Currently reading Mein Kampf. Going to start some others too, like I bought Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide but haven't started it.
Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
121–130 of 400 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not missing anything. There's a reason John Rogers wrote “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Can anyone explain to me why so many intelligent people love hating on this book? Do you disagree with her philosophy? If so - can you tell me about which things exactly made you dislike it and why? Everyone repeats this quote, and everyone generally says bad things about this book, but never anything concrete, never a clear reason what exactly is so bad about it.
Here is a good reddit thread that addresses your question:
http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1js239/why_do...
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#123Showstopper!
I'm really enjoying it. It is filled with history about creating NT that I've never found online. Also a large amount of information about Cutler, which is interesting.
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#124I recently read 'The Lean Startup' and 'The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy'. I would recommend both books.
I think 'The Lean Startup' is not just a good read for startups in the usual sense; it's also a great advise on how to handle personal projects.
With regards to 'The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy' I think the stoic view of life is great and fits well into our western mindset while still being somewhat 'zen' like. I plan to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations at some point since it's a bit like a diary of a stoic.
I will soon start with 'Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage'[0] which was recommended in a previous HN thread.
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[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_Tsukuru_Tazaki_and_Hi...
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#125I just read Andy Weir's The Martian in one day -- it was (obviously) fantastic. I highly recommend it.
One of the best books I read in 2013, hugely enjoyable and very funny. Was also lucky to get the 99p Kindle self published one before he got picked up by a publisher.
The publisher made a few small edits too. The last scene of the book was completely cut out ('are you out of your fucking mind?').
Treasure your original edition.
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#126The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand a revelation, much like encountering Tolstoy for the first time via Anna Karenina.
A Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin, is the Tolkien of our times, but with a dark and raunchy twist ;-) Almost finished; book 6 is a year or more away if previous publishing trend continues -- we needs it ;-(
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#127Greg Egan renewed my faith in Science Fiction. I just finished reading Diaspora, and I am now a fan. It's an incredibly well thought out extrapolation of the future of the human race, much less phantasmagorical and much more grounded in science than pretty much every other SF I know of, while still going off into mind-bending tangents. I think the most common critique of his work might be about the occasional digress…
Diaspora and Permutation City put totally new questions in my head. If consciousness is only a series of states in your brain, does it matter what the order of running that sequence is? In Permutation City there is an experiment where brain states are played back backwards or in a random order, but to the person perceiving it, it seems like just business as usual. I always assumed that after my brain is destroyed the…
Wow, thanks for taking the time to put into words one of the main aspects that make these books so powerful. At first, there is a strange anguish in being immersed in a world where human minds are just programs, and consciousness seems to be a feature emerging from their structure. Especially when they must consider the possibility of modifying and forking themselves or transferring themselves from one medium to another, one can't help but think, "No, my consciousness couldn't possibly work like that, it's too special".
But as the book progresses, you get more and more comfortable with this universe, and with the fact the your consciousness could work like that. You learn to be at peace with this conception of the mind, and this feeling of peace is the main element that stuck with me after Diaspora. I suppose this may also pervade other works that belong to the vague cyberpunk genre.
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#128The interstellar age: Inside the 40-year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell.
The dawn of planetary science and the amazing discoveries of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus found by the two Voyager space craft and the people who built and operated them and the scientists who analyzed the data returned.
Flash Boys: A Wall Street revolt by Michael Lewis
How and why we all were totally fucked by Wall Street during the 2009 market meltdown.
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#129"The Moon is Down" by John Steinbeck, and "A Discipline of Programming" by Edsger Dijkstra. Before that, "The Most Human Human", by Brian Christian. "The Most Human Human" was particularly interesting, about what we can learn about being human by looking at machines.
Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?
#130Re-Reading Age old Jules Verne Collection. Nothing beats a nice adventure novel. ( tired of thrillers and sci-fi.) Any recommendation on Adventure novel most welcome.