Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
221–230 of 231 posts
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#222The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling (non-fiction). Interesting history of hacking.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#223Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig Asterix in Britain - Goscinny, Uderzo
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the few books I've ever read where I practically celebrated when I finished because I didn't have to read it anymore. I read it (and forced myself to finish it) because so many people seem to absolutely love it, but I found myself having to force myself to pick it back up like a job. So, if I may ask someone who cites it as his/her favorite book: would you mind writ…
Didn't like it either.
The story about traveling in the bike with your son and the past with insanity is OK but I found the "philosophy" part terrible ("we cannot define quality, so quality is everything" or something like that - rolls eyes -).
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#224Dune.
The Soul of a New Machine.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#225Thoughts in Prose and Sun Tzu's Art of War are great. To tell you the truth, I rarely read much these days, but back in my prime I would literally stay up for days on end and go years with my nose stuck in a book at every possible chance.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#226Gödel, Escher, Bach Infinite Jest
throw_away: he who can withstand exceptionally long, dense books.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#227The Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The first is insanely superior. The second just really really good.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#228Earlier 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.
To give an alternate opinion. You should read through the first dialogue and the following chapter, then decide for yourself. Maybe skip ahead a bit. I read half of it sitting in a library when I didn't really have time to read it, it presented ideas I hadn't thought before. I hadn't heard of figure and ground, at least not generalized, so I enjoyed noticing that my conversations jumped around the subject rather than being on the subject. I also hadn't heard about recursion before, so...
If the writing engages you then you and presents interesting ideas, to you, in a non-obvious way, then it is worth reading.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#229The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne
Even though "The Goal" is a story about process improvement for a factory, I've also used the thinking from it (basically, lean manufacturing) for software development.
Re: Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah - I much preferred "The Emperors New Mind" Which covers many of the same themes without the pretentiousness.