I'd like to know which books HN read in 2016. Which of these would you recommend? Which of these surprised you, because they are not the usual suspects.
Deep work by Cal Newport, great book on how to develop intense focus to be creative/get more done. Highly recommended.
Race Against The Machine - a concise and informative discussion of the impact of technology on employment, income distribution and macro economics. Highly recommended as well.
Deep Work sure is a great book, but I would recommend people with interest in the material just to go directly to Flow by Mihály Csikszentmihalyi.
Read them one after the other, first Deep Work and then Flow. IF you are going to read both then I would recommend that order. Reading Flow first, then Deep Work doesn't have much to offer.
Those books actually re-fueled my love of programming.
Effectively Deep Work is not bringing much if you already read Flow. This is just a complete book just to tell you that you need to correctly schedule your time to have "Flow/Deep" time and try as much as possible to remove distractions (News, social media, etc.) from your life.
It is even, for a part, totally self contradictory, where he claims that journalists can switch to deep work for 10 minutes at time. Because journalists are super humans not suffering from context switch where the coders are suffering from context switch if they do that.
not the GP, but start with Flow. Flow is the famous, classic one. Finding Flow is a later expansion/restatement -- it's good enough in its own right, but Flow is the lodestone
I read almost all of Brandon Sanderson's novels. I'd heard of him before, but I was hesitant to jump into his huge universe. I'm really happy I did, though. In roughly 2 months I binged on all the Cosmere novels and Steelheart.
He's creating a truly magnificent universe with the Cosmere. As I understand it, he expects it to reach 32+ books total. It's all centered around Stormlight Archive, which is an ongoing 10 novel series.
The killer detail that helped win me over as a big fan was the fact that he communicates with his fans. He's a fast writer, but he still gives updates. After a few years of following GRRM, having an author that so openly speaks with his fans is a breath of fresh air. I think everyone is usually aware that estimates are never truly accurate, but at least it gives you an idea of what the author expects to accomplish. If he says he's hoping to get the next Stormlight Archive book by the end of next year, I know that doesn't mean it's definitely going to happen. But that's fine, at least he's being open and communicating with his followers.
Honestly, I think Stormlight Archive has blow away pretty much everything else I've read.
This year I discovered a genre called LitRPG [0] and picked up all the major books in the genre. It's very light reading, for when you just wanna go off on a brief adventure. I enjoy videogames but I tend to find myself too tired or busy to want to go into the grind myself, so this made for an entertaining proxy.
I'm hoping to finish up the Wax and Wayne trilogy before the end of the year. Sanderson's books might not be quite the best fantasy, but he is consistently good and his writing output is insane. I am eagerly awaiting Stormlight 3.
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Be prepared to have your mind blown to hell up. No you don't have to be a geek or hold a doctorate in quantum mechanics to enjoy this book.
This is something that you will find impossible to put down or stop thinking about long after you have turned the last page.
- Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy. The way Hardy 'smuggles' Jude's viewpoint into the narrative is so ridiculously well crafted, a pleasure to read.
- Legend Of The Galactic Heroes - a big anime from the 80s which was based on Japanese soft SF novels, which are now finally being translated. Worth a read if you're into space operas and large scale politics, I'm happy that the age of ebooks allows for such 'niche' interests to get translated.
Non-fiction:
- Secondhand Time: The Last Of The Soviets, Svetlana Alexievitch. It's her 'usual' style, a selection of interviews with a 'chorus' of shorter interviews, this time about the fall of the Soviet Union. Lots of interesting stuff from people whose world was replaced with another world overnight.
- The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815, Tim Blanning. This is actually an entry in the long row of Penguin History of Europe, but I haven't read the others. It examines certain aspects of change in Europe (starting with how transport networks moved from mud roads to proper streets and culminating in how the nation state was invented)
- Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, Norman Davies. As the title says, a collection of essays on small kingdoms and countries which have only existed for a short time, some for which no current country claims 'ancestry'. It's always important to remind yourself what a random patchwork current European borders are.
- Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe. This is a collection of notes on young Eckermann's conversations with the aging Goethe. Goethe is famous for always challenging himself, always trying to create, make and be involved until his last day, it's absolutely inspirational. Before this book I didn't understand why he's such an icon for Germans (and I read a few biographies), but I get it now, he lived the 'man is his own marble' saying.
Computer stuff:
- Introduction to Machine Learning with Python, Mueller and Guido. This is essentially a more detailed version of the scikit-learn documentation with more elaborate exercises (even though some of it overlaps), highly readable. The scikit-learn documentation itself is among the best python package documentation out there and is something you can read 'cover to cover'.
- Write Great Code - I've only started to read this one, it's very much about the basics of what a computer does when you're running high level code, so you can adjust your coding style. So far it's very useful.
Stats:
- Discovering Statistics Using R, Field/Miles/Field. A very opinionated, highly amusing (the constant humor may annoy some), huge waltz through statistics and how to use the methods and interpret their output in R.
I had asked a question[0] regarding books a few months ago which ended up in the following list[1].
From those so far I have read the following:
- Elon Musk: Inventing the Future - Ashlee Vance
Totally worth to get insight into the Elon. Kinda changes the superhero/good guy image everyone has but you end up with more respect for him whatsoever.
- Thinking fast and slow - Daniel Kahneman
Awesome book presenting modern psychology. You'll get insight into how humans work.
- Rework - Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
Nice, albeit small book regarding how the creators of rails manage their company. So very nice insight.
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers - Ben Horowitz
I started reading this but it was too business centric for me so I stopped, however if you're a business owner it might be worth it.
- Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel - Rolf Potts
This is a nice/into book if you're interested into digital nomading, long term travel in general.
- The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This in my opinion is a superb book if you are interested in statistics/philosophy. He presents the chaotic structure of our world and why extreme events are more common than we think.Definitely suggested.
- The art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin
This is a book that presents the Author's (Chess and Tai Chi Chuan World champion) way of learning. Has some pretty useful insight.
"The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945" - I was worried that this would be rather dry, but I found it rather engrossing - from the accounts of the various espionage escapades during the Cold War, to the political machinations around the creation of the nuclear fleet (with a surprisingly large input from Hyman Rickover, who was quite a character) to a contemporary account of the "Perisher" command course. Imagine being on an incredibly stressful training course where if you fail you are immediately removed from the environment and not allowed to work in that area ever again!
Not the GP, but I read "Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion" by Jay Heinrichs this year, and consider it an excellent intro to classical rhetoric.
'started Jan 2016 jobless, I still am. hence the long reading list!' A year of pure reading, one of the great, rare, unheralded joys of life... Enjoy it while you can!
- Introductory Statistics with R by Dalgaard, Peter. A solid introduction to stats, don't be scared by R bit in the title - it contains plenty of maths/theory so that knowledge is widely applicable. Brilliant introductory for everyone who wants to do something stats related. It's amazing how much can be done with no fancy deep learning algorithms, just plain simple stats.
- Statistics Done Wrong by Alex Reinhart. Plenty of gotchas with real world examples from academia. Well written and easy to read.
- The Circle by Dave Eggers. This one was scary. About imaginary corporation (a blend of Facebook and Google and Amazon) and probably not too distant future. If you liked Black Mirrors, you will love this.
- Brave New World by Huxley, Aldous. Classic novel with interesting thoughts about engineered society, where every human is assigned class, purpose in the society and feature at birth.
- Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Bilton, Nick. Read this book in a weekend, really well written and well researched about the inception of Twitter.
- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Tetlock, Philip E. A study on people with above average ability to forecast feature events (mostly geo-political). Talks about measuring predictions and improving them.
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Brilliant book about overlooking rare events which have dramatic consequences because 'it's unlikely to happen'.
Regarding the first one (Introductory Statistics) what would you say the pre-requisites are? I'm not much of a mathematician, in fact I might even need to brush up on high school math by now, but I've thought about statistics for a while now. Is it approachable or would I have to study up to college level?
It is very approachable. If you know the difference between mean and median then you know enough to study the book.
