I'd like to know which books HN read in 2018. Which of these would you recommend? Which of these surprised you, because they are not the usual suspects.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler - I come back to this book constantly and I absolutely love it. Highly recommended. 5/5.
Deep Work by Cal Newport - Could be summed up in a blog post. 3/5 (for the message; lower otherwise - maybe 2-2.5/5)
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount - Could be summed up in a blog post, but I think he makes a point on cold calling - if you need to do it, suck it up and do it. And that about sums it up. 2.5/5 (message is decent and he does offer some tips)
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke - Liked it, but unsure that I'll continue. 3.5/5.
White Fang by Jack London - Enjoyable and descriptive. Had to power through, though. 3.5/5
Treasure Island by RLS - Absolutely loved it. Now I need to power through the 800ish episodes of One Piece. 4/5
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green - The story moves pretty fast. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford - Khan as a historical figure fascinates me and I enjoyed this book. Don't know if it's just me, but Weatherford does seem to handwave Mongol atrocities. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Quest for God by Jack Weatherford - Again, enjoyable. 3.5/5
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - Charming and enjoyable story. 4/5
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - Pretty sure this is the first book I ever read that's written from an animal's POV. I liked it. 4/5
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (Penguin Classic) - I really liked it. Helped me understand a bit more about Norse mythology. 4.5/5
Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang - I read this earlier in the year; it's about a guy who asked people ridiculous things in an effort to see if they'd say yes or no. I believe the thesis boils down to "Don't be afraid to ask; people say yes more often than you think." Was an enjoyable read. 4/5
My Antonia by Willa Cather (Oxford World Classic) - Really good read and not that long of a book. 4.5/5.
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger - As the title implies, it's about the Apollo 8 mission. Same guy who wrote the biography on Neil Armstrong. 3/5.
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling - Charming short stories that Kipling told his daughter until she died. 3.5/5
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain - Was assigned this in high school but didn't read it then. Read it now. I missed out; it's a good book, but I think it's relatively boring until Tom starts going out with Huck a bit more. 3.5/5
The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame - Best book I've ever read on friendship and its importance. 4.5/5
Only surprises for me were Apollo 8, which I didn't like as much as I liked the Neil Armstrong biography; Tom Sawyer, in that I liked it; and that Deep Work and Fanatical Prospecting seemed a lot more bloated than they should've been. Besides that, I'm happy I didn't read any books that I didn't like, but I suppose I didn't take many risks either.
I've also read the the Weatherford book about Genghis Khan and I agree he downplayed the atrocities during the conquest, but I agree with your rating - I don't think it's a deal breaker. When studying history we have to remember that before WWII, wars of conquest were the normal expected behavior of states, as were the atrocities that come with sacking of cities. Once you've read about a couple of events, you've kind of read about them all, unfortunately. The mongol conquests however were on a different scale than most, but there is quite a bit of nonsense out there about the casualty counts. Weatherford is a fairly short book, and I wish he spent a bit more time confronting it and separating fact from fiction.
Nevertheless, it remains true that atrocities and conquests were the historical norm: what separates different societies is how they rule after achieving power. It's there that we see huge differences from culture to culture. For example, I've recently seen loads of people compare Alexander & Genghis Khan to Hitler... Certainly true of their conquests - true of everyone with the skills to pull it off before WWII - but wildly wrong once they achieved power and began organizing their empires. Weatherford did a great job of explaining that missing half of the story for the Mongols, even though he gives a disappointing analysis of the human cost of building the empire.
Deep Work is excellent and likely a very useful read for most of the programmers / engineers / (data) scientists ... pretty much any "information worker"!
Another +1 from Deep Work. The main takeaway for me was the following quote:
"We spend much of our day on autopilot, not giving much thought to what we are doing with our time.
This, is a problem. It's difficult to prevent the trivial from creeping into every corner of your schedule if you don't face without flinching your current balance between deep and shallow work"
I tried his pretty extreme recommendation to schedule every minute of every day (see chapter 'Rule #4' or 6:30:30 in the audiobook), my summary below:
-> I use a 4"x6" lined post-it note pad and block out 30 minute/block blocks throughout the day
-> Interruptions are scheduled for future blocks (although occasional mandatory interruptions
of course occur from time to time), and I edit the post-it note throughout the day
-> At the end of the week I do a post-mortem and review which tasks slipped to the next week and recap what happened
I've found a surprising amount of distractions lurking throughout my day that I've been able to eliminate. Scheduling your day is also really compatible with Agile development as you can easily answer why your JIRAs slipped into the next sprint, what your blockers were, etc.
Ofer Gal - Baroque Science. A highly academic history of the scientific revolution, not the most readable book. It focused quite a bit on mathematization, especially in optics (and Kepler's optics revolution in particular), and also in observation via instrumentation like telescopes and microscopes.
Paul Nahin - The Logician and the Engineer. About Boole and Shannon's work; I had already learned the material so i skimmed part of it and returned it to the library.
Ian Mortimer - The time traveler's guide to medieval england. Talks about what daily life was like for different social classes in 14th century England eg towns & cities, food, clothes, housing, employment, travel etc. I got about halfway through and lost interest in the subject matter.
Lucio Russo - The forgotten Revolution. A very readable academic history of the development of science in ptolomaic egypt (eg euclid, archimedes, etc). This was certainly the most surprising book I read all year. This time period has been almost completely deleted from history, which jumps straight from aristotle to the renaissance (with a quick stop in the islamic world if you're being spoiled), and their achievements were incredibly impressive!
Jim al-Khalili - The House of Wisdom. A pop-history book about arabic science that i got from the library. I was wary because it's written by a particle physicist and not a historian, and sure enough it is filled with so much nonsense that I through it down in disgust after a few chapters.
Colin Pask - Magnificent Principia. A brief tour of some of the highlights of Newton's Principia, using both newton's geometric diagrams and modern notation. Following the modern notation of course assumes some basic calculus. Highly recommended - it made me want to learn old fashioned celestial mechanics! Perhaps in 2019...
Randall Munroe - What if. A fun light read about whimsical scenarios.
Sigmund - Exact thinking in demented times. About the vienna circle, the philosophical group associated with logical positivism.
Newman [ed] - The world of mathematics vol 1. A varied Collection of mathematical writings, both contemporary and historical.
Richard J Evans - The Coming of the Third Reich. Evans has recently written a three volume treatment of the third Reich. this is of course the first and starts with the origins of the modern form of antisemitism in the late 19th century. I hope to read the next two in 2019!
Robert Harper - Practical foundations for programming languages. I've mostly just skimmed it so my understanding is quite superficial, maybe in a year or two I'll go through and do all the exercises. I liked that he avoided 'paradigms' and developed the subject more systematically. The book's table of contents is absolutely irresistible!
Tolkien - the Hobbit. I finally got around to reading it... I didn't care for it. I started the lord of the rings but i don't think i'm going to finish it.
Michael Chriton - Jurassic Park. The movie was better.
Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express. I think i just don't like fiction. The few years before this I tried reading more fancy literature and i didn't like that, so this year I tried more popular literature... Recently i heard someone say they thought that history spoiled fiction for them. I think I've suffered the same problem.
Findlay & O'Rourke - Power and Plenty. (in progress) An economic history of the 2nd millennium, absolutely fascinating so far. The discussion of the black death was particularly memorable. It's become something of a meme to point out how the peasant survivors were economically better off than their parents and grandparents. In fact that effect was limited to western europe. In eastern europe the economics were different and feudalism deepened, and in the arab world the reaction was different still: (if i remember my reading correctly) it was certain sects of military men who came out on top. I'm bringing it up beca...
The book had a whole bunch of additional plotting at the beginning which initially drew me in. Unfortunately, it never really went anywhere interesting - it was all mostly just dropped - so I think the movie was justified in cutting it out.
But the much bigger issue is that the story relies heavily on a kind of tense suspense/action, plus the wonder and terror of the basic premise: bringing dinosaurs back to life. But Crichton isn't particularly adept at descriptive literature, so that I thought the suspense/wonder/terror worked much better in a visual medium. This is not a case where there is something rather ambiguous best left to the shadowy imagination of the mind's eye. Maybe a different author could have pulled it off.
I read it ~2 years ago and wholly recommend it to folks as a more constructive approach than shouting "Godwin's Law". Well written, detailed, and an incredible read.
I was introduced to sci-fi last year and pretty much stuck to it throughout 2018. Perhaps the usual suspects given the crowd here but in any case below are my highlights.
