* Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Atkins. Now that I'm into physics I had a hunch that I would now also appreciate chemistry. This book delivered.
* Philosophy of Mind: A Very Short Introduction by Barbara Gail Montero. I recall it just being a really well-written overview of an interesting field.
* Systemantics by John Gall. Very entertaining musings on why systems fail.
* Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami. Read this while in Japan. A very strange and interesting noir detective story.
* All Systems Red by Martha Wells. <3 Murderbot <3
* Desert Oracle Volume 1 by Ken Layne. American southwest folklore. Read it while in Joshua Tree.
* There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Biggest brainfuck I've read in a long time, probably ever.
* Fundamentals: Ten Keys To Reality by Frank Wilczek. Physics musings from a Nobel winner.
wonger_ 5 days ago [-]
+1 to antimemetics. I don't usually enjoy sci-fi, but this one captured my attention. You can read it online too: https://qntm.org/scp
tyrust 5 days ago [-]
I read it this year, too. It's a fun read, but I wouldn't recommend anything past the first group of articles (that is, don't bother with "Five Five Five Five Five"). The ideas are good, to be sure, but the overall arc past that is pretty weak.
MollyRealized 5 days ago [-]
If you enjoyed that, the short stories are quite good. qntm = Sam Hughes, and some of their work is published under that name.
dyauspitr 4 days ago [-]
Sam Hughes is a man. Why are you referring to him as their?
therealdrag0 4 days ago [-]
If I don’t know someone’s gender and can’t be bothered to look it up I’ll use “they”. And I know Sam’s of both genders.
itishappy 4 days ago [-]
There's nothing grammatically incorrect or ambiguous about the sentence. What's causing your confusion?
hellojesus 4 days ago [-]
I no idea who Sam is, but I believe "their" is typically utilized to describe plurals while "his", "hers", "its" describe the singular.
My initial reading led me to believe that qntm was a group aliased as Sam.
dyauspitr 4 days ago [-]
It’s ideological. It’s using language that intentionally provides less information.
itishappy 4 days ago [-]
Their usage of "their" aligns with how English has been used for centuries (Wikipedia says 14th century), but more importantly the author's writing was the topic of discussion not their gender.
Policing other's pronoun usage is ideological, but that's your argument, not theirs.
cubefox 4 days ago [-]
Obviously, that is: statistically, all involved here (the SCP author, the HN commenters, you, me) are men, so saying "he" is very likely correct. If by chance someone here is nonetheless a woman she will probably speak up.
MollyRealized 3 days ago [-]
'Their' is practical not ideological - Sam could be Samuel or Samantha, and I didn't know which. Also, bring up the use of 'their' for unknown gender with Shakespeare and Austen, who both did it.
The only one being 'ideological' here is you, getting worked up over basic grammar that's been around longer than Modern English. Go out and touch some grass.
3 days ago [-]
thyrsus 4 days ago [-]
Sam can be short for Samantha or Samuel. "Their" allows one to avoid mis-gendering someone when in ignorance of their gender.
BalinKing 5 days ago [-]
Yeah, the first half or so is a blast, but there’s a point where I feel it drops off quite a bit. (For me, I think it was when the POV changed to Adam.) Still worth a read, though!
jcul 5 days ago [-]
I remember hearing about this before and meaning to read it, but for some reason completely forgot.
Thanks for reminding me.
pavlov 5 days ago [-]
It's not your first time reading the story.
kaycebasques 5 days ago [-]
You write a comment on Hacker News — but what you've written turns out to be hieroglyphs, and nobody can understand them, not even you.
The English translation of a second book in the same universe (well, one of the two universes) was just released---The City and Its Uncertain Walls. I've only just started reading it, though, so I can't offer any commentary beyond that.
If you like Murakami, you might like Convenience Store Woman or Earthlings, both by Sayaka Murata. Mieko
Kawakami is also great. Killing Commendatore (by Murakami, again) is my favorite of his. I have no idea why it's my favorite, though. To be honest I can barely remember the plot of any of his books; it's just a feeling.
ylem 5 days ago [-]
Dr. John Gall was my pediatrician! When I was young, I was interested in astronomy and he gave me a membership in the astronomy book club. I only learned of his work on system theory after his death.
kaycebasques 5 days ago [-]
Wow, what an interesting guy. I have a big affinity for people who are interested in lots of different fields. Gotta love any story about someone who feels so strongly about some idea that they fork over their own money to self-publish the book. (IIRC Gall self-published the first edition himself after getting turned down by 20 publishers.)
TheGoodBarn 5 days ago [-]
Someone gifted me All Systems Red this year and I had never heard of the series and it may be one of my faves of all time. I’m on book 5 now it’s been such a joy
hombre_fatal 5 days ago [-]
It's only a 3-4 hour long audiobook. Definitely gonna try it on my run tonight.
kaycebasques 5 days ago [-]
> “It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said. I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn’t stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, “That was private.”
hinkley 5 days ago [-]
Congrats on starting Martha Wells but how did you stop at one?
I think I read or consumed almost 25 of her books last year.
kaycebasques 5 days ago [-]
I only finished the first one a couple weeks back! And then had to wait for the next one to be available at the library. Definitely going to read the first 4 at least.
hinkley 4 days ago [-]
Oh man. Should have asked for some for Christmas.
They’re short reads and the series is still ongoing. I’ve seen indications she’s under contract for at least one more book. It’s useful I find especially if you read a lot of things, to be able to revisit the story shortly before the next book is published. The same way many people rewatched Ted Lasso each season. I think I managed to only reread the early books in The Expanse twice but Robert Jordan is slow and his books are loaded with foreshadowing, so when he was still alive there were a lot of people rereading those fat books many many times.
The most recent murderbot book I had to reread because I got my wires crossed on what the backstory was, I combined two different arcs and hallucinated a third one entirely. Never did figure out what I borrowed that story from. But they’re very short. I think I reread the entire thing in ten to twelve days, and not even working that hard.
wholinator2 5 days ago [-]
Yooo you got the chemistry introduction by Atkins? He's the author of the "standard" undergraduate physical chemistry text and some others. I've got tons of those tiny "very short introduction" books but i have yet to see chemistry.
kaycebasques 5 days ago [-]
It was exactly the kind of overview I was looking for. You can tell that Atkins is someone that was writing out of pure intellectual love for his domain.
383toast 5 days ago [-]
If you want more brainfuck, read Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
adelmotsjr 5 days ago [-]
What book would you recommend for Physics?
kaycebasques 5 days ago [-]
That Fundamentals book by Wilczek that I mentioned is a good start. I'm also reading through the pop-sci classics now (A Brief History Of Time, Feynman's stuff) and they're not disappointing.
I really like the Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press. I've read 30 of them so far (just counted). At this point they basically have a book on every aspect of physics that has interested me at one time or another: black holes, gravity, quantum theory, waves, time, thermodynamics, chaos, etc. Really love being able to literally put the book in my back pocket and read a few pages whenever I have a spare moment. Each book can be very hit-or-miss, though. Some of them are badly written and fail at their basic value proposition (providing a concise and reasonably complete overview of a field).
> I was also going through a phase in my life where I believed reading more fiction would help power up my imagination.
I kind of hate this mindset. Why does reading always have to be with the goal of self improvement? When someone binge watches a new TV series on Netflix no one asks them what skill they were trying to sharpen by enjoying that media.
bisby 5 days ago [-]
I also dislike the mindset that reading == intellectual. I know plenty of people who read a LOT but it's all Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey type stuff. And I know people who never read books, but are constantly watching documentaries or otherwise always learning.
People should be able to have hobbies and self improvement separate and each one delivered in whichever medium they happen to prefer.
(And I'm not trying to say bad things about either of the books I mentioned, but rather illustrate that certain types of books aren't going to make you a scholar, just because you read a lot. Read what you enjoy.)
edanm 5 days ago [-]
As someone who reads a lot - probably more than 99% of people, I guess? - I mostly agree.
> People should be able to have hobbies and self improvement separate and each one delivered in whichever medium they happen to prefer.
Agreed.
> Read what you enjoy.
Semi-agree on this one.
There are different reasons to read. You can read for pure entertainment. You can read to learn things. You can read to be motivated. You can read to calm down. You can read to be part of the conversation.
Reading what you enjoy is good advice, and it's a valid approach, but so is reading something that's a little but hard and not very enjoyable, because you want to expand your knowledge, to learn and grow.
Read what you want for whatever reason you want, would be my recommendation.
(I personally mix most of the reasons above.)
Ntrails 4 days ago [-]
> Read what you want for whatever reason you want, would be my recommendation.
My minor counter here is "don't let the reason you read [something] be because someone has made you feel like you should"?
I (personally) observe pushing through a thing you actively don't enjoy for external validation etc will just demotivate and bleed into the entire activity. That's not to say you should not try a book because somebody suggests/recommends it. But try, don't feel obliged in order to gain approval.
In the same vein, don't avoid reading "trash" for fun because people are asses. Be it young adult swashbuckling, adult romance or elves and wizards - don't let anyone make you feel bad about your preferences.
bisby 2 days ago [-]
Thank you. this is much more what I was trying to convey by "read what you enjoy". I meant less "enjoy" as in "read because you enjoy it" and more "because you want to". If you WANT to read a book that challenges you, even if it's a bit tedious, then do so. But not because of the external validation.
yazantapuz 4 days ago [-]
Jorge Luis Borges said something about:
if Shakespeare interests you, that’s fine. If you find him tedious, leave him. Shakespeare hasn’t yet written for you. The day will come when Shakespeare will be right for you and you will be worthy of Shakespeare, but in the meantime there’s no need to hurry things.