It is written as a textbook for graduate biology students to help with their research, so it doesn't assume much mathematical knowledge. It also contains exercises (with answers) at the end of each chapter, really helps to consolidate the newly acquired knowledge.
Read the black swan and thinking fast and slow after, I think the combination is life changing. It was for me anyways. They really complement each other.
The way I think of Black Swan is "making money with philosophy" as opposed to "making money with mathematics". It's not mathematical in the quantitative sense; it's more about fallacies and misapplications of statistics.
One thought I've had: If you look the wealthiest guys in the industry and the world, they are more philosophical than mathematical, like Peter Thiel or Paul Graham. An exception would be someone like James Simons (hedge fund guy).
Warren Buffett says he basically just does arithmetic, and the rest of it is critical thinking and controlling your emotions. I was pleasantly surprised to see his partner Charlie Munger talk a lot about cognitive fallacies, which are in the realm of philosophy.
I enjoyed it and would recommend it, but at the same time, I felt a little disappointed in it. I think I expected a bit, more, somehow, given the premise. I dunno, it's hard to explain, but I just felt like there was more that could have been done with the setting and the premise.
I actually thought it was horrible and lazy. I thought of Eggers as a "literary" author, but the writing quality was low, and the plot unimaginative. It was like reading a thin script for a bad action movie.
I also read Ed Catmull's "Creativity Inc." this year, and one of the things he talked about was research trips for artists. He said that even if the audience of Ratatouille didn't know what the inside of a high end French kitchen looked like, it would come through in the movie that the ARTISTS did know. He emphasized the importance of these trips in the book.
Having worked in Silicon Valley, it felt like Eggers basically read a bunch of newspaper articles about it and then wrote a book, rather than visiting the place and talking to people. If you want to write a dystopian novel, this area is certainly rich with possibility. I remember that 10+ years ago I was astounded at how well "Microserfs" captured the mood and motivations of people... I'll have to go back and read it again.
Great; thanks, will add it to the reading list. I took a statistics course this past summer, but it was poorly taught and used Minitab as a package. Hopefully self-study with this text will be better.
I wasn't a huge fan of The Circle. It did a decent job of presenting the creep of surveillance powers that come along with ever more useful social media features. But it didn't have a coherent argument against them. It was sort of left to the reader to see (or maybe just feel) how dangerous The Circle was getting, because most of the characters themselves didn't. Even the ones who did couldn't explain why.
Maybe I just went into the book expecting an examination of the types of tradeoffs we make when interacting with social media, and instead got a thriller. The Circle works pretty well as a thriller to be honest, its just that there is still room for a more serious novel on its subject matter.
Of all the books I've read, this one resonated with me the most. It discusses the process of art making, both the personal process of finding your work and learning how to get better, as well as the issues with being judged through your work. If you treat your projects/code more like art than science, I think this book will be an enjoyable and provoking read.
* The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The prose was a bit purple for me but fascinating book about the progress of cancer treatment including recent advances. Second half of the book is more interesting in my opinion so don't give up if you find the history of cancer a little do dry.
* Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin. I thought this was a stupid premise (guy travels the universe in a huge ship with cat companions?) but a friend strongly recommended it and I found it stupidly readable and very entertaining.
* Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. Deeply interesting and humane book about the work of an eminent brain surgeon.
* The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes by Steven Pinker. Strong persuasive central thesis even if though I didn't agree with all his arguments. Very wide-ranging book with many ideas from philosophy and history.
* Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen. Informative and scary book about zoonotic diseases. Like a non-fiction cross between the detective, horror and sci-fi genres.
* The Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. Read this because I felt I should rather than out of pure interest, but it was a good decision: fascinating biography and startling how intelligent and occasionally ruthless Mandela was.
332 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadRace Against The Machine - a concise and informative discussion of the impact of technology on employment, income distribution and macro economics. Highly recommended as well.
Read them one after the other, first Deep Work and then Flow. IF you are going to read both then I would recommend that order. Reading Flow first, then Deep Work doesn't have much to offer.
Those books actually re-fueled my love of programming.
