Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?

It's highly praised here. The characters are very dry and boring to me, not sure if it's the translation. I genuinely did not care about a single one of them. Neal Stephenson did something similar as he became famous - stopped writing novels and tried to pass off his futurism as such, which is interesting, but not an exciting story. That was the case here. I can't even bring myself to read the second book.

Also, all the higher/lower dimensional space sort-of-scientific stuff is pretty speculative. Or I don't understand enough science.

In other words, my expectations were too high and I was disappointed.

Book: A Deepness in the Sky

Enjoyed this. The characters were more alive. Nothing amazing about it though, not captivated enough to read sequel.

Bad Blood : Man, this book really does read like a Hollywood movie screenplay. The rise and fall of Theranos, documented through interviews with hundreds of ex-employees by the very author who came up with the first expose of Theranos. Truly shows the flaws in the "fake it before you make it" mindset and how we glorify "geniuses".

Shoe Dog : Biography of the founder of Nike. Really liked how it's not just a book glorifying the story of Nike, but tells the tale of how much effort, balance and even pure luck went into making the company the household name it is today.

Master Algorithm : It's a book about the different fields of Machine learning (from Bayesian to Genetic evolution algos) and talks about the pros and cons of each and how these can play together to create a "master algorithm" for learning. It's a good primer for people entering the field and while it's not a DIY, it shows the scope of the problem of learning as a whole.

Three Body Problem: Finally, after years of people telling me to read this (on HN and off), I read the trilogy (Remembrance of Earth's Past), and I must say, the series does live up to the hype. Not only is it fast paced and deeply philosophical, but it's presented in a format very accessible to casual readers as well (unlike many hard sci-fi books which seem to revel in complexity). If I had to describe this series in a single line, it's "What would happen if China was the country that made first contact with an alien race?"

* 'Who is Michael Ovitz' by Michael Ovitz

* 'High Growth Handbook' by Elad Gil

* 'Principles: Life and Work' by Ray Dalio

* '1491' & '1493' by Charles C. Mann

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Issacson - fascinating look into the real life of Leonardo, demystifying the genius

Excession by Iain M Banks - a bit of a let down

Bluets by Maggie Nelson - lyrical and philosophical and explicit ruminations on the color blue

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan - a lot of already known and rehashed info on psychedelics

Lost City of the Incas by Hirham Bingham - Yale professor who discovered Machu Pichu. Good history of the Incas and region

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbuy - Classic!

2041 by Kim Stanley Robinson - NYC underwater in the future. A bit of a let down compared to his Mars series

Shiver by Junji Ito - short stories from the king of Japanese horror manga

Lenin: The man, the dictator, the master of terror by Victor Sebestyen - great bio on Vladimir Lenin. Knew very little about him before reading this. Fantastic!

Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville - definitive text book on Deep Learning

The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu - interesting read into the history of Antitrust and the Sherman Act and how they relate to modern tech giants like Amazon, Google, Facebook

Connecting the Dots by John Chambers - a bit dry. Lessons Chambers learned while CEO of Cisco

Freakonomics- Interesting book if you're into Game theory and economics kind of stuff, though it has no prerequisites

Meditations- Great views of a stoic thinker

Zero to one- Interesting take on startups and how to build them

Foundation and empire- Amazing sci-fi book. Second book in the foundation series