Amezarak 5 days ago [-]
> but are constantly watching documentarie
I don't know why this is, but every single documentary I have seen on a subject that I know something about has been factually atrocious. I strongly discourage people from watching any documentaries. Maybe a few nature-following-animals documentaries are OK, but for some reason I don't understand the average documentary is completely mendacious, with facts altered, twisted to be dramatic, omitted because they contradict some narrative, set pieces completely wrong, the creation of some narrative that doesn't even make real sense, etc.
It's not that there aren't awful books, of course there are, but documentaries seem to be almost uniformly awful, even ones very highly rated, where books are usually the actual source material anyway. On top of this, documentaries are much better suited as propaganda vehicles, and are often used that way.
Of course, it may be I am more sensitive than most people to these issues; other people may find lower truthiness levels acceptable if it's the only way to garner their attention.
hombre_fatal 5 days ago [-]
Just because you categorize something as a leisure activity doesn't mean someone shouldn't do it with an objective in mind.
Daily creative writing, journaling, (trying to) learn to dance, reading books in Spanish when I'd get more enjoyment reading in English. These are all things I've done with goals in mind beyond leisure. In fact I don't particularly enjoy them enough to do them without an objective, else I wouldn't have had to go out of my way to do them.
You don't enjoy everything or else you wouldn't have to try at anything.
> When someone binge watches a new TV series on Netflix no one asks them what skill they were trying to sharpen by enjoying that media.
But they weren't demanding this of anyone else. It was an objective for themself. You are actually the one demanding something of someone else just because you have different preferences. ;) Is that a great mindset?
globular-toast 5 days ago [-]
As someone who reads books for fun (including hardcore technical books) I get where you're coming from. But I think the author understands that books can be both fun and useful. In fact they point it out several times. There's nothing wrong with reading books (or watching netflix) for fun, but there's nothing wrong with doing it because it's useful either.
cmiller1 5 days ago [-]
Perhaps, but the fact that they needed to include that line almost defensively speaks to the culture, as if they had to justify why they were reading fiction books.
toofy 4 days ago [-]
people are allowed to blog why they decided to read more of some genre.
why does it upset you so that someone else wrote their own personal reasons on their own blog?
layer8 5 days ago [-]
Those without that mindset don’t write blog posts about it.
walterbell 5 days ago [-]
In censorship-plagued societies, some non-fiction can only be found in fiction.
Sam6late 5 days ago [-]
There are many ways of reading, the selection and the diversity (old and contemporary writers) of what you read helps you see how you could appreciate a more critical view of what you are reading.
Reading a novel before watching someone's rendering of the same novel into, say Netflix, may expand your imagination and possibly show you how limited the director's version of the same story. I felt that with Stephen King's thrillers, Pet Sematary and Thinner, then watching them as movies.
hinkley 5 days ago [-]
I can get through about six to eight books a year on the self improvement route and a couple dozen or more if I just have fun with it.
Revisiting old audiobooks is especially good for those times you are doing a mundane task or just need something comfortable for one of those days/weeks.
maksimur 5 days ago [-]
TV series and movies can also be watched with a goal in mind, whether secondary to the fun or not. Examples are seeing how culture changed or how a genre evolved.
His finish, going into details of Nietzsche is simply wonderful.
For those that have tried, but cannot penetrate these types of books, start with any Nobel Literature winner that looks interesting. They are the gateway to serious literature, and by reading the recognized "best written intellectual novel of the year" you'll be gradually exposed to the writing structures used in harder to penetrate literature.
Don't be fooled into thinking that a Nobel Literature winner is difficult to read, none of them are and that is why they have the award. They are also white knuckle rides through tragic human lives where the main character wins against incredible odds, and these novels demonstrate the critical thinking and secondary considerations necessary to prevail when others are crushed. Great literature teaches one first hand how to use critical thought, a dire need today.
GeoAtreides 5 days ago [-]
> Don't be fooled into thinking that a Nobel Literature winner is difficult to read, none of them are
Kind of a stretch there. No casual reader can handle Doctor Faustus (Thomas Mann) or the Glass beads game (Hesse) without serious effort. Sure, one can try, in the same way one can try running a marathon without training, with the same predictable results.
tyrust 5 days ago [-]
I've read a few books from Hesse, including The Glass Bead Game, and found the English translations rather readable. His more commonly recommended books, Siddhartha and Steppenwolf, should be fine for any high school level reader.
bsenftner 4 days ago [-]
for those saying "The Glass Bead Game" is a difficult read, be aware there are multiple translations from the original German. One in English is simply titled "The Glass Bead Game" without the subtitle "Magisti Ludi", another it simply titled "Magistri Ludi", and yet another is titled "Magistri Ludi: The Glass Bead Game". The first one I mention was originally translated during the 60's, when Hesse was enjoying popularity with the counter culture set, and that version is written to be largely understood by a general audience. The other translations are more literal to the original German and are a more difficult read. I read the first, easy one initially, but have read the others versions over the years as well. I prefer the easy one, simply because the ideas are the same on all of them, but with the "easy one" I can discuss with non-readers of Hesse and they understand what I'm talking about. The other versions use language that is not in common usage, meaning I have to translate to easier terms to discuss the book with anyone.
AnonC 5 days ago [-]
Any personal recommendations for a starter or favorites (perhaps top three or five or something like that)?
bsenftner 5 days ago [-]
It's subtle in how it delivers it's brilliance: A Clockwork Orange.
Warning: spoilers follow that do not diminish the knock out punch this work delivers: It's written in it's own language, a mixture of Russian and UK slang, which one cannot read at first. About 3 chapters in, the language clicks and then a good reader starts the book over from the beginning. It is a popular book due to the film, and the ultra violence depicted within, but it is also ground breaking philosophical literature because the main character is a hardened criminal and is the narrator, he spends the entire novel explaining his philosophy of life, which by the end of the novel you realize is the same philosophy of modern politics, and the UK edition of the novel ends with the entire novel being the story of a senior member of parliament's youth origin story.
The fact that the novel is in a fictional language increases the reader's submersion in the story line, creating one of the most impactful novels I know.
Another great read, much shorter, more like getting into a street brawl: Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky. Practically the creator of self critical essays, and often the first read for people interested in Existentialism.
Anything from the "Beat Generation" authors, anything from Philip K Dick, anything from Herman Hesse.
mariusor 3 days ago [-]
If one gets into the books that invent their own dialect, the most dense I found was "Riddley Walker" by Hoban Russel. As a non native English reader it was very difficult to make progress, but once the understanding settles in, it's a pretty nice story. Also of note is Anathem, even though Stephenson's jargon is more accessible, I think, to Latin languages speakers.
matthew_stone 5 days ago [-]
Three Booker prize winners I’m particularly fond of:
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is another recent literary favorite
atulatul 5 days ago [-]
I haven't read Evaristo but I will add Salman Rushdie to your list. Particularly, Midnight's Children.
matthew_stone 5 days ago [-]
I bounced off Midnight’s Children the first time I tried to read it, but that was probably 10 or 15 years ago now. I’m in between books at the moment, so your comment will push me to put it on the top of my list for the new year :)
Girl, Woman, Other is one of my overall favorites from the last few years. Th character work is phenomenal. Do try to read a hard copy, rather than on an ereader, if you can. The book uses punctuation and the layout of text on a page creatively, and I’m not sure how well that gets preserved in an ebook.
Lyngbakr 5 days ago [-]
I've tried my damnedest, but simply cannot get into Rushdie. Given that Midnight's Children won the "Booker of Bookers", I thought that would be a great place to start. When I finished the book I turned it over in my hands wondering if I missed something or if I'm simply not smart enough to get Rushdie. I read a couple more of his books and the result was much the same, unfortunately.
tirumaraiselvan 4 days ago [-]
Big Rushdie fan here. I used to think it could be because of a lack of cultural context especially for books like Midnights Children and Moors Last Sigh but now I also think that it could also be a matter of taste. Rushdie himself quotes Milan Kundera who said: "...that the novel descended from two parents, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy". The latter is a style of writing where all conventional rules of literature are broken, it's just wildly creative so to speak. Rushdie's Midnights Children and James Joyce's Ulysses fall into this category.
If you want to see the other style of writing in Rushdie, I can suggest Shalimar The Clown or The Ground Beneath Her Feet. But these are nowhere near as grand as Midnights Children.
In either category, a fair amount of interest in history helps to enjoy his books.
atulatul 4 days ago [-]
After a few pages into Midnight's Children it made me a bit uncomfortable (not bored)- not for the story or characters like in other novels- where you identify with characters or feel for them, their plights, etc. It made me uncomfortable in reading the way the story was told. I wondered why was this book so loved, it does not seem like any good book I've read so far, in fact it somewhat destroys the ideas I have about how a good novel should be. And then a thought occurred that maybe it is because of those things- as
tirumaraiselvan (sibling comment) put it 'all conventional rules of literature are broken, it's just wildly creative'- that this book was loved. With that understanding I 'decided' I was going to be ok with the discomfort I felt till I finished the book. And then creativity became visible and the discomfort sort of went away.
tirumaraiselvan 4 days ago [-]
Exactly! Midnights Children and Moors Last Sigh are so non-linear that one cannot expect to get the hang of it till they are atleast 50 pages through. It's usually on the second reading that the amazingness of those initial pages is felt.
wahnfrieden 5 days ago [-]
Krasznahorkai is by far my favorite Booker recipient
He also did the screenplays for most of Bela Tarr’s movies
stevoski 5 days ago [-]
Ernest Hemingway - starting with “The Old Man and the Sea”.
After reading that, you’ll no longer think that Nobel Prize winners for literature write books that are difficult to read and understand.
bsenftner 4 days ago [-]
I've never enjoyed Hemingway; his short sentences feel unnatural to me. I end up feeling like the narrative is trying, hard, to manipulate my feelings, to the degree that sense of being manipulated ends up being the loudest voice in my head as I try to read Hemingway. I've finished his books with only a memory of arguing with the prose the entire time.
otherme123 5 days ago [-]
When someone ask for my favourite author my answer is Hemingway. Want to write better? Try to write like Hemingway.
