, Manfred Macx, section, but I look forward to settling down on the couch with it when I have the opportunity. [0]: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...

I see it’s part 3 in a series. But people also recommend it alone.

Do you recommend starting with this? Or something else?

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

#240

Post by coffeepancakes »

ruslan wrote: post #217

The Code Book by Simon Singh[1]. The book is very old, first published in 1999, but I did not know about it till my colleague brought it to work recently. The following stories are very interesting and read as detective novel: 1) how Enigma worked and how it's code was cracked; 2) how Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered, which appeared to be very common to Coptic language[2]; 3) how Linear B writing decoded[3], whic…

> The book is very old, first published in 1999

I beg your pardon! 1999 is not very old! Especially in terms of books.

It does look really interesting, thanks for sharing.

Post reply on HN