Ask HN: What is the best book you read on 2017?

61 points by zwrt ↗ HN

47 comments

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Nice bookshelf page! It would be nice if you could somehow box in red, say, the best book for each year...
Thanks for the kind words and the idea! Will do.
For anyone looking for a DS primer, I have to say I was really disappointed with "Data Science from Scratch". It was all breadth with little depth. It felt more like a suggested list of topics to further research w/ other material.

I personally got way more value and insight out of "Data Science for Business" and would highly recommend it.

Thanks for the recommendation. I like "Data Science from Scratch" for the same reason you dislike it :-)
1. Thinking fast and slow - Kahneman

2. Outliers - Malcom Gladwell

3. How to read and do proofs - Daniel Solow

All of these were packed with great insights and are books I'm sure I will return to in the future for multiple re-reads.

I enjoyed Outliers when I read it a while ago, but have since realised it's just a bunch of anecdotes.
Maybe I'll come to that conclusion at some later point as well. Still, the point about how rules in social systems bias outcomes in subtle ways was an interesting anecdote (the hockey player birthday distribution).
Yes. Malcolm Gladwell loves to write about his own brilliantly uncovered anecdotes...

Peak loses a lot of that, and is co-authored by a psychologist who is behind a lot of more scientific work in the area of expertise (his work is also referenced in Outliers).

In general, I recommend people skip Outliers (really just skip Gladwell entirely) and read Peak instead.

The best book I have ever read I read in 2017, it’s the book “The Anatomy of Peace” (and it’s twin Leaders and Self Deception) from the Arbinger Institute.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.
Hyperion

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Ready Player One

Non-fiction:

Tough to call. I got a lot out of Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday, How To Win At The Sport Of Business by Mark Cuban, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and The Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler, as well as the three Grant Cardone books I read: The 10x Rule, Sell or Be Sold and Be Obsessed or Be Average.

Fiction:

I'll go with The Whispering Room by Dean Koontz. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami was also pretty good.

You can see the entire list of what I've read lately (and further back) on my Goodreads profile:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33942804-phillip-rhodes

or, if this link is visible publicly, on this "2017 in books" page:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2017/33942804

I've been reading David Walliams' books for children. I think they're very good. More importantly, so does my child.
I've read over 100 books this year, but mostly non-fiction. I'm kinda surprised that my favourite book ended up being a fiction book, which is: 'Ready Player One'
Do you have a speed reading technique or just read for a long time per day?
I read when I'm in transit or waiting for people

I made a promise to buy a book / e-book per week. So I better make sure I finish it.

When I'm driving or walking from one place to another I'm listening to an audiobook and it is at 3x speed

I think if you're forced to read a lot of book, you'll come up with a system that works for you. Some of the advice people give over the internet might not work at least that was my experience

Fiction: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor - the first of a very enjoyable SF trilogy

Non-Fiction: Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture by Gabriel Thompson - a collection of detailed and moving stories from people who work in the fields in California.

I normally only read books to help me sleep and usually that book is "Lord of The Rings". However, I did branch out in 2017 with "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman which I quite enjoyed until near the end where it got a little too crazy.
Fiction (fantasy): Broken Empire Trilogy by Mark Lawrence (2013)

Fiction (Sci-fi): The Three-body Problem by Liu Cixin

Non-fiction: The C Programming Language

Martin Kleppmann's "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" is one of the best books in computing I've read in a very long time (and thus the best book of 2017).
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"Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise" by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool