HN Explorer

What are you reading?

72 points by brownegg ↗ HN
I don't ever see this discussed here. The level and focus of discourse here should make for great recommendations.

<edit> Should this be restricted to "on topic" material? </edit>

Me, recently and currently:

http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-2-0-Essentials-Interaction/dp/0764526413/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767831&sr=8-12

http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Great-Design-People-Company/dp/0137142447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767882&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Mind-Anniversary/dp/0071359168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767926&sr=1-1

221 comments

[ 7.2 ms ] story [ 322 ms ] thread
fogus
Okasaki's "Purely Functional Data Structures"

Giola's "The History of Jazz"

Herbert's "Chapterhouse: Dune"

Mongoose
I'm currently reading "Persepolis," the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and MIT Press' "A History of Modern Computing." I recently acquired a copy of Steven Levy's "Hackers," which I'd like to at least start before the end of the summer.
mkramlich
Hackers is an excellent book, probably should be required reading for anyone into the programmer/entrepreneur lifestyle, or wannabe.

It gave me my first moment where I was reading a book and thought, "Yes. That's what I want to be doing. What they're doing. But me," when reading about some of the first computer game companies like Sierra, early Electronic Arts, early Apple, etc. Especially the story of Ken and Roberta Williams.

As a kid, I was using the software and hardware made by the folks described in those stories and felt that when I grew up I also wanted to be my own boss, and make and sell my own stuff. Make, sell, repeat. All other BS minimized.

derwiki
I'm gonna check out that book based on your glowing review. Thanks!
Mongoose
That's the feeling I'm going for. Hopefully the MIT history of computing book coupled with Hackers and a full load of computer science courses in the fall will help motivate me.
djm
Steven Levy is a brilliant writer. If you want to read about computer history from the position of the hackers building it then I'd also suggest reading his other books, especially 'crypto' and 'insanely great'.
tokenadult
Assessment of Children: Cognitive Foundations by Jerome Sattler

http://www.amazon.com/Assessment-Children-Foundations-Jerome...

Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence, Third Edition by Alan S. Kaufman and Elizabeth O. Lichtenberger

http://www.amazon.com/Assessing-Adolescent-Adult-Intelligenc...

What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought by Keith Stanovich

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...

What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect by James R. Flynn

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn-Effect/...

Handbook of Intelligence edited by Robert Sternberg

http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Intelligence-Robert-Sternberg...

and a host of related books about IQ testing and what it means, to prepare a working paper on the latest research on IQ testing.

TheElder
Do you know if baby size at birth is correlated to higher intelligence later in life? Also, what about the amount of hair a child is born with? Any correlation there?
tokenadult
This is a paper by an eminent researcher in the discipline (I have read one of his books and have another at hand) that I Googled up:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

TheElder
Thank you! Through your link, I gathered a few keywords and found this: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7280/199

Birth weight was also associated with education, with those of higher birth weight more likely to have achieved higher qualifications, and this effect was accounted for partly by cognitive function at age 8.

Small size at birth is associated with a range of adverse health outcomes, including poor cognitive development, an effect that is largely unconfounded by features of the family environment, such as socioeconomic status and birth order.

tjr
Most recently, been doing some skill refreshing with Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" and Paul Graham's "ANSI Common Lisp".

Not too long ago, Pepper White's "The Idea Factory".

DanielBMarkham
I got books like sheiks got oil. I'm swimming in them. I try to read a little from at least four books every day. (You'll have to look up these links yourself)

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On my Kindle:

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy; Clean Code, Uncle Bob; Palm WebOS; Antoninus Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, Emperor; Never Eat Alone, and Other Secrets to Success, Ferrazzi

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In my stack:

Daniel-X, James Patterson; Born To Run, Christopher McDougall; The Existential Jesus, John Carroll; Fear and Trembling - Repetition, Soren Kierkegaard

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On the way in from Amazon: The Trusted Advisor, Maister; Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully, Weinberg; Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, Harding

-----------------------------------------------------------

I'm thinking about growing another pair of eyeballs so I can read two books at once. I'll let you know how the genetic engineering goes. (grin)

kristiandupont
Why do you try to read from four books every day?
DanielBMarkham
It's an interesting phenomenon. Now that I have my Kindle, I find I can "parallel read" instead of sequentially reading. It's really easy to flip between several books, and the Kindle keeps track of what percentage I have completed of each book.

I'm finding that the Kindle might not be so good with technical books -- why, I don't know. But for fiction and "light" books it's great. I wished I had read Tolstoy many years ago. That guy can really write!

brianto2010
> I don't ever see this discussed here.

