I’m currently reading:
The art of explanation by Ros Atkins.
Lovely book.
Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
261–270 of 287 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cigarette use is plummeting in the west.
Meat eating should also plummet if meat eating is banned in restaurants and there’s a minimum meat eating age that increases a year at a time. Bonus if there’s a health insurance question about meat eating and special meat taxes. There is no societal structure to disincentivize meat eating. Social pressure from vegetarians (which is so very slight) and logical arguments are the only thing we’ve got. Tradition, conven…
I think that's what the person above was saying already, just that it's a surprise that many intelligent people still prioritise tradition over the logical arguments.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#263Malot - En Famille.
I decided it's time to revisit some classics. I finished the "Sans Famille" a few days back. Those are quick/fast reads but with immense value/wisdom/philosophy.
Next one is to re-read the "Hold on to your kids" by Neufeld & Maté.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#264Jon Fosse (this year's Nobel Prize winner in literature) - "Septology" I-II, a dreamlike maze of thoughts written in a way I haven't seen before. A hypnotic, meandering stream of consciousness slowly unfolding into an intriguing story.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#265Attention is all you need, still on page one.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#266Bluey: Camping When Bluey is on a family camping trip, she meets a new friend, Jean Luc. Join them as they plant a tree, hunt a 'wild pig' and learn about the magic of friendship.
This episode broke my heart with its wholesomeness! I'm a grown ass adult and I watch Bluey unashamedly. I don't even have a kid companion to provide cover. It's such a layered show, with themes that resonate with adults as well. Cafe , where Bluey as a kid makes friends immediately with another kid, and Bandit and the other kid's dad were very cagey about how fast is too fast. Puppet subtext is as serious as any Rid…
I do have a kid, but I’ll sneak some Bluey even when they’re not around. It’s a great show with good lessons about life. Even good those of us who don’t quite fit the demographic.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#267Bluey: Camping When Bluey is on a family camping trip, she meets a new friend, Jean Luc. Join them as they plant a tree, hunt a 'wild pig' and learn about the magic of friendship.
What!? I never realized there are bluey books
They’re really just breakdowns of episodes. This is common in tv adapted to books. Great for kids who are being read to or learning to read.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#268“The Lost Cause” by Cory Doctorow
I got an early copy at a conference he keynoted at. I’m enjoying it quite lot.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#269"Journey to the Edge of Reason, The Life of Kurt Gödel", by Stephen Budiansky. Even though it contains an introduction to his proof of the Incompleteness Theorems, you won't learn all too much about logic or mathematics, but it sure paints an interesting picture of the people involved at the start of the 20th century. "Silas Marner" by George Eliot. Has redefined humor for me. "Reinforcement Learning and Stochastic O…
Eliot was a genius. If you haven't read it yet, Middlemarch easily earns its claim to be one of the greatest novels ever.
Re: Ask HN: What are you reading these days?
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ser…
Stormlight is significantly easier to read than Malazan and, at least in my opinion, significantly simpler in almost every way.
Malazan is really a narrative tour-de-force with an extremely satisfying way of bringing a number of storylines together and to conclusion in each book. It's also an interesting meditation on history, regret, and the arc of empires over time. The complexity and in media res nature of the beginning throws a lot of people off but you just have to keep reading. It's written in a way that has no handholding; the world is already built and ancient and you're dropped into it, while Sanderson, honestly, seems to be kind of making it up as you go along. (This is, in part, because Erikson had the entire Malazan world as a tabletop RPG before writing the books.)
Sanderson's books, in comparison, are more like Marvel movies. They're entertaining, but I don't find that they reinvent the wheel or do anything too interesting. Stormlight is also much less grim and mature in many ways than Malazan, which is either a pro or a con for some people.