That said, people who read less tend to believe that more and bigger words equal better writting. My (usually scientific) texts are described as "telegraphic", and heavily expanded without adding any real content. E.g. "the house was white" gets transformed to "the paint that covered the beautiful house was pure white".
jgalt212 5 days ago [-]
Most of Steinbeck is similarly approachable.
nihzm 5 days ago [-]
Roughly sorted by thickness (for the editions I own), these are among my favourites and arguably a good starting point
* Animal Farm - George Orwell
* The Fall - Albert Camus
* Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
* One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
* The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
internet_points 3 days ago [-]
Master and Margarita is wonderfully burlesque and beautiful, and not that thick ;-)
smodo 5 days ago [-]
Imre Kertesz - Fatelessness
Easy to read but provides a profound understanding of the unique historical situation it describes. A famous and heartbreaking sentence: ‘(…) I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.’
okasaki 5 days ago [-]
Doris Lessing
sillyfluke 5 days ago [-]
I like to encourage extensive use of quotes whenever I see them in book reviews, and at least this author makes a little effort to provide some. It often annoys me to no end when I read long book reviews with very little quotes from the actual book. Like, where is the evidence of this amazing writing.
I understand that for some books specific quotes don't quite get across what makes the book great. But in those cases I expect the author to address that characteristic directly, and make an effort to try to explain why the book is great despite not being very quotable. And by quotes I mean quotes that can span an entire page if need be.
The only exceptions to this that I'm inclined to allow is when your descriptive writing skill is at such a pro level that the review itself is a piece of art. But most "professional" book reviewers are not even at that pro level frankly.
An example of actual "pro level" would be this Martin Amis line from one of his reviews:
"You can stir a vat of molasses with James Wood's Chekhov boner." (I'm recalling the line from memory)
pavlov 5 days ago [-]
Long quotes are problematic from a copyright point of view, especially because different countries have different interpretations of what may be called "right to quote" or "fair use".
p3rls 5 days ago [-]
>> Great literature teaches one first hand how to use critical thought, a dire need today.
And that's why we see in the halls of our colleges, where these works are pored over day in and day out, that these humanities majors are the font of wisdom in our civilization.
BTW Nietzche speaks in goodreads quotes and meme-like aphorisms. If you can't get through Nietzche maybe reading isn't for you. (There's nothing wrong with audiobooks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv5IyRuEVI4&t=10s either)
bsenftner 5 days ago [-]
If not them, then who is? It sure is not the management wealth class, driving all of humanity off an extinction cliff. It's not the religious leaders, that appear to be as corrupt as they can possibly be. It's not the tech industry or leaders, that appear to be yes-person suck ups to wealth if not fascist wealth itself.
Wisdom does not equate with power, in fact: overt power is not the result of wisdom, but fanatical perseverance to wealth creation, often in opposition of wisdom in favor of simple dominance of others, and basic mental illness driving that individual.
maeil 5 days ago [-]
Your profile has made me curious. May I ask you if it was the MBA itself that made you come to this insight? It's so uncommon to see an MBA holder with such views.
bsenftner 5 days ago [-]
Well, I also have 5 undergraduate degrees: computer science, creative writing, philosophy, statistics, and a general business degree. I was a fat kid that stuttered, read far too much to avoid people and then got carried away with learning. I read all the Nobel Lit winners by the end of my 4th grade, by the end of grade school I was running out of authors, but I discovered writing software and that took over my attention.
Plus, my MBA was also to understand the world, as business is this world.
JadeNB 5 days ago [-]
> BTW Nietzche speaks in goodreads quotes and meme-like aphorisms.
Aside from the fact that I doubt it's true, this seems a lot like panning The Third Man as derivative of later thrillers.
vmilner 5 days ago [-]
I can never praise A Wizard of Earthsea enough - although it’s highly regarded I never think it quite receives the level of praise it should as a book that will move children (and adults). I first heard it read by Edward Fox on BBCs Jackanory in the mid70s and have remembered it ever since.
thefaux 5 days ago [-]
It bums me out that we live in the world of Hogwarts rather than the world of Earthsea. Even though they are accessible to children, the depth of these books is so far beyond most contemporary culture while also beautifully stirring the imagination.
sapphicsnail 5 days ago [-]
It's a little odd that he recommends Loebs for Cicero and Aeschylus. They have Greek/Latin on one side and English on the other. The translations vary in quality and they are significantly more expensive than buying an English-only translation. I have a bunch of Loebs but I studied Classics and can read Greek and Latin. I would never recommend them to a friend.
Edit: Just wanted to add that Aeschylus, Euripedes, and Sophicles are great reads. You can read a whole play in one sitting. If I could recommend one from each it would be Agamemnon, The Bacchae, and Antigone. Each of those plays deeply affected me and they're fairly accessible.
diob 5 days ago [-]
Best I read in 2024:
"I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom"
Highly recommend it to folks, especially if you enjoy Pargin's other works ("John Dies at the End", "Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits"). I am continually in awe at how he is evolving as a writer.
His characterizations and insights convey a unique and profound interest in the world we live in, and it’s clear he takes great care in understanding others and what makes them who they are.
It'll make you rethink some of your relationships / reactions to the current world (social media, other humans, etc.).
edanm 5 days ago [-]
It's really interesting how strongly Pargin has managed to "brand" himself, at least in my mind. I read the title you mentioned, and despite only having read "John Dies at the End", I insta-guessed it's the same author.
Weird thing is that "John Dies at the End" sounds like something I'd love, and yet I really bounced off of it when trying to read it. I've been meaning to give it another go.
diob 5 days ago [-]
That series definitely had a different feel at the start compared to his current work (and even later work in the same series).
He's no less funny, but he's honed in on exploring the human condition (in a natural way) in each of his books.
retskrad 5 days ago [-]
People often lament the decline in literacy, but the books mentioned in the article demand hundreds or thousands of hours of focused practice to achieve even moderate reading speed and comprehension. These books can be far more rewarding than social media or YouTube, but they are often dense, esoteric, and written in complex sentence structures. Since our brains aren’t naturally wired for reading, developing this skill is a challenging and humbling process. Most people decide it isn’t worth the effort.
technothrasher 5 days ago [-]
> Since our brains aren’t naturally wired for reading
There's actually some evidence that we are, in fact, naturally wired for reading. The below study, for instance, shows that the area in the brain used for visualizing words seems to be already hooked up to language processing areas in newborns.
Most people "decide" to not develop their reading skills when they are young children without the ability to understand the long-term implications.
criddell 5 days ago [-]
AI tutors might help with this because I think the constraints teachers have make it difficult to foster a love of books in a lot of kids.
When I was growing up, teachers would assign one text for the entire class to read. Sometimes it was a book I enjoyed (like Canticle for Leibowitz) but more often than not it was some book I hated (like Great Gatsby which I reread as an adult and still think it’s terrible). If you really wanted to instill a love of reading and develop skills around reading, you would give students more choice.
My kids had a similar experience so I don’t think much changed between 1985 and 2015. If anything, it’s worse now. It feels like schools do as much as they can to prevent kids from enjoying reading. They were assigned only books they had zero interest in and were given so much homework they had no desire or energy left to read for pleasure.
It took me a long time after high school to start reading for pleasure (thank you Douglas Adams and Michael Ondaatje). I hope it works out for my kids too.
So maybe the problem isn't kids who decide they don't like to read, but voters and taxpayers have decided that they don't want to pay for anything better.
cinntaile 5 days ago [-]
It depends. If the complex sentence structures can be expressed more clearly using simpler structures, I would argue the writer is lacking.
dantondwa 5 days ago [-]
Sometimes the writing itself is a guide for the mind of the reader, and the indirect path prose can take is part of the message.
Not everything has to be written in digestible snippets of text.
raffraffraff 5 days ago [-]
My wife writes a little, but reads a lot. One time she went back and re-read something she had written years ago, and came away thinking "I hate this type of writing! It thinks it's so damn smart!". Her takeaway was this: if you're in love with the way you phrased something, rewrite it.
Hey goal is to write a story with plot. Real characters. Arcs. As soon as she finds herself wasting time rolling sentences around her mouth, like toffee, with big fancy words, she is directly hurting the readers' flow. Sometimes it's nice to leave one or two, but in general you shouldn't try to be in love with every sentence you've written. But every sentence should move the story forward. Just tell the damn story. Because when you come back to your writing years later, it's those very stylish, witty, fancy phrases that will embarrass you.
cenazoic 5 days ago [-]
I think this speaks to a common misunderstanding of ‘literary’ fiction vs. ‘genre’ fiction - the former is typically more character- or idea-driven, while the latter is story/plot driven.
I’m not making the argument that one is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other; rather that their goals are different.
I do tend to agree with the idea that you shouldn’t be ‘afraid to kill your darlings’ (cite needed). Flannery O’Connor was once asked whether she thought that MFA programs killed too many aspiring authors. Her reply was that she thought they didn’t kill enough of them.
aspenmayer 5 days ago [-]
> I do tend to agree with the idea that you shouldn’t be ‘afraid to kill your darlings’ (cite needed). Flannery O’Connor was once asked whether she thought that MFA programs killed too many aspiring authors. Her reply was that she thought they didn’t kill enough of them.
It's funny to me that that line by O’Connor is both good writing and good business, at least in that it reduces competition with their own works. Furthermore, making quotable quips is the best kind of publicity for your writing you can do for free as an author. I wonder how many MFA programs are so explicit about the dismal prospects of writing as a livelihood or career, not that it was ever much better in the past. Arguably, it's easier than ever to get paid as an independent writer, but that doesn't make it any easier to make a decent living exclusively from one's published output.
