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Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024

40 points by andher ↗ HN
Always found some interesting reads like this. Looking to add to my tbr to hit my yearly goal.

I just finished the three body problem, found it fantastic. I'm most of the way through 'The will of the many', and I'm finding it amazing - one of the best fantasies I've read in a while.

93 comments

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Verath
I'm currently reading Nation by Terry Pratchett. I have previously read all of the Discworld novels and thoroughly enjoyed them. Then last year I read the Terry Pratchett biography (also worth a read, IMO!), where it is mentioned that Terry himself thought Nation was probably his best book. Had to give it a read after that! So far it's pretty good, but I do miss the characters from the Discworld universe to be honest.
andher
I haven't read Nation but I till now Guards! Guards! Guards! has been my favorite. Its been a while since I read Discworld, will have to pick up nation
ochronus
The Anatomy of Peace: How to Resolve the Heart of Conflict
hubraumhugo
- Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare

Excellent history of firearms and war tactics from around 1300 to the present day

- One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

How can 400k people collaborate to achieve something so big? Fascinating read.

jerpint
I’m listening to “the creative act - Rick Rubin”, the audiobook is narrated by him and he has such a soothing voice , highly recommended
vidyesh
The Remembrance of Earth's Past has been on my list for some time now. Will you be finishing that trilogy?

Actively reading:

- Mistborn : Final Empire (~90% finished ding)

- 3rd novella in The Murderbot Diaries

- Dive into Design Patterns

- Fullstack D3 and Data Viz

Passively reading:

- The Design of everyday things (I don't think I will ever finish this book)

- Bhagavad-Gita as it is

- LOTR (mostly a re-read)

andher
Yup, I intend to finish it. I've heard The Dark Forest may be the best in the series, so looking forward to the next one.

How are the Murderbot books? I've been intending to pick them up

vidyesh
Thats exciting! I might read the Remembrance this year.

Murderbot is exciting! There is very little world building, you are thrown into the world and you slowly figure things out. Each novella is a new adventure, but as a whole(the series) its a lot more; an android seeing and understanding humans in a very different way.

It also explores how a world of robots would have various bots with each having a different personality(they develop) based on their lifelong assigned task.

The Muderbot itself is sulky, tired of incompetent humans and its dry behavior adds humor to the narration. Plus it addicted to watching soap operas so it has a very unique understanding of human creativity and reality.

abbadadda
I started listening to "The Unicorn Project" on audiobook. It is not as good as "The Phoenix Project" audiobook, but it does a decent job of describing problems from the software engineer's perspective. The problem is I need a version of these books from Sarah Molton/Steve Master's point of view (a novel about being a product manager or CEO?) to better understand what motivates that side of the org. I have been mired in "The Core Chronic Conflict" for years, paying down tech debt, and turns out changing an org to learn/understand/care about DevOps is Hard.
RyanHamilton
I agree on your review of both books. Phoenix project was excellent. After years of banging my head trying to change a large org, I'm not sure you can do it head on. I found either you need incentives to change, then the org changes. e.g. Rather than encourage goal X, pay or promote teams that do X and it will happen (subject to some level of faking). Or more usually use the current org structure to affect change. i.e. play their game, then use the parts you can to make change. Trying to change an org head on never worked for me and just caused myself and otehrs great unhappiness :).
andher
I read The Phoenix Project a while back and really liked it, have been intending to pick up the The Unicorn Project for some time now. Did you think just the audiobook wasn't better or in general it wasn't as good as The Phoenix Project?
abbadadda
> Did you think just the audiobook wasn't better or in general it wasn't as good as The Phoenix Project?

I listened to both audiobooks. Something about the paperbacks I couldn’t get in to. Now that I think about it, I don’t want to read a novel about work when I’m not at work. Also, audiobooks lend themselves really well to a commute.

At any rate, the narrator of The Phoenix Project is male and the narrator of the audiobook for The Unicorn Project is female. But that’s not why I liked The Phoenix Project more. The male narrator _really_ got into the voices of the different characters, which I appreciated.

TheAceOfHearts
A few days back I finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross. It's really interested, the premise basically explores what a potential posthuman technologically advanced future could look like.
Brajeshwar
I usually make a list by the year-end of what I want to read the following year. It tends to shift as the year progresses. Here is my list of tentative books for 2024 (which is subject to change).

https://brajeshwar.com/2024/books/

zi_
"From the soil: Foundations of Chinese Society" by Fei Xiaotong.

