171–180 of 222 posts
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Le Ton Beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter How is it? please share your impressions.
If you're interested enough to ask, then you'll probably like it. If you've read and liked any other Hofstadter, then just just go get it. A bit weird at first, but ultimately superb.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton recommended in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760771
Infinite Jest, as a long slow process. The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo/The Girl who Played with Fire, each of which I found myself burning through in a day (the new definition of the genre of Swedish crime writing, which is amazing).
The Road to Reality (and I'll probably be able to post this for the next 3 or more threads of this type :)
Dead Until Dark (well when it comes in, certainly not going to buy this, and the library reserve goes nuts for books that spawn your popular vapire drama)
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton recommended in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760771
Great interview with him on Marketplace of Ideas podcast (Google it).
Reading "Q for Mortals." Highly recommend it for ideas for your next Antlr project. Whitney is a sharp character. Also trying my best to read some fiction - it's gotten progressively more difficult to do over the years (the programmer has become programmed). Best I could muster was to re-read "The First 20 Million is Always The Hardest" by Po Bronson. Precious read.
Real World Haskell http://book.realworldhaskell.org/
I'm bouncing between that book and "The Haskell School of Expression"( http://www.haskell.org/soe/ ). The second seems to be better at describing data structures and building the language in your mind while the first is more of a reference of useful ideas.
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Ayn Rand was a philosopher. And like most philosophers, she started out with some good ideas and over applied them to everything in life, which leads to some scary conclusions. My favorite Rand book was Anthem. It was short and therefore didn't have space to extrapolate Rand's ideas to their scary conclusion. I just finished reading Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. It is just as long and pompous as Atlas Shrugged, but…
I once listened to a 80-hour overview of the world's great philosophers, given by modern professors. What amazed me was how many of them came up with a good idea that was new and revolutionary -- and then spent the rest of their life taking the damn thing too far. I guess great people fall so much in love with their great ideas that it never occurs to them that the most important piece is finding the boundaries for w…
Looks like it's on sale -- you download audio or pick up the CDs for around a hundred bucks (DVD also available)