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Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

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Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#141

Post by Reedx »

w1ntermute wrote: post #85
raamdev wrote: post #64

Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina, because it made me a better father; Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, because it taught me of the importance of something that I’d occasionally dismiss as a nuisance; Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC by Pete Egoscue, because it completely changed the way I understood posture, pain, and how repetition influences my body; and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, because it…

Re: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, this critique of the book is worth a read: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

Disappointing... That book has been highly recommended ad infinitum on HN, to the point that it was sounding like gospel. Maybe that should've been a hint, heh.

Has Walker responded to that critique?

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#142

Post by gotoeleven »

s3nnyy wrote: post #115

Everything from Nassim Taleb, basically "the incerto", his four books are basically one book ( https://www.amazon.com/Incerto-Fooled-Randomness-Procrustes-... )

I'm not sure why everyone is so excited about Taleb. Whatever wisdom there is in it is buried in page after page of bizarre chest thumping and silly stories. Reading it gives me a constant feeling of "ok he's finally going to get to his point.." but he never does. I'd recommend reading one book before buying the whole stupid boxed set. If you want mine you can have it!

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#143

Post by teamwork007 »

raamdev wrote: post #64

Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina, because it made me a better father; Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, because it taught me of the importance of something that I’d occasionally dismiss as a nuisance; Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC by Pete Egoscue, because it completely changed the way I understood posture, pain, and how repetition influences my body; and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, because it…

If you like Rilke, you'd also really like James Hollis' The Middle Passage (1993). As for as books from the past decade go David Brooks' The Road to Character was pretty good. His follow-up The Second Mountain would have been better if he didn't recycle so much from the previous work. Sam Harris' Waking Up was pretty eye opening as Harris is a very lucid thinker.

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#144

Post by ljm »

Before I scan the thread for inspiration, these are mine:

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; I have no words for this except that it was profound and I was ready for it.

2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team; a classic where history knows better than we do.

3. Special Topics in Calamity Physics; a fictional tale that shows you how damn easy it is to get lost in conspiracy and speculation.

4. House of Leaves; you can't beat a mind-bending horror like that. I live for this stuff.

5. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse; It's 50 pages long, just read it.

6. Tantra Illuminated; A well researched and academic study into the history and the beliefs of Tantra

7. The King in Yellow and its derivatives; The Hanged King lore in the SCP universe is obsessively fascinating to me.

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#145

Post by __s »

gherkinnn wrote: post #89
mindcrime wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is no logical consistency to the attributes used to define each grouping. They're just a hodgepodge of loosely related (at best) ideas. So a lot of people simply don't fit in either category. For example: I am absolutely pro-choice on the abortion issue. I am also rabidly pro-gun on the second amendment issue. So do I fall into the "left" bucket or the "right" bucket? The answer is "neither".

You sound rather liberal , in the literal sense.

Liberal doesn't say whether someone is left-wing or right-wing, so we can disregard it as an idealistic person who refuses to take an opinion of the real political question: left or right?

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#146

Post by mke »

ronyfadel wrote: post #137
mke wrote: post #66

2010 - Outliers, Malcom Gladwell 2011 - In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan 2012 - Born to Run, Christopher McDougall 2013 - Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss 2014 - Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon 2015 - Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins 2016 - Black Swan, Nicolas Taleb 2017 - Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman, Richard Feynman 2018 - The Prophet, Khalil Gibran 2019 - Three Body Problem (series), Liu Cixin These…

I’m finishing the Four Hour Work Week.. this book just reads like a “get rich quick”/scammy collection of snippets. It’s conflicting at times (“money isn’t the end-all be-all” v/s “how I made 10k$ a month sipping piña coladas”). The only useful takeaway was not to waste your life 1) wasting time and 2) working, which is fair.. but the message is wrapped with so much ego I ended just being annoyed through most of the…

The title and intro is unabashedly “get rich quick” fodder. But hidden inside, one can find practical applications of Pareto principles to work and life choices, in ways that made me question how I approach everything. Better books have followed in this zeitgeist. This one found me first.

Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?

#149

Post by Reedx »

4NDR10D wrote: post #26

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure [1] by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt I didn't necessarily agree with all of it but it helped me understand the changes I've seen across workplaces, colleges and beyond. It was also a nice way of thinking more "grey" in terms of the current political climate, and trying to understand the reasons behind peop…

Another Haidt book well worth checking out is "The Righteous Mind".

Great for grey thinking and better understanding. And I think it's one of those books that if everyone read it, we'd all be better off. Like an antidote or inhibitor to tribalism.

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