Set in the near-ish future, a big asteroid comes whizzing into the solar system. Looks weird, so we investigate. It's a total page turner, and reads like an adventure/mystery. Highly recommended.
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The Malazan Book of the Fallen series - Steven Erikson
A fantasy series, set in a really unique setting. It's an epic fantasy series with a huge ensemble cast and a bunch of parallel plots that break a lot of the usual tropes. It's tough to describe, but if you like epic fantasy it's a must read. I'm on book five of ten and loving it.
But then, I didn't like Eon either (Greg Bear), so maybe hard-SF isn't really for me.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGGpadyh0wS589np9dre-...
For example, I found Amy Herman's "Visual Intelligence", it is pretty good (I am still reading it).
Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am
Zadie Smith's Swing Time
Ian McEwan's Nutshell
Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad
Carl Hiassan's Razor Girl
Alan Moore's Jerusalem
Jonathan Lethem's A Gamber's Anatomy
Ha Jin's The Boat Rocker
T.C. Boyle's The Terranauts
Michael Chabon's Moonglow
Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger
I've got plenty of friends who never touch fiction because "it's not real". Preferring science, history, economics, biography and virtually anything else. But I think its obligatory at times. The soul requires it's own nourishment, if not more so than the body and the mind. Indulge yourself. If only because great writing will make your writing greater, as if by osmosis. But ultimately, because only fiction can uncover the truths that can't be revealed any other way ;)
Sid's brother is Wylie whose voice does the yodel in the Yahoo commercials. Their father, Rib Gustasfson was the vet for Pondera County and the Blackfeet Reservation and all around the Rocky Mountain Front. Rib also wrote a book called "Under the Chinook Arch"
As a side note, Pondera county is home to an amazing number of authors given its population. Not the least of which is Ivan Doig. There are about 14 nationally known.
As a software engineer, I've come to really love how good products are built and how to explore new markets. While I don't think it's a life-changing book, it's certainly a good read and I'd recommend it to any engineer that wants to be more product-focused (also Inspired, Creativity Inc, and Zero to One)
The same simple programming problem (term frequency) solved using 33 different programming styles.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L2EAVAW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
I've been really taking my time with this one, lots of annotations, lots of re-reading passages and pages.
I'm not done yet, but what I've read so far has really spoken to me and provided a lot of clarity where I previously had trouble filling in the blanks.
>> Computer History & biographies:
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, Michael Lewis
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman
Machines of Loving Grace, by John Markoff
The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson
Ghost in the Wires, by Kevin Mitnick
Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft, by Paul Allen
Creativity, Inc, by Ed Catmull (reading)
>> Startups:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz
The Founder's Dilemmas, Noam Wasserman
The Launch Pad, by Randall Stross
>> Other books:
Trilogy: Off to Be the Wizard (series), by Scott Meyer
Search Inside Yourself, Chade-Meng Tan
Joy on Demand, Chade-Meng Tan (reading)
old man and the sea - Hemingway - good read
sapiens (currently reading) - Yuval Noah Harari - fantastic till now
What if (still reading) - Randall Munroe - an interesting read
https://www.crcpress.com/The-End-of-Error-Unum-Computing/Gus...
Epic Fantasy, set in a alternative Earth, where the magic system works on Earthquakes. Won the Hugo this year, which is why I read it. Breaks a lot of core writing rules, and tries hard to do things that are rarely seen in the genre.
History and evolution of man kind. Hihgly recommended.
$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business
Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz (reading this book WILL make you feel like you're on drugs)
Witch Piss - Sam Pink
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
Mastery
The Geography of Genius
Ready Player One
Currently: Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History (1994), and Manfred Weissenbacher, Sources of Power (2009). Both detail the role and impact of energy through world history. The latter draws strongly on the first, both are exceedingly well documented. TL;DR: coal changed much, oil changed everything.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/3...
http://www.worldcat.org/title/before-oil-the-ages-of-foragin...
http://www.worldcat.org/title/oil-age-and-beyond/oclc/837625...
James Burke's books Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, and their accompanying television series, were a profound introduction to the history of technology, science, ideas, and philosophy. Though 30+ years old, they remain highly current and relevant.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/connections/oclc/4494136
https://www.worldcat.org/title/day-the-universe-changed/oclc...
Jeremy Campbell's Grammatical Man (1984) introduced the concepts of information theory and their deep, deep, deep interconnections to a tremendous number of interconnected systems, many not explored within his book. Darwin's The Origin of Species, James Gleick's Chaos, and many of the works of Santa Fe Institute members, including John C. Holland, J. Doyne Farmer, Geoffrey West, W. Brian Arthur, David Krakauer, and Sander van der Leeuw, continue these themes.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man-information-e...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/chaos-making-a-new-science/oc...
