Unforgiven by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
141–150 of 231 posts
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#142Brother in the Land, Danny Swindells
That needs explaining. It's a teenagers book I read about when I was 16. Of all the books I've ever read it is the one that sticks with me most strongly - it is about passion, anger, compassion and loss. I always think it captured humanity really well. EDIT: for the plot think "Day of the Triffids" style end of the world, but bleaker and more realistic.
I suspect it was just my age and I have given the book more weight than it deserves - but it affected me strongly.
The other book is probably 1984, Orwell
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I first read it years ago, 1979 or 1980. It was the first time I ever thought about how math related to music, art and nature. I had never heard of recursion or self-reference, never programmed a machine to do anything, never thought about how it could be done, or why I might want to do it. So the book opened up new worlds for me. It changed the way I think.
How do you think you'd rate it today, already knowing about all those things? It's sitting on my table in my to read stack but I haven't managed to get to it yet.
"This sentence is a lie"
That pretty much sums it up.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you think you'd rate it today, already knowing about all those things? It's sitting on my table in my to read stack but I haven't managed to get to it yet.
My (potentially unpopular) feeling about GEB is that it's a book that explores some very interesting areas but that doesn't say all that much of interest itself. Reading it I felt like different sections could be put into two categories: (good and somewhat romantic) exposition about something interesting, and observations that seem profound until you think about them and realize that they're stupid (e.g. Hofstadter s…
I have to agree. I found the dialouges mind numbing.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#145Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Um, awesome!!?! What kind of hacking do you do?
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#146Siddhartha -- Hermann Hesse Dragons Of Eden -- Carl Sagan
I would Second ANYTHING by Hesse, not got round to a thorough read of Siddhartha yet, but Damien is most excellent and The Glass Bead Games is a revelation for anyone who feels there is something just a little bit ill with the mind and motion of our modern age.
Oh, and something along the lines of The Neverending Story (The Silmarillion/LotR), because it's something to lose yourself in with kids and doesn't even have to be read.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#147Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau
Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#148Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#149Dove by Robin Lee Graham
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#150Ok I read a lot so I will just give you my favourite authors just in case someone is looking for new writers to explore. I have read the majority of books written by each of the ones below, and really cannot choose a favourite. So here they are:
sci fi: PK Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Vonnegut (some of Bradburry's work may join this group but be careful not all of his stuff is brilliant)
crime: raymond chandler, dashiel hammett
russian lang lit: dostoevsky, bulgakov
english lang lit: vladimir nabakov, joseph heller, evelyn waugh, joseph conrad
All of the above writers are absolutely brilliant and you will not be wasting your time picking up any of their books (except for bradbury, make sure you only get martian chronicles or farenheit 451).