> A piece of advice to prospective authors that they must kill their “darlings”, i.e. suppress overuse of their favorite expressions, tropes, characters, etc. Often attributed to William Faulkner (1897–1962), but already expressed earlier by Arthur Quiller-Couch (murder one's darlings); more recently popularized by Stephen King.
bbddg 5 days ago [-]
Was it intentional that you used the phrase “rolling sentences around her mouth, like toffee” in a post about how it’s better to write plainly?
greenie_beans 5 days ago [-]
william faulkner would like a word
ilovethesecir 5 days ago [-]
[flagged]
greenie_beans 5 days ago [-]
reading this whole debate in this thread, i thought: "literary fiction writers should not be worried about ai because tech ppl don't like prose"
HellDunkel 5 days ago [-]
The thing is- it often isn‘t (worth it) until you can put things in context and even then it is not a given you will be rewarded.
I stopped reading to forcefully educate myself and just read for entertainment. Turns out I read much more and even found many more great books i want to read.
pknerd 5 days ago [-]
A kind of off-topic:
How do you, as a techie, find time to read most of the books? Any tips or hacks? Ryan Holiday once mentioned that he managed to read extensively by always keeping books with him, allowing him to read whenever he found some spare time.
s1artibartfast 5 days ago [-]
I think having/making time to read is pretty independent from being a techie. I know people who work 6 hours a week and 60 hours a week. People that haven't touched a book since college, and those that build their careers around the ability to read books.
edanm 5 days ago [-]
Listen to audiobooks.
The amount of "spare time" most people have, time they're doing random things that don't require full focus, is enormous, at least it is for me. Arranging breakfast for the kids before the school day, doing dishes, walking to and from places, working out at the gym, etc - all of those times become moments to listen to whatever you're reading.
TrueSlacker0 5 days ago [-]
100% this. Sometimes it's audio books, sometimes it's long form podcasts. But usually I "find" about 20hrs a week for this and its been a great way to learn.
linsomniac 5 days ago [-]
I've made it part of my bedtime routine. Part of it is that it is not the dreaded "blue light". Some days I only ready for ~5 minutes before I'm falling asleep, but I try to make at least some progress every day before sleeping.
SonicScrub 5 days ago [-]
Escape into the woods for at least 1 week out of the year with no internet connection. It rekindles my love for reading, and helps keep that fire burning throughout the year.
AnimalMuppet 5 days ago [-]
I do that (for a few days, not a full week). I always read less than I intended to, because the space to be able to think, to feel, and to be is more valuable than the space to read.
rr808 5 days ago [-]
Right and how do you stop your wife and/or kids interupting you every 30 seconds?
I also I have a huge backlog of tech books that I should work on because this career kinda requires it.
tw42566499 5 days ago [-]
At the risk of sounding insensitive: an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure—this is one of those things that if it's a problem someone is experiencing, that thing is not their real problem, which is a deep failure somewhere else, way, way back.
The unvarnished truth is that the answer to your question ("how do you stop your wife and/or kids interrupting you every 30 seconds?") for many people is "I don't". They don't stop them, that is. Because they don't have to. Because they didn't marry someone who interrupts them every 30 seconds and then have kids with them and then raise those kids to be the kinds of kids who interrupts them every 30 seconds.
dot1x 3 days ago [-]
That's way too deep for this audience.
ilbeeper 5 days ago [-]
Read when they are asleep. I also read when sitting next to my son on his bed, after I read him a book, while waiting for him to fall asleep
rr808 5 days ago [-]
Yeah I miss those days, now they go to bed after I do. :)
BLKNSLVR 5 days ago [-]
Hah, me too.
I tell both my kids "don't stay up too late" just before I go to bed (usually around 11pm). Beyond a certain age you can't force them anymore and they have to learn their limits themselves.
maksimur 5 days ago [-]
I set up some time for myself and let everybody know not to interrupt me unless necessary.
sonabinu 5 days ago [-]
Could also be husband and kids ;)
rr808 5 days ago [-]
Absolutely! I'm sure some couples are both readers, still not sure I'd have the time though.
sonabinu 5 days ago [-]
There are weekends where I spent 3 to 4 hours reading at the public library. It is definitely a deliberate act, not always supported by other family members but it is possible. I am able to do 20 to 30 books a year. All the best! I hope you are able to get started. Happy reading.
5 days ago [-]
wazoox 5 days ago [-]
When I take my breakfast, I'm reading a book. Whenever I lie on my bed, I'm reading a book. This way, I read 30-50 books every year. I don't use any of TikTok, WhatsApp, X etc, that probably helps too.
ivan_ah 5 days ago [-]
A couple of years ago I discovered the MacOS accessibility feature "Speak selection" under "Accessibility > Spoken Content." I've set up a keyboard shortcut for it, which allows me to take any ebook in PDF format, select a bunch of text (usually one chapter) press the key and let the computer read it to me. Basically, it turn any text into an audio book, then listen while exercising, doing the dishes, cleaning the house, or simply when you like down and need a break.
I've never was a literary person (despite everyone else in my family reading a lot), but ever since this discovery I've been catching up on a lot of fiction, philosophy, psychology book, and pretty much anything that doesn't have code or equations. Highly recommended.
You can also use the `say` command, which can produce an audio file that you can load into a music player app, which might be more useful since it can remember your place. https://ss64.com/mac/say.html
sonabinu 5 days ago [-]
I have my reading material next to my work desk. I read 15 to 20 minutes before I start work and most days read about 15 to 20 before bed. I also read over the weekends and have chosen that over TV and other entertainment. I carry a book with me to places where I have to wait - doctor's office, DMV, airports, school conferences etc.
joeyagreco 5 days ago [-]
The rule of thumb is: The number of pages you read every day is the number of books you will read in a year.
Read 10 pages per day? That's 10 books that year.
I read a little less than 1 page per minute (depends on book), but the way I look at it is minutes per day = books in year. Read 30 minutes every day that's 30 books that year.
haizhung 5 days ago [-]
I replaced my bed time routine. Instead of watching YouTube for 30 minutes I, I read a book for 30 minutes.
I was surprised just how much you can read with this amount of time investment. I read 12 books during that year; with 600 pages on average. It’s much quicker than you’d think!
ashwinne 4 days ago [-]
Set aside 30 minutes a day and try to keep at it regularly. If there are kids and being a good parent, this is only possible after their bed/story time. Quickly turns into a no-screen meditative quiet time for the mind before going to sleep.
Put the book(s) on the bedside table so that it is right there staring at you.
If a book isn't interesting even after first 50 pages, dump and move on to a new one. Borrow books from library so that there is a forcing function of the due date.
30 mins a day is plenty to get through 10-20 books a year easily. Read only easy/fun/interesting books until the stamina to get into tougher reads arrives.
BeetleB 5 days ago [-]
> How do you, as a techie, find time to read most of the books?
Audiobooks while driving. I easily do over ten a year this way.
SoftTalker 5 days ago [-]
Does that count as "reading" though? I find it very difficult to engage with an audiobook in the way I do with a real book in my hands.
BeetleB 4 days ago [-]
Yes, definitely.
It likely won't work for all kinds of books. I don't think I'd want to listen to an audio book of Thinking, Fast and Slow for example.
But for fiction and certain non-fiction, it can be a great experience. In fact, for fiction it is now my preferred mode of consumption. There are books (e.g. Ancillary Justice) that I know I would have not finished if I were reading the book directly (for various reasons). But the audio book narration was so good I stuck to it.
It really depends on what your goals for reading are. If you're reading a heavy nonfiction book where you want to annotate, etc, then obviously it won't work.
If you're simply trying to absorb a story or gain information, it works as well as a regular book. You will likely rewind often, though. It sounds a lot worse than it is, but you get used to it quickly.
selykg 5 days ago [-]
I would call it reading. But it’s up to the person.
Ultimately I find time for both. I completed 30 books in 2024. 2-3 of them were audiobooks I think. They count in my opinion.
SoftTalker 5 days ago [-]
That's pretty impressive. I have not read 30 books in the past decade. Probably not even 10.
selykg 4 days ago [-]
I dedicate time to it almost every day. I also have a book club with a friend to keep me a bit outside my comfort zone.
nozzlegear 5 days ago [-]
I find it really engaging, there's something about it that lets me really easily envision the world and the characters in my mind's eye, and to put myself into the narrative when I'm listening to a book. I get lost in it more than I do while reading a physical book, so much so that at times it can be almost disorienting when someone interrupts me while I'm engulfed.
edanm 5 days ago [-]
Yes, it "counts". There are differences, but the main point of books (the conveying of a story and/or information) happens perfectly well with audiobooks, at least for me.
Scarblac 5 days ago [-]
I often spend way too much time on my phone (like now).
The days when I keep my ereader nearby so I look at that instead I am much happier.
avaika 5 days ago [-]
My 2024 top 3:
- They would never hurt a fly. Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic covered the Hague trial for military crimes in Bosnia war. The book made me rethink how I view the war in general and what motivates people to do absolute evil things.
- A primate memoir by Sapolsky. I can't stress enough how interesting, witty and overwhelming this book is. One of the rare reads I couldn't stop reading until the very end.
- Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. Even though sometimes it might be felt like a boulevard novel, it gave me absolutely fantastic insight and the atmosphere of Italian Naples in the 1960-1970s.
sorokod 4 days ago [-]
Ferrante's novels were made into a very good tv series: "My Brilliant Friend"
DavidPiper 5 days ago [-]
Strong second for Born Standing Up, just in case anyone was on the fence. Steve Martin is a delight.
