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Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
321–330 of 532 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would try the original book on people pleasing: "No more Mr. Nice Guy" by Dr. Robert Glover. The title may sound lousy but is a very logical book. The author is a PhD in his 60s and he coined the concept. You can start by listening some podcasts where he was a guest. He's genuine and a great communicator. Definitely underrated.
After a short search for Dr. Robert Glover I'm getting all kinds of "red pill", "pickup advice", "men's rights" links etc, all of which are red flags to me for "incel" kind of stuff. Is that also what I can expect from the book, or did I come to conclusions too quickly?
I consider myself a feminist and I strongly recommend the book. It was my therapist that recommended it to me. The term "nice guy" has been co-opted to mean something different (though related) in the meme world.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#323The 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.
The longest fantasy series ever written. Take all Stephen King books, throw in the entire Harry Potter series, and it's still shorter than the Wandering Inn.
I just gave up on the series after book 4. I felt the original main character wasn't getting enough screen time, and didn't really like the newer characters as much.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#324The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name 978-1250207142
Stories of Your Life and Others: Ted Chiang 978-1529039436
Leonardo da Vinci 978-1501139154
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#325Cats paws and catapults - I saw this first recommended on a different HN thread. Great comparison of natural and man-made mechanical systems that changed my intuitions about why things in the world are built the way they are.
From Strength to Strength, Brooks - it's a self-help book for midlife crises. Has all the normal issues of self-help books but I found the exploration of the acceptance of inevitable age related decline in some abilities interesting and useful.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#326Why we sleep . This book motivated me to change my sleep habits after decades of being a night owl. I’m starting to love early mornings, and I feel so much better. This was a hard change. How to do nothing . About resisting the attention economy and reorienting one’s relationship with technology and the environment. A very thought provoking and timely read, especially while I’m on sabbatical. Flow . Explores the psyc…
Caveat: I would not recommend Why We Sleep for anyone suffering from insomnia.
When I was dealing with sleep issues I tried reading it, hoping I'd learn something useful. But the book just kept hammering home how badly it screws you if you're not getting enough sleep. As I was trying all the recommended steps (good sleep hygiene, CBT, exercise, did an overnight sleep study, etc.) with only modest results, this basically just fueled my anxiety -- which is itself a known trigger for insomnia.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#327The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow. Refutes most of the claims made by Harari in Sapiens, and shows everything you though you knew about prehistory is plain wrong. It's a great book, very well written and well informed. Made me think that humanity's history isn't an arrow pointing in the direction of progress; we make experiments. Our current way of life is not the "best so far", it's but one arrangement…
Dawn of Everything does a fantastic job of demonstrating how what is currently considered enlightened thinking derives largely from American Indians and their debates with Jesuit priests as the Indians pushed back against the Jesuits demanding conversion to Christianity by the Native Americans. If you like philosophy debate, the book is a treasure.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#328Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, the guy who wrote The Martian, is really great.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#329The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow. Refutes most of the claims made by Harari in Sapiens, and shows everything you though you knew about prehistory is plain wrong. It's a great book, very well written and well informed. Made me think that humanity's history isn't an arrow pointing in the direction of progress; we make experiments. Our current way of life is not the "best so far", it's but one arrangement…
For what it's worth, sapiens was generally hated by academic anthropologists but Dawn of everything is generally hated by everyone else. Graeber was always expressly advocating for one specific (anarchist) viewpoint in his work, and that book suffers mightily for it. Don't take anything in that book as true, because I've read lots of academics losing their minds over how much he glossed over or just ignored contrary…
> Dawn of everything ... one specific (anarchist) viewpoint in his work
Anarchism means without a ruler, and there is scarce if any evidence that migratory hunter-gather bands at the dawn of history had rulers in one class expropriating surplus from another class. We can look for historical, or pre-historical evidence, but we can also observe the few remaining migratory hunter-gather bands remaining in the Amazon and such that have not been killed off by mining companies.
Modern authors don't impose an anarchist viewpoint on such groups, this is how they lived, and still live.
Re: Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?
#330Just finished my third reading of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It really ruined most other history books for me by setting the bar so high.
Three readings of such a massive book is quite an endorsement!