Ask HN: What book(s) did you love reading this year?
Inspired by [1], I considered my key reads of the year:
* Courage Is Calling by Ryan Holliday
* Post Corona by Scott Galloway
* Feck Perfuction by James Victore
What about you?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309758
34 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 83.9 ms ] threadAfter Meta I had to re-read: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
I enjoyed quite a few short stories and collections, “One day all this will be yours”, “forward collection”, “dispatcher”.
Books I really struggled with, “klara and the sun”, “snow crash”, “oryx and crake”.
Klara and the sun
Project Hail Mary
The Noonday Demon
I also finally got around to reading Cixin Liu's Three Body series, and although not perfect, there's so many interesting ideas in them.
* The Neapolitan Novels -- Elena Ferrante (4 book set, also a great HBO show adaptation!)
* Kitchen Confidential -- Anthony Bourdain (not sure why I hadn't read it till now... I was a huge fan of everything else Tony did)
- Currently reading 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows -- Ai Weiwei
* Royal Tars: The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy - Brian Lavery
* SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - Mary Beard
I have also been enjoying my subscription to the [American Affairs Journal](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/) and, similarly, [National Affairs](https://www.nationalaffairs.com/subscribe).
I was pretty young myself the last time I read it and I found the experience very different now that I'm on my 30s.
I've read somewhere that you're supposed to read this book 3 times in your life: as a kid, as a young adult and as an older person. Curious to see how it will feel like to read it in 30 years.
"Uprooted" by Naomi Novik.
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman
Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory
* A mind at play - Jimmy Soni, Rob Goodman
* Show the work - Austin Kloen
* The effective executive - Peter Drucker
Fiction
* The 7 and 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton
Technical
* On Lisp - Paul Graham
Also Atomic Habits by James Clear. I liked this one so much i outlined it myself after reading through it straight. I had never done that
Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
I should try to not being so lazy and read more.
- Night Over the Solomons, Louis Lamour
A rollicking read of daring exploits of GIs in the Pacific Theater (fictional). Louis Lamour writes well; excellent light reading.
- Tales of the South Pacific, James Michener
Tales of quirky characters in the South Pacific, during wartime and after it. James Michener can spin a good yarn, and he totally immerses you in the place. I read Hawaii (and almost got to finishing it) and got on a Hawaii / Pacific kick a couple years ago. It is a surprisingly rich and enjoyable sub-genre of literature.
Non-fiction
They say truth is stranger than fiction. You couldn't find a better example than this tale set in Silicon Valley.
- Bad Blood, John Carreyrou
I'm late to the party, but better late than never. It shows how low seemingly ordinary people can stoop, but also, how high seemingly ordinary people can reach. It also is an example of how utterly ordinary our so-called leaders are.
The play itself is fairly short but I'd need to ruminate on it for weeks on end to give it some worthy words.
The Last Lion (Alone) by William Manchester.
- Three Body-trilogy, Cixin Liu
- The Children of Húrin, Tolkien
- The Silmarillion, Tolkien
- The Hobbit, Tolkien
- Lord Of The Rings-trilogy, Tolkien
- The Green Mile, Stephen King
Non-fiction
- Practical Vim 2nd ed., Drew Neil
- Pestens år: döden i Stockholm 1710, Magnus Västerbro
Fortunately Peter Jackson made a good job with the original LOTR-trilogy. You can be a fan of the movies and the books at the same time even though there are (probably necessary) differences between the formats.
It's about the engineering of the Merlin airplane engine from the early days of rolls Royce thru to ww2
* Russia Leaves the War by George Kennan * The Battle Cry of Freedom by James MacPherson
Fiction:
* Hunger by Knut Hamsun * White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Philosophy:
* Philosophy of Logic by W.V.O. Quine * Modes of Being by Paul Weiss * Phenomenology, Its Genesis and Prospect by Quentin Lauer * Philosophy of Right by Hegel
It has a good condensed summary of practical philosophy as well as a great list of books to check out for further ideas.
Being short on time, the summary was very helpful.
The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday was a short high level description of some aspects of Stoic Philosophy. It opens the door to some of the classics.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle made me think a lot about being present, that the mind is apart from the consciousness.
Redirect by Timothy Wilson - I like that it is experimental based and debunks a lot of other stuff out there that has no basis for truth.
The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti - reading this now, I really like the daily meditation format. It gives you something to think about.