(Get the paperback if you can, the edition I have is the most well-weighted and well-proportioned high-quality paperback I think I own. I hope they still print it like that.)
linsomniac 5 days ago [-]
Bought. The Kindle edition is $2.99 at amazon right now. Long ago I read Shopgirl by Steve Martin and I recall enjoying it, but don't recall much about it. Looks like it's a movie now.
Just recently, after that SNL skit about the Five Timers Club, I found that Steve Martin was the fastest to reach the Fiver Timers Club, it sounds like in 1977 he was hosting SNL all the time.
Thanks for the recommendation, I've added it to my To Read list (currently working on Doctrow/Stross Rapture of the Nerds, I'm kind of Meh on it).
HellDunkel 5 days ago [-]
I just finished the Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris. Probably easier to digest than the works of the man himself and a very good read too.
alkyon 5 days ago [-]
Finished Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator last year - what an excellent read! By Harris I also enjoyed Fatherland, his alternative history detective novel.
vmilner 5 days ago [-]
I sometimes struggle with Harris’s recent books but I agree these are great.
dddddaviddddd 4 days ago [-]
Some of my favourites from this year:
* The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Classic urbanist book that changed the way I see my city, and elegantly described so many things I didn't know I knew.
* A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Short, beautiful sci-fi story.
* The first four Dune books by Frank Herbert, so full of intrigue.
rottc0dd 5 days ago [-]
I personally loved "The Gene : An intimate history". I thought genes were hardcoded code that is needed sometime during life creation and once the cells specialized, they are done.
The cells are computer that operated on proteins, the input is protein being present and output is specific protein that does specific job.
wannabebarista 5 days ago [-]
Here's my list for 2024:
* Wisdom’s Workshop (2016) by James Axtell is a history of the American research university from Medieval times to the present.
* The Principles of Science (1874) by William Stanley Jevons (of economics fame) is a wide-ranging treatment of logic and philosophy of science that’s bursting with ideas.
* Ballyhoo! (2024) by Jon Langmead is a history of professional wrestling and combat sports from its outlaw roots in the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century.
* A Discourse on Political Economy (1824) by John Ramsay McCulloch is the first history of economic thought from the era of the classical economists.
Recommendation since I haven't seen it mentioned here yet:
Annie Jacobsen's _Nuclear War: A Scenario_
A second by, at times, millisecond, tale of what could and would happen after a nuclear attack on the US is detected. Been a long time since I read a book in just over two days.
edanm 1 days ago [-]
This was a great book.
If you haven't seen the tv show Madam Secretary (minor spoiler warning), there's an episode that more or less films this scenario playing out. You can find clips on YouTube of just the "nuclear war is about to happen" part of the episode, and I highly recommend it as a dramatization of this kind of thing. (It's a great show in general, too.)
hypertexthero 5 days ago [-]
My 2024 favorites:
* The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. Maybe the best book about creative process in everyday life and art I’ve read. Positive vibes and meditations. Speaking of which…
* Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Timeless advice about life and death from a ruler/philosopher who seemed to have been actually good and uncorrupted by power. And speaking of that, at the top of my to-read list for 2025 sits On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder, also available in a visual graphic edition.
* Drawing on the Dominant Eye by Betty Edwards. Worthwhile, even if not as much as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
* Not finished yet, but The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell is eloquent and erudite so far.
hinkley 5 days ago [-]
I got through almost 50 books last year, which is about what I got through in the previous three.
The first trick was giving myself permission to stop a book I started in 2023. I’m about to start trying to finish it again later this week. The biggest was finding myself with too much free time which I don’t recommend. But all the physical books I read were strictly for pleasure and not self improvement. The half dozen books I consumed in the latter category were as audiobooks, and half of those were Goldratt, who cheats anyway by making his entire book into a fictional story about the moral of the book. Essentially a parable.
If you want to read a lot, then do it to have a good time.
amarcheschi 5 days ago [-]
I read the strangest man a few years ago, a therapist I went to talk to suggested me to read it because - despite not bejng possible to diagnose dead people - he definitely had some traits that overlapped with autism. Definitely an interesting read
globular-toast 5 days ago [-]
I read it years ago and it definitely helped me get comfortable in my own skin. There's more acceptance (or at least it's given more lip service) towards "neirodivergent" people now, but for a long time it felt like I had something wrong with me because I didn't understand normies.
There are also some good documentaries and books about the people working at Bletchley Park. A lot of them seemed to have been wired similarly.
5 days ago [-]
swayvil 5 days ago [-]
In the old days they called it, "habitually one-pointed".
Those guys really know how to concentrate.
alexpotato 5 days ago [-]
I recently started putting together an organized list of books I've really loved.
Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson was a very enjoyable read.
It's about Beatrice Sparks and her unique genre of fake teen diaries, of which Go Ask Alice was the most famous. It chronicles her whole-cloth invention of tragic teens who succumbed to whatever the current panic is consuming late-to-mid-twentieth-century concerned suburban parents: from accidentally becoming acid freaks to ritualistic satan worship to HIV/AIDS.
kh_hk 5 days ago [-]
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
internet_points 3 days ago [-]
I find real-life "rationalists" of this kind to be quite insufferable, but that book was very fun if you like good plot puzzles.
buseb 5 days ago [-]
Siddharta, Anna Karenina
dhosek 4 days ago [-]
I do a yearly post of my favorite reads of the year (https://www.dahosek.com/my-favorite-reads-of-2024/) and this year I noted, “there are only three male authors on my top reads for the year and only five white authors. I don’t read diverse books because it’s my vitamins, I read diverse books because it’s women and people of color who are writing the best stuff right now.”
joveian 5 days ago [-]
Although I'm only interested in a few books on the list I find it a nicely done list: a good theme and a good amount of detail per book. I can't do as well but these are my favorites this year(ish):
* Fur Trade Nation by Carl Gawboy - a graphical history of the Ojibway nation between 1650 and 1850. Not a hard history with detailed discussion of evidence and possibilities but more of a grade school style overview of the history and really well done as that. I do better with text than most but I still think this style communication has a lot of advantages and should be used more.
* The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich (historical fiction, starting at the end of the period Fur Trade Nation covers) - I've read the first three books and while they are aimed at children they have complex characters and themes (and also some cute animals and a focus on the kids). I read her book Tracks a couple of decades ago and liked it well enough to remember her name when I saw a few years ago that she has a bookstore in Minneapolis called Birchbark Books. Their online store has a great selection of books by indigenous authors.
* The Gift is in the Making Anishinaabeg stories retold by Leanne Simpson - Traditional stories retold with a few recent references. This one has a few ojibway terms but is in english while I also read Plums or Nuts by Larry Amik Smallwood and Michael Migizi Sullivan Sr. which is fully in ojibway as well as english and the stories there are more personal by the first author. They are chosen primarily for language learning reasons but they are also nice "slice of life" stories and I recommend it even if you aren't trying to learn ojibway.
* Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot - The author has a breakdown and writes about it. A really rough read but well writen and has a lot of love for such a tramatic story.
* Bringing Joy: A Local Literary Welcome - I heard about Fur Trade Nation when it was first published and not widely available so I got it from the publisher at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College and found this poetry collection and decided to try it even though I'm not usually into poetry. There were a couple that I will hopefully never forget and more that I enjoyed reading. I picked up What Book!? later thinking I'd try a bit more poetry but haven't enjoyed that one as much so far.
* A Space for the Unbound - Technically a game not a book but very story focused and in my opinion the best game story (by quite a bit) of any game I've played. Again some severe abuse depicted and also a lot of love.
norir 5 days ago [-]
The most impactful book I read this year was "Computer Power and Human Reason" by Joseph Weizenbaum. For a book written about ai in 1976, it has aged very well.
voisin 5 days ago [-]
I really enjoyed Dutch House and Commonwealth, both by Anne Patchett. Beautiful writing about somewhat commonplace or relatable people and their lives.
unitpass 5 days ago [-]
My favorite book is Deep Work by Cal Newport
evw 4 days ago [-]
Ursula K. Le Guin's edition of Tao Te Ching - Laozi, was the best thing I read in 2024. Very short read, poetic philosophy from 2300+ years ago that's equally relevant today. Highly recommend.
3. How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie
imajoredinecon 5 days ago [-]
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
So funny that my face was basically fixed in a smile the entire time reading.
krishna2 4 days ago [-]
Here are a few of my favorite reads from 2024.
If I were to just pick one favorite, it is not even a contest. Heck, challenge me to pick one favorite in a decade, it would still be this. Charlie Munger!
Charlie Munger: Poor Charlie’s Almanack
I even wrote about this: https://krishna2.com/munger
Just like countless others, I too grew up bewildered by Jackie Chan's movies and his stunts. And I liked his autobiography.
Jackie Chan: Never Grow Up
I read "The Poppy War" - even though I liked it, I didn't want to go down a full-fledged series. I read "Yellowface" and loved it so much. I have "Babel" on my shelf - but (irrationally) I am not reading it thinking that it would be over if I read it.
R. F. Kuang: Yellowface
I can't wait for what R.F. Kuang's going to come up with next.
This is an old classic -- my son recommended this to me. I enjoyed it.
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther
What an amazing biography. Very very inspiring.
Robin Marantz Henig: Monk in the Garden: Life of Gregor Mendel
I had gotten her "Ember in the Ashes" in 2016 or so but never got to it - but this story snipper caught my attention. What a lovely book. It is set in a Motel in a Sierra Nevada town in California. Loved the book. Promptly went back to read "Ember in the ashes". This book (all my rage) won the National Book Award for Young Readers.
Sabhaa Tahir: All my Rage
Everyone's bound to get on this train sooner or later (I think this is being made into a movie) -- 440,000+ reviews on amazon. I got curious and got this book. Liked it.
