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Ask HN: Summer Reading Recommendations?

61 points by neilc ↗ HN
I'm about to take a few weeks off, and I'd love to hear recommendations from HNers on books they've read recently and enjoyed. I'm open to anything, fiction or non-fiction -- and I'd be particularly interested in subjects other than programming or entrepreneurship.

100 comments

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kjbekkelund
My favourite books read lately are Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and Perrotta's Metaprogramming Ruby. If you haven't read Free by Chris Anderson, it's also highly recommended. It's just an article, but Anarconomy by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies was a very interesting read (http://www.cifs.dk/doc/medlemsrapporter/MR0309UK.pdf).

If you are willing to check out an audiobook, World War Z is truly an amazing book. Absolutely the best audiobook I have heard so far.

Enjoy your weeks off!

metellus
The print version of World War Z is very good as well.
lkozma
Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman.

D. MacKay: Sustainable energy - without the hot air.

N. Taleb: Fooled by randomness.

M. Karinthy: A journey round my skull.

tptacek
Not a fan of Taleb, who is in love with the sound of his own voice, and who is articulating concepts that may be shocking to pit traders but not so much to anyone who has spent quality time on Usenet.
lkozma
Yeah, he gets repetitive for sure. But I still think the core of his message is sound and (somewhat) counterintuitive (to me at least): you can lose most bets if you win the rare large ones, people underestimate the probability of outlier events, people tend to find patterns in sheer randomness, etc.
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weaksauce
I think the Feynman book is great! He is a great storyteller and humble to boot.
sr3d
I'm reading "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman". I'm about 100 pages into it, and it's a pretty cool read. Smart as he is but the way he wrote it doesn't make me feel intimidated at all. I was really impressed about the part when he talked about this his first presentation to Einstein and Pauli and other biggest minds of the 20th century. He made it so casual and I could pictured me in his shoes perfectly. It reminds me of my Chemistry classes in college.
SandB0x
Two of my favourite summer books:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland

Any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine.

lionhearted
> The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I read Gatsby and came away with two thoughts:

1. How incredibly well constructed. Almost every paragraph weaves a story together that starts off slow and then accelerates incredibly rapidly.

2. I think it's so popular because it paints a picture of rich people as actually unsuccessful at what really matters to them, depraved, inconsiderate, immoral, and miserable and hollow on the inside. Note how frequently the book is recommended by English professors with no money who generally hate wealthy people - it's like, "see, they're like us, just even worse!"

Worth reading, though, at the very least to see what the fuss is about. It is incredibly well-constructed from a writing standpoint.

zooey
I think it's more a fact of describing the life of upper class people. The poor characters are not so well painted too. But they live (or want to live) in the upper class world, in the book. We have only flash of the world of the "poor".

The narrator, also, is from a bourgeois family (Nick graduated from Yale).

So maybe it was just a novel describing a world. A World fading away.

tptacek
Things you can easily read on the beach:

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain (but read Kitchen Confidential first if you haven't already).

Also recommend FiveBooks.com, which does interviews with various academics and "thinkers" each recommending 5 books on a particular subject. It's a bit slanted towards politics but has a fair bit of hard science as well.

[dead] openfly
The Giants Trilogy if you've never read it is fun.

Heinlein's The moon is a harsh mistress.

The web mage series is well... horrible, but like a train wreck hard to look away from. I mean few books rival plan 9 from outer space.

I have yet to read the lady with the dragon tattoo, but the movie was amazing so I look forward to that.

How to catch squirrels was a good read.

helwr
Atlas Shrugged
tomjen3
I would be surprised if most here hadn't read it, whether they agree with it or not, simply because it is so famous in tech circles.
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jokull
I'm going to shock you lot and tell you I haven't read it although I've heard mentions of it from hackers that seem to live by it and quote it. What's so good about it?

EDIT: Just recalled that it's a book by Ayn Rand which to me came across as a total looney at the time.

wallflower
The idea that natural intelligence will succeed on its own merit in a capitalistic society
tomjen3
She was kind of looney (if you take what she writes at face value) but she does have some interesting ideas, which can changes your outlook on your life.

But no you don't shock me by not having read it - I specifically said that most people would have read it, which means that it may not make as good a suggestion as, something that is less well known.

helwr
In USSR where I grew up Rand was completely unknown, unlike many other American authors

I've discovered her recently on Quora and was really surprised. It was like discovering antimatter, composed of antiparticles each of which annihilates some familiar idea

The strange thing is it came so late

lionhearted
I just started "The Ultimate Sales Machine" - looks really, really promising. Author gives good general advice you might've already heard before (sell to current clients, have a good training program, consistency and processes), but he actually takes the time to write about how much "pigheaded discipline and determination" a given policy is going to take to implement. It's been a good read so far, very synergistic with E-Myth for those who like E-Myth.
jpdbaugh
Daemon and Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez. It will rock your world trust me.
sliverstorm
Such practical and classic recommendations!