Nonsense :-).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749706

Code Complete 2 [Chapter 7] (McConnell)

Test Driven: Practical TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers [Chapter 2] (Koskela)

A friend is helping me with this one:

The Rebel [Chapter 2] (Camus)

DanielBMarkham
Code Complete is good stuff. The first volume changed the way I thought about code.
yan
OO i love these threads.

I am currently reading "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro and its awesome so far (~150 pgs in). Just finished Zinn's "A people's history". Next up is "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Power of Babel" by John McWhorter.

mynameishere
Why? Just because someone is reading something doesn't mean it's a good recommendation. I'm reading "Two years before the mast," and it's okay. There are better books.

However, here's a real recommendation: If you have a netbook, it can be used very effectively as an e-book reader if you turn it on its side while in bed, or place it upon your chest. I didn't buy it for that reason, but it is the most comfortable manner of reading books, AFAICS.

yan
Because recommendations tend to be very specific to a certain topic (probably very technical), but asking what a person is reading now includes outside interests, hobbies and curiosities.
bkovitz
I like these threads, not because I'm looking for book recommendations, but because finding out what people are reading gives me some insight both into the people and into publishing.
Perceval
Michel Foucault Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College De France)
nfnaaron
The Candy Bombers, about the Berlin Airlift, the political and military conflicts surrounding the Airlift, and the Airlift pilot that started dropping candy for the kids near the airport.
reddiar
Network Algorithmics - George Varghese; Back of the Napkin - Dan Roam
tptacek
Good for you on Varghese. Let us know what you build.
sabon
Finishing "Atlas Shrugged". While ideas and the spirit of the book have aged only slightly, the way of writing seems way too pretentious for our times. But overall the book is interesting. From historic and ideological point of view.
brownegg
For a time, I considered this my bible. But it's too idealistic, and goes a long way on some fairly iffy assumptions.

It's still compelling as hell, though.

quantumhobbit
Ayn Rand was a philosopher. And like most philosophers, she started out with some good ideas and over applied them to everything in life, which leads to some scary conclusions.

My favorite Rand book was Anthem. It was short and therefore didn't have space to extrapolate Rand's ideas to their scary conclusion.

I just finished reading Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. It is just as long and pompous as Atlas Shrugged, but of the exact opposite philosophy. Those two books make for some interesting comparisons.

DanielBMarkham
I once listened to a 80-hour overview of the world's great philosophers, given by modern professors.

What amazed me was how many of them came up with a good idea that was new and revolutionary -- and then spent the rest of their life taking the damn thing too far. I guess great people fall so much in love with their great ideas that it never occurs to them that the most important piece is finding the boundaries for where their work applies and where it does not.

stevenj
>I guess great people fall so much in love with their great ideas that it never occurs to them that the most important piece is finding the boundaries for where their work applies and where it does not.

Well said.

I think many ("normal") people would benefit from listening to this, but more importantly, by practicing it.

derwiki
Link for the interview?
matt1
What's the series called?
philwelch
Then there's Wittgenstein, who did the same thing, except twice and with entirely separate ideas. He's the philosophical equivalent of one of those bands that makes a major stylistic change halfway through their career, lose a bunch of their fans, and pick up an entirely different set of fans.
nonrecursive
What's interesting is that Ayn Rand thought Victor Hugo was the best novelist ever. She also thought that the philosophy in Les Miserables was at odds with his "sense of life".
philwelch
She also thought that Frank Lloyd Wright's philosophical and political ideas were at odds with his architecture.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
NoBSWebDesign
Ayn Rand was able to name so much of what I've felt growing up. While she may have used the literary technique of exaggeration to heighten the contrast between her philosophical views of moral vs. immoral, I don't think she took it "too far" as others are commenting. I think that's like saying Philip K. Dick took the ideas of technological advances and psychic ability too far in his story, "Minority Report", or like saying Pablo Picasso took multi-perspective simplicity too far in his Cubist paintings. Of course they did, it's part of their literary freedom. Exaggeration helps to make an underlaying principle become self-evident by speeding along conclusions that could eventually be drawn from observation.
fauigerzigerk
I took her meritocratic stance seriously until I heard her defend inherited wealth, which is ridiculously inconsistent.
perfectlyfrank
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him." - I think she's still basing it on merit. While I disagree with some of what she says, and she says a lot, she does a decent job of staying consistent.
fauigerzigerk
It would be consistent if everyone who was fit to inherit actually did inherit. But that is not the case. Some of those who are fit do not inherit and others do. What is the basis for this inequality? Birth.

She destroys the idea of meritocracy that she herself presented so eloquently and discredits libertarianism as yet another excuse for those born wealthy to keep their wealth.

If an hair is not equal to his money it destroys him? Come on, what does it even mean to be "equal to money"? And how can someone who does not inherit wealth even prove that he or she is "equal to the money"? That's just the kind of fluffy nonsense that moral philosophers are so infamous for.

