Ask HN: Great book that you read recently?

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank

Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Business Model Generation - Alexander Osterwalder

I don't tend to read biz books, but recently I've read a ton of great Russian texts.

The Master & Margarita

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita

Goethe's Faust & the story of Pontius Pilate retold in 1930s Russia. Really, I mean really damn good. Very readable.

Books 1 & 2 of The Gulag Archipelago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

An expansive history of the Soviet prison camp system, almost a folk history.

Petersburg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_(novel)

Think Joyce writing about a revolutionary plot in the Petersburg of 1910-something, involving patricide and a time-bomb set for 24 hours from now. Yeah.

That and slowly working through Proust (book 5). I'm not sure if I really recommend it, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts from other smarty-pants HN people.

I'd highly recommend any Scalzi book. The Old Man's War trilogy is great, but if you're after something more light-hearted then The Android's Dream or Agent to the Stars are also great.

Practical Irrationality - Dan Ariely

It changed the way I think about pricing, among other things, forever. He makes some wild conclusions then backs them up with scientific experiments. Its a fun read to boot.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindn...)