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Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

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

#221

Post by FlailFast »

crossroads091 wrote: post #184

"Harry Potter and The Methods Of Rationality" by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I am really liking the recasting, so far.

Likewise! I'm halfway through myself. I'm a huge HP fan, and the concept of a Harry Potter universe with slightly modified initial conditions taken to a logical conclusion ("taken to a logical conclusion" being the operative phrase with this book) was hugely appealing. Loving every page, would highly recommend.

Another fanfic that's well worth reading for the consumate HP fan, although cut from a very different cloth: Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4315906/1/Dumbledore-s-Army-and...]. If you've ever read Ender's Game, imagine Ender's Shadow for Book 7 of Harry Potter. :)

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

#222

Post by iN7h33nD »

navbaker wrote: post #219
iN7h33nD wrote: post #201

Audiobooks I have Read Recently: (Sanderson is Awesome) * The Reckoners #1/#2 * Stormlight Archive #1/#2 * Mistborn #1/#2/#3 * Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures As the World's Most Wanted Hacker Digital Books: * How to Win Friends and Influence People * Malazon Book #1 * The Forever War * The Martian Things on my List: * Think and Grow Rich * Watership Down * Rainbows End * Snow Crash * What is Zen * Wool: Silo * Fou…

It looks like you have pretty similar taste to mine, what did you think of Malazon #1? Would you continue the series? I've seen lots of conflicting reviews...

I also saw conflicting reviews and have since stopped the series. Its not bad, but I find it really hard to get into. I may pick the series up at a later date.

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

#225

Post by lbruder »

Vaskivo wrote: post #45
slayed0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your critique of 1984, try Brave New World if you haven't already. I think it fits your expectations of the dystopian genre much better.

I've read it in about 10 years ago, in my teens. It's funny because I've always thought that the Orwellian dystopia was a bit far-fetched, and the Huxleyan dystopia was much closer. Reading 1984, I feel like we're nearing both at the same time!

Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us: http://www.nedhardy.com/wp-content/uploads/images/2011/may/h...

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

bemmu wrote: post #104
pierrec wrote: post #80

Greg 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…

[deleted]

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

#228

Post by navbaker »

chops wrote: post #151

After years of only reading technical, business, and philosophical books, I finally decided to take the plunge and read some fiction about 2 years ago. Since then, I've caught up with Song of Ice and Fire, read the first 11 books of Sword of Truth, and did the first 2 Dune books. Most recently, I finished Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and I'm currently going through a bunch of HP Lovecraft (it feels good to final…

You would probably really enjoy Brandon Sanderson's and Patrick Rothfuss's novels, based on your fiction list.

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

#230

Post by JonnieCache »

pierrec wrote: post #80

Greg 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…

Yeah, if you liked diaspora then permutation city will have you picking your jaw up off the floor in a similar manner. Schild's Ladder is the third in the unofficial trilogy (he denies any connection, but I definitely reckon they form a nice trio) and it's pretty hardcore: lots of quantum mechanics and graph theory actually driving the plot.

A fascinating thing about diaspora: if you read reviews of it, opinion is split between those who see it as a story about nerd-heaven, which to me is how egan wrote it, and those who see it as a dystopia, basically a vision of hell. Apparently to a lot of people, the book reads like pitch-dark satire. I'm guessing there aren't so many of those people here.

EDIT: Bonus scott aaronson quantum conciousness essays! Wooooo! Egan fans will like these:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1951

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