NoBSWebDesign
I don't think you would enjoy reading Rand (either you haven't yet read any of her work and are going based solely on what you read in this thread, or you just completely didn't understand her work).

As she argues, money is a means of trading human production and value. To be equal to your money is to provide production and value to society equal to the value of your money. According to Rand, if one who is barely capable of ever making more than $30k per year were to inherit $5m, it would not end well. And actually lottery statistics support this pretty consistently.

fauigerzigerk
How does that explain why it is consistent that some get the opportunity to start out wealthy and some do not?

You don't seem to get what I'm saying at all. Among those who are willing and able to provide production value are some who get a boost from inherited wealth and some who do not.

Do you consider that fair or consistent with a merit based society? I do get perfectly well what Ayn Rand says in her books, and based on that her stance on inheritance is grotesque.

NoBSWebDesign
I think that according to Rand, fairness is a moot point when it comes to this situation. She is saying that if you are capable of achieving wealth, then you will achieve it no matter where you start from in our society. She also explains that those who are capable of achieving are concerned only with their own achievements and awards, and those of others only so far as they help to achieve their own.

If you put all of this together, you end up with the person of achievement not caring where others started (or what they inherited) in relation to themselves. Fairness only holds value when the person getting shafted cares enough to give it value.

Besides, Rand's argument is that over the long run, it really doesn't matter, as the person who is capable of producing great wealth will do so, with or without an inheritance. The person who is not will quickly squander it all and end up right back where they started. Her point is simply that an inheritance does not change one's ability to produce.

j1o1h1n
Rather teleological argument from Ms Rand. If the heir manages to keep the inheritance, then they deserved it, however if they lose it, they weren't worthy. Perhaps a new "Ayn Rand" inheritance tax is in order; those heirs who fail to double their inheritance within, say, 5 years, must donate them to needy, friendless orphans, these then have their chance for five years. Imagine all the stimulating entrepreneurship! Now excuse me while I go patent some alloys.
billswift
Her defense of inherited wealth amounted to the right of the creator of the wealth to dispose of it as he/she chooses. If he leaves it to his children, fine, if he gives it to a house for stray cats, fine,it's HIS choice because he earned it.
fauigerzigerk
That's self defeating. It's like saying that a democratic society has the right to democratically abolish democracy.
NoBSWebDesign
Ayn Rand's philosophy is that of a free economy that stresses the importance of the individual. A democracy is a political institution that stresses the rule of the majority. Rand idealized the self-sustaining individual. A democracy by definition cannot be sustained by one individual. So, it's a difficult analogy to make.

A better analogy would be like saying that a king has a right to abolish his monarchy.

Also, it is only self-defeating if the original goal was only to amass the wealth.

To continue the analogy to this point, a king abolishing his monarchy would only be self-defeating if his only goal was to be a king. However, if his goal as king was to make life better for his country, then abolishing his monarchy in favor of a democracy would be a very good move and not self-defeating at all.

Likewise, if the person's original goal was to produce and then dispose of the rewards as he wished, then doing so is not self-defeating. It's only self-defeating if his original goal was to simply have wealth.

<edit> The other part of Rand's argument is that the individual has the right to dispose of their wealth however they please, because they produced it and they own it. A democracy would only have a right to dispose of itself provided it was the democracy that created itself in the first place. </edit>

fauigerzigerk
That's a pretty fatalistic argument. I think meritocracy has merit and I don't want it to self destruct. That's why, like other principles, this one needs exceptions as too.

Set theory is very useful but it needs an exception to survive Russel's paradox. You can't let useful things become useless just to uphold some moral rule.

philwelch
I don't think she was exaggerating.

Atlas Shrugged was a formative influence during my late teens, but Rand is above all things an extremist. Still, she had some good ideas, she communicated them well, and she got me into philosophy. If you take the best parts of Rand and leave the rest, you'll be well served.

_glass
Reading the same thing at the moment. But right after reading The Fountain Head, which I like way more. Maybe because than these ideas were all fresh and new for me. But now it is just too romantic. I can understand why she takes this idealistic approach, but it is just that it doesn't read that good in this great length. I am at the point where she discovers Atlantis and they think they live in the old US.
[dead] neoclassical
Consider reading the originals upon which she almost certainly based her ideas: Plato "The Republic" and Nietzsche "Human, All Too Human"
timf
Good Calories, Bad Calories (Taubes)

About 700 children's books (Assorted authors)

derwiki
"The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. This was a result of asking my Twitter friends to decide between this and Art of War for me, and this won overwhelmingly. It's been a great read so far, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about how evolution and computer science can mix.
MikeCapone
Dawkins is eminently readable, even in books that you think you know what he's going to say. I also recommend The God Delusion.
derwiki
The God Delusion was the first Dawkins book I read -- a Christmas gift from my mother. When I told her what it was about, she got made and said "that's not in the spirit of Christmas."
apotheon
The real payoff in that book for computer science oriented people is the end, where Dawkins basically invents memetics as a field of study.