I'm just trying to make it through A Clash of Kings and Dune.

agentargo
I've been into Klosterman lately

Downtown Owl (novel) Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs (essays on pop culture) Eating the Dinosaur (more essays)

Other Novels:

Lolita - Nabokov White Noise - Delillo

gahahaha
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better

It charts a connection between the income gap and everything from crime to illness and under-education. Got it two weeks ago. Blew me away. Easy to read too.

arethuza
Recent favorites of mine:

Anathem - Neal Stephenson

A People's Tragedy: Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 - Orlando Figes

The Big Short - Michael Lewis

m0th87
I'm reading The Joy of Clojure right now. I've never been able to get myself into lisp, but this book is doing a pretty damn good job.

I think technical books are best combined with fiction, because it's pleasant to keep switching between the two as you get bored. I just finished and highly recommend Fluke by Christopher Moore. Its synopsis does not do it justice: once you start reading it, it's impossible to put down.

deathbob
I think "Lamb" is my favorite Christopher Moore book.
ddewey
I just read and enjoyed The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton.
JunkDNA
It's older, but I really enjoyed Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
sgoraya
I recently went on a Ernest Hemingway bender after not having read much fiction in a while (sort of a gray area for these novels since a lot of it is based on Hemingway's experiences during the wars); I would highly recommend:

For whom the bell tolls & A farewell to arms

Out of those two, I liked For Whom The Bell Tolls a little bit better.

namin
Some books I've read this summer, which I can recommend:

- The Facebook Effect -- well-written insider's account of the history of Facebook and its ambitions. http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect...

- The Quantum Enigma -- an accessible digest of quantum mechanics and its philosophical consequences. http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Cons...

- Flesh & Machines -- a lightweight history of robotics and some wacky speculations by MIT's Rodney Brooks. http://www.amazon.com/Flesh-Machines-Robots-Will-Change/dp/0...

- The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution of Personalized Medecine -- a well-backed account of what is or will be possible in medicine thanks to a better understanding of the genome and increase use of DNA sequencing for prevention, diagnostic, and treatment. http://www.amazon.com/Language-Life-Revolution-Personalized-...

- ... by David Sedaris -- Funny short stories. Perhaps The Santaland Diaries for something light but really amusing, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames for something darker and more well-known. Also, if you like short stories, I heartily recommend Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, a varied collection of short stories selected by Sedaris. http://www.amazon.com/David-Sedaris/e/B000AQ3YUW/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0349119759 http://www.amazon.com/When-You-Are-Engulfed-Flames/dp/031615... http://www.amazon.com/Children-Playing-Before-Statue-Hercule...

- Dreams of My Father -- Barack Obama writes candidly and beautifully about his childhood and early adulthood; it's not a political book, and it's worth reading for the writing alone. http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-My-Father-Story-Inheritance/dp/...

- Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty: a chatty history of mathematics, and its perception. http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Loss-Certainty-Galaxy-Book...

tptacek
Regarding Sedaris, I highly, highly recommend consuming him in audiobook format.

David Foster Wallace's "Consider The Lobster" is also an excellent audiobook; he figured out a way to do the footnotes via audio.

eande
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO)
atldev
I'm reading this right now. I have to say, I saw Tony on an episode of the Apprentice and was left with the (apparently wrong) impression that he didn't have much personality.

However, in his writing, he comes across as humble, hard-working and brilliant. He also strikes me as someone who is a little crazy and probably a blast to hang out with.

The book is a great read and inspirational for anyone contemplating the tough road for a startup founder. It gives you a fascinating window into the mind of an entrepreneur who has built and sold quickly (LinkExchange) and then went on to build an "overnight success" 10 years in the making.

harscoat
* Bouvard & Pécuchet - Flaubert

* The hero with thousands faces - Joseph Campbell

c1sc0
I'll see your Flaubert and raise you an "Eugénie Grandet" by Balzac. Classical storytelling genius.
gaius
Just finished The Restoration Game by Ken McLeod, I recommend it.
mqmouse
If you like SciFi, I really recommend Ian M. Banks and his Culture Series.

Here is a link to the "first" in the series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas

Basically to give you a flavour, imagine a utopian society where energy is basically free and run by super intelligent benevolent AIs. So basically the citizens have nothing to do but live a completely hedonistic life.

Whenever they encounter "primitive" societies, they try to make them more human and civilized. Basically the opposite of the "prime directive". The organization responsible for that is called Contact. Unfortunately, in order to make these societies more humane they sometimes have to resort to some dirty tricks (like assassinating evil dictators, instigating civil wars, etc etc). The organization responsible for that is called "Special Circumstances".

Another author I find great is Sheri Tepper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper

SciFi with a feminist bent. Examples are Grass / and the Margarets.

If you want something more acid, anything by Victor Pelevin. Buddha's little finger is brilliant.

hop
Recently finished The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - An extraordinary true story and possibly the best book I've ever read.