Ask HN: What're You Reading?
I'm plowing through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which is not particularly challenging as sci-fi/LitRPG goes, but entertaining enough. I'm also wrapping up Doctorow's _Enshittification_, and I'm looking for something a little meaty to keep the brain working...
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[ 25.8 ms ] story [ 5572 ms ] threadI have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.
I have been wanting to read Donald Knuth's "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated".
(https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html)
My favorite example: see how all mainstream modern editions (NRSV, NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB, and even the NKJV) say "every man" (or something along those lines), rather than "any that pisseth against the wall" (literal rendering of the Hebrew): https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Samuel%2025%3A22
(I don't have a theology degree, but I do have an English degree. I have read parts of KJV, and it has literary significance, but it is not attempting to be a bare literal translation)
* New Living Translation (NLT): My main one nowadays. This one is not for everyone, but I find it very readable and was recommended it online. My one criticism is that the style is a bit too American. It works on a thought for thought basis.
* New English Bible (NEB): I have something of a soft spot for this one. It has the opposite problem to the NLT in that its style is sometimes too British. Nonetheless I always liked its text lay out and style. Sadly it got superseded by the Revised English Bible which is not so good. I mostly come across it second hand.
* New King James Version (NKJV): this one at least retains some of the literary qualities of the KJV while making the text more accessible to a modern audience. It does have some problems (mostly those that afflict other modern Bible versions).
The International Standard Version is online only, but its range of sources has piqued my interest as a study Bible, but its readability seems to vary. I hope it comes out in print.
I have Lorimer's New Testament in Scots. I find it a bit uneven. I know folk who love it.
As for BAD Bible versions, I'd out the following on the naughty stool. The Scholars' Version is gospels only, but is horrendous to read (its version of the Beatitudes says "congratulations to the..." as if they'd won Reader's Digest Prize Draw.) The New World Translation is the Jehovah's Witness version and had clunky prose, making it extremely unpleasurable to read. The Good News Bible is not as annoying as the other two but its English is oversimplified and directed at children and learners. The Message goes for colloquial English and doesn't always work. The Conservative Bible, like NIV and NSRVue allows its political biases in.
The authors argue that rigid, goal-oriented planning and metric-driven objectives actively prevent true innovation and groundbreaking achievement.
It's definitely Miéville, but the weird doesn't cut in immediately.
The first 100 or so pages is about a young single British woman (Maur) in the 1970s/1980s. She brings up a son who becomes increasingly remote, joins the army, and then something happens to him, which is when the weird elements begin to appear (involving the disturbingly unpleasant lingering spirits of the dead). The second plot strand concerns a Brit soldier (Allardyce) whose unit participates in various weird events (also somewhat disturbing) set against British-empire post-colonial / cold war shenanigans in the 50s and 60s, although the two plot strands eventually connect.
One reviewer I saw described the first bit (which is 'mundane', in the non-fantasy sense) as a masterclass in how to present a character's interiority, and I'm inclined to agree. As with any Miéville, it helps to have access to a good dictionary. I'm a Brit who grew up at approximately the same time as Maur, which helped me understand some of the allusions (e.g. to 'the election', which is Thatcher's). But I had to read into the darker sides of British colonial disengagement to fully understand Allardyce's experiences. E.g. the so-called Malayan Emergency, a particularly brutal little war of independence in the 1950s.
In a way, it reminded me of Kraken, where Miéville throws in lots of references to real-world weirdness to better sneak his own inventions into the story world.
Not sure if this one qualifies as more meaty :)
I like how he has the slow, almost clinical way of revealing interesting worlds and systems. It’s not the kind of book that’ll make me cry, but I really like world building with fun enough characters
Now if anyone would invest in him continuing Elantris...