It is even, for a part, totally self contradictory, where he claims that journalists can switch to deep work for 10 minutes at time. Because journalists are super humans not suffering from context switch where the coders are suffering from context switch if they do that.
So, this one is not on my recommended list.
Flow: The Psychology of Happiness
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life
Which one are you recommending?
- The Power of Habit - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-hab...
- The Greatest Salesman in the World http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/356896.The_Greatest_Sales...
- Originals http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25614523-originals
- The One Thing http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16256798-the-one-thing
Rosemary's Baby https://www.amazon.com/Rosemarys-Baby-Ira-Levin-ebook/dp/B00...
Make: Analog Synthesizers https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson-e...
Android UI Design with XML https://www.amazon.com/Android-UI-Design-XML-Tutorial/dp/147...
Rosemary's Baby https://www.amazon.com/Rosemarys-Baby-Ira-Levin-ebook/dp/B00...
Make: Analog Synthesizers https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson-e...
Android UI Design with XML https://www.amazon.com/Android-UI-Design-XML-Tutorial/dp/147...
It's a history of oil over the last 150 years. Sounds boring. It's not. It's one of the best books I've ever read.
This book has made me realize that the history of the world over the last century and that of oil are almost one and the same.
Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
The Prince - Nicollo Machiavelli
Being Mortal - Atul Gawande
High Output Management - Andrew Grove
Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance
Red Plenty - Francis Spufford
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz
The Inner Game of Tennis - W. Timothy Galleway
My Gita - Devdutt Pattanaik
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Istanbul - Orhan Pamuk
The Stranger - Albert Camus
He's creating a truly magnificent universe with the Cosmere. As I understand it, he expects it to reach 32+ books total. It's all centered around Stormlight Archive, which is an ongoing 10 novel series.
The killer detail that helped win me over as a big fan was the fact that he communicates with his fans. He's a fast writer, but he still gives updates. After a few years of following GRRM, having an author that so openly speaks with his fans is a breath of fresh air. I think everyone is usually aware that estimates are never truly accurate, but at least it gives you an idea of what the author expects to accomplish. If he says he's hoping to get the next Stormlight Archive book by the end of next year, I know that doesn't mean it's definitely going to happen. But that's fine, at least he's being open and communicating with his followers.
Honestly, I think Stormlight Archive has blow away pretty much everything else I've read.
This year I discovered a genre called LitRPG [0] and picked up all the major books in the genre. It's very light reading, for when you just wanna go off on a brief adventure. I enjoy videogames but I tend to find myself too tired or busy to want to go into the grind myself, so this made for an entertaining proxy.
[0] http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/28/11801040/have-you-heard-ab...
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Novel-Blake-Crouch/dp/110...
Fiction:
- Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy. The way Hardy 'smuggles' Jude's viewpoint into the narrative is so ridiculously well crafted, a pleasure to read.
- Legend Of The Galactic Heroes - a big anime from the 80s which was based on Japanese soft SF novels, which are now finally being translated. Worth a read if you're into space operas and large scale politics, I'm happy that the age of ebooks allows for such 'niche' interests to get translated.
Non-fiction:
- Secondhand Time: The Last Of The Soviets, Svetlana Alexievitch. It's her 'usual' style, a selection of interviews with a 'chorus' of shorter interviews, this time about the fall of the Soviet Union. Lots of interesting stuff from people whose world was replaced with another world overnight.
- The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815, Tim Blanning. This is actually an entry in the long row of Penguin History of Europe, but I haven't read the others. It examines certain aspects of change in Europe (starting with how transport networks moved from mud roads to proper streets and culminating in how the nation state was invented)
- Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, Norman Davies. As the title says, a collection of essays on small kingdoms and countries which have only existed for a short time, some for which no current country claims 'ancestry'. It's always important to remind yourself what a random patchwork current European borders are.
- Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe. This is a collection of notes on young Eckermann's conversations with the aging Goethe. Goethe is famous for always challenging himself, always trying to create, make and be involved until his last day, it's absolutely inspirational. Before this book I didn't understand why he's such an icon for Germans (and I read a few biographies), but I get it now, he lived the 'man is his own marble' saying.
