Mine were: – Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai (2000) – William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis (1991) – John Ma, Polis (2024) – John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice (1982)
(Apologies if someone has posted something similar recently. I did a quick search and couldn't find anything.)
You can browse by a lot of different genres, etc.
You can also submit yours here -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads
You can see my 3 here: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb *Every submitter gets a page like that.
What were my 3? 1. The Cold Cold Ground - Fantastic police procedural set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. 2. The Aggressor - Near future Tom-Clancy-like sketch of a USA/China war. 3. Wounded Tigris - Amazing Nonfiction about a team traveling down the entire Tigris River. Heavy on environment, history, and people. Utterly fascinating.
No thanks tbh. This isn’t identity politics. It’s just live and let live.
"This also highlights the huge difference between the "LGB" and the "T''. The gay rights movement just asked society to leave them alone and let them get married. No impositions on my life. The trans movement demands that I adopt their new dialect (or I'm a bigot) and allow males to play in girls sports (or I'm a bigot). Big impositions."
The making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes was probably the best of the bunch. I read it because I see some parallels between the discovery of atomic power and the search for AGI, and wanted an insight on the ethics and decision making of the time. It didn't disappoint.
The dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow was a solid read and retelling of how civilization began and evolved.
The message by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I read in two sittings — it was that impactful. A reminder of how the oppressed becomes the oppressor again and again. "As it happens, you can See the world but never see the people in it"
Other highlights: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt; re-read Thinking in Systems by Daniella Meadows; re-read Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat Zinn; The light eaters by Zoe Schlanger; I don't want to talk about it, by Terrence Real.
Will I like The Dawn of Everything if I didn't like Harari's Sapiens? (I loved Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years)
Refreshing and beautiful because it’s a totally new kind of world for a story to take place in, essentially survival in a world of procedurally generated endless architecture.
Most of the time there is just one or two characters among repetitive environments, which was relaxing as I get easily confused if there are 5+ characters to remember or extensive mental visualization required.
I do agree with your sentiment about number of characters though, that really helped. I find that my working memory for characters isn’t what it used to be.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. Excellent book that handles time travel and its implications reasonablly well. She also wrote a shorter, "children's" book series under a pen name; quotes from it appeared in Middlegame. It's called the Up-and-under series. I've only made it through book one so far, as I lost book two, but so far it's been good!
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. It's been on my list of books to read for ages and it is in fact excellent, if difficult. I'm planning on reading some of her--allegedly much less dark--books about the sea next, because I've heard she can be very poetic and in Silent Spring it shines through sometimes, but not often.
Fall Out - Tim Shipman, on of his astonishingly detailed quartet on Britain's exit from the EU;
Robert Blake's biography of Disraeli, magisterial yet readable;
Boris Johnson's memoir Unleashed, great fun if you like his tone;
Colonialism, a Moral Reckoning, Nigel Biggar, an antidote to the more ahistorical versions of the BLM narrative.
The Notebook - A history of thinking on paper, Roland Allen - a joyful romp through the notebook's history;
Elusive - How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of Mass, Frank Close - a nice account of the discovery of the Higgs Boson, with perhaps too much biography of Higgs, who after all as a lecturer at Edinburgh was not a thrill-seeker.
Carlo Rovelli's White Holes, implausible but beautifully written.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200128457-mathematica?ac...
Excellent book on mathematical thinking in the true sense - what needs to happen in the mind's eye to really grapple with abstract mathematics. Definitely a eye (mind?) opener for someone who has some graduate level math education but couldn't gel with the crazier stuff.
Came across the book from this article which was on HN a little bit ago: https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematical-thinking-isnt-wh...
Troubled - Rob Henderson. About how Henderson was in state care and wound up at prestigious universities and his thoughts on the world.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176444107-troubled
Not the End of the World - Hannah Ritchie from 'Our World in Data' about the state of the planet.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/145624737-not-the-end-of...
Dictatorland - Paul Kenyon - About the dictators who have impoverished Africa.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36260719-dictatorland
Magic Pill - Johann Hari - About Semaglutide and how people got fat.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201319612-magic-pill
On the Edge - Nate Silver - About how seeing the world in terms of risk and expected value can work.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204236707-on-the-edge
Orbital - Samantha Harvey - Booker Prize winner about people on the ISS and the world.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123136728-orbital
Build, Baby, Build - Bryan Caplan on why YIMBYism is a good idea. This is a graphic novel. It's really fun.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181564537-build-baby-bui...