Completely blew me away:
- Anathem by Neal Stephenson
- Accelerando by Charles Stross
- Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Liu Cixin
Great Reads:
- Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
- Glasshouse, Neptunes Brood & Saturns Children by Charles Stross
- Rendezvous with Rama by Isaac Asimov
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons
- A Deepness in the Sky by Verner Vinge
The two categories are pretty subjective, due to personal taste but also the fact that all of the concepts in the more recent books were new to me (whereas they may be quite familiar to those who had read earlier authors work). All are awesome.
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts - Andrew Chaikin. Loved it
A Man for all Markets - Edward O. Thorp. Loved his stories about counting cards and then moving onto hedge funds etc.
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road – Nick Bilton. Not a bad rundown on the Silk Road. I came across this book after listening to the Casefile podcast https://casefilepodcast.com/case-76-silk-road-part-1/ which I highly recommend.
Origin - Dan Brown. Enjoyed his first couple of books and thought that this might be alright. It was okay.
This year, I mostly went through books Hemingway compiled for a young writer who asked him for writing advice [1].
Henry James - The American. This book is about an American who'd made his fortune in business and goes to the old world looking for a wife, so it goes into differences of capitalist vs. aristocratic worldviews. The main character is a bit of a Mary Sue and the author later repudiated his work as being sentimental, but it was surprisingly engrossing. 5/5
The Red and the Black - Stendhal. This book was superbly entertaining. It is written by Stendhal who is the father of realist literature. It is similar to Dostoevsky, but takes a more light-hearted tone. If you are an introvert like me but curious about what makes people tick, you too will find fascinating the same penetrating passages into human psyche as Dostoevsky, but not as much philosophy. I loved this book. 5/5
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal. This book is very similar to the previous one, except it's about Italians instead of the French. Read it if you're a Dostoevsky fan or if you enjoyed the previous book. This book is about the adventure of an Italian aristocrat who falls in love with Napoleonic ideals and travels to France only to see the French defeated at Waterloo. Then he spends the rest of life wondering whether he contributed to the French cause. 5/5
E. E. Cummings - The Enormous Room. This book is based on a real story of the author's actual experiences as someone who volunteered for WWI as a medic on the allied side only to be wrongfully arrested by the French police and interned in a giant room with several dozen others for over a year. There are many colourful characters, but I didn't enjoy this one so much. 3.5/5
John Steinbeck - Cannery Row. This book is about a poor community in Monterey, Califor ia during the Great Depression. I didn't like this book as much as Grapes of Wrath, but there are some memorable parts near the end. 4/5
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day. This book is about the reminiscences of a butler who in his younger days served a respected aristocrat, and gets clues that his master's reputation has come become suspect. He questions whether his life's work was worth it in the end. This book wasn't very engrossing, but I liked the part about the romance. 4/5
David Kushner - Masters Of Doom: How Two Guys Created An Empire And Transformed Pop Culture. I read this book after someone wrote an excerpt on HN. It was fun to read about how two Johns created a revolution in video games and fun to learn tidbits about a legendary 100x dev like Carmack. 4.5/5
Josef Lhevinne - Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing. I like how he drew differences between quarter, half and three-quarter staccatos. Learning about distinctions like this can definitely make you a better piano player. 5/5
> John Steinbeck - Cannery Row. This book is about a poor community in Monterey, Califor ia during the Great Depression. I didn't like this book as much as Grapes of Wrath, but there are some memorable parts near the end. 4/5
If you like Steinbeck, try "East of Eden". For me it was his best.
I liked “Remains of the Day” - the subtlety in the tone seems to be intentional given the theme, and tempts the reader to miss the point that lies between the lines - the same theme as the book itself is wrapped around and the main character doesn’t see. I think it is well done.
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Covering a span of sixty years, the graphic novel Logicomix was inspired by the epic story of the quest for the Foundations of Mathematics.
This was a heroic intellectual adventure most of whose protagonists paid the price of knowledge with extreme personal suffering and even insanity. The book tells its tale in an engaging way, at the same time complex and accessible. It grounds the philosophical struggles on the undercurrent of personal emotional turmoil, as well as the momentous historical events and ideological battles which gave rise to them.
The role of narrator is given to the most eloquent and spirited of the story’s protagonists, the great logician, philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell. It is through his eyes that the plights of such great thinkers as Frege, Hilbert, Poincaré, Wittgenstein and Gödel come to life, and through his own passionate involvement in the quest that the various narrative strands come together.
I love Bertrand Russell, and this was a great read.
One idea from it really struck me: what kind of an individual spends years trying to prove that 1+1=2 (oversimplification of course). It takes a peculiar type of dedication, curiosity, and perhaps madness to go that deep.
1. La peste (Albert Camus) - entertaining if you're into French existentialism
2. Linked (Barabasi) - insightful and useful to understand that most phenomenon we see in real life follow a power law and what that means
3. Leonardo da Vinci (Walter Isaacson) - surprising how little of da Vinci's real personality is reflected in his modern image
4. Matrix computations – third edition (Gene Golub, Charles van Loan) - good read if you're into linear algebra
5. Giving effective feedback (Harvard business review) - useful for getting an understanding on how to handle human interaction
6. The old man and the sea (Ernest Hemingway) - enjoyed it a lot, a reflection of Hemingway's romantic spirit. Also, a quick read.
7. Screwjack (Hunter S. Thompson) - didn't resonate with me although I am a fan of existentialism
8. Sun and steel (Yukio Mishima) - raw and intimate. before reading this book I'd recommend reading up on Mishima's life
9. Stranger than fiction (Chuck Palahniuck) - somewhat entertaining, more so because it served as a glimpse into Palahniuck's creative process
10. Thinking in Systems: A Primer (Dana Meadows) - useful for understanding that in modern life we have complex systems at work with emergent behavior that we didn't expect. Trying to isolate / model a single component of one of these systems is a flawed approach.
11. Chaos monkeys (Antonio Garcia Martinez) - entertaining, but quite long
12. Weapons of math destruction (Cathy O'Neil) - in a way, similar to Thinking in systems, but at an applied level. Shows how rules in modern society can have unintended negative consequences when hidden negative feedback loops emerge from the complex system they are embedded in.
13. Lolita (Nabokov) - a brilliant novel from many points of view. Although the topic is controversial, it is a book that had to be written.
14. The prince (Machiavelli) - an interesting read. It was intended as a guide to the young price Cesare Borgia from his teacher Machiavelli. The secret to enjoying it is not to judge it by modern morality.
15. Give and take (Adam Grant) - psychology research about giving / taking / matching personality types presented in a book for the masses. I would not read it again; watching a presentation online should be enough to get the point across.
16. Mécanique (Landau, Lifchitz) - refresh of mechanics
17. Do androids dream of electric sheep (Philip K. Dick) - enjoyable and entertaining! I'm surprised how different the feel of the book is compared to the Blade runner films. In the book androids are purely rational beings, whereas the film wraps them in an aura of romanticism.
18. How we learn (Benedict Carey) - decades of learning research condensed in a book
19. Advanced Calculus: A Differential Forms Approach (Harold M. Edwards) - the best math book I've read so far! For me it was eye-opening in a fundamental way. Edwards is truly a gifted teacher.
20. Three men in a boat (Jerome K. Jerome) - enjoyable and amusing
21. Getting to yes (Roger Fisher, William Ury) - negotiation book, nicely written and structured
22. Without a word (Zhang Jie) - historical novel by one of China's most acclaimed modern writers. I don't have a good reference to compare against since this was my first Chinese novel, but overall I did enjoy it. It felt real and raw.
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss is an excellent book on negotiation, the antithesis of Getting to Yes. Written by FBI negotiator. Says you want to get to _no_ as quickly as possible. Recommend.
The Paypal Wars (4/5): Gives insight about the company from it's beginning to IPO. Might have suffered from survivalshi[ bias and is kinda anti-Musk.
The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight (4/5): Tells lots of things about biological clocks. Action items to have better sleep, mood and hunger.
Alan Carr- Easy way to quit smoking (5/5): Helped me to quit smoking with ease. Although I have started again and quit again because it was so easy to quit I fell in the trap that I would quit later. Hopefully, it will stick this time.
The Road Less Traveled (4.5/5): Scot Peck shares his experience of physiology and what he learned about human behavior. What he thinks make fully grown people and how to think in that direction.
