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Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#201

Post by laserbeam »

The bible - am not a religious person, don't want to become one, and I mean no shade to religious people. However, as I now read it, I'm surprised by how much western culture references it. People use examples, names and scenes from the bible much more often than I realised and it helps to recognize that.

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Oppenheimer was an ok movie, the book it's based on is better paced.

A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. This is the first book I encountered on disaster sociology. That field of study sounds amazing! It's about how people become altruistic and how communities form right after a natural disaster.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#202

Post by vidyesh »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #76
vidyesh wrote: post #62

Actively reading: - The Fountainhead - Project Hail Mary - Learning TypeScript Passively reading: - The Design of Everyday Things - Dive into Design Patterns Considering to read - This is mostly for anyone who has read them and would like to give their opinion about it. - Algorithms to Live By - Name of the Wind - Malazan Book of the Fallen - Good Girl's guide to murder - The Paradox of Choice - Moonwalking with Eins…

Re: Name of the Wind. I read the first book in the series and enjoyed it but didn't continue after finding out that the author has stalled indefinitely with the third volume. I understand that mental health issues are serious, but there's so many good finished series out in the world that I don't get why people keep recommending this guy's books. There was also some drama surrounding the author due to some charity do…

Thank you about all the other information related to that. People rave about NotW when it comes to fantasy novels. But rarely everything else around it is discussed in recommendation sections/forums.

> but there's so many good finished series out in the world that I don't get why people keep recommending this guy's books.

I see your point and I tend to agree lately, there are many DNF books in my list I used to regret but not anymore as I think there is a lot good out there to read and not much time, its better to enjoy what we can than to worry or feel not satisfied by certain read.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#204

Post by vidyesh »

samskot wrote: post #78
vidyesh wrote: post #62

Actively reading: - The Fountainhead - Project Hail Mary - Learning TypeScript Passively reading: - The Design of Everyday Things - Dive into Design Patterns Considering to read - This is mostly for anyone who has read them and would like to give their opinion about it. - Algorithms to Live By - Name of the Wind - Malazan Book of the Fallen - Good Girl's guide to murder - The Paradox of Choice - Moonwalking with Eins…

I'm reading Algorithms to Live By at the moment. It's very interesting and definitely worth reading.

Thank you. I plan to add it to my reading list soon.

Is it too technical? I don't want to end reading another algorithm book with a small footnote of its practical use.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#205

Post by unsungNovelty »

Mrs. Gandhi's last battle by Satish Jacob & Mark Tully. BBC journalists who reported the blue star operation after which lead to India's former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination.

If you wanna know about the history behind the current Canada vs India row, this is a good place to start.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#206

Post by sebmnt »

Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu - A year ago I read The Three Body Problem by the same author and extremely loved his approach to storytelling and sci-fi. Since then I have bought his other famous books (Ball Lightning, The Dark Forest and Deaths End) and I am really loving Ball Lightning so far.

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin - I'd like to call myself a creative (I produce music, paint and love cinema but all as a hobby). I recently read The Artists Way and found it really fulfilling in how to thing about creativity and nurturing your creative self. A friend lent me her copy of The Creative Act and after the first few pages I bought my own copy as I wanted to highlight and write notes in the book. Really recommend it for anyone who wants to think about how to think about creativity.

Multiple papers on ANNs - I am working with ANN libraries such as FAISS, Annoy and HSNWLib as part of my job as an ML Engineer in recommendation systems and I want to properly understand how the internals of these approximate vector search indexes work. I stared reading `Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs` and it lead to a rabbit hole of different papers I have on my stack.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#207

Post by vidyesh »

subtra3t wrote: post #83
vidyesh wrote: post #62

Actively reading: - The Fountainhead - Project Hail Mary - Learning TypeScript Passively reading: - The Design of Everyday Things - Dive into Design Patterns Considering to read - This is mostly for anyone who has read them and would like to give their opinion about it. - Algorithms to Live By - Name of the Wind - Malazan Book of the Fallen - Good Girl's guide to murder - The Paradox of Choice - Moonwalking with Eins…

Malazan is amazing, possibly the best fantasy series I've ever read after Stormlight Archives (KKC would be on the list if not for the author's attitude towards the 3rd book). That said, it's really common for newcomers to the series to abandon the book even after a couple hundred pages. Think of it as being akin to being dropped in a completely foreign country, with no kind of guidance or language experience. The 1s…

Dude! Thank you. But slow down for me will you?

Do you mean to say The Stormlight Archive are better in your opinion than the Malazan book of the Fallen series? And KKC is the best of those three series?

Sidenote: Reading about KKC from other comments, seems like I might drop the idea of reading it for reason you too highlighted.

I also checked out the Malazan Book for Fallen series properly, I was aware it was a series of 10 books but just now discovered Steven Erikson is a beast, that series including the prequels is a set of possibly 26 books! That is so exciting!

Okay so I ask again, worth getting into? And some advice to survive the 1st book as you mentioned its the most difficult read?

OR is The Stormlight series easier or first to read?

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#208

Post by TexanFeller »

Scarblac wrote: post #129

_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 ou…

Steaks and bacon are some of the few things that make life worth living. I'd rather talk about population control for humans to achieve sustainability(maybe necessary in the end anyway) than deprive ourselves of the joy of a burger.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?

#209

Post by indigo0086 »

Finishing listening to the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons (read it the first time) and reading Olympos by Dan Simmons. I think I'm all Dan Simmons'd out though I want to read Carrion Comfort. I think I'm going to return to three body problem and dune for my next books. Not sure for audiobooks yet but the sequel to fire upon the deep is on my queue
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