Greg Egan, Diaspora (7/10)
Dan Simmons, Hyperion 1-4 (9/10)
James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes (6/10)
Scott Alexander, Unsong (7/10)
Qtmn, Ra (7/10)
Qtmn, Fine Structure (6/10)
Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary (6/10)
Wildbow, Worm (8/10)
amazing how a niche webserial from 10 years ago is still being read and having an impact
also, the ride doesn't have to end, lots of Worm fanfictions out there, some of them are really good
Pilgrims?
A random monster?
WTH?!
But it was very sci-fi-y in the end. Interesting concepts, not too soft on the science.
Loved it.
Both great books.
The Last of the Wine (1956) by Mary Renault. Athens on its way to losing the war with Sparta. You know what’s coming for Athens, but the characters do not. The atrocity at Melos echoes through the whole book.
Strong recommendation for both; they feel very much of the present, age notwithstanding.
The story of his life was absolute fascinating for me, unfortunately the last part of the book attempts a connection with the development of Alpha Go / reinforcement learning that should have been avoided.
Fiction:
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
- Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- A Man with One of Those Faces by Caimh Mcdonnell
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
- Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton
- Where the Body Was by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips
Nonfiction:
- Exiles by Preston Sprinkle
- Jesus and the Powers by N. T. Wright & Michael F. Bird
- With All Its Teeth by Joshua S. Porter
- In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
- A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Copenhagen(play) by Michael Frayn done by BBC Radio, not really a book, but it's great. https://archive.org/details/michael-frayn-copenhagen
The main "trick" is that the majority of books I read are audiobooks, usually at 2x or even 3x speed. And I'm just always reading, or listening to a podcast. There is a lot of slack time in which you can't be doing something else, and I use it for books. E.g. getting up in the morning and arranging food for my kids for school, or doing the dishes, or walking to/from work, or going to the gym, running to buy groceries, etc.
It really doesn't take that much time to read a lot. Say you want to read 52 books a year - that's a book a week. Depending on what you read, the average book is 10-20 hours on Audible, so let's say 15 hrs on average. If you read at 2x speed that's 7.5 hours of listening time per week, or roughly an hour a day. For most people that is easily achievable just with their commute to work.
The tricks are to put a lot of time in it and always have a surplus of interesting books on hand. I spend around $2k a year on Kindle books (if I talk to someone and they mention a book they like, I’ll usually just buy it) and make reading a daily habit.
I read on average an hour a day on weekdays and two or more hours on weekends. Reading is one of the things I enjoy the most and has been for my entire life.
Also even though I enjoy reading a lot, I find more isn't always better, but I've been trying to survey some topics - fascism, Christian Nationalism, etc. If I really want to get something out of what I'm reading or if it is a complex topic I have to slow down.
And A Desolation Called Peace, or really that series, is one of my favorite SF reads of the last 10 years, I've recommended it often.
- Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesch -- really phenomenal pacing and psychological terror in a sci-fi action novel.
- The Golem of Brooklyn by Adam Mansbach -- good portrait of different strains of American Judaism in a book structured around a quest
- Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters -- great characters and structured revelation. This was sitting unread on my shelf for years because I thought it would be preachy, but it wasn't.
- The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman -- tales from Camelot in the aftermath of Arthur's defeat at Camlann. Excellent mixing of round table legends from different points in history.
Other than that, "Il deserto dei Tartari" by Dino Buzzati (in english: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tartar_Steppe). Gave me some different point of view when thinking about time passing by. This was actually an audio-book, but I don't think there's any difference.
It's a septology, curiously self-published by an established author, which she started on decades ago. Books 1 through 5 are out in Danish. The main plot device is superficially reminiscent of Groundhog Day, but with a completely different execution. Starts out kind of claustrophobic, then goes through these waves of revelations and disappointment and hypothesizing and hopefulness and rebuilding. I find it hard to compare to anything.
It very credibly tells an agonizingly familiar human story, from the perspective of a inescapably inhuman android protagonist - by seeing the world through her eyes, you also learn who she is, and what her experience of consciousness is - you in fact are offered a precious insight into the nature of artificial consciousness that no one else in the book is quite properly aware of.
Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris. How cultural norms establish collective behavior.
The Extermination of the American Bison. Written in the late 1800s as the tragedy was unfolding. Lots on great detail on how and why we decimated a keystone species in a matter of a few decades.
