Ask HN: What are some must read books?

Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote (1609! The more things change, the more they stay the same)

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (I thought I knew the story until I actually read the book—whoah, that opened my eyes to our relationship with technology and industry and how we use energy)

Dracula, by Bram Stoker (from Blindboy’s podcast episode “Paddy Dracula” I learned Stoker is from Dublin, son of a Protestant mother who told him stories, bedridden until seven years old, about the horrors of cholera)

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (further awareness of how we convert resources, this time before petrol, and for the descriptions of sea life and human relationships)

For background, I’m also into contemporary sci-fi and fantasy and would have an easier time going without electricity than without books, unless I was part of a community that carried on storytelling traditions.

Two others: Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard, both about ecology and reciprocity, guiding how I garden, parent, and relate to the bleeding edge of life in general.

Terrific sci-fi reads were Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Hyperion, Ringworld, and to a lesser extent A Deepness in the Sky. Also Excession, whose human characters are poorly developed and written but whose world-building and AI characters are amazing.

Terrific fantasy reads were The Time-Traveler's Wife, as well as The Name of the Wind and its sequel The Wise Man's Fear. The latter two have rather bad writing and TERRIBLE female characters, but the story is extremely engrossing anyway and some of the ideas are really original (the Cthaeh!).

Catch-22 was an amazing read as well. Watership Down, After Dark, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, and Blood Meridian all dazzled me.

Oh, and The Sandman, Watchmen, Maus, and Persepolis for graphic novels.

For short stories: MMAcevedo (https://qntm.org/mmacevedo), The Last Question by Asimov, The Library of Babel by Borges, and The Dead by Joyce (whose final sentence is my favorite of all English-language writing).

Lastly, The Design of Everyday Things changed how I saw man-made items.

Edit: I almost forgot-- Ecclesiastes, from the Old Testament. I am not religious and this work stands out strongly from all the other writings collected in the bible. It's a poetic work on finding purpose in a world that lacks any inherent meaning. Considered one of if not the most well-written book of the entire bible. Recommend the NIV translation.

But, here we go anyway (and yeah, some of these are just off those lists):

1) Shakespeare's big four tragedies are, in fact, out-fucking-standing. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth. IMO Hamlet reads the best of those. Any would be fine to watch, as well, and may be better that way. The language, especially, is easier to understand when performed, because you have body language, tone, and other context to work with.

2) Gilgamesh. I like Mitchell's edition.

3) The Odyssey. Iliad's a bit of a bore, but with a few incredible scenes that really stick with you. The Odyssey, though, is great. Screw the haters, even the "Telemachy" portion is good.

4) Revolutionary Road by Yates, for a certain kind of struggle with identity & purpose that I suspect will resonate and provide a useful mirror for lots of folks on here.

5) Woolf's To the Lighthouse is probably my favorite book, so I'll throw that on here.

6) The 20th century gave us tons of essayists (some of whom also wrote novels and such) who are great reads. Orwell, C.S. Lewis, and Forster all come to mind.

7) Maugham wrote a lot of novels, and most of them are well worth a read.

8) Farmer's Riverworld series are probably my favorite very dumb books.

CLASSIC FICTION: The Master and Margarita Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov - a magical text of immense imagination. Had it not been released posthumously Bulgakov would no doubt have gotten shipped to a gulag or worse.

CHILDREN'S BOOK: The Little Price by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - I read this charming book at the age of 28 and found it to be one of the most enchanting books I've ever read. Full of life lessons.

NON FICTION: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Once every while you read a book that forces you to view the world in a whole new light, this is one such book.

COMEDY SCI-FI: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - delightful book with immense irony and is absolutely hilarious.

It's fascinating to read a novel written 200 years ago in a country completely unlike mine, but see so many traits and characters that I know and have met in my life today. Dostoevsky has this un-nerving ability to see through people like they are transparent, and show their innermost depth in a few sentences

Its the book I wish I read in high school and college. I genuinely believe the world would be a better place if everyone were to read that book.

"Dahlgren" by Samuel Delaney (and most everything else I've read by him as well).

"Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin - and "Powers".

"Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson.

"Holy Fire" by Bruce Sterling (I also enjoyed Islands in the Net, Zenith Angle and Schismatrix).

"Foundation" trilogy + prequel by Isaac Asimov.

