I read a bunch this year but Pandora's Lab is the most mind-boggling shit one should read.
My list resides here: https://saru.science/readinglist/
Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
171–180 of 396 posts
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hacking growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Browne? Just want to check I'm buying the right book!
Yep. Oh, and if you're interested in the subject, I can also recommend "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, it's a really neat outline of traction channels.
I also really enjoyed Traction. It provides a good framework on testing to identify the channel that provides the results needed at the stage your business is at. It also goes drives home the concept that the channel that gets you to one stage of growth might not be the one that gets you to the next stage.
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#173As for me —- 0: Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths Anyone interested in information theory, intelligence (artificial or otherwise), many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics, metafiction, the nature of art, or even probabilistic sequence modeling should read Borges’ short stories. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. 1: Hero With A Thousand Faces A classic book collating world mythologies and psychoanalytical tho…
> 1: Hero With A Thousand Faces
Unusual. The first time, I - happily - see someone on HN mentioning Joseph Campbell and this book.
As a following up lecture, I'd recommend: The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242530.The_Hero_s_Journe...
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#174I'm 2/3 of the way through Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker, having seen Bill Gates describe it as his new favourite book of all time: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now . With the daily news cycle full of violence, hatred and despair, the book is an rationally optimistic (possibilist!) argument that the human condition has been improving since the days of the Enlightenment - and that the improveme…
>Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker
Just started reading it after having finished another one of Mr. Gates' favorite -- Factfulness, by Hans Rosling -- which, btw, he's distributing at no cost to college students in the United States. [0]
Insofar, I could observe Enlightenment Now to be a book that ties the loose ends of all of Mr. Pinker's previous works -- The Better Angels of our Nature, The Blank Slate etc. Would definitely recommend checking them out before starting with this to get an idea of the intellectual depth of the man.
[0] http://time.com/money/5303143/bill-gates-free-book-graduates...
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#175"Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent", by Ryan Holiday.
I really enjoyed this one and I will read it again. IMHO, it helped me understand people better and especially myself. It changed a lot of my own perspectives and opened my eyes in at least 2 areas of my own life.
Behaviour, intentions, humility, self-esteem, focus on right things and don't let other opinions (about you or your work) mess with your mind.
I read this last year. Since then, many different daily situations reminded me in some way to topics discussed in the book. I will also gift this book to others (if I feel someone is open for these kind of topics).
- Good Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27036528-ego-is-the-enem...
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#176Here's Jeff Atwood's 'Recommended Reading for Developers': https://blog.codinghorror.com/recommended-reading-for-develo...
From the header:
> This list was last updated in March 2015.
> Why are updates to my reading list so rare? Because computers change a lot in 10 years, but people don't.
> To make better software, you need to understand how people work, and that is what the books I recommend tend to focus on.
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#177Peter F. Hamilton, "Commonwealth Saga" and "Void Trilogy". Among the best Sci-Fi I've ever read.
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#178I suppose I could give my summer reading list:
The History of the Peloponessian War - Thucydides.
On book 3 right now, it's some of the most profound political strategy and philosophy I've ever read. It really helps if you read Herodotus' Histories before hand, to give context on the Persian War, and how what we now call Greece ended up in this mess. It's extremely illustrative, and if you've read it, the rise of populism after 70 years of American hegemony should be absolutely no surprise (it looks a lot like Athens).
The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Another book that is very important today, as socialism/communism is on the rise in parts of the western world. It's an exploration of what happens when social trust breaks down in a society, as it did after the Bolshevik Revolution. Is the US at that point? No. Does it have the potential to get there, with a few elections of more radical types and further breakdown of the social fabric? Absolutely.
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#179Taleb's Technical Incerto. Imminently readable and accessible probability theory. His postulates concerning fat tail vs normal distributions can readily be translated into quick and dirty computer simulations. Thereby demonstrating such hidden insights as "black swans are not more frequent in fat tails, but merely more consequential"! Other than recent technical papers, I am pretty much trying to eschew anything publ…
The audio version of Principles in much better, imo.
Re: Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?
#180I'm going to do something a bit different from everyone else and suggest some poetry. 1) Songs of Innocence and of Experience from William Blake. 2) The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde 3) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge I've started to enjoy reading poetry again. The education system managed to extinguish any love I had for poetry. It's been a bit over half a decade since I was in sch…
Blake is indeed great summer reading - a retreat from the rational mind. In that vein, my two summer picks are A.R. Ammons' "Still" and the fragments of Friedrich Holderlin translated by Michael Hoffman.