Plato's Revenge by William Ophuls. A concise manifesto on societal change. Lays out a vision for a new post-growth, post-oil, ecological consciousness that incorporates modern science, religion and philosophy.
Four Thousand Weeks. Far from a self-help time-management book, this is more a philosophy book on human's relationship with time. Delightful read.
Breath by James Nestor. Modern humans are breathing incorrectly due to factors of modern life. An exploration of the science and art of breathing properly.
Bernoulli's Fallacy by Aubrey Clayton. In the statistical wars, this book takes a strong stance: Bayesian is unequivocally better. He exploses the racist/colonial history of frequentist statistics, as well as the fundamental flaws in their math. Posits that mis-applied frequentist methods are to blame for the reproducibility crisis in science.
How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. A no-nonsense, factual account of the systems that keep our modern globalized society running.
Elements of Clojure by Zach Tellman. A concise, high-level philosophy about how we build and compose abstractions. One of those books where every sentence is gold. My only wish that the book wasn't tied to Clojure (most of the book is applicable to any language, despite the title).
Tidy First? by Kent Beck. How and when to make structural changes (refactoring, architecture, paying down tech debt) vs behavioral changes (new features, bug fixes). You need both, and you can use economic theory as a guide for when to invest in one or the other. But you need to treat them differently.
Numerical Linear Algebra for Programmers by Dragan Djuric. A code-centric introduction to common linear algrebra routines, Using Clojure and the neaderthal library - a high-level API for fast math optimized for CPU and GPU hardware.
Walts Way, Andrew Lock Busy Doing Nothing, Hundred Rabbits The Art and Business of Online Writing, Nocolas Cole
If you want to be a writer and publish your own book I've written a short how-to guide. I'm updating it right now, building a site to promote other authors, and I'll release the new version in the coming days. My email address is in my profile if you're interested.
I heard about it from the same HN post
Mind Hunter: Somehow even better than the show.
A Brief History of Intelligence: Packed with so much knowledge about the evolution, mechanics, and different forms of intelligence. One of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time.
I generally read between 30-50 books a year (mix of fiction and non-fiction). But this year I knew my focus was going to be more on research, reading papers, writing code, etc. so I set my reading goal lower than normal (I usually set it to like 75, knowing that that's a bit aspirational). This year? I set it to like, 30. And I won't come close to hitting that. Right now I'm at 7 books for the year. So I don't have a big sample set to choose from. :-(
That said...
Of what I did read, a couple were pretty good:
Non-fiction:
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks- Scott J. Shapiro
Readings in Agents - Huhns, Singh (eds)
Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason - Bordini, Hubner, & Wooldridge
Fiction:
In Too Deep (Jack Reacher, #29) - Lee Child
And I gotta say, I've considered a few times lowering my "target" books read per year, to make more time for studying, reading articles, etc. And I totally thought that's what you were doing since you mentioned reading papers, research etc. And I was super proud on your behalf for doing that.
So anyway, just popping in to say that maybe there's a bright side to lowering your goal.
Very entertaining sci-fi. I tore through it a a couple of days.
The 5th book is an "audiobook only" release until January 2025 (I think) called, "NOT TILL WE ARE LOST".
And the Bobiverse series has recently been optioned to Universal!
- Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar (an examination of the Dyatlov Expedition).
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (fantasy).
- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden.
Hopefully the other responses here give me something good to read for Christmas break. :-)
Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (1937)
Rather difficult reads for me as a non-native english speaker, but it was worth it. It is hard to imagine a more epic science fiction scenario than "Star Maker".
The Wall Speaks by Jerr was that book this year.
A very interesting perspective on masculine vs feminine frame.
The biggest takeaway is working on the external to improve the internal.
A quick read on many points in history when things looked grim and it must have seemed like the end of society was coming --an interesting read not necessarily mind-blowing.
For a general recommendation for a book to buy for Christmas I'd say the Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner is quite wonderful, if you'll pardon the pun.
It is about scientists that are fully consumed by their work, going mad somtimes. Their work is making a world a better place, but at the same time is used to kill lots of people.
This is the first book for me that I can say is beautifully written. Even though the subject was heavy at times, I couldn't stop reading it.
This is how you lose the time war -- took me a long time to start this book, and then I couldn't put it down.
Non fiction, I really enjoyed Slouching Towards Utopia. I'm a sucker for narrative history like that, and I got a few useful concepts from the book. I also really liked The Prince of Peace, a biography of Keynes.