I thought so too, until I read the 2nd Mistborn trilogy!
i've been working my way through all of the cosmere (after starting with mistborn), currently on book 3 of stormlight archive. can't put em down
If you are interested in DG history but not into this book, I can recommend a few other sources:
https://mark.people.clemson.edu/fhp.html
https://www.teamfoster.com/billteamfostercom
"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence"
In my original comment, I Iisted some other books by Dawkins if you're interested -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896133
I'm reading Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes by Harms and it goes off on how weak Dawkins is.
I don't tend to be great at finishing (or starting) books, and this is a big one. I've also never had any interest in Medieval or Renaissance history, for me it's been a black hole between the fall of Rome and the modern age.
But recently I saw some Youtube videos of Ada, and her enthusiasm is totally infectious [2]. She's fun and paints these vivid pictures of Florence and renaissance Europe that are incredible, absurd, and relatable, which makes sense since given she's also an accomplished sci-fi writer. She also reminds me of one of my favourite high school teachers. So I ordered the book right away.
The book is in the same tone as her videos, so it won't be for everyone, but I've really been enjoying it and now I'm fascinated by Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli, merchant republics, etc.
1. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo246135...
2. (My favourite example) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68p3jVQQdFk
On Youtube, you'll probably come across a lot of her podcast appearances like Dwarkesh Patel's (which is how I first came across her), but she also just started her own podcast 3 weeks ago that might not pop up in the results yet [1]. The latest episode [2] where she's talking about the church bells of Florence, which still ring today, was so cool to listen to. The way their schedule carried (and carries) the rhythm of life, the blood of tradition, and when something wasn't right in the city, the call-to-action (defence or riot, for example). So neat, it made me want to live there for a few years (something she did during her studies, in a tower that the medieval Florentines had ripped the upper levels off so noblemen couldn't garrison it and burn the city around them).
1. https://www.youtube.com/@Beforecast
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruDc0GynjSI
The Works of Vermin. Exceptionally well written. Not an ounce of flab anywhere.
The Carryx series, 2 books so far. Best villains ever.
Tainted Cup and sequel. Sherlock Holmes meets Godzilla.
Goblin Emperor
The Prophet (Gibran)
Los Alamos (Kanon)
Hyperion (reread)
Finally, a shout out to the best book I read in 2025: Terra Ignota. Yes, the whole series.
Weird. There's a species called Carryx too in a series from James S.A. Corey called "The Captive's War".
Try to get a modern translation if you're not reading in original language.
Its a pretty good history of the X-48 program.
Edit: also reading the "The Anduril Thesis" in parallel.
Highly recommend the game for anyone who liked Dark or Primer (or any other fiction that features stable time loops).
Sadly found I could have been reading a better abridgement, which I'll get for the 2nd reading now.
I'm not reading anything at the moment since I'm taking a break and watching season one of Deadwood and also re-watching season one of Boston Legal.
But when I'm done, I plan to re-read "The Cold War A Very Short Introduction" by Robert J. McMahon. I read it about five years ago and it's time to read it again.
Having said that, I can't pass on this opportunity to share the books I've read (some are re-reads) thus far this year that I recommend. I'll just list them while saying that they all come highly recommended by me.
In the famous words of Frank Zappa - So many books, so little time.
1. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
2. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
3. Lying by Sam Harris
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
6. Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
7. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
8. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
9. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
10. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
11. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
13. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
14. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
15. Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan
16. Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818/1831), https://frankendiff.com; and Tales of the Dead, by Mrs. Utterson (1813), https://archive.org/details/talesofdead00utte
Just started Homer's Iliad (Fagles translation) and Christopher Logue's War Music (2015).
Just finished re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1980). I think it holds up well. Last time I read it, I was much younger than Arthur Dent; now I'm much older. And now that we have computers with Genuine People Personalities, it's hard to remember what it was like in the Before Times.
Recently finished Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908). For better or worse (no spoilers here), it kept me guessing.
There was an article on HN a month or two ago about how some books drive people to the kind of madness that would make them do a degree in literature. This is probably the one for me. Excited to read it again in 5 years and see it differently again.