Ask HN: Books you read in 2022 and recommend for 2023
The year is coming to an end. Time to look back and reflect. What are the books you've read in 2022? Which books made you change your mind or you simply enjoyed? And which books would you recommend to others for 2023?
205 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 253 ms ] threadBooks I highly recommend:
Churchill by Andrew Roberts (p:1105)
A biography about one of the most interesting figures in politics and WWII. Roberts gives a very detailed description of the life of Churchill and manages to keep you interested the entire length of the book.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (p:374)
In The God Delusion Dawkins gives arguments why there is no God, why we do not need a God and why religion is damaging to our society. If you are religious it might not be the book for you unless you are open to hear his arguments and line of reasoning. Dawkins will challenge your worldview.
The Bomb by Fred Kaplan (p:384)
Kaplan describes the policy of different US presidents on the atomic bomb and war in general. And primarily on the inability of US presidents and policy-makers to tune down its military. A chilling read which makes you appreciate a nuclear holocaust did not happen (yet)....
Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (p:320)
Banerjee and Duflo give a gripping portrait of how poor people live. They offer an insight in the choices and decisions people make surviving on less than 1 USD a day (corrected for purchasing power). It made me completely rethink my own view on poverty and development aid; stressing even more that in order to help one need to have a complete understanding of the individual's situation and the local boundary conditions.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (p:476)
This book triggered my science fiction reading. For some reason I never was interested in science fiction. Most likely triggered by reading Foundation by Asimov a few years back which apparently is not a book to my taste. But Andy Weir completely annihilated that wrong perspective on science fiction. Project Hail Mary is interesting, funny and gripping book.
Kindred by Octavia Butler (p:287)
This book.... From page one I was hooked and almost read it in one go. Butler is a wonderful author and Kindred is a must-read. The book is about a woman traveling back in time to end up on a slave plantation. It's a chilling account of slavery.
Other books I read this year, ask me anything about one of these books. I've added a + if I think its worth a recommendation
Biography:
Navalny by Dollbaum, Lallouet and Noble (p:280); The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya (p:354) +
Sociology; Politics; Economics; Business:
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove (p:224); The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (p:140); Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov (p:290); Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum (p:224) +; Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl (p:164) +; We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins (p:272); De Zeven Vinkjes by Joris Luyendijk (p:200); Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers by Rutger Bregman (p:104)
Comedy: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams (p:336)
History:
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (p:432); The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (p:413) +; The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre (p:384) +; De Heineken Ontvoering by Peter R. de Vries (p:347); Red Famine by Anne Apllebaum (p:384); Night by Elie Wiesel (p:115) +
Science, Technology, Mathematics:
Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh (p:315) +; A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy (p:153); The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (p:546); The Rise and Fall of the Dinousaurs by Stephen Brusatte (p:404) ++; The Double Helix by James Watson (p:144)
Sport:
Run or Die by Killian Jornet (p:208); The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (p:290) +; The Rise of the Ultra Runners by (p:304); Tom Dumoulin by Patrick ...
Something which I discovered this year is reading multiple books in parallel. And start reading the book which you feel like reading, not the book which you think you should read. That way I always had the mindset to enjoy a particular book.
But still, here are some I probably bought for $0.99 and enjoyed:
Lost Restaurants of Seattle
This Outcast Generation by Taijun Takeda
The Royal Navy Lynx: An Operational History
A Doctor's War by Aidan MacCarthy
Sniping in France by Hesketh-Prichard
The Art of Whittling by Faurot
Moscow Calling by Angus Roxburgh
Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow
Icelandic Folk Tales by Stefansson
If you like any of those topics then you have my random recommendation, and possibly the indulgent vanity of once more having avoided consumer risk, or maybe consumer regret.
These were fun in 2022, in addition to 1) web browsing, which I find is definitely reading, despite all its numbered-pagelessness, and 2) dipping back into lots of classics and favorites, from Blacksad to Darwin to Scaramouche and Tom Sawyer.
(Possibly throwing in a volume on the adventures of Groo, a Weird Tales, a Comics Cavalcade, some TTRPGs, and a Scooby-Doo Team-Up...)
Nice.
For some more local flavor, you might also enjoy Seattle Justice (eg SPD started as a protection racket) and Woodland for the "stone soup" origins of a local institution.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/seattle-justice-the-rise-and-f...
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/woodland-the-story-of-the-anim...