The Little Prince (2/5): Probably I missed something in the book, probably the hype spoiled it for me but I didn't find it profound or anything.
I want to comment on Alan Carr's Easy Way book. This book is the reason I managed to stick to quitting. I haven't smoked in 3.5 years because of that book, after nearly 15 years.
The argument he makes is better than the common ones you hear (it's bad for your health, it costs money, it smells bad), which is nice. As he mentions, smokers know all those things, and that information isn't helpful. Instead he points out clearly that it is just an addiction, and one that you don't need.
10/10 - I have Alan Carr to thank for being smoke free.
For someone who didn't read at all for the longest and started a couple of years back, I'm glad I read 20 books this year. Here are the few that stuck with me -
Bad Blood (John Carreyrou) - Story of Theranos, its founders and the conception of terrible ideas. Great record of their actions based on subjective ethics and morals, how they can lead you to going insane.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain) - Fun read for functional introverts like myself.
Stuff Matters (Mark Miodownik) - I wish every science lesson is taught like this
Em and the Big Hoon (Naresh Fernandes) - Fiction, but based closely on the author's mother, her control over the English language, poetry and the mental illness' control over her and their family here in Bombay.
Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) - A biography of the Daily Show host. He's seen a lot of terrible situations and come out unscathed!
Being Mortal (Atul Gawande) - Hospice care - all its good and bad.
A Man Called Ove - Fictional and funny book about a man with a strict code, who lost his beloved wife and still dislikes everyone.
That is a very narrow, heavily concentrated set of subject matter. Obviously everyone's reading tastes vary, but could you benefit from branching out a little?
Currently reading The Sun Also Rises. I have already read my fair share of Hemingway and I knew TSAR is regarded as one of his finest works, but still I didn't expect to be struck so hard by Book One.
Yes I know what it is, I was questioning the "brooo... " comment, which seemed so tonally inappropriate and weird in what otherwise seemed like a thoughtful list.
Cos I addressed that one to the author, not the audience.
It's like I imagine he's standing right in front of me and what my visceral response would be to him. From one human to another I'm sorry we're capable of putting each other through that.
That book is just unyieldingly bleak in the most gripping way. And he was such a good guy right til the very end.
I see, and I believe your intentions weren't bad. But as some constructive criticism I'd say the optics are not good.
The phrase "brooo" just feels tone-deaf and minimizing here. And unless you are the most charmingly clueless surfer dude on the planet, I don't think it works when the survivor is standing in front of you either.
Most people who use bro are being at least a little ironic. It's a weird register to use for a Austrian man born in 1905. Wouldn't be a big deal except that it's literally the Holocaust. Not personally offended, just explaining why most people will probably not take it the way you mean.
Read your list, we have a bunch of books in common
Why Nations Fail (was an interesting read!)
Thinking Fast and Slow (This was on a lot of trader desks and was a good read.)
The Elephant In The Brain (this is the first audiobook i have ever listed to, agree, highly underrated.)
Principles (many years ago, I worked at BW for around 4 years... It was required reading, but remains one of my top recommended books. I actually own a copy of his original principals, and still bought the hard cover. Dalio's deep thinking is amazing).
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan
- The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier
Fiction:
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The non-fiction books were all incredible and highly recommended. I especially appreciate The War on Science as it is highly relevant in today's polarized and emotional political climate.
The fiction books were good, for the most part. However, The Magicians might be the worst book I have ever read, not limited to fiction or fantasy. For more on that, ask.
I managed to read significantly more books this year due to joining an at-work book club, which has been very nice.
Yes - it was truly atrocious. It was nominated in our book club, but I wouldn't have finished it otherwise.
I wonder how it managed to get published in the first place. Also, I love this review from George RR Martin, where he manages to discuss the book without complimenting it:
“The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea. Solidly rooted in the traditions of both fantasy and mainstream literary fiction, the novel tips its hat to Oz and Narnia as well to Harry, but don’t mistake this for a children's book. Grossman’s sensibilities are thoroughly adult, his narrative dark and dangerous and full of twists. Hogwarts was never like this.”
I just finished this one and I have to say it was eye opening and a great read.
My one criticism is that sometimes he ignores oppositional arguments where I think he should address them. For example, he argues against market regulation in a number of cases, but doesn't admit that some market regulation is a good thing.
However, I'm very glad I read it and think it's much more good than bad.
> My one criticism is that sometimes he ignores oppositional arguments where I think he should address them.
Yes, that's because Thomas Sowell skews libertarian as mentioned by another commenter elsewhere in the thread.
I think this Amazon review [0] and a few others did a decent job of mentally preparing me wrt Sowell's biases before I committed to reading his very well-written book. It's essentially a caveat that there are quite a range of economic views out there but Basic Economics only exposes you to the economic view which he considers worthy of his time.
Regardless, Sowell does an excellent job of clearly expounding on what constitutes economic thinking.
I'm interested in checking out Basic Economics, but I'm concerned it's very ideologically slanted compared to an undergrad economics textbook. I'm moderately well read in classical political economy (and Marx) but I've heard conflicting reviews over Sowell (the man) and his book.
I highly recommend it. I don't think it's ideologically slanted too much, but he does ignore some oppositional arguments. However, I've heard (no source, just word of mouth) that the book is used as the main text in introductory courses to economics.
It's a very well written book. It's obvious that Thomas Sowell skews libertarian but he doesn't brow beat you over the head with it. The focus of the book is more to provide the analytical framework for you to make your own judgements as to how things operate in an economy. Once you ready the Sowell book make sure you read "How Markets Fail" which takes a slanted, oppositional view to deregulation.
Wow, that's interesting. We must have approached Grossman from completely different perspectives. Last year (2017) I read the entire Magicians series and thoroughly enjoyed them because they made me uncomfortable. I was trash, in the same way that Quentin was trash, so following his arc was introspective.
At the time I contrasted it to the optimism in "All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders (if you're familiar)
What was your experience like?
For reference, my most recent fiction is:
- "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Murakami
I hated The Magicians the first time, but I read it again once the tv show came out and I found it a lot better the second time. I just had to realize everyone in the book was supposed to be incredibly spoiled and bored assholes with barely any redeeming qualities. It showed the completely emptyness of life for people who can do pretty much everything, like youre playing a video game with cheats.
I definitely understood what Grossman was going for with the characters and the aspect around boredom you mention. My problems with the book have to do with how the story is paced, which is pretty bad, as well as with completely unnecessary and useless plot points around sex. I don't want to read a fantasy book where furry porn is sprinkled in wantonly without contributing to the plot in a meaningful way.
Also, Grossman writes the perspective of women (especially with respect to sexual interactions) as if he were a horny 19 year old incel. It actually gives no consideration to how women truly think in the real world, which is offensive and makes for bad reading.
I'll push back just a little and say that a lot of the first book was written from Quentin's perspective, so that's why it might have come off as clueless wrt how it handled sexuality. However, that might have been by design because in the rest of the series there's a lot of, "Expectations vs Reality."
Meaning, "Here's how Quentin expects the women around him to exist," but "Here's how they actually exist."
Plus, a big chunk of the rest of the series revolves around <spoiler> Julia healing from sexual trauma </spoiler> and it was both nuanced and satisfying.
I won't go so far as suggesting that you give it another try, but it's not as terrible as it might seem :)
I side with you on this, I found it to be fantastically bad.
That being said, the defenders here have me suspecting that I may have misjudged it or misinterpreted it some. There is also a fairly popular tv show based upon it. It is very polarizing, perhaps it’s the age of the reader or some other experience that makes it so.
Cool to see an economics book on your list. I think it's a highly underrated subject among the tech community. I started to lightly teach myself economics this year. It was a real sobering experience learning how incredibly stupid I was towards economics and how complex it is. But even after just learning a little, it's amazing to see how that ignorance is a fear mongering tool in the media.
Right? It's really eye-opening when a few basic concepts are explained. My only qualm so far in that field is the ideology aspect towards economic theories. I don't think Keynesian, classical, supply-side, etc should be considered as "theories", but more as "tools" to address certain economic situations. More I read about them, the more I think they are all, more or less, equally valid, depending on the situation or end goal. It's like, there's no one perfect battle strategy. It all depends on the situation. But it seems the greater part of politics and society just wants "One way that works all the time".
Man, the Magicians has to be the most controversial book, in terms of people either LOVE it or HATE it. I fall in the former camp and consider it my favorite book of all time.
Yeah, me too. I thought it was a wonderful take on fairy stories and the danger of getting what you want. I think you need to read all three to truly appreciate it though.
