I'm finishing the Art of War by Sun Tzu and I'm looking for some book suggestions, so I'm curious to know which books are being read by the members of the HN community.
i binge buy from amazon and i have eclectic tastes - i don't have a tv and i don't like reading from electronic devices YMMV. Looking up at my bookcase shelf: Triumph of the City - Glaus, Time Enough for Love - Heinlein, We The Navigators, Strength to Love - Martin Luther King, The Filmmakers Handbook, Schaums's Mathematica, Other People's Wars - Hager, What if?, The Fiery Trial, The Difference Engine, Robert's Rules of Order, The Swerve.
Freaky. I'm reading this on another tab in this very browser session. Did you by any chance have any involvement in a recent /r/kerbalspaceprogram thread? Or is this just crazy coincidence?
One of the best books I read in 2013, hugely enjoyable and very funny. Was also lucky to get the 99p Kindle self published one before he got picked up by a publisher.
I remember seeing that deal. Should have jumped on it then but forgot about it. Then I saw the book at an airport news stand and grabbed it...glad it got picked up by a publisher!
- Becoming Steve Jobs - Brent Schlender (after reading Isaacson's Jobs' bio I figured another perspective wouldn't be horrible)
- Countdown to Zero Day - Kim Zetter (RE: Stuxnet and cyber-espionage)
And finally, I'm re-reading The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen (something of a social science approach to "Why do rebels/guerrillas/terrorists exist?")
I'm a big fan of The Accidental Guerrilla. I went through a big counter insurgency phase about seven years ago. That book and The Gamble by Ricks were my favorites.
Just finished Nate Silver's "The Signal and The Noise". Interesting collection of prediction case studies, seeing what can and can't be effectively predicted. Good for correcting black-and-white thinking.
Currently reading "Naples 44", diary of an intelligence officer there just after the US landings. The author is classically trained enough to immediately fall in love with the place despite the war, so it's a strange mix of lounging around Paestum and the stark effects of war.
Next in queue: pick one to re-read from Iain M Banks or Pratchett.
(Presumably Clausewitz is in your reading list somewhere as well; his book is unfinished but contains both good quotes to mine and real insight into how few military problems are about actual fighting itself.)
Currently reading:
Never Eat Alone - By Keith Ferrazi and Tahl Raz
How to network?
Basically, don't treat people like stepping stones. Make meaningful connection with them and always be an active go-giver without keeping score. Also, really ask for help when you need it without being bashful about it.
I can't get enough of reading about the history of Apple and Jobs in particular. I read the Isaacson's Jobs biography twice. It's now more of a guilty pleasure than anything.
Don Quixote is good too. I'm listening to the audio book. While listening to it, I don't really know what to make of it. It's part comedy, part tragedy and all around captivating. Also recommend the mini-story within Don Quixote called The Ill-Advised Curiosity.
1984, George Orwell. I'm enjoying it. It's bleak and scary and messes with your mind. The only think I dislike is that the overall mood is "look at how wrong this is". I was expecting a more detached and unemotional description of the setting, where all the "wrongness" would be creeping up in back of the reader's mind.
Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, Simon Blackburn. Not enjoying it. It is a well written book, and reads easilly, but it's way of explaining the themes is just not good. It's long-winded, goes back and forth between the philosophers and the analogies are not very good. Maybe I'm too used to technical books, but I was expecting something like "Theme X. This is what philosopher A thinks of it. This is what philosopher B thinks of it. This is how these theories clash". Probably gonna drop it.
Programming in Lua, Roberto Ierusalimschy. The first programming language book I bought since college. IMO, Lua is the most well-designed and beautiful language yet (from the one I know). The book is clear, concise, full of examples and it is simply a treat to read.
You may also like Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" [1]. Orwell asserted that Huxley ripped it off for Brave New World, but Huxley said that he had never heard of it.
I've read it in about 10 years ago, in my teens. It's funny because I've always thought that the Orwellian dystopia was a bit far-fetched, and the Huxleyan dystopia was much closer. Reading 1984, I feel like we're nearing both at the same time!
I'm currently reading The Design of Everyday Things. I'm not sure if anyone else does this but I recently created a Github repo to log all of the books I read [1]. I could use Goodreads but I like the visibility of Github for any future employers.
Great read with lots of sane advice. My only wish was that they talked more about "junior" folks and the whole mentoring aspect - steps to make that effective remotely (for both parties!)
I read remote almost two years ago shortly before starting my first remote job. I'm a huge 37signals fan but the book just didn't do it for me. I found the advice to be mostly obvious. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad book but I was really looking for more well tested industry specific advice. It would have been great to also hear of any remote working failures they endured during their 16 years in business.
Started Flatland on the train yesterday - lots of fun so far.
I'm looking for more Sci-fi if HN can recommend anything! I've been reading a lot of historical non-fiction over the years, but recently finished Snow Crash and the Diamond Age. Love the genre, but don't know much about it.
