Ask HN: What are some must read books?
Life is too short to read crummy books. So after reading the review on Blade Runner 2049 which touched on PKD and Nabokov I have decided get Pale Fire. I am curious what you would recommend on top of that (I was also planning to get A Confederacy of Dunces). That said, take a penny leave a penny, if you haven’t read A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again or Gibsons’ Neuromancer, try and make time. They’re exquisite!
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[ 177 ms ] story [ 4590 ms ] threadAnytime I hear about a new movement or school of thought I go back to that
Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote (1609! The more things change, the more they stay the same)
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (I thought I knew the story until I actually read the book—whoah, that opened my eyes to our relationship with technology and industry and how we use energy)
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (from Blindboy’s podcast episode “Paddy Dracula” I learned Stoker is from Dublin, son of a Protestant mother who told him stories, bedridden until seven years old, about the horrors of cholera)
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (further awareness of how we convert resources, this time before petrol, and for the descriptions of sea life and human relationships)
For background, I’m also into contemporary sci-fi and fantasy and would have an easier time going without electricity than without books, unless I was part of a community that carried on storytelling traditions.
Two others: Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard, both about ecology and reciprocity, guiding how I garden, parent, and relate to the bleeding edge of life in general.
Can confirm, the novel is very unlike every film adaptation I'm aware of. It also, incredibly, hits its themes even harder than those do.
Will have to check out the others!
It has very detailed descriptions of whaling which I didn't find interesting
It's fascinating to read a novel written 200 years ago in a country completely unlike mine, but see so many traits and characters that I know and have met in my life today. Dostoevsky has this un-nerving ability to see through people like they are transparent, and show their innermost depth in a few sentences
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
I haven't started reading it yet.
I'm sure there's layers but I think most adults will appreciate the portrayal of human vice and vanity :)
Despite its unfortunate mis-titling, it's a fantastic book.
- Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson: it has its flaws but is still a rocket ride through a not-so-farfetched cyberpunk dystopia. I love the tongue-in-cheek nature of it as well "Hiro Protagonist" being the main character :D
- Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin: a different take on leadership than I've read previously, once you get through the first couple bits on "we're SEALs and badass" sort of stuff there's some amazingly good leadership qualities on display.
- Every Tool's a Hammer - Adam Savage: As a weekend warrior maker, this book speaks to my soul. It gives my brain permission to make mistakes and learn in a way that few others have.
- Michael Pollan: pretty much anything written by him has wit, intelligence, research, practical experience, etc. Love his writer's voice and most of his audiobooks seem to be read by him, a fun bonus!
I already have read Cryptonomicon, and I have Seveneves and Snow Crash sitting on my shelf.
I will give the others a try.
Nonfiction, but really entertaining. A must read because it's insightful on how different but similar human beings can get. It's more than just a history imo. Also a period of European history people think is important, but rarely read up on.
So, would recommend depending on the individual - if you know you have an appetite for thick and detailed history books, this one is great. A sardonic and entertaining writing style for sure.
But, here we go anyway (and yeah, some of these are just off those lists):
1) Shakespeare's big four tragedies are, in fact, out-fucking-standing. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth. IMO Hamlet reads the best of those. Any would be fine to watch, as well, and may be better that way. The language, especially, is easier to understand when performed, because you have body language, tone, and other context to work with.
2) Gilgamesh. I like Mitchell's edition.
3) The Odyssey. Iliad's a bit of a bore, but with a few incredible scenes that really stick with you. The Odyssey, though, is great. Screw the haters, even the "Telemachy" portion is good.
4) Revolutionary Road by Yates, for a certain kind of struggle with identity & purpose that I suspect will resonate and provide a useful mirror for lots of folks on here.
5) Woolf's To the Lighthouse is probably my favorite book, so I'll throw that on here.
6) The 20th century gave us tons of essayists (some of whom also wrote novels and such) who are great reads. Orwell, C.S. Lewis, and Forster all come to mind.
7) Maugham wrote a lot of novels, and most of them are well worth a read.
8) Farmer's Riverworld series are probably my favorite very dumb books.
I have the same problem. I found a used physical copy of "No Fear Shakespeare - Macbeth" to be very helpful. On the left page is the original text, on the right page is are notes and a translation. I was able to get through the book and understand it.
You can access online here: https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/
> what you think makes it outstanding?
I'm not the original commenter, so speaking for myself only. I would say the prose is very poetic and has a certain magical quality to it.
As for what's great:
1) Masterful plotting, leaving just enough up to the audience to figure out (and, more often than not, leveraging that for ironic purposes).
2) Outstanding characterization.
3) A hard-to-pin-down quality that makes relating episodes, characters, and exchanges in his plays to real life the most natural thing in the world. There's a reason we've ended up with so many of his characters and phrases as parts of the English language itself.
I don't think Gilgamesh was covered at all. Yates, Maugham, Farmer, or Forster are certainly not commonly assigned in US high schools. Woolf, maybe, and if so, yeah, it'll probably be To the Lighthouse. Orwell, yes, but mainly for Animal Farm and maybe 1984, not his essays. I guess there might be some schools that assign C.S. Lewis, but I doubt it's common.
"Android Karenina" is a two-in-one deal.
One of my favorites: Violent Python: A cookbook for hackers, penetration testers, and security analysts.
This is the book that really gave me the knowledge i needed to begin scratching that itch we all get about computers and their secrets.
Very short to the point hard sci-fi.
Made me realise how sometimes some books/stories are dragged out and milked into oblivion.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
A fascinating and intimate history about the people who developed particle physics and how it led to the atomic age. It really highlights what the scientific mindset is like.
Fiction :
Expeditionary Force series of books by Craig Alanson
I'm 12 books into this relatively new series and it is still going strong. If you like sci-fi and geopolitical dramas, this is the series for you.
1) Collected Fictions by Borges
2) The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka
3) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
4) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
5) 9 Stories by J.D. Salinger
6) 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme
7) 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
I'd encourage anyone who was put off by The Catcher in the Rye not to dismiss Salinger's other work, and agree that this is the one to read, if you're only going to read one (other) volume of his.
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoy
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
- Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky
- Dune, Frank Herbert
"Dahlgren" by Samuel Delaney (and most everything else I've read by him as well).
"Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin - and "Powers".
"Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson.
"Holy Fire" by Bruce Sterling (I also enjoyed Islands in the Net, Zenith Angle and Schismatrix).
"Foundation" trilogy + prequel by Isaac Asimov.
"Brave New World", Aldous Huxley.
"Deepness in the Sky" / "Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge.
"Something wicked this way comes" by Ray Bradbury.
And a couple of comics/visual novels:
"V for Vendetta" and "Watchmen" by Alan Moore (David Lloyd/ Tony Weare and Dave Gibbons / John Higgins).
Dave Sims: "Cerebus" (I don't think I've finished this yet, but the first ten volumes or so is.. Something else).
On a different note - Hurki Murakami's non-fictional account of the Tokyo subway gas attack "Underground" is a harrowing, but rewarding read. And while tragic, "Norwegian Wood" is lighter, and also great (I actually think his best book among those I've read is "South of the Border" - in a similar sense that "The great Gatsby" is good (unsurprising as Murakami translated Scott Fitzgerald).
https://www.cupblog.org/2013/05/07/haruki-murakami-on-transl...