Presents a few simple techniques (confidence intervals, Monte Carlo simulations, regression analysis, Bayes, etc) to help with decision-making. E.g., should we build this feature or spend the same money on marketing?
I put it alongside "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (Daniel Kahneman), "Superforecasting" (Philip Tetlock), "The Art of Thinking Clearly" (Rolf Dobelli), etc. These books explain how our thinking is often flawed; "How to Measure Anything" gives you some tools to avoid flawed thinking.
Note: if you already know the math (a lot of people on HN would), you might not get that much out of it.
2. "Why We Sleep" (Matthew Walker)
As I read this book I kept thinking about all the people I knew who would benefit from it: family and friends whom I want to have healthy happy lives, managers who believe that they'll get more out of people by pushing them to work crazy hours… and lots of people who think they’ll get more out of themselves if they sleep less.
With references to studies, the book explains the different factors that influence sleep, what your body does during sleep and the different phases of sleep, how your body—mostly the brain—benefits, etc.
For days after reading it I kept telling friends about things I'd learnt from it. One of my favourite was how certain types of bird are able to sleep: they line themselves up in a row, with the birds on each end putting only half their brain to sleep. This way they can keep one of their eyes open—the one furthest to the end—so they can keep watch. Then after a while the birds on the end will turn around and sleep the other side of their brain.
Fascinating!
My only complaint is that it very rarely mentions the actual numbers behind studies. E.g., there might be a mention of a lack of sleep and an increased risk of diabetes or depression or heart attacks, but there's no reference to the amount the risks increase by.
3. "Shoe Dog" (Phil Knight)
The story of Nike, told by the founder. I honestly don't care about Nike but that's not the takeaway—it's not about shoes or T-shirts or Michael Jordan. It's about a guy trying to keep a business alive: almost from day one there no let-up, the company is continually under threat.
Also the early employees are a really fun bunch.
4. "The Master and Margarita" (Mikhail Bulgakov)
Fiction. It took me a while to warm up to this but I'm glad I stuck it out. I think the charm is in the language and the crazy mix of characters, the way religion is dealt with in a very human way; the tension, the fun…
I really struggle to describe this book.
5. "Shantaram" (David Gregory Roberts)
Fiction. I was looking for a book about India. I've never been, and I thought I might learn something and get a feeling of what it's like to be there.
I didn't. Not in the same way that I could feel the heat in "Heart of Darkness" (Joseph Conrad) or the sun and the trees in "From the Holy Mountain" (William Dalrymple) or the weight of the world in "Suttree" (Cormac McCarthy).
But it's a good ride of a story.
6. "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories" (Delmore Schwartz)
I knew this book from university. And then a few weeks ago: I needed a break from the world of tech and productivity and work, and this did the trick. It is so far away from that. Think: creative types working on books and poems and plays during the depression, struggling, self-conscious, observant, talkative…
How to Measure Anything is great! It has some brilliant advice - for example: you can get a 95% confidence interval for the median of an unknown thing with just 5 measurements!
And he describes a framework for how to calculate the value of measurement (e.g. how much is running an experiment that costs $1,000 worth -- will the information we gain be more valuable than the cost? etc).
"The Master and Margarita" - I'm assuming you read this in English. I'm currently reading this in Russian, great book, but I wonder how much is lost in translation and lost in "missing context"- there are some great parts of this book that are very Russian/Soviet, did you find parts that you didn't understand? (I'm assuming you're not Russian).
I read it in English. The Burgin/O'Connor translation.
I don't recall not understanding anything, but I'm sure there are parts that I would have enjoyed more had I known about the history and culture, or had I read it in Russian.
To compensate a bit I read the notes at the end of the book and the Wikipedia article. E.g., apparently there are some abbreviations that are meant to be ironic: that was completely lost on me.
I've read numerous books by him in the education section and they deserve so much more attention! For example, did you know that the vast majority of studies done to show the benefits of homework failed to show benefits? If you like that -- read The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.
Personal summaries and opinions on some books I’ve read this year:
The First Man - Camus: A semi-autobiographical novel about his childhood growing up in Algeria in a poor family, his friendships, his educational successes and becoming a man.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera: A realistic, unromantic look at the ideals involved in love, sexual and romantic relationships.
Laughable Loves - Kundera: More of the same in the form of a collection of short stories. Thoroughly enjoyed.
The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently - Alan Carr: I’m not particularly into self-help books, but this has actually worked so far. It focusses on removing the desire to smoke, rather than increasing willpower not to smoke.
Metamorphosis - Kafka: Looks at duty to family, social alienation and the equation of a man’s worth with his career and earning ability.
What we cannot Know - du Sautoy: A not too poppy pop-science look into the limits of human knowledge and consciousness. Delves into maths, astronomy, philosophy, existence of a god, quantum physics. Still interesting as a graduate of mathematics, and answers a few questions I had about quantum physics.
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand.
Story of human grit and survival in the Pacific WWII theater that I hadn't heard of before. I was blown away by the story, and about what I learned about the War that I didn't already know.
Creativity Inc. Re-read it this year, re-inspired.
The Outsider - Stephen King.
Well written, engrossing but a typical Stephen King novel
Shoe Dog - Phil Knight.
Story of Nike. Phenomenal.
Bad blood - John Carreyrou.
Story of Theranos. Absolutely crazy read.
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer.
Good insights on strategy
These are a mixture of audio books and paperbacks I've been reading. I'm listening to more and more audiobooks via audible as it allows me to keep learning new stuff whilst travelling or doing simple household jobs.
Anyways. Here are a few of my best of I've read/listened to this year:
Dictators Handbook by Bruce De Mesquita and Alastair Smith -
Very interesting theories on power structures.
History of western philosophy by Bertrand Russel - I love my history. And it was fascinating seeing how ideas/thoughts/thinking have evolved over the centuries.
America the Farewell tour by Chris Hedges - Very interesting ideas and points of view. A tough read at times. I really hope it some part of the book doesn't come true.
Chasing the Scream by Johanne Hari - Good history of the war on drugs, the cost and its futility.
I wish I could say I read as much as others here, but I'm slow and lazy. I'll mention one, though...
Roughing It by Mark Twain. It's a grab bag of stories about his journey west without much of an over-arching plot. Though one of his earlier novels, it already has his distinctive humor and a command of English you could drown in, like this:
"A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud waste, flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring."
If you want to get through more books but don't have the time, you might want to give audio books/Audible a go. My book reading has declined over the years due to work and life. But my Audible subscription has allowed me to get through quite a few extra books every year.
Here's the few that stood out from this year's reading pile, IMHO:
Derek Howse - Greenwich Time. On why there was (is!) a need for GMT, how it evolved, how it was utilized - and how it was kept. Brilliant engineering porn for those of a horological bent.
J.E. Gordon - Structures: Or why things don't fall down. Eminently readable on structural engineering, explaining concepts and methodology, delivered with the dry wit of a British don.
Mary Elise Sarotte - Collapse. On how -hm- accidental the fall of the Berlin Wall was, telling the stories of a number of individuals who more or less inadvertently played a role in its downfall - from dissidents in Dresden to the Stasi head-of-station at the first border crossings to open as the crowds gathered.
John Hackett - I was a stranger. Memoir of a British officer in hiding in occupied Netherlands after operation Market Garden, on the friendship he formed with the people who risked it all by hiding him and on the ways he found purpose to the long days spent doing essentially nothing.
From my homepage: Some nonfiction books that I've read during 2018. I try to reduce my thoughts to the logline style in sense of Save the Cat: The Last Screenwriting Book You Will Ever Read. A logline is a single sentence describing a work with a twist of irony after a comma.
- Mechner, Jordan: The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985 - 1993 (2011).
My remarks: I read his previous book about developing Karateka, in one sitting.
- Nadella, Satya: Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone. My remarks: I didn't expect the story that he opened with.
- Edited by Rohde, Peter: The Diary of Soren Kierkengaard (1960). Lived 1813-1855. The blurb on the back cover: "Jean-Paul Sarte's philosophy of existentialism is based on his thinking."
- Kai Bird; Martin Sherwin: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer. My remarks: I wanted to know what was behind him quoting the Gita. This book took me several years to read but delivered on my curiousity about that.
- Nimoy, Leonard: I Am Not Spock (1975). My remarks: So if you consider yourself a Vulcan, it may suprise you to learn that Nimoy cried every weekend to let out the emotions he held inside during the week of acting.