Freida McFadden: The Housemaid
I am keeping the recommendations to a general audience and hence skipping my Vedanta books (which I thoroughly relish/read and read again many times). Oh, there are a bunch of business books too, a bunch more fiction this year (than my usual ratio) including a few LitRPG and of course, some running related. As always, you can see the full list here:
Unfortunately many of the books I had time to read this year were a bust. But here's some of the ones I did appreciate very much:
* Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive - Philipp Dettmer.
* The Gene: An Intimate History - Mukherjee. Won't necessarily teach you much new if you've already read a few genetics books, but a fine read nonetheless.
* On Sophistical Refutations - Aristotle. Like anything by Aristotle, read it with a grain of salt and as historical document. Still, it's always a wonder how a text like this can be over 2000 years old.
* Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann. Skip the movie and read this instead.
* 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles Mann. It challenges common misunderstandings of pre-columbian society without being anti-Columbus.
* American History, Combined Edition: 1492-Present - Thomas Kidd. Goes beyond just the usual narratives we are all familiar with. Not recommended as a first American-history deep-dive, but a fine supplement.
* The Man Who Saved Cincinnati - Peter Bronson. Entertaining civil war history book. It's not only about Cincinnati.
* Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power - Carwardine.
* The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets - Thomas Cech. RNA is now kinda required reading since 2020. This is a good starting point.
* The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie - Dawkins. His latest is definitely worth a read, like (nearly) all his previous.
* Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI - Harari. How information traveled historically, with modern technology, and in the near future. Enlightening and a little scary.
* Beauty and Sadness: Mahler's 11 Symphonies - David Vernon. Even if you haven’t listened to all of Mahler’s symphonies, still very interesting read on “the first modern composer.” If you /are/ familiar with all his symphonies, the book is even better, and it will show you layers you didn’t realize were there... in case the music isn't dense enough to absorb by itself ;-)
Fiction:
* Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir.
* Dark Matter - Blake Crouch.
* Red Rising - Pierce Brown. A light read, maybe will seem derivative at this point but it was fun.
* Rifters Trilogy - Peter Watts. Super bleak, very creative.
* You Like It Darker - Stephen King. Another fine collection of short stories.
* The Forest of Lost Souls - Koontz
* House of Leaves - Danielewski. I waited way too long to read this. As good as everyone said it would be.
Apocryphon 5 days ago [-]
re: that Paul Dirac book, were there any atomic scientists during WWII who wasn't a mystic?
gjm11 5 days ago [-]
Feynman. Von Neumann. Teller. Ulam.
(At least, they all seem pretty non-mystical from what I know of them; I am willing to be corrected by others who know more about their lives and minds.)
giardini 3 days ago [-]
Social Media is Bullshit by B.J. Mendelson.
Don't Read the News" by Dobelli.
These two books complement each other surprisingly well in describing the media/marketing companies that underlie the Internet.
begueradj 5 days ago [-]
From my experience,
Sturgeon's law applies to books too.
dllthomas 5 days ago [-]
I mean, it would, wouldn't it? Theodore Sturgeon wrote a bunch of books, and I've always assumed his "Revelation" was initially delivered in that context.
bru3s 5 days ago [-]
[dead]
coolThingsFirst 5 days ago [-]
that's i think a lot
Rendered at 14:53:52 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
* Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Atkins. Now that I'm into physics I had a hunch that I would now also appreciate chemistry. This book delivered.
* Philosophy of Mind: A Very Short Introduction by Barbara Gail Montero. I recall it just being a really well-written overview of an interesting field.
* Systemantics by John Gall. Very entertaining musings on why systems fail.
* Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami. Read this while in Japan. A very strange and interesting noir detective story.
* All Systems Red by Martha Wells. <3 Murderbot <3
* Desert Oracle Volume 1 by Ken Layne. American southwest folklore. Read it while in Joshua Tree.
* There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Biggest brainfuck I've read in a long time, probably ever.
* Fundamentals: Ten Keys To Reality by Frank Wilczek. Physics musings from a Nobel winner.
My initial reading led me to believe that qntm was a group aliased as Sam.
Policing other's pronoun usage is ideological, but that's your argument, not theirs.
The only one being 'ideological' here is you, getting worked up over basic grammar that's been around longer than Modern English. Go out and touch some grass.
Thanks for reminding me.
The English translation of a second book in the same universe (well, one of the two universes) was just released---The City and Its Uncertain Walls. I've only just started reading it, though, so I can't offer any commentary beyond that.
If you like Murakami, you might like Convenience Store Woman or Earthlings, both by Sayaka Murata. Mieko Kawakami is also great. Killing Commendatore (by Murakami, again) is my favorite of his. I have no idea why it's my favorite, though. To be honest I can barely remember the plot of any of his books; it's just a feeling.
I think I read or consumed almost 25 of her books last year.
They’re short reads and the series is still ongoing. I’ve seen indications she’s under contract for at least one more book. It’s useful I find especially if you read a lot of things, to be able to revisit the story shortly before the next book is published. The same way many people rewatched Ted Lasso each season. I think I managed to only reread the early books in The Expanse twice but Robert Jordan is slow and his books are loaded with foreshadowing, so when he was still alive there were a lot of people rereading those fat books many many times.
The most recent murderbot book I had to reread because I got my wires crossed on what the backstory was, I combined two different arcs and hallucinated a third one entirely. Never did figure out what I borrowed that story from. But they’re very short. I think I reread the entire thing in ten to twelve days, and not even working that hard.
I really like the Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press. I've read 30 of them so far (just counted). At this point they basically have a book on every aspect of physics that has interested me at one time or another: black holes, gravity, quantum theory, waves, time, thermodynamics, chaos, etc. Really love being able to literally put the book in my back pocket and read a few pages whenever I have a spare moment. Each book can be very hit-or-miss, though. Some of them are badly written and fail at their basic value proposition (providing a concise and reasonably complete overview of a field).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Very_Short_Introduct...
I kind of hate this mindset. Why does reading always have to be with the goal of self improvement? When someone binge watches a new TV series on Netflix no one asks them what skill they were trying to sharpen by enjoying that media.
People should be able to have hobbies and self improvement separate and each one delivered in whichever medium they happen to prefer.
(And I'm not trying to say bad things about either of the books I mentioned, but rather illustrate that certain types of books aren't going to make you a scholar, just because you read a lot. Read what you enjoy.)
> People should be able to have hobbies and self improvement separate and each one delivered in whichever medium they happen to prefer.
Agreed.
> Read what you enjoy.
Semi-agree on this one.
There are different reasons to read. You can read for pure entertainment. You can read to learn things. You can read to be motivated. You can read to calm down. You can read to be part of the conversation.
Reading what you enjoy is good advice, and it's a valid approach, but so is reading something that's a little but hard and not very enjoyable, because you want to expand your knowledge, to learn and grow.
Read what you want for whatever reason you want, would be my recommendation.
(I personally mix most of the reasons above.)
My minor counter here is "don't let the reason you read [something] be because someone has made you feel like you should"?
I (personally) observe pushing through a thing you actively don't enjoy for external validation etc will just demotivate and bleed into the entire activity. That's not to say you should not try a book because somebody suggests/recommends it. But try, don't feel obliged in order to gain approval.
In the same vein, don't avoid reading "trash" for fun because people are asses. Be it young adult swashbuckling, adult romance or elves and wizards - don't let anyone make you feel bad about your preferences.
if Shakespeare interests you, that’s fine. If you find him tedious, leave him. Shakespeare hasn’t yet written for you. The day will come when Shakespeare will be right for you and you will be worthy of Shakespeare, but in the meantime there’s no need to hurry things.
I don't know why this is, but every single documentary I have seen on a subject that I know something about has been factually atrocious. I strongly discourage people from watching any documentaries. Maybe a few nature-following-animals documentaries are OK, but for some reason I don't understand the average documentary is completely mendacious, with facts altered, twisted to be dramatic, omitted because they contradict some narrative, set pieces completely wrong, the creation of some narrative that doesn't even make real sense, etc.
It's not that there aren't awful books, of course there are, but documentaries seem to be almost uniformly awful, even ones very highly rated, where books are usually the actual source material anyway. On top of this, documentaries are much better suited as propaganda vehicles, and are often used that way.
Of course, it may be I am more sensitive than most people to these issues; other people may find lower truthiness levels acceptable if it's the only way to garner their attention.
Daily creative writing, journaling, (trying to) learn to dance, reading books in Spanish when I'd get more enjoyment reading in English. These are all things I've done with goals in mind beyond leisure. In fact I don't particularly enjoy them enough to do them without an objective, else I wouldn't have had to go out of my way to do them.
You don't enjoy everything or else you wouldn't have to try at anything.
> When someone binge watches a new TV series on Netflix no one asks them what skill they were trying to sharpen by enjoying that media.
But they weren't demanding this of anyone else. It was an objective for themself. You are actually the one demanding something of someone else just because you have different preferences. ;) Is that a great mindset?
why does it upset you so that someone else wrote their own personal reasons on their own blog?
Revisiting old audiobooks is especially good for those times you are doing a mundane task or just need something comfortable for one of those days/weeks.
Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2024?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42508087
Ask HN: Best non-fiction book you read in 2024?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42218828
For those that have tried, but cannot penetrate these types of books, start with any Nobel Literature winner that looks interesting. They are the gateway to serious literature, and by reading the recognized "best written intellectual novel of the year" you'll be gradually exposed to the writing structures used in harder to penetrate literature.
Don't be fooled into thinking that a Nobel Literature winner is difficult to read, none of them are and that is why they have the award. They are also white knuckle rides through tragic human lives where the main character wins against incredible odds, and these novels demonstrate the critical thinking and secondary considerations necessary to prevail when others are crushed. Great literature teaches one first hand how to use critical thought, a dire need today.