- Hard Drive by Wallace
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Cooper
These three books are some of the best books in their respective categories. All three are about product design in a way. Build is about the development of the iPhone and Nest. Hard Drive is about the early history of MS and about the stunts Gates pulled to win. Inmates argues that programmers tend to hijack the product design process because they can (programmers write the code after all), and that products suffer as a result.
Yikes! The typical HN post says MBAs ruin everything. Who knew programmers who have troubles interacting with people would build products which have troubles interacting with people!? (i'm not an MBA)
BTW, look at HN. It can have so many more functions but it does not. As a result it's very easy to use for everyone no PhD in HN needed.
Really solid cli-fi (climate-science-fiction). Tells the story of a fictional United Nations that begins to seriously take on the role of ensuring the survival of the human species.
Standard E-books made an excellently formatted version: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/joseph-conrad/lord-jim
- Scattered (How Attention Deficit Disorder originates and what you can do about it) by Gabor Mate
Question: how do folks discover new books to read — Goodeads? Friend recommendations? Book Clubs? Any other sort of niche, online recommendation engine? Podcasts?
I do track all books I want to read and have read in Goodreads. And I sometimes learn about cool new books from others on there.
But mostly I have topics in mind I want to read about so I search lists online and reddit to find a good book on the topic.
Oftentimes the books I read cover only part of a very large topic, and this leads me to seek out books covering the rest; for instance, I do not expect my interests in political/societal structure and economics will ever stop yielding new books to read.
I have a local bookstore and browse the new releases and staff recommendations they have, and all together that can usually keep me busy.
1. News sites with book reviews. I read Vox's book critic reviews for a while, as well as my local paper's book review section. Definitely better for fiction or current events than other non-fiction.
2. Asking the people working at the bookstore. I'm consistently surprised by the breadth of book recommendations bookstore employees can give. Even asking for something incredibly specific (like "young adult fiction featuring a trans male protagonist" or "modern fantasy takes on mythologies other than Greek or Norse") usually yields a few interesting results. Again, better for fiction than technical non-fiction.
3. Friends, newsletters, and podcasts.
4. Wandering around bookstores, especially boutiques, and thumbing through the books on display. This still yields mostly new releases, but stretches me outside my comfort zone. I found both Paddling Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman (entertaining) and Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines by Jaime Lowe (well-researched non-fiction) this way.
I used to be scared of tackling big books because I don't feel strongly committed. But with these I did audiobooks for the first time, while cleaning and driving and cooking and it has made reading big books merely a matter of time.
Other than Caro's books this year, I really liked the three-volume Churchill biography by William Manchester. And the first two volumes of the Teddy Roosevelt biography by Edmund Morris.
I also read Don Quixote this year - Edith Grossman's translation is excellent, capturing the joy of the original, and laugh-out-loud funny in places.
Maybe that doesn't make an interesting book?
"I don't know what people find romantic about this nonsense"
It's fine to have different literary preferences than some other people. As you say, "one might enjoy crime drama, but not gratuitous violence". But to question the literary preferences of other people is an entirely different matter.
"I hate this stupid trend."
It's not a trend. Writers have been writing about love triangles and marital infidelity for literally centuries.
What happens when humankind on the verge of post-scarcity suffers its first alien contact -- truly alien contact. A team of engineered humans is sent to meet them.
What really stuck out to me is how the content of the book could be applied to a potential AGI -- an alien, intelligent entity that we can't really understand and still have to interact with. I can't go further without delving into spoilers. It's really good. But, also, very bleak.
On the good side, I think the author is brilliant, the way he created this new race of aliens, how he explains their physiology, faster than what it takes for your brain to process images, their camouflage, how their body is a whole lens, their communication system, their way to accumulate energy, etc... that was amazing and worth reading.
On the bad side, I hated every character in the book, it's maybe expected to not like the protagonist with his "lack of empathy", but who makes a crew of such a bunch of uncooperative people, is like nobody wanted to do their job properly; All their conversations felt hostile, not sure how to put it, but I would expect a sense of wonder, curiosity and cooperation from the people sent to do a first alien contact.
The part that I disliked the most is how the human ship felt so abstract, they are in a ship, but everyone stays in some sort of independent tent, I thought this was my problem maybe I missed some key information about it, but after reading some critics, other people also have this feeling of disorientation.
Overall, it's worth it if you really like the genre, but not a must in my opinion.