- David Lipsky: Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace (2010). My remarks: I only care for the nonfiction writings of DFW. He had a sad end. It is a good read for writers. Consider the "snow" of his middle name as well.
- Scott, Robert Falcon: Scott's Last Expedition: The Journals (called as unabridged). Personal: This makes me want to travel to Iceland, to be honest.
- Foer, Joshua: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (2011). My remarks: A journalist wanted to document the competitive memory subculture and then won the American championship. It was a more comprehensive survey of memory than I'd expected.
- Buford, Bill: Among the Thugs (1990). My remarks: I originally read this book for contemporary understanding since I had read that far right parties in Europe used futball hooligans as a base population to draw from. Susan Sontag underwhelmingly calls ecstatic experiences "flair." The fact that Buford quoted her twice means I am reading her stuff as well.
- Wright, Evan: Generation Kill. Courtesy of radio: Dave Ramsey show has as a common quote, "Pay your student loans or you will be damned, dead, or in Iraq."
- Funder, Anna: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall (2002). My remarks: A movie on this topic is "The Lives of Others."
- Fisher, Michael: A History of India. (Great Courses)
- Ferris, Tim: Summary: The 4-Hour Workweek (2018). My remarks: This is an amazing book!
- Rosenberg, Marshall: The Nonviolent Communication Training Course (2006). My remarks: This one was pretty interesting. I was also reminded of Getting to Yes and CBT theory.
- Rogers, Fred: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember (2003). My remarks: I read this in memory of him after his passing. He considered his work a ministry.
- Yalom, Irvin: Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy (1989). My remarks: What it says on the tin.
- Blank, Dan: Soccer IQ: Things That Smart Players Do, Vol. 1 (2012). Amazon.com: #1 Best Seller in Soccer.
- Shapiro, Cythina: Corporate Confidential (2005). My remarks: Temple Grandin is someone who claims institutional logic follows its own rules. This Shapiro book has an explanation of the hidden scene behind the human resources curtain.
- Harari, Yuval: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. My remarks: Seemed kind of blank to me.
- Tyson, Neil: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. My remarks: A better source for basic physics understanding might be Einstein's popular account of GR. But thinking about relativistic light cones takes more time.
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[ 45.5 ms ] story [ 7169 ms ] threadDeep Work by Cal Newport - Could be summed up in a blog post. 3/5 (for the message; lower otherwise - maybe 2-2.5/5)
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount - Could be summed up in a blog post, but I think he makes a point on cold calling - if you need to do it, suck it up and do it. And that about sums it up. 2.5/5 (message is decent and he does offer some tips)
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke - Liked it, but unsure that I'll continue. 3.5/5.
White Fang by Jack London - Enjoyable and descriptive. Had to power through, though. 3.5/5
Treasure Island by RLS - Absolutely loved it. Now I need to power through the 800ish episodes of One Piece. 4/5
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green - The story moves pretty fast. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford - Khan as a historical figure fascinates me and I enjoyed this book. Don't know if it's just me, but Weatherford does seem to handwave Mongol atrocities. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Quest for God by Jack Weatherford - Again, enjoyable. 3.5/5
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - Charming and enjoyable story. 4/5
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - Pretty sure this is the first book I ever read that's written from an animal's POV. I liked it. 4/5
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (Penguin Classic) - I really liked it. Helped me understand a bit more about Norse mythology. 4.5/5
Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang - I read this earlier in the year; it's about a guy who asked people ridiculous things in an effort to see if they'd say yes or no. I believe the thesis boils down to "Don't be afraid to ask; people say yes more often than you think." Was an enjoyable read. 4/5
My Antonia by Willa Cather (Oxford World Classic) - Really good read and not that long of a book. 4.5/5.
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger - As the title implies, it's about the Apollo 8 mission. Same guy who wrote the biography on Neil Armstrong. 3/5.
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling - Charming short stories that Kipling told his daughter until she died. 3.5/5
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain - Was assigned this in high school but didn't read it then. Read it now. I missed out; it's a good book, but I think it's relatively boring until Tom starts going out with Huck a bit more. 3.5/5
The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame - Best book I've ever read on friendship and its importance. 4.5/5
Only surprises for me were Apollo 8, which I didn't like as much as I liked the Neil Armstrong biography; Tom Sawyer, in that I liked it; and that Deep Work and Fanatical Prospecting seemed a lot more bloated than they should've been. Besides that, I'm happy I didn't read any books that I didn't like, but I suppose I didn't take many risks either.
Nevertheless, it remains true that atrocities and conquests were the historical norm: what separates different societies is how they rule after achieving power. It's there that we see huge differences from culture to culture. For example, I've recently seen loads of people compare Alexander & Genghis Khan to Hitler... Certainly true of their conquests - true of everyone with the skills to pull it off before WWII - but wildly wrong once they achieved power and began organizing their empires. Weatherford did a great job of explaining that missing half of the story for the Mongols, even though he gives a disappointing analysis of the human cost of building the empire.
"We spend much of our day on autopilot, not giving much thought to what we are doing with our time. This, is a problem. It's difficult to prevent the trivial from creeping into every corner of your schedule if you don't face without flinching your current balance between deep and shallow work"
I tried his pretty extreme recommendation to schedule every minute of every day (see chapter 'Rule #4' or 6:30:30 in the audiobook), my summary below:
I've found a surprising amount of distractions lurking throughout my day that I've been able to eliminate. Scheduling your day is also really compatible with Agile development as you can easily answer why your JIRAs slipped into the next sprint, what your blockers were, etc.Paul Nahin - The Logician and the Engineer. About Boole and Shannon's work; I had already learned the material so i skimmed part of it and returned it to the library.
Ian Mortimer - The time traveler's guide to medieval england. Talks about what daily life was like for different social classes in 14th century England eg towns & cities, food, clothes, housing, employment, travel etc. I got about halfway through and lost interest in the subject matter.
Lucio Russo - The forgotten Revolution. A very readable academic history of the development of science in ptolomaic egypt (eg euclid, archimedes, etc). This was certainly the most surprising book I read all year. This time period has been almost completely deleted from history, which jumps straight from aristotle to the renaissance (with a quick stop in the islamic world if you're being spoiled), and their achievements were incredibly impressive!
Jim al-Khalili - The House of Wisdom. A pop-history book about arabic science that i got from the library. I was wary because it's written by a particle physicist and not a historian, and sure enough it is filled with so much nonsense that I through it down in disgust after a few chapters.
Colin Pask - Magnificent Principia. A brief tour of some of the highlights of Newton's Principia, using both newton's geometric diagrams and modern notation. Following the modern notation of course assumes some basic calculus. Highly recommended - it made me want to learn old fashioned celestial mechanics! Perhaps in 2019...
Randall Munroe - What if. A fun light read about whimsical scenarios.
Sigmund - Exact thinking in demented times. About the vienna circle, the philosophical group associated with logical positivism.
Newman [ed] - The world of mathematics vol 1. A varied Collection of mathematical writings, both contemporary and historical.
Richard J Evans - The Coming of the Third Reich. Evans has recently written a three volume treatment of the third Reich. this is of course the first and starts with the origins of the modern form of antisemitism in the late 19th century. I hope to read the next two in 2019!
Robert Harper - Practical foundations for programming languages. I've mostly just skimmed it so my understanding is quite superficial, maybe in a year or two I'll go through and do all the exercises. I liked that he avoided 'paradigms' and developed the subject more systematically. The book's table of contents is absolutely irresistible!
Tolkien - the Hobbit. I finally got around to reading it... I didn't care for it. I started the lord of the rings but i don't think i'm going to finish it.
Michael Chriton - Jurassic Park. The movie was better.
Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express. I think i just don't like fiction. The few years before this I tried reading more fancy literature and i didn't like that, so this year I tried more popular literature... Recently i heard someone say they thought that history spoiled fiction for them. I think I've suffered the same problem.
Findlay & O'Rourke - Power and Plenty. (in progress) An economic history of the 2nd millennium, absolutely fascinating so far. The discussion of the black death was particularly memorable. It's become something of a meme to point out how the peasant survivors were economically better off than their parents and grandparents. In fact that effect was limited to western europe. In eastern europe the economics were different and feudalism deepened, and in the arab world the reaction was different still: (if i remember my reading correctly) it was certain sects of military men who came out on top. I'm bringing it up beca...
That surprised me as I found the book far better than the movie, and in fact it's a book I keep recommending.