"Brave New World", Aldous Huxley.

"Deepness in the Sky" / "Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge.

"Something wicked this way comes" by Ray Bradbury.

And a couple of comics/visual novels:

"V for Vendetta" and "Watchmen" by Alan Moore (David Lloyd/ Tony Weare and Dave Gibbons / John Higgins).

Dave Sims: "Cerebus" (I don't think I've finished this yet, but the first ten volumes or so is.. Something else).

The Jeeves & Wooster series, of course, but also any of the Blandings Castle series. And the glorious Golf Omnibus. (Always used to think of golf as utterly boring, but PGW can make it hilarious.)

See https://wodehouse.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_books_by_P._G._Wod....

Epic Fantasy: The Malazan series. (Gardens of the Moon, the first book is a challenging read and has a bit of an anticlimatic end. Don't judge the series till finishing the first three books. They get easier to read starting book 2).

History: The making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes. (The title is misleading - it's not about the manhattan project really. The book traces the history of nuclear physics, starting from Rutherford realizing that most of an atom's mass must be concentrated in a nucleus - and step by step, follows all the turns and surprises as a group of people pieced together what an atom must be made of. The book makes an unavoidable turn into the manhattan project and ends with Hiroshima/Nagasaki, so yes the Manhattan project does make a significant part of the book, but it's really not the focus of the book).

Design: The Elements of typographic style by Robert Bringhurst. (A beautiful book about typesetting beautiful books).

Nature: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. (A fascinating book about fungii. I'll never see trees the same way again).

Autobiography: A man for all markets by Edward O Thorp (Claude Shannon shows up and helps the author try to cheat at Roulette using wearable computers! A lot of fascinating stuff).

More history: The Anarchy by William Dalrymple. (A book on the British East India company went from being a merchant company to eventually becoming the British Raj).

Factfulness by Hans Rosling et al.

Both of these books profoundly changed the way I look at the world.

Absolutely unrelated, but I'd recommend Vaclav Smil in general - Energy in Nature and Society and Energy and Civilization are two I've read and enjoyed. A bit dry as reading material, but well-worth for his energetic perspective on human and biological systems.

* Beyond good and evil: Nietzsche

* The Temple of the Golden Pavilion: Yukio Mishima

* Steppenwolf: Hermann Hese

* Library of babel: Borges

* The Brain: David Eagleman

* The Magical Mountain: Thomas Mann

* The Dark Tower: Stephen King(actually tons of King books - I am a bit of a fanboy)

* Factfulness: Hans Rosling

* William Blake: selected poetry

* Dostoevsky: The idiot

* Captain Nemo: Jules Verne

* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Adams

- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

- Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoy

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig

- Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky

- Dune, Frank Herbert

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, 2021 edition

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, 2nd edition 2014

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury, 2011 edition

Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations by William Ury

Bargaining for Advantage by Richard Shell, 2nd edition 2006

Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff

Nonviolent Communication: A language of life by Marshall Rosenberg, 2015 edition

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/0/all-t...

You could also find nice websites and collections if you Google "Hacker News books".

Hacker News has become one of the most impactful places in determining what to read.

I have read at least 10 books as suggested in HN comments by others within 4-5 months after deciding to do so.

I have a list of almost 70 books that I am going to check out, and a shortlist of ~20 books that I am definitely going to read- all from HN comments.

HN is a great place to find out new books- whether it is about tech, fiction, or non-fiction.

The books suggested here amazingly diverese in nature. I highly recommend reading books suggested in HN many times according to your choices to whoever reads this.

Happy reading!

1984 and Animal Farm.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It.

Emma and Pride and Prejudice.

Iliad, Odyssey and first half of the Aeneid.

A Room With A View and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Great Gatsby, Call of the Wild and Age of Innocence.

War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Don Quixote.

Mortimer Adler is the author of "How to Read a Book", conincedentally, also a good book, he did a lot to promote quality reading in his age.

At the end of the book, he lists greatest books ever written, in his opinion. This list is called "Greatest Books of the Western World". It was even published as a series once. I'm still hunting for this set.

Here is the link to the list -> https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/120742.Mortimer_J_Adler_...

This book has a profound impact on me and my relationship with my kids. Read once early in their lives and then reread as they go through different stages in their lives.