Computer stuff:
- Introduction to Machine Learning with Python, Mueller and Guido. This is essentially a more detailed version of the scikit-learn documentation with more elaborate exercises (even though some of it overlaps), highly readable. The scikit-learn documentation itself is among the best python package documentation out there and is something you can read 'cover to cover'.
- Write Great Code - I've only started to read this one, it's very much about the basics of what a computer does when you're running high level code, so you can adjust your coding style. So far it's very useful.
Stats:
- Discovering Statistics Using R, Field/Miles/Field. A very opinionated, highly amusing (the constant humor may annoy some), huge waltz through statistics and how to use the methods and interpret their output in R.
Also:
Irvin Yalom, Love's Executioner
Gavin Extence, The Universe vs. Alex Woods
- Elon Musk: Inventing the Future - Ashlee Vance Totally worth to get insight into the Elon. Kinda changes the superhero/good guy image everyone has but you end up with more respect for him whatsoever.
- Thinking fast and slow - Daniel Kahneman Awesome book presenting modern psychology. You'll get insight into how humans work.
- Rework - Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson Nice, albeit small book regarding how the creators of rails manage their company. So very nice insight.
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers - Ben Horowitz I started reading this but it was too business centric for me so I stopped, however if you're a business owner it might be worth it.
- Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel - Rolf Potts This is a nice/into book if you're interested into digital nomading, long term travel in general.
- The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb This in my opinion is a superb book if you are interested in statistics/philosophy. He presents the chaotic structure of our world and why extreme events are more common than we think.Definitely suggested.
- The art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin This is a book that presents the Author's (Chess and Tai Chi Chuan World champion) way of learning. Has some pretty useful insight.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415621 [1]: https://github.com/kostistsaprailis/non-tech-books-for-devel...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0171SWRGI
Once you realize virtually every conversation with a human is also a negotiation, the need to study it becomes clear.
* The Short Drop (The Gibson Vaughn Series) - Matthew FitzSimmons
* The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
* Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution - Neil deGrasse Tyson
* Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future - Ashlee Vance
* Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries - Neil deGrasse Tyson
* The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest To Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind - Michio Kaku
* An Innocent Client (Joe Dillard Series Book 1) - Scott Pratt
* WIRED - Douglas E. Richards
* Phantoms - Dean Koontz
* Breakthrough - Michael C. Grumley
* Knots And Crosses (Inspector Rebus) - Ian Rankin
* Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston
* The Tumor: A Non-Legal Thriller - John Grisham
* Kick the Drink... Easily! - Jason Vale
* Hide And Seek (Inspector Rebus) - Ian Rankin
* Tooth And Nail - Ian Rankin
* Nexus (The Nexus Trilogy Book 1) - Ramez Naam
* Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow - Yuval Noah Harari
* Biocentrism - Bob Berman
Good call. Even though he's famous and all, I still sometimes feel like Koontz is very under-rated and doesn't get enough respect.
- Sapiens ~ Yuval Noah Harari
- Mindset ~ Carol Dweck
- Why we do what we do ~ Edward L. Deci
- Capital in the XXIst century ~ Thomas Piketty
- Statistics Done Wrong by Alex Reinhart. Plenty of gotchas with real world examples from academia. Well written and easy to read.
- The Circle by Dave Eggers. This one was scary. About imaginary corporation (a blend of Facebook and Google and Amazon) and probably not too distant future. If you liked Black Mirrors, you will love this.
- Brave New World by Huxley, Aldous. Classic novel with interesting thoughts about engineered society, where every human is assigned class, purpose in the society and feature at birth.
- Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Bilton, Nick. Read this book in a weekend, really well written and well researched about the inception of Twitter.
- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Tetlock, Philip E. A study on people with above average ability to forecast feature events (mostly geo-political). Talks about measuring predictions and improving them.
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Brilliant book about overlooking rare events which have dramatic consequences because 'it's unlikely to happen'.
It is written as a textbook for graduate biology students to help with their research, so it doesn't assume much mathematical knowledge. It also contains exercises (with answers) at the end of each chapter, really helps to consolidate the newly acquired knowledge.