What did you find lacking there?
But the much bigger issue is that the story relies heavily on a kind of tense suspense/action, plus the wonder and terror of the basic premise: bringing dinosaurs back to life. But Crichton isn't particularly adept at descriptive literature, so that I thought the suspense/wonder/terror worked much better in a visual medium. This is not a case where there is something rather ambiguous best left to the shadowy imagination of the mind's eye. Maybe a different author could have pulled it off.
I read it ~2 years ago and wholly recommend it to folks as a more constructive approach than shouting "Godwin's Law". Well written, detailed, and an incredible read.
Completely blew me away:
- Anathem by Neal Stephenson
- Accelerando by Charles Stross
- Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Liu Cixin
Great Reads:
- Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
- Glasshouse, Neptunes Brood & Saturns Children by Charles Stross
- Rendezvous with Rama by Isaac Asimov
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons
- A Deepness in the Sky by Verner Vinge
The two categories are pretty subjective, due to personal taste but also the fact that all of the concepts in the more recent books were new to me (whereas they may be quite familiar to those who had read earlier authors work). All are awesome.
Arthur C. Clarke, not Asimov
Anathem was great
If you're looking for additional science fiction suggestions:
1. American War by Omar El Akkad
2. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
3. Artemis by Andy Weir
4. Daemon by Daniel Suarez
5. Old Man's War by John Scalzi
6. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
7. Red Rising series by Pierce Brown
A Man for all Markets - Edward O. Thorp. Loved his stories about counting cards and then moving onto hedge funds etc.
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road – Nick Bilton. Not a bad rundown on the Silk Road. I came across this book after listening to the Casefile podcast https://casefilepodcast.com/case-76-silk-road-part-1/ which I highly recommend.
Origin - Dan Brown. Enjoyed his first couple of books and thought that this might be alright. It was okay.
Henry James - The American. This book is about an American who'd made his fortune in business and goes to the old world looking for a wife, so it goes into differences of capitalist vs. aristocratic worldviews. The main character is a bit of a Mary Sue and the author later repudiated his work as being sentimental, but it was surprisingly engrossing. 5/5
The Red and the Black - Stendhal. This book was superbly entertaining. It is written by Stendhal who is the father of realist literature. It is similar to Dostoevsky, but takes a more light-hearted tone. If you are an introvert like me but curious about what makes people tick, you too will find fascinating the same penetrating passages into human psyche as Dostoevsky, but not as much philosophy. I loved this book. 5/5
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal. This book is very similar to the previous one, except it's about Italians instead of the French. Read it if you're a Dostoevsky fan or if you enjoyed the previous book. This book is about the adventure of an Italian aristocrat who falls in love with Napoleonic ideals and travels to France only to see the French defeated at Waterloo. Then he spends the rest of life wondering whether he contributed to the French cause. 5/5
E. E. Cummings - The Enormous Room. This book is based on a real story of the author's actual experiences as someone who volunteered for WWI as a medic on the allied side only to be wrongfully arrested by the French police and interned in a giant room with several dozen others for over a year. There are many colourful characters, but I didn't enjoy this one so much. 3.5/5
John Steinbeck - Cannery Row. This book is about a poor community in Monterey, Califor ia during the Great Depression. I didn't like this book as much as Grapes of Wrath, but there are some memorable parts near the end. 4/5
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day. This book is about the reminiscences of a butler who in his younger days served a respected aristocrat, and gets clues that his master's reputation has come become suspect. He questions whether his life's work was worth it in the end. This book wasn't very engrossing, but I liked the part about the romance. 4/5
David Kushner - Masters Of Doom: How Two Guys Created An Empire And Transformed Pop Culture. I read this book after someone wrote an excerpt on HN. It was fun to read about how two Johns created a revolution in video games and fun to learn tidbits about a legendary 100x dev like Carmack. 4.5/5
Josef Lhevinne - Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing. I like how he drew differences between quarter, half and three-quarter staccatos. Learning about distinctions like this can definitely make you a better piano player. 5/5
[1] http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/ernest_hemingways_reading...
If you like Steinbeck, try "East of Eden". For me it was his best.
Story Themes Cast of characters Topics Praise International Editions Covering a span of sixty years, the graphic novel Logicomix was inspired by the epic story of the quest for the Foundations of Mathematics.
This was a heroic intellectual adventure most of whose protagonists paid the price of knowledge with extreme personal suffering and even insanity. The book tells its tale in an engaging way, at the same time complex and accessible. It grounds the philosophical struggles on the undercurrent of personal emotional turmoil, as well as the momentous historical events and ideological battles which gave rise to them.
The role of narrator is given to the most eloquent and spirited of the story’s protagonists, the great logician, philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell. It is through his eyes that the plights of such great thinkers as Frege, Hilbert, Poincaré, Wittgenstein and Gödel come to life, and through his own passionate involvement in the quest that the various narrative strands come together.
One idea from it really struck me: what kind of an individual spends years trying to prove that 1+1=2 (oversimplification of course). It takes a peculiar type of dedication, curiosity, and perhaps madness to go that deep.
2. Linked (Barabasi) - insightful and useful to understand that most phenomenon we see in real life follow a power law and what that means
3. Leonardo da Vinci (Walter Isaacson) - surprising how little of da Vinci's real personality is reflected in his modern image
4. Matrix computations – third edition (Gene Golub, Charles van Loan) - good read if you're into linear algebra
5. Giving effective feedback (Harvard business review) - useful for getting an understanding on how to handle human interaction
6. The old man and the sea (Ernest Hemingway) - enjoyed it a lot, a reflection of Hemingway's romantic spirit. Also, a quick read.
7. Screwjack (Hunter S. Thompson) - didn't resonate with me although I am a fan of existentialism
8. Sun and steel (Yukio Mishima) - raw and intimate. before reading this book I'd recommend reading up on Mishima's life
9. Stranger than fiction (Chuck Palahniuck) - somewhat entertaining, more so because it served as a glimpse into Palahniuck's creative process
10. Thinking in Systems: A Primer (Dana Meadows) - useful for understanding that in modern life we have complex systems at work with emergent behavior that we didn't expect. Trying to isolate / model a single component of one of these systems is a flawed approach.
11. Chaos monkeys (Antonio Garcia Martinez) - entertaining, but quite long
12. Weapons of math destruction (Cathy O'Neil) - in a way, similar to Thinking in systems, but at an applied level. Shows how rules in modern society can have unintended negative consequences when hidden negative feedback loops emerge from the complex system they are embedded in.
13. Lolita (Nabokov) - a brilliant novel from many points of view. Although the topic is controversial, it is a book that had to be written.
14. The prince (Machiavelli) - an interesting read. It was intended as a guide to the young price Cesare Borgia from his teacher Machiavelli. The secret to enjoying it is not to judge it by modern morality.
15. Give and take (Adam Grant) - psychology research about giving / taking / matching personality types presented in a book for the masses. I would not read it again; watching a presentation online should be enough to get the point across.
16. Mécanique (Landau, Lifchitz) - refresh of mechanics
17. Do androids dream of electric sheep (Philip K. Dick) - enjoyable and entertaining! I'm surprised how different the feel of the book is compared to the Blade runner films. In the book androids are purely rational beings, whereas the film wraps them in an aura of romanticism.
18. How we learn (Benedict Carey) - decades of learning research condensed in a book
19. Advanced Calculus: A Differential Forms Approach (Harold M. Edwards) - the best math book I've read so far! For me it was eye-opening in a fundamental way. Edwards is truly a gifted teacher.
20. Three men in a boat (Jerome K. Jerome) - enjoyable and amusing
21. Getting to yes (Roger Fisher, William Ury) - negotiation book, nicely written and structured
22. Without a word (Zhang Jie) - historical novel by one of China's most acclaimed modern writers. I don't have a good reference to compare against since this was my first Chinese novel, but overall I did enjoy it. It felt real and raw.
- Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito (4.5/5)
- Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella (4.5/5)
- Becoming by Michelle Obama (4.9/5)
The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight (4/5): Tells lots of things about biological clocks. Action items to have better sleep, mood and hunger.
Alan Carr- Easy way to quit smoking (5/5): Helped me to quit smoking with ease. Although I have started again and quit again because it was so easy to quit I fell in the trap that I would quit later. Hopefully, it will stick this time.
The Road Less Traveled (4.5/5): Scot Peck shares his experience of physiology and what he learned about human behavior. What he thinks make fully grown people and how to think in that direction.