William Ophuls' Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977) is perhaps the best, most comprehensive, shortest, and most readable exposition of the fact, reality, dynamics, and interactions of limits on the present phase of fossil-fuel fed economic growth I've found. This is a book I recommend not only for the message, but the author's clarity of thought and exposition, his meticulous research, exquisite bibliographical notes, and, given the nearly 30 years elapsed, testability numerous of his predictions, some failed, yes, others uncannily accurate. Rather more the latter. In a similar vein, William R. Catton's Overshoot looks at the ecological dynamics in more depth, with much wisdom, the writings of Richard Heinberg cover the ground of limits fairly accessibly and more recently. Vaclav Smil in numerous books addresses technical factors of the profound nature of the past 250 years, and implications for the future. Meadows, et al, in Limits to Growth set off much of the post-1970 discussion (though they're hardly the first to raise the question -- it dates to Seneca the Elder),
https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/overshoot-the-ecological-basi...
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Aheinberg%2C+richard&a...
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Asmil%2C+vaclav&qt...
Though hardly pessimistic, Daniel Yergin's book The Prize (and TV series) impressed upon me more than any other just how much petroleum specifically changed and transformed the modern world. Though intended largely as laudetory and championing the oil industry by the author, my read of it was exceptionally cautionary. The impacts on business, everyday life, politics, wars, industry, and transport, and the rate at which they occurred, are simply staggering. You can continue this exploration in Vaclav Smil's Energy in World History (1994) (I've recommended Smil independently elsewhere), and a rare but profound two-volume set I'm currently reading, Manfred Weissenbacher's Sources of Power: How energy forges human history (2009). The shear physicality of this book speaks to the message -- it's divided into five parts: 1) Foraging Age (6 pages), 2) Agricultural Age (156 pp), 3) Coal Age (160 pp), 4) Oil Age (296 pp), and 5) Beyond the Oil Age (142 pp). That is, the ~2 million years of pre-agricultural existence are little more than a footnote, the 8,000 years of agriculture roughly equal to the 150 years of coal, and the 100 years of petroleum use roughly twice either. The oil and post-oil ages comprise their own volume. Yergin followed up with The Quest, continuing the search for oil, though I've been less impressed by it.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/prize-the-epic-quest-for-oil-...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/before-oil-the-ages-of-foragi...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/oil-age-and-beyond/oclc/83762...
Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is among the most-cited (and most incorrectly cited), least-read books of high influence I'm aware of, outside religious texts (and perhaps it is a religious text to some…). The author's message has been exceptionally shaped and manipulated by a powerful set of forces, quite often utterly misrepresenting Smith's original intent. Reading him in his own words, yourself, is strongly recommended. I'd also recommend scholarship particularly by Emma Rothschild and Gavin Kennedy, though also others, on Smith. Contrast with the portrayal by the propaganda disinformation front of the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network / so-called Foundation for Economic Education, and much of the modern American Libertarian movement (von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Hazlett, Rothbard, and more recently, Norberg). Contrast The Invisible Hand (1964), a compilation of essays published by Libertarian house Regnery Press in 1966, at the beginning of the rise in public use of Smith's metaphor to indictate mechanism rather than an expression of the unknown.
There are numerous editions of Smith, I believe the Glasgow is frequently cited by Smith scholars: https://www.worldcat.org/title/glasgow-edition-of-the-works-...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-sentiments-adam-smit...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/adam-smith-and-the-invisible-...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/adam-smiths-lost-legacy/oclc/...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/invisible-hand-a-collection-o...
I'd like to put in recommendations on technology specifically, but am still searching for a good general text. The material's covered somewhat in the chaos and complexity recommendations above (Campbell et al), though I'd add Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies. Charle's Perrow has several excellent books including Normal Accidents and Organizing America. I'd like to reference something concerning Unix, Linux, and programming, perhaps Kernighan and Pike's The Unix Programming Environment, Linus Torvalds' Just for Fun, Richard Stallman's The GNU Manifesto, and Steve McConnel's Code Complete. The O'Reilly book Unix Power Tools also encapsulates much the strength of the Unix toolset. All these are somewhat dated.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/collapse-of-complex-societies...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/normal-accidents-living-with-...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/organizing-america-wealth-pow...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-programming-environment/...
https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-power-tools/oclc/5238168...