Incredible book and your post has reminded me that I need to reread it.
This is definitely a book that stuck with me over the years. The concepts were very foreign and unusual at the time I read it, and I still find them novel to think about. Definitely in my top five recommendations for sci-fi reading.
Trying to summarize a half-remembered book, but the big revelation is that the aliens are not sentient at all. They are rather operating on instinct. The point of the book was more to discuss the nature of being human and is consciousness/sentience all that necessary. Lots of philosophical waxing on the nature of thought.
As to your question about other species, I think you are posing a rather challenging problem. How does an author write from the perspective of a being significantly more intelligent than themselves? Their actions and motivations become wholly alien as comprehension is not within our reach. One can justify any alien action as the unknowable motivations of a capacious god.
Watts wrote a loosely related sequel called Echopraxia that was not nearly as good as Blindsight but expands on some of the concepts. It was much more of a slog to read through and a bit confusing to follow the story and I had to force myself to finish it. If you are thinking of picking that up after reading Blindsight.
Both books have a good section after the story where Watts explains the research and citations of how he came up with the story. If you read that part it may break your brain in a questioning existence kind of way.
Here is the list of some of the good books I read this year https://brajeshwar.com/2022/books/
Starting this year, instead of writing the list at the year-end, I have decided that I will just write as I read along. Besides the 5 odd I listed from a comment on this thread, here are others I have listed from other threads on Hackernews and Twitter. The URL is a pattern anyway, so it will be https://brajeshwar.com/2023/books/
- How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Be-Perfect/Mic...
- [How to Stop Worrying and Start Living](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Stop_Worrying_and_Start...) is from the popular author [Dale Carnegie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie) of the [How to Win Friends and Influence People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...) fame.
- A young girl's diary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl)
- Greenlights by [Matthew McConaughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_McConaughey)
- How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World's Most Dynamic Region
- How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil
- How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry by [Adele Faber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_Faber)
- Impact Mapping: Making a big impact with software products and projects
- Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price
- Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself
- Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry
- The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness
- [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...) by [Douglas Adams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams)
- [Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming](https://www.amazon.com/Windfall-Booming-Business-Global-Warm...) by [McKenzie Funk](https://www.mckenziefunk.com)
- The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read: (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry
If a book opens your eyes to something you used to ignore, it's a good book.
In the book, Rovelli explores the concept of time and how it has been understood by scientists and philosophers throughout history. An intellectually stimulating and not overly technical read about the concept of a universe without time and some of the latest developments in Loop Quantum Gravity (Rovelli’s field of work).
I also have a blog post on my Top 10 books from last year: https://medium.data4sci.com/top-10-books-we-read-in-2022-c3d...
The Body Electric by Dr. Robert Becker and The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Firstenberg - these books made me aware of the impact electricity may have on life - including us! Much of these two books would likely be dismissed as quackery to most, but the implication of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease as piezoelectric illnesses, the idea that limbs can be regrown, in part by electric signaling, and the massive ecological issues associated with widespread electromagnetic radiation all were things I’d never have considered. Since the latter book made me aware, I haven’t been able to stop noticing the constant tinnitus I experience.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau - this had been on my list for a while. I finally reached a mental state where this felt like the right book to read next; I felt that technology had gone too far, and a simple life would be a better life. If nothing else, gleaning the perspective of a man almost two hundred years ago and seeing both how different and how similar the issues regarding technology were, made me feel far less alone, and enlightened me toward ways I could make progress in feeling liberated from the ever-increasing grasp of technology on my life.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber - after spending four years working on defense systems that, in a best-case scenario, will never be used, I felt my job was useless. I saw jobs in the tech field that I thought were worse than useless - social media developers, advertisement company developers, etc. What I didn’t see, and this book discusses, is the vast swath of workers in all fields who feel, who know, that their job is worthless too. The book discusses the vast impact that this has on human mental health and societal direction. Highly recommend.
10% Human by Alanna Collen - I find myself referencing this book very frequently. It is all about the power of microbes in the human body (they make up 90% of us, by cell count!). That small imbalances can cause illnesses and influence our thought processes, habits, and behaviors is starting to become mainstream scientific knowledge. The implications this has for treatment of illness and prevention of illness (e.g. avoiding unnecessary bouts of antibiotics, fecal transplants, the value of breast feeding and natural birth) excite me due to the improvement they can cause in human health and quality of life.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - Does one have to pay their debts? What does it mean to owe someone a debt? What implications does the widespread holding of debt cause for our society? Is it morally right? All these questions and more are answered in this excellent book. It changed how I saw macroeconomics, and the structure of our society.