Kind of a stretch there. No casual reader can handle Doctor Faustus (Thomas Mann) or the Glass beads game (Hesse) without serious effort. Sure, one can try, in the same way one can try running a marathon without training, with the same predictable results.
Warning: spoilers follow that do not diminish the knock out punch this work delivers: It's written in it's own language, a mixture of Russian and UK slang, which one cannot read at first. About 3 chapters in, the language clicks and then a good reader starts the book over from the beginning. It is a popular book due to the film, and the ultra violence depicted within, but it is also ground breaking philosophical literature because the main character is a hardened criminal and is the narrator, he spends the entire novel explaining his philosophy of life, which by the end of the novel you realize is the same philosophy of modern politics, and the UK edition of the novel ends with the entire novel being the story of a senior member of parliament's youth origin story.
The fact that the novel is in a fictional language increases the reader's submersion in the story line, creating one of the most impactful novels I know.
Another great read, much shorter, more like getting into a street brawl: Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky. Practically the creator of self critical essays, and often the first read for people interested in Existentialism.
Anything from the "Beat Generation" authors, anything from Philip K Dick, anything from Herman Hesse.
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is another recent literary favorite
Girl, Woman, Other is one of my overall favorites from the last few years. Th character work is phenomenal. Do try to read a hard copy, rather than on an ereader, if you can. The book uses punctuation and the layout of text on a page creatively, and I’m not sure how well that gets preserved in an ebook.
If you want to see the other style of writing in Rushdie, I can suggest Shalimar The Clown or The Ground Beneath Her Feet. But these are nowhere near as grand as Midnights Children.
In either category, a fair amount of interest in history helps to enjoy his books.
He also did the screenplays for most of Bela Tarr’s movies
After reading that, you’ll no longer think that Nobel Prize winners for literature write books that are difficult to read and understand.
That said, people who read less tend to believe that more and bigger words equal better writting. My (usually scientific) texts are described as "telegraphic", and heavily expanded without adding any real content. E.g. "the house was white" gets transformed to "the paint that covered the beautiful house was pure white".
* Animal Farm - George Orwell
* The Fall - Albert Camus
* Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
* One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
* The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Easy to read but provides a profound understanding of the unique historical situation it describes. A famous and heartbreaking sentence: ‘(…) I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.’
I understand that for some books specific quotes don't quite get across what makes the book great. But in those cases I expect the author to address that characteristic directly, and make an effort to try to explain why the book is great despite not being very quotable. And by quotes I mean quotes that can span an entire page if need be.
The only exceptions to this that I'm inclined to allow is when your descriptive writing skill is at such a pro level that the review itself is a piece of art. But most "professional" book reviewers are not even at that pro level frankly.
An example of actual "pro level" would be this Martin Amis line from one of his reviews:
"You can stir a vat of molasses with James Wood's Chekhov boner." (I'm recalling the line from memory)
And that's why we see in the halls of our colleges, where these works are pored over day in and day out, that these humanities majors are the font of wisdom in our civilization.
BTW Nietzche speaks in goodreads quotes and meme-like aphorisms. If you can't get through Nietzche maybe reading isn't for you. (There's nothing wrong with audiobooks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv5IyRuEVI4&t=10s either)
Wisdom does not equate with power, in fact: overt power is not the result of wisdom, but fanatical perseverance to wealth creation, often in opposition of wisdom in favor of simple dominance of others, and basic mental illness driving that individual.
Plus, my MBA was also to understand the world, as business is this world.
Aside from the fact that I doubt it's true, this seems a lot like panning The Third Man as derivative of later thrillers.
Edit: Just wanted to add that Aeschylus, Euripedes, and Sophicles are great reads. You can read a whole play in one sitting. If I could recommend one from each it would be Agamemnon, The Bacchae, and Antigone. Each of those plays deeply affected me and they're fairly accessible.
"I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom"
Highly recommend it to folks, especially if you enjoy Pargin's other works ("John Dies at the End", "Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits"). I am continually in awe at how he is evolving as a writer.
His characterizations and insights convey a unique and profound interest in the world we live in, and it’s clear he takes great care in understanding others and what makes them who they are.
It'll make you rethink some of your relationships / reactions to the current world (social media, other humans, etc.).
Weird thing is that "John Dies at the End" sounds like something I'd love, and yet I really bounced off of it when trying to read it. I've been meaning to give it another go.
He's no less funny, but he's honed in on exploring the human condition (in a natural way) in each of his books.
There's actually some evidence that we are, in fact, naturally wired for reading. The below study, for instance, shows that the area in the brain used for visualizing words seems to be already hooked up to language processing areas in newborns.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75015-7
Most people "decide" to not develop their reading skills when they are young children without the ability to understand the long-term implications.
When I was growing up, teachers would assign one text for the entire class to read. Sometimes it was a book I enjoyed (like Canticle for Leibowitz) but more often than not it was some book I hated (like Great Gatsby which I reread as an adult and still think it’s terrible). If you really wanted to instill a love of reading and develop skills around reading, you would give students more choice.
My kids had a similar experience so I don’t think much changed between 1985 and 2015. If anything, it’s worse now. It feels like schools do as much as they can to prevent kids from enjoying reading. They were assigned only books they had zero interest in and were given so much homework they had no desire or energy left to read for pleasure.
It took me a long time after high school to start reading for pleasure (thank you Douglas Adams and Michael Ondaatje). I hope it works out for my kids too.
So maybe the problem isn't kids who decide they don't like to read, but voters and taxpayers have decided that they don't want to pay for anything better.
Not everything has to be written in digestible snippets of text.
Hey goal is to write a story with plot. Real characters. Arcs. As soon as she finds herself wasting time rolling sentences around her mouth, like toffee, with big fancy words, she is directly hurting the readers' flow. Sometimes it's nice to leave one or two, but in general you shouldn't try to be in love with every sentence you've written. But every sentence should move the story forward. Just tell the damn story. Because when you come back to your writing years later, it's those very stylish, witty, fancy phrases that will embarrass you.
I’m not making the argument that one is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other; rather that their goals are different.
I do tend to agree with the idea that you shouldn’t be ‘afraid to kill your darlings’ (cite needed). Flannery O’Connor was once asked whether she thought that MFA programs killed too many aspiring authors. Her reply was that she thought they didn’t kill enough of them.
It's funny to me that that line by O’Connor is both good writing and good business, at least in that it reduces competition with their own works. Furthermore, making quotable quips is the best kind of publicity for your writing you can do for free as an author. I wonder how many MFA programs are so explicit about the dismal prospects of writing as a livelihood or career, not that it was ever much better in the past. Arguably, it's easier than ever to get paid as an independent writer, but that doesn't make it any easier to make a decent living exclusively from one's published output.
Found the citation:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_one%27s_darlings
> A piece of advice to prospective authors that they must kill their “darlings”, i.e. suppress overuse of their favorite expressions, tropes, characters, etc. Often attributed to William Faulkner (1897–1962), but already expressed earlier by Arthur Quiller-Couch (murder one's darlings); more recently popularized by Stephen King.
How do you, as a techie, find time to read most of the books? Any tips or hacks? Ryan Holiday once mentioned that he managed to read extensively by always keeping books with him, allowing him to read whenever he found some spare time.
The amount of "spare time" most people have, time they're doing random things that don't require full focus, is enormous, at least it is for me. Arranging breakfast for the kids before the school day, doing dishes, walking to and from places, working out at the gym, etc - all of those times become moments to listen to whatever you're reading.
I also I have a huge backlog of tech books that I should work on because this career kinda requires it.
The unvarnished truth is that the answer to your question ("how do you stop your wife and/or kids interrupting you every 30 seconds?") for many people is "I don't". They don't stop them, that is. Because they don't have to. Because they didn't marry someone who interrupts them every 30 seconds and then have kids with them and then raise those kids to be the kinds of kids who interrupts them every 30 seconds.
I tell both my kids "don't stay up too late" just before I go to bed (usually around 11pm). Beyond a certain age you can't force them anymore and they have to learn their limits themselves.
I've never was a literary person (despite everyone else in my family reading a lot), but ever since this discovery I've been catching up on a lot of fiction, philosophy, psychology book, and pretty much anything that doesn't have code or equations. Highly recommended.
See here for screenshots: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...
Read 10 pages per day? That's 10 books that year.
I read a little less than 1 page per minute (depends on book), but the way I look at it is minutes per day = books in year. Read 30 minutes every day that's 30 books that year.
I was surprised just how much you can read with this amount of time investment. I read 12 books during that year; with 600 pages on average. It’s much quicker than you’d think!
Put the book(s) on the bedside table so that it is right there staring at you.
If a book isn't interesting even after first 50 pages, dump and move on to a new one. Borrow books from library so that there is a forcing function of the due date.
30 mins a day is plenty to get through 10-20 books a year easily. Read only easy/fun/interesting books until the stamina to get into tougher reads arrives.
Audiobooks while driving. I easily do over ten a year this way.
It likely won't work for all kinds of books. I don't think I'd want to listen to an audio book of Thinking, Fast and Slow for example.
But for fiction and certain non-fiction, it can be a great experience. In fact, for fiction it is now my preferred mode of consumption. There are books (e.g. Ancillary Justice) that I know I would have not finished if I were reading the book directly (for various reasons). But the audio book narration was so good I stuck to it.
It really depends on what your goals for reading are. If you're reading a heavy nonfiction book where you want to annotate, etc, then obviously it won't work.
If you're simply trying to absorb a story or gain information, it works as well as a regular book. You will likely rewind often, though. It sounds a lot worse than it is, but you get used to it quickly.
Ultimately I find time for both. I completed 30 books in 2024. 2-3 of them were audiobooks I think. They count in my opinion.
The days when I keep my ereader nearby so I look at that instead I am much happier.
