Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

Then definitely don't miss its forefather. Writing with such insight

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

Didn't work for me. It was too frivolous with technical details.

"No time to lose" a book by Pema Chodron. Its a translation and commentary of a Buddhist manuscript on basically how to become enlightened. I found the sections on how humans all suffer from past emotional memories (kleshnas) really interesting. As was the discussion on rage and forgiving people cruel to oneself. I followed it up with another of her books "when things fall apart". Again very good.

I'm now reading a Witcher fantasy novel. Blood of elves.

My non-fiction pile is very peculiar to me (maths, probability, gambling, Rust and Elixir books, a backlog of a load of recent Humble Bundle deals), but I have some solid fiction recommendations:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is the sort of novel where you start to get sad as the weight of unread pages in your right starts to lighten. A novel about some friends who build some games (set in the 1990s and 2000s, with references to games of that era), it's really about friendship, social awkwardness and creativity.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke can't really take a review. When I first of it in Literary Review, the reviewer refused to disclose any plot for fear of providing spoilers, and I'm the same. I can just tell you, it's lovely. Her writing has got even better since she wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and it's a really, really solid novel.

Yesterday, my Dad messaged me about a current read I'll share here as a warning, and because his style is just hilarious:

I treated myself to a copy of "A Stroke of the Pen" by Terry Pratchett: short stories unearthed after his death. Very disappointing. If I were you, I would wait until it is available at your local library and then you could scrawl cuss words inside it without damaging your personal copy.

Solid advice that, I hope you'll agree.

_Regenesis_, by George Monbiot.

About how we can realistically feed everyone on the planet long term, in a way that doesn't destroy nature, keeps soil healthy and more able to deal with climate change, and is also affordable.

Very good. Very well sourced, sceptical of romantic ideas that just don't scale.

Given that we currently use 60% of our agricultural land to feed livestock, that we then use to produce 12% of our calories (and 40% of the land for the other 88%), and that methods of agriculture that leave the ecology healthier have lower yields than current industrial methods, he takes as a given that we'll have to do without most of the livestock.