One thought I've had: If you look the wealthiest guys in the industry and the world, they are more philosophical than mathematical, like Peter Thiel or Paul Graham. An exception would be someone like James Simons (hedge fund guy).
Warren Buffett says he basically just does arithmetic, and the rest of it is critical thinking and controlling your emotions. I was pleasantly surprised to see his partner Charlie Munger talk a lot about cognitive fallacies, which are in the realm of philosophy.
I enjoyed it and would recommend it, but at the same time, I felt a little disappointed in it. I think I expected a bit, more, somehow, given the premise. I dunno, it's hard to explain, but I just felt like there was more that could have been done with the setting and the premise.
Still, worth a read for sure.
I also read Ed Catmull's "Creativity Inc." this year, and one of the things he talked about was research trips for artists. He said that even if the audience of Ratatouille didn't know what the inside of a high end French kitchen looked like, it would come through in the movie that the ARTISTS did know. He emphasized the importance of these trips in the book.
Having worked in Silicon Valley, it felt like Eggers basically read a bunch of newspaper articles about it and then wrote a book, rather than visiting the place and talking to people. If you want to write a dystopian novel, this area is certainly rich with possibility. I remember that 10+ years ago I was astounded at how well "Microserfs" captured the mood and motivations of people... I'll have to go back and read it again.
If one is new to R, would this text be a good intro to the language?
Maybe I just went into the book expecting an examination of the types of tradeoffs we make when interacting with social media, and instead got a thriller. The Circle works pretty well as a thriller to be honest, its just that there is still room for a more serious novel on its subject matter.
Genghis Khan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93426.Genghis_Khan_and_t...
Mistakes were made (but not by me) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/522525.Mistakes_Were_Mad...
Sapiens - a brief history of humankind https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens
A little history of the world https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61505.A_Little_History_o...
That last one I just finished and look forward to re-reading real soon. It's written by a German and from a European point of view.
A few other good ones but not top of my list of recommendations:
The church of fear - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17201748-the-church-of-f...
A brief history of time - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3869.A_Brief_History_of_...
Looks who's back - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17289087-look-who-s-back
Of all the books I've read, this one resonated with me the most. It discusses the process of art making, both the personal process of finding your work and learning how to get better, as well as the issues with being judged through your work. If you treat your projects/code more like art than science, I think this book will be an enjoyable and provoking read.
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ~ Oliver Sacks, 1985. This book contains tales of some of the Sacks's patients. A very interesting read. [1]
- The Mind's Eye ~ Oliver Sacks, 2010. [2]
- Spy Catcher (Autobiography of a MI5 agent) ~ Peter Wright, 1987. [3]
- Applied Cryptography ~ Bruce Schneier, 1994. Approachable and succinate language of this book makes it easier to understand. [4]
[1] http://www.amazon.in/Man-Who-Mistook-his-Wife/dp/0330523627
[2] http://www.amazon.in/Minds-Eye-Oliver-Sacks/dp/0330508903/
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Catcher-Autobiography-Intelligenc...
[4] http://www.amazon.in/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algorith...
- Alibaba - The house that Jack Ma built by Duncan Clark https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25817524-alibaba
- Shoe Dog - A memoir by the creator of NIKE by Phil Knight https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27220736-shoe-dog
- Originals - How non-conformists move the world by Adam Grant https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25614523-originals
[0] - https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Harsh-Mistress-Robert-Heinlein-e...
* Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin. I thought this was a stupid premise (guy travels the universe in a huge ship with cat companions?) but a friend strongly recommended it and I found it stupidly readable and very entertaining.
* Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. Deeply interesting and humane book about the work of an eminent brain surgeon.
* The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes by Steven Pinker. Strong persuasive central thesis even if though I didn't agree with all his arguments. Very wide-ranging book with many ideas from philosophy and history.
* Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen. Informative and scary book about zoonotic diseases. Like a non-fiction cross between the detective, horror and sci-fi genres.
* The Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. Read this because I felt I should rather than out of pure interest, but it was a good decision: fascinating biography and startling how intelligent and occasionally ruthless Mandela was.