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul - This book, written in the 1960s, is astonishingly prescient about the state of humans in relation to “technique”. While the end of the book’s predictions for the 21st century are wrong (more progress was expected than was delivered), that does not diminish the rest of this book’s observations that technology can cause a great deal of issues in our society.
I hope at least one person can experience the joy I have from reading one of these books. I’m looking forward to what I’ll learn from your recommendations.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170211015067
Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
[3] https://crookedtimber.org/category/david-graeber-debt-semina...
[4] https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-human...
Whenever I hear or see such descriptions, I start discounting the opinions of those who made them, because they're often hyperbolic. I'd put someone like Genghis Khan at the level of being a "horrible human being," not some random author, because it indeed is a very high insult to levy against someone. That, or the person is just engaging in semantic drift [0].
Anyway, why was he a "horrible human being?" I couldn't find any controversy regarding his views or actions that would classify him as "horrible," at least in my limited search.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Best fiction read was Tim Winton's Breath or (there's probably some recency bias at play here) Sebastian de Castel's Traitor's Blade.
I also read a few comic books. I love the East of West series (at least the first three books).
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
> What Is The 1619 Project? - The 1619 Project And Socialism
> 1619 Project Debunked - What parents should know.
So i assume there's a certain section that disagrees with the book so much that they're paying for ads to counter it! Maybe there's an answer lying there. i.e. it triggers the left versus right debate and hard!
One of the goals of propaganda is to cause disunity.
The idea being you divide people and conquer. You force people into psychological states where there are two minorities where some people don't react, and some who react violently at shadows, and it allows a smaller third group to do things that couldn't normally be done. That's the gist of it. You get them to that point by corrupting social norms, and other factors that make up individual and national identity. Its quite evil, and often uses sophisticated techniques that are designed to work on psychological blindspots we all have, the only defense for that type of material, is to limit exposure and view that material with critical thought and attention.
Obviously this kind of content would be harmful to any children younger than 12 as they would lack the developmental faculties needed to discern lies from truth and just accept what is provided.
I have no opinion myself (haven't read the book, don't know much beyond the official grade school history curriculum), but some of the criticisms come from superficially reasonable people.
If you take the book content to be meaningful, you should at least survey the criticisms. Of course you'll want to ignore the virulently anti brigade, which is numerous, very loud, and insufferably stupid.
Did not downvote. I think this is what the downvoters meant. As a reader, you deserve an explanation, IMO.
Subversive content in general tends to get that reaction from intelligent people and that book is more rightly considered propaganda than actual history.
If you understand what propaganda is, what its goals are, and can recognize it easily you probably wouldn't have been blindsided.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/06/1619-s06.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/14/mcph-n14.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html
lmao
Non-Fiction, work: - The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition by David Thomas, Andrew Hunt: I’m not a programmer and still found this one of the most useful books I read this year. - Working Backwards by Colin Bryar, Bill Carr: The Amazon/Bezos love choked me a couple of times but I’ve put in practice some of what learned in this book to good effect.
Non-Fiction, history: - Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy D. Snyder: This is a hard book to read. Not slow hard. Terrifying and apocalyptic and true hard. Gives a lot of context to current events. - The Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson: Pirates. The seafaring kind.
1)The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Tasting_Tea This book is about the history of Statistics which is weaved through the some remarkable personal stories behind the history of Statistics. If you have ever used statistics, some of the words will sound familiar and will help to understand the history behind it.
2)The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Song-of-the-Cell/... I am still reading this book but I have read his previous book, "The Emperor of All Maladies" so knew his style. Again I enjoy historical perspective and this one tells about how we thought of the cell. It almost reads like textbook but is much interesting read than textbook. Brought some of the memories from my cell biology class. Always fascinating on how we take some things for granted such as blood transfusion came along in first place. He also narrates some his personal experience in between to make it even more readable.
In short, I love tech and biology sparkled with history.
In the process of reading:
Parable of a Sower’s Daughter by Octavia Butler
Read this year:
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Any standouts from the lot?
My top three were:
1. Four Thousand Weeks
2. The Book of Form and Emptiness
3. The Three-Body Problem