The Art of War is good, too, though.

JimmyL
Infinite Jest, as a long slow process.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo/The Girl who Played with Fire, each of which I found myself burning through in a day (the new definition of the genre of Swedish crime writing, which is amazing).

tptacek
What do you think about IJ? Where are you at in it? I'm ~400; was doing 75 pages a day during my summer break last week, but now that I'm working I'm down to 5 or 6 a day.
JimmyL
I like it, but it's a long march - I'm at about 320, and a had a similar pattern; 40 a day while on holiday, five or so while at work.

Seems like once you clear 200 pages or so, you're in it for the long haul. It's intimidatingly large, but I couldn't think of not finishing it.

raju
1. Programming Clojure (Not going too well)

2. Refactoring your Wetware (This is a very good book)

3. SICP (Just started looking into this to see if I can attempt to write the code in Clojure)

oscardelben
I am half the way of SICP and I also have my hand on clojure. It would be a good experiment to solve the problems with clojure.
bufordtwain
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn

carbon8
Omnivore's Dilemma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore%27s_Dilemma
brownegg
I'm a total foodie, and I simply cannot read this book. I'm not sure if I need pretty pictures, or salacious kitchen anecdotes, or what, but I read a lot of food books and I've failed to get past pg. 30 on this one several times.
latortuga
On the (sort of) same topic, I'm in the middle of Good Calories, Bad Calories.
jrockway
Me too. This book has taken me a long time to get through for some reason, but it's good, and I'm almost done :)
jamesbritt
* Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher (So-so. Pop-psychy, but interesting ideas.)

* 500 Essential Anime Movies: The Ultimate Guide, by Helen Mccarthy (Perhaps one doesn't actually read such a book, but graze.)

* Mister Blank Exhaustive Collection, by Christopher J. Hicks (Fun. Love the art.)

* Programming Cocoa with Ruby, by Brian Marick (Tonight I will likely crack this open and see how soon I can code something.)

* Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories, by Raymond Carver (Started in, will work slowly through the stories.)

Sitting on the floor, beckoning me:

* Sunnyside, by Glen David Gold

* The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson

kwantam
The Reasoned Schemer by Friedman, Byrd, and Kiselyov

Purely Functional Data Structures by Okasaki

Programming Language Pragmatics, 3rd ed by Scott

Fast Analytical Techniques for Electrical and Electronic Circuits by Vorperian

sb
I second "Programming Language Pragmatics" it is a fantastic book, and he is a very good writer, with illustrative examples and just the right balance between breadth/depth.
MikeCapone
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt

DanielBMarkham
Finished "Ghost" last week -- nice book!

Not as good as his first one, but well-written.

You know there's a third book in the series too, right? Not as good as the first two, but good.

What impressed me most about this author was after writing three books, he hung up the series. He said that was it, not going any father.

I gotta admire that. Most Sci-Fi Authors with a good series have to beat the thing to death before they let go.

Kaizyn
Well, he did follow it up with Zoe's Tale, a fourth book. And there's also Jane's Diary or some other book that is tangentially related to the main trilogy.
DanielBMarkham
Yikes!

Sorry about the misinformation. I said that based on how he closes "Last Colony" -- he makes it pretty clear he's done for a while.

I guess the lure of the steady paycheck is a tough thing to resist.

zemariamm
. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

. Programming Clojure

. Little Schemer (re-reading)

. Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals by David Aronson

ddemchuk
+1 on ZAMM, very interesting book...do you plan on moving on to Lila, the "sequel"? I've read that very few have a full understanding of the point of the second book...I never got around to reading it after the first...
Estragon
That book caused me no end of confusion, when I read it as a teenager. By the time Lila came out, it was no surprise to me that in it he repudiates much of what he said in ZAMM.

People should avoid reading it, because it's useless, and if they do read it, they should take it a lot less seriously than it does itself, because it's clear from the sequel that the author himself does.

zemariamm
Actually I don't know :), I usually avoid reading a lot of books from the same author, but, who knows :)
bts
"The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman

"Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter

quantumhobbit
A friend of mine has been completely obsessed with the Discworld books. I just borrowed "Jingo" and was impressed with how mature it was.(Mature in the ideas presented. The humor is absurd and appropriately silly) Pratchett isn't quite as great as Douglas Adams but is certainly close enough.