Anytime I hear about a new movement or school of thought I go back to that

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

A Walk Among the Tombstones - Lawrence Block

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Use of Weapons - Iain M Banks

Blood Song - Anthony Ryan

Red Rising - Pierce Brown

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

The Short Timers - Gustav Hasford

Which reminds I've yet to read Isaac Asimov's books on the history of North America/USA.

https://sursumcorda.salemsattic.com/archives/2018/06/19/isaa...

The Soldier of a Great War by Mark Helprin. Amazing meditation on life & beauty.

The Cornerstone and The World is Not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg. Even though they're translated from the French, you'll never read anything like it, in terms of conveying the life and struggles of a Crusade-era Norman knight. I finished it utterly exhausted and humbled, astounded at how great a man's life could be.

I'd second for Master & Margarita and almost anything by Dostoyevsky

A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, The Broken Road (unfinished)

— Founders at Work, Jessica Livingston

— Principles, Ray Dalio

— Calling Bullsh*t (The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World), Carl Bergstrom

— Masters of Doom, David Kushner

— Anything you want, Derek Sivers

— Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, Joseph Sugarman

— Ogilvy on Advertising

— The Art of looking sideways, Alan Fletcher

— The Messy Middle, Scott Belsky

— The Wart of Art, Steven Pressfield

— The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, Mel Lindauer

— The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

— Ikigai, Francesc Miralles

— The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman

— Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

A fascinating and intimate history about the people who developed particle physics and how it led to the atomic age. It really highlights what the scientific mindset is like.

Fiction :

Expeditionary Force series of books by Craig Alanson

I'm 12 books into this relatively new series and it is still going strong. If you like sci-fi and geopolitical dramas, this is the series for you.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Nonfiction, but really entertaining. A must read because it's insightful on how different but similar human beings can get. It's more than just a history imo. Also a period of European history people think is important, but rarely read up on.

"Android Karenina" is a two-in-one deal.

Blew my mind (pun intended) and changed my perspective on pretty much everything forever.

And the setting is awesome too.

1) Collected Fictions by Borges

2) The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka

3) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

4) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

5) 9 Stories by J.D. Salinger

6) 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme

7) 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

8) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

It’s hard to categorise, nominally science fiction but not out of place with literary fiction. The writing is plain but it’s quite an emotional book to read with a very dark twist that creeps up on you.

Very short to the point hard sci-fi.

Made me realise how sometimes some books/stories are dragged out and milked into oblivion.

Fiction

- Dracula

Non-fiction

- Moonwalking with Einstein

- Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

- Seiobo There Below, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai

- The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

- Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

- Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

- Cuentos Completos, by Jorge Luis Borges (or at least the "Labyrinths" compilation)

- A Perfect Vacuum, by Stanislaw Lem (Forewords to Non-Existent Books)

- Imaginary Magnitude, by Stanislaw Lem

- His Master's Voice, by Stanislaw Lem (Along the same lines as Sagan's Contact, but better, way better.)

- Buddha's Little Finger, by Victor Pelevin

Some my favorite "non-fiction" books:

- The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, edited by Robert Strassler

- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon

- Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb

- The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb

- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter

- The Road to Reality, by Roger Penrose

- Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Atlas Shrugged.

- Scrum by Sutherland: We all know Scrum yet nobody really gets it. We've all read the blogs, we paid and heard the coaches, we've all done the daily standup and other cargo cult like rituals without really understanding what we are doing and why we're doing it. The book is very easy to read and simple to understand and you actually to know why Scrum came to be and therefore why you're doing it wrong.

- The Phoenix Project: Pretty much the best introduction books about DevOps. One of the few tech books written as a story yet also one of the best, because concepts are easier to remember and internalize when they are part of a broader story. The first half will make you go "are you me?", if you ever were in any kind of dysfunctional software organization. The second half borrow solutions from the manufacturing world and the authors successfully make the point about how they can be applied in in an IT context and also why they work. One of the few tech audio books that you can actually listen to.

- The C Programming Language: Learn the basics, a lot of what you will learn there is applyable to other languages and frameworks. Again, learn why stuff exists so everything makes more sense.

- The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup: Get out of tutorial hell. Actually get to know the language. You don't have to read it back to back.

- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie: A great book about leadership and reciprocity. Not a book about manipulation as the title might lead you to think. As pointed out by others, the world would be a better place if more people read this book. Really great to getting along with other devs.

- Win your Case by Gerry Spence: Based on the same principles of How to Win Friends but applied to adversarial circumstances. Eventually you will have to defend your implementation, convince your colleagues against rewrites and sell your products to clients who were disappointed in the past. This book provides the right tools for that.

- Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraftian literature in general. When I read this book I had a huge sense of déjà vu, but this is because Lovecraft really was the spearhead that put the cosmic horror genre into the minds of the public. Also a great way to deepen your English vocabulary, especially if you are not a native English speaker like me.

- C++17 Standard Library Quick Reference by Van Weert and Gregoire: The fastest and most convenient way to navigate the STL and find the feature you want with just enough information that covers 90% of usual needs. I saved a lot of time with this book.

- Introduction to Electrodynamics by Griffiths: This is the best science book I have ever read and this sentiment was shared among my fellow physics class camaraderie at the time. The explanations are first intuitive and then builds to more rigorous foundations, as it should be for all scientific literature but is not unfortunately. It was so good that people got their copy stolen. I even bought it back years later even if I don't study physics anymore.

- Dune by Hebert. The Denis Villeneuve movie doesn't give Dune's lore it's proper due in my opinion and should have had a proper 20 minutes long prologue like LOTR did but I digress. This book really aged well because of the premise that all computers were banned ten thousands years ago and what replaced them was the supremacy of the human mind over body and matter. The book, at least the first which I just read, is very easy to read. The appendices are very good too, make sure to go back and read them often.

- The Art of War by Suntzu: More than a book about war, but also about organization, leadership, and general principles of strategy. Aidan Gillen (Little Finger) also reads in on Audible.

- CIA Human Resource Exploitation Manual by CIA: Now publicly available as declassified. Worth reading not only for its historical value but also for a toolkit on how to defend oneself against exploitation and know by the knowing the signs and methods. Funny fact: the mentions about torture are rewritten by hand to say not to use torture instead of "only with proper authorization".

FICTION

The Mysterious Island - Verne

The Time Machine - Wells

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell

Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury

Brave New World - Huxley

Snow Crash - Stephenson

The Shockwave Rider - Brunner

The Fountainhead - Rand

Cryptonomicon - Stephenson

The Foundation trilogy - Asimov

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Bradbury

Strangers - Koontz

After Dark - Murakami

It - King

The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

The Hobbit - Tolkien

Perdido Street Station - Miéville

Permutation City - Egan

Glasshouse - Stross

NON-FICTION

Report from Engine Co 82 - Smith

Godel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter

How the Mind Works - Pinker

The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Blank

Charles Proteus Steinmetz: The Electrical Wizard of Schenectady - Bly

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Levy

Artificial Life - Levy

Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Haffner & Markoff (Note: this book is not without controvery. There is a lot of debate about the veracity of much of the material on Mitnick. However, it is a wildly entertaining read, and an introduction to a number of interesting characters. But I'd suggest following up by reading other related titles, especially regarding Kevin Mitnick)

Ghost in the Wires - Mitnick (Mitnick's autogiography, basically)

Takedown - Shimomura & Markoff

The Fugitive Game - Littman (of the books written about Mitnick, but not by Mitnick, this one has a reputation for being a little more "pro Kevin" whereas a couple of the others are sort of pointedly "anti Kevin" in their bias. Maybe it all balances out in the end if you read them all).

The Cyberthief & the Samurai - Goodell

The Cuckoo's Egg - Stoll

How To Create A Mind - Kurzweil

On Intelligence - Hawkins

Engineering General Intelligence (volumes 1 & 2) - Goertzel

The Hidden Pattern - Goertzel

Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity - Wallace

Factfullness by Hans rosling: The world is awesome, stop focusing on some tiny negatives that are being mispresented by the media.

Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: Contemporary top scifi author

Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein: The movie was awesome, until you read the book and see the movie as an abomination.

Pheonix and Unicorn Projects by Gene Kim: Devops > ITIL.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: Stoicism, how to be a good leader, how to live life.

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie: Everyone should be forced to read this multiple times. I really need to re-read.

Lying by Sam Harris: Seriously don't lie. You'll find things get better unexpectedly.

12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson: Here comes the downvotes.