"Off to be the wizard" is pretty light and fun. "John dies at the end" was fun, not really sci-fi, more buffy the vampire slayer esque. "Existence" by David Brin made me want to puke it had so many good ideas. A tiny bit dated, but very smart. "The Martian" I expect you've read it. Good romp, easy to read. Reminded me of a Michael Crichton. "World War Z" was good.
I'm a huge fan of John Dies At The End. It's really not for everyone but I found it incredibly entertaining. The follow-up, This Book Is Full of Spiders is also worth reading.
Isaac Asimov is a must read for people who love Sci-Fi. Some of his books I loved: The Robot Series (The Caves of Steel, The Robots of Dawn etc.), The Foundation Series, Nemesis, the list goes on ...
R.A. Lafferty's literary sci-fi has many historical and non-fiction elements. Out of print but there's a complete collection online called "Talled Tales". Some stories can be read on the web, http://www.ralafferty.org/works/collections/online-stories/
The two books I've read by Stephenson and really enjoyed. Never really got into the Baroque cycle because it's so long winded, but that should also be good.
Not for every reader but Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) is something between historical fiction and science fiction. Worth a try in your case.
Also, it's hard to go wrong with the yearly Hugo Award winners and nominees. Sometimes they are middle entries in long running series, which is worth checking on Wikipedia if you like to start at Book 1. Usually it is just going to mean the whole series is great.
How about a few great authors who have all won?
Ursula K LeGuin
Lois McMaster Bujold
CJ Cherryh
Connie Willis
Jo Walton
Neuromancer by William Gibson.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke.
A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, both by Vernor Vinge.
Also, the Culture series by Iain M. Banks, but I would recommend not starting with the first published book, Consider Phlebas. YMMV, but I personally found it hard to get in to and almost didn't continue the series. Later I read lots of reviews of the second book, The Player of Games, and decided to give it a chance and have since read most of the remaining books. I have now gone back and re-read Consider Phlebas and love it now that I have a better handle on the setting, universe, and concepts from the series, but I definitely feel that The Player of Games is a much better intro into the series.
"Dune" the classic sci-fi novel for the first time and I've just finished the Fountain series. Before that was Snow Crash. On a classic sci-fi reading bender right now.
I did quite the bender over the last few years and covered all of the (Frank Herbert) Dune novels, as well as most of Orson Scott Card's and the Ringworld series. I highly recommend all of the Ringworld books if you haven't read them.
You may also enjoy two books by Edith Hamilton as more "preparation":
"Mythology" is a summary of the most common "stories" of Greek and Roman (and a bit Norse) mythology, good to understand contents and allusions.
"The Greek Way" is her "love letter" to Greece - why it was (according to her) better than our society, the differences in general thinking compared to Egyptians, Hindus, and "us modern Westerners", why we still have much to learn from the Greek.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, and I'm loving it. Some parts are funny, some are dry, and some are truly mind-blowing. As someone who loves wordplay, self-reference, and multiple layers of meaning, this book is like crack. Every chapter surprises me with something new. Its reputation is well-deserved.
It took me doing a reading group to get through that one. That was more my fault than the book, but GEB is real work, and having a number of people involved definitely helped me stick through the parts where I might have wandered off for brain candy.
I think it took me four tries before I finally read it all the way through. Eventually the text on formal systems becomes quite heavy and that's where I stopped in my previous tries... once I got past that hump it was downhill all the way. Highly worth the effort; one of the best books I've ever read.
I am a Strange Loop elaborates on the ideas from GEB, while also being more personal (which GEB definitely isn't). Some people I knew thought it was repetitive, less enjoyable, and less artistic than GEB. In some ways I agree with those criticisms. But if you want to know more about how self-reference actually leads to consciousness and more about Hofstadter the person I recommend it.
It's definitely fantastic, and one of the books that had the greatest influence on my thinking (I read it as a teenager, 20+ years ago).
If you want something less theoretical, more personal, poetic and emotional, his "Le ton beau de Marot" (English, despite the title) is also fabulous. He takes a short poem and translates it a hundred different ways, all the while musing about what "translation" means (literal, conveying the same emotion, using the same metaphors, between cultures...) as well as about thought, language and meaning more generally. And then, while he writes the book, his wife gets a brain tumor and dies, and the book becomes part of his mourning.
I see this book lauded on HN frequently. Would it be interesting/understandable for someone who doesn't have a CS background but has an interest in CS?
There is very little "hard CS" in the book, though there are references to programming. It's more about formal systems. If you're a CS major you may find these things easier to grasp, since you can draw analogies to finite state automata, recursion, the halting problem, etc. But a CS degree is by no means required to enjoy the book.
While not reading it right now (read it 4-5 yrs ago) I recommend The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. One of the few non-technical books that I really enjoyed :)
As I'm just 50 pages in, so far it's basically all familiar stuff, because I already have read most of the article series on fsharpforfunandprofit.com.
I was searching for recommendations online and people on reddit were recommending this book, together with Expert F#.
Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby, Sandi Metz. Doing this for a bookclub I sort of helped start with some local developers.
A Game of Thrones, GRRM. The new preview chapter restarted my hype train and reminded me how much I missed reading the books. So I started another read-through, hoping I'll be done by the release of the next book.