- They would never hurt a fly. Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic covered the Hague trial for military crimes in Bosnia war. The book made me rethink how I view the war in general and what motivates people to do absolute evil things.
- A primate memoir by Sapolsky. I can't stress enough how interesting, witty and overwhelming this book is. One of the rare reads I couldn't stop reading until the very end.
- Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. Even though sometimes it might be felt like a boulevard novel, it gave me absolutely fantastic insight and the atmosphere of Italian Naples in the 1960-1970s.
(Get the paperback if you can, the edition I have is the most well-weighted and well-proportioned high-quality paperback I think I own. I hope they still print it like that.)
Just recently, after that SNL skit about the Five Timers Club, I found that Steve Martin was the fastest to reach the Fiver Timers Club, it sounds like in 1977 he was hosting SNL all the time.
Thanks for the recommendation, I've added it to my To Read list (currently working on Doctrow/Stross Rapture of the Nerds, I'm kind of Meh on it).
* The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Classic urbanist book that changed the way I see my city, and elegantly described so many things I didn't know I knew.
* A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Short, beautiful sci-fi story.
* The first four Dune books by Frank Herbert, so full of intrigue.
The cells are computer that operated on proteins, the input is protein being present and output is specific protein that does specific job.
* Wisdom’s Workshop (2016) by James Axtell is a history of the American research university from Medieval times to the present.
* The Principles of Science (1874) by William Stanley Jevons (of economics fame) is a wide-ranging treatment of logic and philosophy of science that’s bursting with ideas.
* Ballyhoo! (2024) by Jon Langmead is a history of professional wrestling and combat sports from its outlaw roots in the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century.
* A Discourse on Political Economy (1824) by John Ramsay McCulloch is the first history of economic thought from the era of the classical economists.
Check it out in more detail here: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2024/
Annie Jacobsen's _Nuclear War: A Scenario_
A second by, at times, millisecond, tale of what could and would happen after a nuclear attack on the US is detected. Been a long time since I read a book in just over two days.
If you haven't seen the tv show Madam Secretary (minor spoiler warning), there's an episode that more or less films this scenario playing out. You can find clips on YouTube of just the "nuclear war is about to happen" part of the episode, and I highly recommend it as a dramatization of this kind of thing. (It's a great show in general, too.)
* The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. Maybe the best book about creative process in everyday life and art I’ve read. Positive vibes and meditations. Speaking of which…
* Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Timeless advice about life and death from a ruler/philosopher who seemed to have been actually good and uncorrupted by power. And speaking of that, at the top of my to-read list for 2025 sits On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder, also available in a visual graphic edition.
* Drawing on the Dominant Eye by Betty Edwards. Worthwhile, even if not as much as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
* Not finished yet, but The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell is eloquent and erudite so far.
The first trick was giving myself permission to stop a book I started in 2023. I’m about to start trying to finish it again later this week. The biggest was finding myself with too much free time which I don’t recommend. But all the physical books I read were strictly for pleasure and not self improvement. The half dozen books I consumed in the latter category were as audiobooks, and half of those were Goldratt, who cheats anyway by making his entire book into a fictional story about the moral of the book. Essentially a parable.
If you want to read a lot, then do it to have a good time.
There are also some good documentaries and books about the people working at Bletchley Park. A lot of them seemed to have been wired similarly.
Those guys really know how to concentrate.
It's organized and filterable by:
- fiction vs non fiction
- author
- general themes
https://alexpotato.com/books/?l=hn
It's about Beatrice Sparks and her unique genre of fake teen diaries, of which Go Ask Alice was the most famous. It chronicles her whole-cloth invention of tragic teens who succumbed to whatever the current panic is consuming late-to-mid-twentieth-century concerned suburban parents: from accidentally becoming acid freaks to ritualistic satan worship to HIV/AIDS.
* Fur Trade Nation by Carl Gawboy - a graphical history of the Ojibway nation between 1650 and 1850. Not a hard history with detailed discussion of evidence and possibilities but more of a grade school style overview of the history and really well done as that. I do better with text than most but I still think this style communication has a lot of advantages and should be used more.
* The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich (historical fiction, starting at the end of the period Fur Trade Nation covers) - I've read the first three books and while they are aimed at children they have complex characters and themes (and also some cute animals and a focus on the kids). I read her book Tracks a couple of decades ago and liked it well enough to remember her name when I saw a few years ago that she has a bookstore in Minneapolis called Birchbark Books. Their online store has a great selection of books by indigenous authors.
* The Gift is in the Making Anishinaabeg stories retold by Leanne Simpson - Traditional stories retold with a few recent references. This one has a few ojibway terms but is in english while I also read Plums or Nuts by Larry Amik Smallwood and Michael Migizi Sullivan Sr. which is fully in ojibway as well as english and the stories there are more personal by the first author. They are chosen primarily for language learning reasons but they are also nice "slice of life" stories and I recommend it even if you aren't trying to learn ojibway.
* Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot - The author has a breakdown and writes about it. A really rough read but well writen and has a lot of love for such a tramatic story.
* Bringing Joy: A Local Literary Welcome - I heard about Fur Trade Nation when it was first published and not widely available so I got it from the publisher at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College and found this poetry collection and decided to try it even though I'm not usually into poetry. There were a couple that I will hopefully never forget and more that I enjoyed reading. I picked up What Book!? later thinking I'd try a bit more poetry but haven't enjoyed that one as much so far.
* A Space for the Unbound - Technically a game not a book but very story focused and in my opinion the best game story (by quite a bit) of any game I've played. Again some severe abuse depicted and also a lot of love.
1. Right/Wrong - Juan Enriquez
2. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
3. How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie
So funny that my face was basically fixed in a smile the entire time reading.
If I were to just pick one favorite, it is not even a contest. Heck, challenge me to pick one favorite in a decade, it would still be this. Charlie Munger! Charlie Munger: Poor Charlie’s Almanack I even wrote about this: https://krishna2.com/munger
Just like countless others, I too grew up bewildered by Jackie Chan's movies and his stunts. And I liked his autobiography.
Jackie Chan: Never Grow Up
I read "The Poppy War" - even though I liked it, I didn't want to go down a full-fledged series. I read "Yellowface" and loved it so much. I have "Babel" on my shelf - but (irrationally) I am not reading it thinking that it would be over if I read it.
R. F. Kuang: Yellowface
I can't wait for what R.F. Kuang's going to come up with next.
This is an old classic -- my son recommended this to me. I enjoyed it.
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther
What an amazing biography. Very very inspiring.
Robin Marantz Henig: Monk in the Garden: Life of Gregor Mendel
I had gotten her "Ember in the Ashes" in 2016 or so but never got to it - but this story snipper caught my attention. What a lovely book. It is set in a Motel in a Sierra Nevada town in California. Loved the book. Promptly went back to read "Ember in the ashes". This book (all my rage) won the National Book Award for Young Readers.
Sabhaa Tahir: All my Rage
Everyone's bound to get on this train sooner or later (I think this is being made into a movie) -- 440,000+ reviews on amazon. I got curious and got this book. Liked it.
Freida McFadden: The Housemaid
I am keeping the recommendations to a general audience and hence skipping my Vedanta books (which I thoroughly relish/read and read again many times). Oh, there are a bunch of business books too, a bunch more fiction this year (than my usual ratio) including a few LitRPG and of course, some running related. As always, you can see the full list here:
https://krishna2.com/books
Here's to a happy prosperous fulfilling 2025!
Happy reading!
This post is available at: https://krishna2.com/2024 Post on Jan 1, 2024 (2023 reading): https://krishna2.com/2023 Post on Jan 1, 2023 (2022 reading): https://krishna2.com/2022
* Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive - Philipp Dettmer.
* The Gene: An Intimate History - Mukherjee. Won't necessarily teach you much new if you've already read a few genetics books, but a fine read nonetheless.
* On Sophistical Refutations - Aristotle. Like anything by Aristotle, read it with a grain of salt and as historical document. Still, it's always a wonder how a text like this can be over 2000 years old.
* Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann. Skip the movie and read this instead.
* 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles Mann. It challenges common misunderstandings of pre-columbian society without being anti-Columbus.
* American History, Combined Edition: 1492-Present - Thomas Kidd. Goes beyond just the usual narratives we are all familiar with. Not recommended as a first American-history deep-dive, but a fine supplement.
* The Man Who Saved Cincinnati - Peter Bronson. Entertaining civil war history book. It's not only about Cincinnati.
* Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power - Carwardine.
* The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets - Thomas Cech. RNA is now kinda required reading since 2020. This is a good starting point.
* The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie - Dawkins. His latest is definitely worth a read, like (nearly) all his previous.
* Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI - Harari. How information traveled historically, with modern technology, and in the near future. Enlightening and a little scary.
* Beauty and Sadness: Mahler's 11 Symphonies - David Vernon. Even if you haven’t listened to all of Mahler’s symphonies, still very interesting read on “the first modern composer.” If you /are/ familiar with all his symphonies, the book is even better, and it will show you layers you didn’t realize were there... in case the music isn't dense enough to absorb by itself ;-)
Fiction:
* Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir.
* Dark Matter - Blake Crouch.
* Red Rising - Pierce Brown. A light read, maybe will seem derivative at this point but it was fun.
* Rifters Trilogy - Peter Watts. Super bleak, very creative.
* You Like It Darker - Stephen King. Another fine collection of short stories.
* The Forest of Lost Souls - Koontz
* House of Leaves - Danielewski. I waited way too long to read this. As good as everyone said it would be.
(At least, they all seem pretty non-mystical from what I know of them; I am willing to be corrected by others who know more about their lives and minds.)
Don't Read the News" by Dobelli.
These two books complement each other surprisingly well in describing the media/marketing companies that underlie the Internet.