The Little Prince (2/5): Probably I missed something in the book, probably the hype spoiled it for me but I didn't find it profound or anything.
The argument he makes is better than the common ones you hear (it's bad for your health, it costs money, it smells bad), which is nice. As he mentions, smokers know all those things, and that information isn't helpful. Instead he points out clearly that it is just an addiction, and one that you don't need.
10/10 - I have Alan Carr to thank for being smoke free.
Bad Blood (John Carreyrou) - Story of Theranos, its founders and the conception of terrible ideas. Great record of their actions based on subjective ethics and morals, how they can lead you to going insane.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain) - Fun read for functional introverts like myself.
Stuff Matters (Mark Miodownik) - I wish every science lesson is taught like this
Em and the Big Hoon (Naresh Fernandes) - Fiction, but based closely on the author's mother, her control over the English language, poetry and the mental illness' control over her and their family here in Bombay.
Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) - A biography of the Daily Show host. He's seen a lot of terrible situations and come out unscathed!
Being Mortal (Atul Gawande) - Hospice care - all its good and bad.
A Man Called Ove - Fictional and funny book about a man with a strict code, who lost his beloved wife and still dislikes everyone.
One Minute Manager
Talent is Overrated
Originals
Measure What Matters
Crossing the Chasm
Mindset
The Startup Of You
Remote - Office not Required
So Good They Can't Ignore You
The 8 Traits Successful People
The Box
The Defining Decade - Why Your Twenties Matter - Meg Jay
The Power of Habit
Cracking the Coding Interview
The Google Resume
Brain Rules
Automatic Millionaire
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Bootstrappers Bible
Startup Nation
The Lean Startup
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Ideavirus
Traction - Gabriel Weinberg
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
The $100 Startup
The Customer Funded Business
Alibaba - The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark
Don't Make Me Think - A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability
Hooked
Shoe Dog
Side Hustle
Start With Why
The Phoenix Project
Wiley The Customer Funded Business
13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
The Pragmatic Programmer
Outliers
Delivering Happiness
The Four Hour Work Week
Good to Great
Sacred Games
Option B
Entrepreneuring Pakistan
Give and Take
Your Money or Your Life
Zero to One - Notes on Startups
Pour Your Heart Into It
Fourth Industrial Revolution
Grit by Duckworth is probably the worst example of this. Overhyped trollop
Chimpanzee Politics (interesting)
Corporate Confidential (paranoid, but worth a read)
Developer Hegemony (red pill for developers!!!)
Bargaining For Advantage (reasonable)
Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision Making (abstract as hell but rewarding)
Thinking Fast and Slow (loved it)
The Elephant In The Brain (seriously underrated)
The Brain That Changes Itself (inspirationally freaky)
The Power of Habit (good!)
The Secret Barrister (mildly disturbing)
Thinking In Systems (huge fan of this book!)
A Short History of Truth (meh...)
Man's Search For Meaning (brooo... I am so sorry)
Thinking In Bets (meh.. really meh)
The Road To Ruin (alright. Interesting even.)
Lying For Money (lots of fun!)
Great Answers To Tough Interview Questions (what it says on the tin)
Traction (good overview of marketing tactics)
Lean Customer Development (pretty good)
The Mom Test (eye opening)
Lean B2B (solid playbook)
Principles (instant classic)
Thanks for giving me another Xmas gift idea - bought!
The interesting thing for me about books like that is whether it inspires or makes you more down about the situation, what's that one like?
??
It's like I imagine he's standing right in front of me and what my visceral response would be to him. From one human to another I'm sorry we're capable of putting each other through that.
That book is just unyieldingly bleak in the most gripping way. And he was such a good guy right til the very end.
The phrase "brooo" just feels tone-deaf and minimizing here. And unless you are the most charmingly clueless surfer dude on the planet, I don't think it works when the survivor is standing in front of you either.
Why Nations Fail (was an interesting read!)
Thinking Fast and Slow (This was on a lot of trader desks and was a good read.)
The Elephant In The Brain (this is the first audiobook i have ever listed to, agree, highly underrated.)
Principles (many years ago, I worked at BW for around 4 years... It was required reading, but remains one of my top recommended books. I actually own a copy of his original principals, and still bought the hard cover. Dalio's deep thinking is amazing).
It's about how group dynamics also produce irrationality and why dissent is dangerous but necessary. I'd say you'd probably really enjoy it too.
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling
- The War on Science by Shawn Otto
- Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan
- The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier
Fiction:
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The non-fiction books were all incredible and highly recommended. I especially appreciate The War on Science as it is highly relevant in today's polarized and emotional political climate.
The fiction books were good, for the most part. However, The Magicians might be the worst book I have ever read, not limited to fiction or fantasy. For more on that, ask.
I managed to read significantly more books this year due to joining an at-work book club, which has been very nice.
I wonder how it managed to get published in the first place. Also, I love this review from George RR Martin, where he manages to discuss the book without complimenting it:
“The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea. Solidly rooted in the traditions of both fantasy and mainstream literary fiction, the novel tips its hat to Oz and Narnia as well to Harry, but don’t mistake this for a children's book. Grossman’s sensibilities are thoroughly adult, his narrative dark and dangerous and full of twists. Hogwarts was never like this.”
My one criticism is that sometimes he ignores oppositional arguments where I think he should address them. For example, he argues against market regulation in a number of cases, but doesn't admit that some market regulation is a good thing.
However, I'm very glad I read it and think it's much more good than bad.
Yes, that's because Thomas Sowell skews libertarian as mentioned by another commenter elsewhere in the thread.
I think this Amazon review [0] and a few others did a decent job of mentally preparing me wrt Sowell's biases before I committed to reading his very well-written book. It's essentially a caveat that there are quite a range of economic views out there but Basic Economics only exposes you to the economic view which he considers worthy of his time.
Regardless, Sowell does an excellent job of clearly expounding on what constitutes economic thinking.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3RFDB6MCBI1BI/re...
What was your experience like?
For reference, my most recent fiction is:
- "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Murakami
- "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik
- "God Emperor of Dune" by Frank Herbert
Also, Grossman writes the perspective of women (especially with respect to sexual interactions) as if he were a horny 19 year old incel. It actually gives no consideration to how women truly think in the real world, which is offensive and makes for bad reading.
Just my thoughts though.
Plus, a big chunk of the rest of the series revolves around <spoiler> Julia healing from sexual trauma </spoiler> and it was both nuanced and satisfying.
I won't go so far as suggesting that you give it another try, but it's not as terrible as it might seem :)
That being said, the defenders here have me suspecting that I may have misjudged it or misinterpreted it some. There is also a fairly popular tv show based upon it. It is very polarizing, perhaps it’s the age of the reader or some other experience that makes it so.
1. "How to Measure Anything" (Douglas Hubbard)
Presents a few simple techniques (confidence intervals, Monte Carlo simulations, regression analysis, Bayes, etc) to help with decision-making. E.g., should we build this feature or spend the same money on marketing?
I put it alongside "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (Daniel Kahneman), "Superforecasting" (Philip Tetlock), "The Art of Thinking Clearly" (Rolf Dobelli), etc. These books explain how our thinking is often flawed; "How to Measure Anything" gives you some tools to avoid flawed thinking.
Note: if you already know the math (a lot of people on HN would), you might not get that much out of it.
2. "Why We Sleep" (Matthew Walker)
As I read this book I kept thinking about all the people I knew who would benefit from it: family and friends whom I want to have healthy happy lives, managers who believe that they'll get more out of people by pushing them to work crazy hours… and lots of people who think they’ll get more out of themselves if they sleep less.
With references to studies, the book explains the different factors that influence sleep, what your body does during sleep and the different phases of sleep, how your body—mostly the brain—benefits, etc.
For days after reading it I kept telling friends about things I'd learnt from it. One of my favourite was how certain types of bird are able to sleep: they line themselves up in a row, with the birds on each end putting only half their brain to sleep. This way they can keep one of their eyes open—the one furthest to the end—so they can keep watch. Then after a while the birds on the end will turn around and sleep the other side of their brain.
Fascinating!
My only complaint is that it very rarely mentions the actual numbers behind studies. E.g., there might be a mention of a lack of sleep and an increased risk of diabetes or depression or heart attacks, but there's no reference to the amount the risks increase by.
