Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012

If you really want to expose the bias and structure of your consciousness, this the book to read. I would also pair this book with Incognito by David Eagleman (2012) to rehash some of the ideas of Kahneman and for a discussion of the implications of these ideas in morals and justice.

Also Connectome by Sebastian Seung (2012) gives a good outline of the structure of the brain, and an interesting discussion of how understanding that structure is a great scientific goal and some hypothetical implications of that understanding.

Really, I'd recommend reading anything to do with the emerging understanding of the brain because, without hyperbole, the better we understand the brain the better we understand the self.

At deeper levels a lot of things are left to the interpretation of the reader, as it is with most abstract things. He uses the word Quality in the most fundamental way. To me that word held the meaning for his life. Quality in the way in which he understands and reacts to the world.

Before he learned to fix his motor cycle, he was at the mercy of various kinds of mechanics with varying skill levels and attitudes. He particularly cites an example of some listening to music while working on the machine. Which he does not like. For him working on the machine or writing technical documents for his job, is a spiritual activity.

Also, he makes a point regarding his nervous breakdown, that for others it was a nervous breakdown. But for him, the way he saw it, it was the deepest of meditations. Following which phase the understanding and meaning of Quality, dawned on him, and he was at peace with his life.

Also, I found the way he treats his 11 year old son, i.e like an adult, very interesting.

Another delightful thing, was the book full of philosophical quotable quotes. Like the (approximate) one I have cited in my above comment.

But most basic reason I liked the book, is because, it talked to me in the tone, I wanted it to talk to me. For example the moment any book becomes very specific (for example 'Life of Pi' is very specific in being inclusive to all religions, in a rather simplistic way), as a reader I tend to start to disagree. But if it is abstract, and "Zen.." is very very abstract in portions, I can provide my own concrete implementations!

Going back to Sprawl after reading Blue Ant, new layers of detail became apparent to me. There is a lot more than just an AI-driven singularity story going on. If anything, the [Spoiler!] Neuromancer-Wintermute union is a McGuffin made too explicit, distracting many readers from the rest of the interesting content. Like Space Rastas. How awesome are Space Rastas?!

I found it easy to follow the Cayce Pollard thread in Pattern Recognition. Everything seems to develop around her or eventually relate back to her. In some sense, Cayce is a hybrid of Case from Neuromancer and Marly Krushkova in Count Zero. Bigend is a hybrid of Josef Virek (Count Zero) and perhaps the physical aspects of Armitage (Neuromancer).

All of Gibson's books deal with characters that operate with relatively little wealth and power on the fringe of society and their interactions with figures of extraordinary wealth and power who have ambiguous locations within society. But these characters aren't just computer hackers / programmers. They can be marketing advisors, children, fashion designers, linguists, artists or mercenaries.

It is worth giving the Blue Ant* series a second change, there is more in common with Sprawl than first appears.