Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

Isaac Asimov is a must read for people who love Sci-Fi. Some of his books I loved: The Robot Series (The Caves of Steel, The Robots of Dawn etc.), The Foundation Series, Nemesis, the list goes on ...

Obviously there are a lot of good books out there, however "Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers" is certainly one which most of the folks here would find interesting. It's a comprehensive list of what you can do to get your initial bunch of users.

The best line in the book though is the definition of traction: "It's identical to the Supreme Court's definition of porn: you know it when you see it!"

I'm reading Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays. I forgot until I picked this book up again how much fun it is to read David Foster Wallace. Despite all the footnotes, he's very engaging.

Also, my girlfriend just sneaked Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love into my computer bag the other day. I haven't read him in a long time, but coincidentally was just very recently talking to a friend about What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, which is mostly unrelated to the Carver book, but also a really good read about his life of running.

Here's my usual list of recommendations, the best books I've read in the past 5 years.

Fiction:

- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

If you know nothing about this book you might naturally hesitate to read "Harry Potter fanfiction" and assume that it's dumb/horrbile, but it's not. Just suspend your disbelief and read the first 5-10 chapters. Trust me, it's brilliant, hilarious, and life-changing.

- Atlas Shrugged

Controversial, I know, a lot of people here hate it for some reason, but it was incredibly influential on me, inspired my passion for entrepreneurship and science and philosophy. Still is one of the best books I am aware of.

Nonfiction:

- Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

Also a collection of his essays that you can find on github. He is one of the most clever writers I am aware of, but I assume you know that, since you're on HN.

- "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins

This book explains in simple terms a very awesome and elegant theory on how mind works. Incredibly fascinating, I've learned a lot from it and it explains a lot of things, and will change the way you think about thinking process.

- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Engaging and entertaining explanation of evolution, absolutely fantastic book.

- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli.

Despite the stigma, and people thinking that Machhiavellian = "evil", I've found this book extremely clever and wise.

- Serious Creativity by Edward De Bono

The best book on creativity and the process of generating ideas that I'm aware of.

- Abundance

This is a very inspiring and optimistic book about the future of technology.

Entrepreneurhsip:

- Start Small, Stay Small

Guide to creating your first product/business for hackers. It lays out all the basics of entrepreneurship in a very concise and clear ways, my favorite introduction to startups.

- Rework

Very wise and intelligent advice about startups, intelligent and witty, must read.

- Lean Startup

Classic book on "lean startup methodology", very useful.

- 4-Hour Workweek

Despite the silly title I think it is a great book and is very much worth reading. Many people here dislike Tim Ferris, but whatever, I think this book is cool.

Autobiographies:

- Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman

- Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick

- Catch me if you can by Abagnale

- iWoz by Steve Wozniak

- Losing my Virginity by Richard Branson

All these are fantastic and very intelligent autobiographies by the very awesome people.

Now I'm reading "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and "Rationality: From AI to Zombies."

"Rationality" is great and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. Can't say much about GEB, I've only started reading it, but everyone is saying that it is so great and the best book ever, so I think it's definitely worth checking out.

I'm almost done with The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error: http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error/...

It's a brilliant book written by Sidney Dekker, a "Professor of Human Factors and Flight Safety". The basic point is that the default way of understanding bad outcomes is what he calls "the Old View or the Bad Apple Theory". He instead argues for the New View, where "human error is a symptom of trouble deeper inside a system".

Normally with a book like this, I read the first couple of chapters, say, "Ok, I get the idea," and can ignore the rest. After all, I both agree with and understand the basic thesis. But so far every chapter has been surprisingly useful; I keep discovering that I have Old View notions hidden away. E.g., when I discover a systemic flaw, I'm inclined to blame "bad design". But he points out that's a fancy way of calling the problem human error, just a different human and a different error than normal.

Even the driest parts are helped by his frequent use of examples, often taken from real-world aviation accident reports. There are also fascinating bits like a system for high-resolution markup of dialog transcripts to indicate timing (down to 1/10th second), speech inflection, and emphasis. I'll never use it myself, but I will definitely use the mindset that it requires.

Given how much time software projects spend dealing with bugs, I believe we need a new way to think about them, and for me this book describes a big piece of that.