3. "Shoe Dog" (Phil Knight)
The story of Nike, told by the founder. I honestly don't care about Nike but that's not the takeaway—it's not about shoes or T-shirts or Michael Jordan. It's about a guy trying to keep a business alive: almost from day one there no let-up, the company is continually under threat.
Also the early employees are a really fun bunch.
4. "The Master and Margarita" (Mikhail Bulgakov)
Fiction. It took me a while to warm up to this but I'm glad I stuck it out. I think the charm is in the language and the crazy mix of characters, the way religion is dealt with in a very human way; the tension, the fun…
I really struggle to describe this book.
5. "Shantaram" (David Gregory Roberts)
Fiction. I was looking for a book about India. I've never been, and I thought I might learn something and get a feeling of what it's like to be there.
I didn't. Not in the same way that I could feel the heat in "Heart of Darkness" (Joseph Conrad) or the sun and the trees in "From the Holy Mountain" (William Dalrymple) or the weight of the world in "Suttree" (Cormac McCarthy).
But it's a good ride of a story.
6. "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories" (Delmore Schwartz)
I knew this book from university. And then a few weeks ago: I needed a break from the world of tech and productivity and work, and this did the trick. It is so far away from that. Think: creative types working on books and poems and plays during the depression, struggling, self-conscious, observant, talkative…
And he describes a framework for how to calculate the value of measurement (e.g. how much is running an experiment that costs $1,000 worth -- will the information we gain be more valuable than the cost? etc).
I read it in English. The Burgin/O'Connor translation.
I don't recall not understanding anything, but I'm sure there are parts that I would have enjoyed more had I known about the history and culture, or had I read it in Russian.
To compensate a bit I read the notes at the end of the book and the Wikipedia article. E.g., apparently there are some abbreviations that are meant to be ironic: that was completely lost on me.
I've read numerous books by him in the education section and they deserve so much more attention! For example, did you know that the vast majority of studies done to show the benefits of homework failed to show benefits? If you like that -- read The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.
The First Man - Camus: A semi-autobiographical novel about his childhood growing up in Algeria in a poor family, his friendships, his educational successes and becoming a man.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera: A realistic, unromantic look at the ideals involved in love, sexual and romantic relationships.
Laughable Loves - Kundera: More of the same in the form of a collection of short stories. Thoroughly enjoyed.
The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently - Alan Carr: I’m not particularly into self-help books, but this has actually worked so far. It focusses on removing the desire to smoke, rather than increasing willpower not to smoke.
Metamorphosis - Kafka: Looks at duty to family, social alienation and the equation of a man’s worth with his career and earning ability.
What we cannot Know - du Sautoy: A not too poppy pop-science look into the limits of human knowledge and consciousness. Delves into maths, astronomy, philosophy, existence of a god, quantum physics. Still interesting as a graduate of mathematics, and answers a few questions I had about quantum physics.
Creativity Inc. Re-read it this year, re-inspired.
The Outsider - Stephen King. Well written, engrossing but a typical Stephen King novel
Shoe Dog - Phil Knight. Story of Nike. Phenomenal.
Bad blood - John Carreyrou. Story of Theranos. Absolutely crazy read.
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer. Good insights on strategy
The Art of War by Sun Tzu - bit sad
2 books by Greg Egan: Distress & Teranesia
The Invention of Nature : Alexander Von Humboldt's New World
DMT: The spirit molecule
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez (WOW)
The book of dead philosophers by Simon Critchley (funny!)
& some more (I have to start noting it down :P)
Currently: The Systems View of the World by Ervin Laszlo
Anyways. Here are a few of my best of I've read/listened to this year:
Dictators Handbook by Bruce De Mesquita and Alastair Smith - Very interesting theories on power structures.
History of western philosophy by Bertrand Russel - I love my history. And it was fascinating seeing how ideas/thoughts/thinking have evolved over the centuries.
America the Farewell tour by Chris Hedges - Very interesting ideas and points of view. A tough read at times. I really hope it some part of the book doesn't come true.
Chasing the Scream by Johanne Hari - Good history of the war on drugs, the cost and its futility.
I've read more but these are my top 5 of 2018
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer
American Wolf - Nate Blakeslee
Atomic Habits - James Clear
Conspiracy - Ryan Holiday
Courage To Be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi
How To Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan
Open - Andre Agassi
Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
World After Capital - Albert Wenger
Fiction:
Chocky - John Wyndham
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
The Eight Mountains - Paolo Cognetti
The Invisibility Cloak - Ge Fei
The Midnight Fox - Betsy Byars
Such Small Hands - Andres Barba
The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura
Ties - Domenico Starnone
Trick - Domenico Starnone
Roughing It by Mark Twain. It's a grab bag of stories about his journey west without much of an over-arching plot. Though one of his earlier novels, it already has his distinctive humor and a command of English you could drown in, like this:
"A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud waste, flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring."
Derek Howse - Greenwich Time. On why there was (is!) a need for GMT, how it evolved, how it was utilized - and how it was kept. Brilliant engineering porn for those of a horological bent.
J.E. Gordon - Structures: Or why things don't fall down. Eminently readable on structural engineering, explaining concepts and methodology, delivered with the dry wit of a British don.
Mary Elise Sarotte - Collapse. On how -hm- accidental the fall of the Berlin Wall was, telling the stories of a number of individuals who more or less inadvertently played a role in its downfall - from dissidents in Dresden to the Stasi head-of-station at the first border crossings to open as the crowds gathered.
John Hackett - I was a stranger. Memoir of a British officer in hiding in occupied Netherlands after operation Market Garden, on the friendship he formed with the people who risked it all by hiding him and on the ways he found purpose to the long days spent doing essentially nothing.
- Mechner, Jordan: The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985 - 1993 (2011). My remarks: I read his previous book about developing Karateka, in one sitting. - Nadella, Satya: Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone. My remarks: I didn't expect the story that he opened with. - Edited by Rohde, Peter: The Diary of Soren Kierkengaard (1960). Lived 1813-1855. The blurb on the back cover: "Jean-Paul Sarte's philosophy of existentialism is based on his thinking." - Kai Bird; Martin Sherwin: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer. My remarks: I wanted to know what was behind him quoting the Gita. This book took me several years to read but delivered on my curiousity about that. - Nimoy, Leonard: I Am Not Spock (1975). My remarks: So if you consider yourself a Vulcan, it may suprise you to learn that Nimoy cried every weekend to let out the emotions he held inside during the week of acting. - David Lipsky: Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace (2010). My remarks: I only care for the nonfiction writings of DFW. He had a sad end. It is a good read for writers. Consider the "snow" of his middle name as well. - Scott, Robert Falcon: Scott's Last Expedition: The Journals (called as unabridged). Personal: This makes me want to travel to Iceland, to be honest. - Foer, Joshua: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (2011). My remarks: A journalist wanted to document the competitive memory subculture and then won the American championship. It was a more comprehensive survey of memory than I'd expected. - Buford, Bill: Among the Thugs (1990). My remarks: I originally read this book for contemporary understanding since I had read that far right parties in Europe used futball hooligans as a base population to draw from. Susan Sontag underwhelmingly calls ecstatic experiences "flair." The fact that Buford quoted her twice means I am reading her stuff as well. - Wright, Evan: Generation Kill. Courtesy of radio: Dave Ramsey show has as a common quote, "Pay your student loans or you will be damned, dead, or in Iraq." - Funder, Anna: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall (2002). My remarks: A movie on this topic is "The Lives of Others." - Fisher, Michael: A History of India. (Great Courses) - Ferris, Tim: Summary: The 4-Hour Workweek (2018). My remarks: This is an amazing book! - Rosenberg, Marshall: The Nonviolent Communication Training Course (2006). My remarks: This one was pretty interesting. I was also reminded of Getting to Yes and CBT theory. - Rogers, Fred: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember (2003). My remarks: I read this in memory of him after his passing. He considered his work a ministry. - Yalom, Irvin: Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy (1989). My remarks: What it says on the tin. - Blank, Dan: Soccer IQ: Things That Smart Players Do, Vol. 1 (2012). Amazon.com: #1 Best Seller in Soccer. - Shapiro, Cythina: Corporate Confidential (2005). My remarks: Temple Grandin is someone who claims institutional logic follows its own rules. This Shapiro book has an explanation of the hidden scene behind the human resources curtain. - Harari, Yuval: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. My remarks: Seemed kind of blank to me. - Tyson, Neil: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. My remarks: A better source for basic physics understanding might be Einstein's popular account of GR. But thinking about relativistic light cones takes more time.