It is a book (accessible to non-chinese) that helps one understand a population of >1.4 billion in less than 180 pages. Wouldn’t one call this a bargain?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/134293.From_the_Soil

say_it_as_it_is
Depends on whether it's a brutally honest, historically accurate assessment or simply imaginative propaganda.
yannis
I am not sure about the bargain part. It is a window in the roots of Chinese society and mainly its relation to rural communities and villages (from a sociology perspective). I would recommend it to anyone trying to understand a society based on its people and not its politicians. Also anyone from a rural small town in the US or any other country, I think will enjoy it.
fuzztester
Your comment reminded me of this book:

The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, which I read many years ago, as a teenager or young adult.

I was quite moved by it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Earth

Excerpt:

[ The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a 20th-century Chinese village in Anhwei. It is the first book in her House of Earth trilogy, continued in Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. ]

It is only today that I got to know, due to googling for the links, that she won both the Pulitzer prize and the Nobel prize for Literature, partly for that book.

Tomte
Edward Glaeser: Triumph of the City
photonthug
Hitting some classics I missed.. Moby Dick and the narrative of Arthur Gordon pym. Also in nonfiction thanks to recent HN.. only the paranoid survive
temeya
'The Systems Bible, 3rd Edition, by John Gall as a light introduction to Systems Theory as well as 'How Linux Works: What Every Superuser Should Know, 3rd Edition' to brush up on my Linux. "Computer Organization and Design, 5th Edition" after those two.

On the fiction front, I just finished "Queen City Jazz", by Kathleen Ann Goonan, and I've got "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez queued up as well.

lofaszvanitt
No starch books have a terrible track record... every superuser should know, is that book an exception?
temeya
I mean, so far, its helped make things a bit easier for me to understand. I've also read "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" by Al Sweigart, which as someone with a non-CS background, I found very helpful, even when going back as a reference.
lofaszvanitt
Maybe you chose the proper books. I had a terrible experience with them.
temeya
That's entirely plausible. The next No Starch published book I read may also be terrible. But, I try to recommend what I can (that I've read) and allow readers (present and future) to make their own judgements.

Best case scenario, you've found a new resource. Worse case scenario, you learn what works for you.

martopix
"The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder"
bluenose69
On a bit of a Graham Green kick lately. This happens every few decades.
gryzzly
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. It even talks about what is the best way for a worker - capitalist relationship, among everything else.
Frummy
Euclids Elements, Thomas Heath translation
vertigolimbo
Subscribed to Literary review print magazine for 2 reasons. Firstly, it’s like TIL but in print version. Secondly, it’s a relief to read something interesting unrelated to IT on a range of subjects. Every now and again I find a book recommendation that I buy. I found this magazine by accident in the airport bookstore when flying out of UK, so if you are at the airport in uk give it a go (it’s almost impossible to find a print version in bookstores).
danielovichdk
"close to the machine" by Ellen Ulman.

So far i am very pleased!

oumua_don17
The End of the World Is Just the Beginning.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_t...

cpursley
This book is absolute garbage. Zeihan is a geopolitical lightweight and a very uninformed one at that. It’s hard to tell if he was intentionally dishonest in that book or really that uninformed. He is so factually wrong on some points that’s it shocking, like things that are objectively and quantifiable facts.

For much better Geopolitical books, check these out:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52962238-principles-for-...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56696339-the-power-of-ge...

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16144575

Swalden123
I’ve been working through the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, reading Stillness is the Key and Siddhartha.

The SICP might take me a year.

ctrw
The first three chapters will take you a year. The next two will take you longer.

I always find it odd that no one talks about the lisp book where you write a hardware simulation of a computer to run the compiler you also wrote on.

elemeno
Which Lisp book is that?
n2dasun
Is that htdp.org?
ctrw
No that's sicp chapter 4 and 5.

Again I have no idea why no one talks about those. They are the most mind bending parts of the book.

Swalden123
I’ve been looking forward to getting to that part.
andher
I started SICP last year but haven't gotten anywhere close to completing, mostly because of competing priorities.

Siddhartha is great book, I read it years back and it sparked my interest in other works of Herman Hesse.

philshem
All fiction so far (and with similar themes)

- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

- Pachinko

- Homegoing (just started)

neongreen
I'm reading What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders.

It says it's not a self-help book, but in practice it's the first book ever that helped me with my lifelong anxiety.

magnio
I just finished "Song of Solomon". Toni Morrison needs no introduction, and the book is simply an irresistible whirlwind of emotions and lessons.

Currently reading "The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews." Shakespeare and Co. is a bookstore in Paris with a long history of inviting authors to reside at and give talks there. A nice and fun pot-pourri of down-to-earth wisdom, it does not exude the typical literary snobbery from this kind of book. I like it so far.

n2dasun
Song of Solomon is a favorite and I love seeing it mentioned here