I've also been reading lots of stuff on Git. I'm trying to learn everything I can about hooks so that I can start doing awesome things automatically, and I feel it's the one aspect of git workflows I haven't explored yet.
399 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 304 ms ] threadCurrently working my way through Thiel's book. It's not bad if you haven't read it yet.
This should take me a couple months.
Treasure your original edition.
- The Good Spy - Kai Bird (Robert Ames bio)
- Becoming Steve Jobs - Brent Schlender (after reading Isaacson's Jobs' bio I figured another perspective wouldn't be horrible)
- Countdown to Zero Day - Kim Zetter (RE: Stuxnet and cyber-espionage)
And finally, I'm re-reading The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen (something of a social science approach to "Why do rebels/guerrillas/terrorists exist?")
-The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Currently reading "Naples 44", diary of an intelligence officer there just after the US landings. The author is classically trained enough to immediately fall in love with the place despite the war, so it's a strange mix of lounging around Paestum and the stark effects of war.
Next in queue: pick one to re-read from Iain M Banks or Pratchett.
(Presumably Clausewitz is in your reading list somewhere as well; his book is unfinished but contains both good quotes to mine and real insight into how few military problems are about actual fighting itself.)
How to network?
Basically, don't treat people like stepping stones. Make meaningful connection with them and always be an active go-giver without keeping score. Also, really ask for help when you need it without being bashful about it.
If you liked that you might also enjoy Daemon and the sequel Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez.
I can't get enough of reading about the history of Apple and Jobs in particular. I read the Isaacson's Jobs biography twice. It's now more of a guilty pleasure than anything.
Don Quixote is good too. I'm listening to the audio book. While listening to it, I don't really know what to make of it. It's part comedy, part tragedy and all around captivating. Also recommend the mini-story within Don Quixote called The Ill-Advised Curiosity.
Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, Simon Blackburn. Not enjoying it. It is a well written book, and reads easilly, but it's way of explaining the themes is just not good. It's long-winded, goes back and forth between the philosophers and the analogies are not very good. Maybe I'm too used to technical books, but I was expecting something like "Theme X. This is what philosopher A thinks of it. This is what philosopher B thinks of it. This is how these theories clash". Probably gonna drop it.
Programming in Lua, Roberto Ierusalimschy. The first programming language book I bought since college. IMO, Lua is the most well-designed and beautiful language yet (from the one I know). The book is clear, concise, full of examples and it is simply a treat to read.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29
[1] https://github.com/atom-morgan/read-it
http://37signals.com/remote/
I'm looking for more Sci-fi if HN can recommend anything! I've been reading a lot of historical non-fiction over the years, but recently finished Snow Crash and the Diamond Age. Love the genre, but don't know much about it.
Also, it's hard to go wrong with the yearly Hugo Award winners and nominees. Sometimes they are middle entries in long running series, which is worth checking on Wikipedia if you like to start at Book 1. Usually it is just going to mean the whole series is great.
How about a few great authors who have all won?
Also, the Culture series by Iain M. Banks, but I would recommend not starting with the first published book, Consider Phlebas. YMMV, but I personally found it hard to get in to and almost didn't continue the series. Later I read lots of reviews of the second book, The Player of Games, and decided to give it a chance and have since read most of the remaining books. I have now gone back and re-read Consider Phlebas and love it now that I have a better handle on the setting, universe, and concepts from the series, but I definitely feel that The Player of Games is a much better intro into the series.
Try Ian M Banks if you haven't already for some cerebral sci-fi, also Vernor Vinge.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm
"Mythology" is a summary of the most common "stories" of Greek and Roman (and a bit Norse) mythology, good to understand contents and allusions.
"The Greek Way" is her "love letter" to Greece - why it was (according to her) better than our society, the differences in general thinking compared to Egyptians, Hindus, and "us modern Westerners", why we still have much to learn from the Greek.
http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2yys1i/lets_start_...
http://godel-escher-bach.wikia.com/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_...
If you want something less theoretical, more personal, poetic and emotional, his "Le ton beau de Marot" (English, despite the title) is also fabulous. He takes a short poem and translates it a hundred different ways, all the while musing about what "translation" means (literal, conveying the same emotion, using the same metaphors, between cultures...) as well as about thought, language and meaning more generally. And then, while he writes the book, his wife gets a brain tumor and dies, and the book becomes part of his mourning.
While not reading it right now (read it 4-5 yrs ago) I recommend The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. One of the few non-technical books that I really enjoyed :)
I was searching for recommendations online and people on reddit were recommending this book, together with Expert F#.
There is also this article recommending those two books: http://jorgetavares.com/2015/01/01/reading-list-for-f-learni...
A Game of Thrones, GRRM. The new preview chapter restarted my hype train and reminded me how much I missed reading the books. So I started another read-through, hoping I'll be done by the release of the next book.
I've also been reading lots of stuff on Git. I'm trying to learn everything I can about hooks so that I can start doing awesome things automatically, and I feel it's the one aspect of git workflows I haven't explored yet.
Code Complete 2 - Only halfway through but this is by far the best book about programming I have ever read.