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Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

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141–150 of 400 posts

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#142
"Longitude" by Dava Sobel.

Sailors knew for a while how to get your latitude (by using the position of the north star) but didn't have a way of getting their longitude pre-18th century. This was a serious problem in navigation and this is the story of how a solution came about.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#144

Regenesis by George Church It's an interesting primer on the potential benefits of synthetic biology to society at large from one of the field's luminaries. He covers everything from engineering "mirror humans" (with inverted biochemical chirality) to reviving extinct species. http://www.regenesisthebook.com/

On a somewhat similar topic, I also enjoyed "The Machinery of Life" by David Goodsell. Worth it for the diagrams alone.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#145
Quiet by Susan Cain, great book about introversion and why we have the "Extrovert Ideal". It's really fascinating to see how introverts have their qualities and how

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - Robert Pirsig: Fantastic book that talks about philosophy in a new way and goes deeper into discovering what's "Quality" and what are the main 2 ways of interacting/reading the world around us.

Adam Smith, theory of moral sentiments: Just began the book under ryan holiday advice, but can't really say more about it.

Game of thrones, 1st volume, I suppose this book doesn't need any explanation :)

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#149
"Quantum Computing since Democritus" by Scott Aaronson. This book makes me wish I was cool enough to understand everything in it. But still, it does a very good job at connecting the high level bits, and letting you skip over proof sketches if necessary.

He is connecting quantum computing, computability, computational complexity, foundations of mathematics, probability, crypto, philosophy, and a bunch of other things I haven't gotten to yet. All the deep stuff -- but it's not pretentious or tedious at all.

Scott Aaronson is a great writer and lucid thinker. I got hooked from the preface alone.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#150

Quiet by Susan Cain, great book about introversion and why we have the "Extrovert Ideal". It's really fascinating to see how introverts have their qualities and how Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - Robert Pirsig: Fantastic book that talks about philosophy in a new way and goes deeper into discovering what's "Quality" and what are the main 2 ways of interacting/reading the world around us. Adam Smith, theor…

Can you help me understand why Quiet is a good read? It's been recommended to me before but it just keeps on getting bumped on the backlog.
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