- The Last Traverse; Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whites
- Where You'll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova
Each book covers a wintertime climbing tragedy in the NH White Mountains but they're really about human nature, risk management, and decision making. I found both books riveting, devoured each in a few evenings of reading.
* "Beware of Chicken" by CasualFarmer
* "The Immaculate Collection" by havlo
* "The Runic Artist" by Ellake
* "The Broken Knife" by SilverSidhe
* "Immovable Mage" by ImmovableMage
* "The Gorgon Incident and Other Stories" by John Bierce
* "Quest Academy" by Brian J. Nordon
* "The Weirkey Chronicles" by Sarah Lin
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell Not as amazing as I thought it would be but memorable nonetheless.
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent Something nice about this book. Not for everyone. What is?
Don’t read anything about the plot, it will spoil it. Don’t read the Wikipedia article.
It’s a science fiction novel. Relatively short.
The book will hit you differently, depending on your age.
It’s messed with me for weeks and it’s still messing with me.
Highly recommend it. Don't waste your time with Franklin's autobiography.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empireworld-British-Imperialism-Sha...
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
All of the CJ Box series of Joe Pickett books
The Dan Abnett Eisenhorn and Ravenor Warhammer novels
In case you can't tell, I mostly read for entertainment.
For non fiction "Why nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu was quite well done.
This is going to be a life time companion for me.
It's a book of 300 maxims.
If you want be be better person, wiser. Get a copy.
It's a great little book.
you don't have to have read the other Hunger Games because it is set about 60 years before the others
The Murderbot diaries books by Martha Wells - 6/10. Mixed on these. They're fun to read. The setting is cool and the worldbuilding is shallow but effective (i.e., don't read it if you want game of thrones in space). Each novella takes an afternoon to read. I think "snarky violent droid" is overcooked these days and lost interest after book 5.
Light by M. John Harrison - 7/10 excellent prose; great multiple-storyline plot; the journey was better than the destination, but it kept me thinking
Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson - 7/10 Fun. If "near future Nigerian/British post-colonial frontier action with guns, robots, and psychic aliens" sounds cool to you, check it out. I liked his Rosewater Trilogy just as much.
Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - tough to rate these. brilliant ideas, VERY challenging plots. I wish I didn't get so confused by the end of each book.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - 6/10 - this and the Martian read like blog posts pasted together. The grand dilemma is spelled out on page one and never gets any deeper. Pro: the plot is in your face on every page and you will never be confused when reading; Con - there is zero internal character development. Read if you like stories driven by applied science, not comparative moral decision-making.
The City and the City by China Miéville - 9/10 - you will invariably see something like "Kafka meets [some affected crime novelist] to describe this book, and that ain't wrong. Kind of SF, kind of fantasy.
Railsea by China Miéville - 8/10 - great good vs evil YA SF about, well, imagine if trains were like boats. Good character writing, tight plot.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - 8/10 - loved this. More "realist" near-future fabulism than Gibson, but if you love cyberpunk, read this.
The Shipbreaker Triology by Paolo Bacigalupi - 6/10 - near-future YA science fiction with a lot of blood and guns. Pretty good stories.
Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers - 9/10 - reread. I had to go back. This gets a near perfect score because of its style, setting, and plot.
The Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) by William Gibson - 9/10 - I had read Neuromancer 3 times but never the next two. I was pleasantly surprised to find the second and third novel easier to read* but just as enjoyable as Neuromancer.
The Bridge trilogy by William Gibson - 8/10 so far. I am in the second book. Can't believe I slept on these for the last couple decades.
non-SF:
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad - 9/10 - if you like punk/hardcore from the 80s, this is a great read.
* Every time I read Neuromancer, Gibson's literary footguns --holograms, false memories, hallucinations, and drug-addled unreality--make me feel crazy for not being able to follow the plot at times. I'm okay with believing that was the intended effect.
Fiction -
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/2ab29d16-0cb1-4ef8-8cde...
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/65214629-29ac-45a6-b474...
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/bd090cb4-bc9a-41cb-9833...
Nonfiction -
The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine (my luckiest find of the year)
Stalin: The Court of The Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/13ebec0d-0859-4858-864a...
Vienna by Richard Cockett - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/c0e1d1fb-dea7-456b-a95e...
The House That Madigan Built by Ray Long (an interesting history of a legendary figure in Illinois state politics)
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Tamsin Muir, Gideon the Ninth
Iain M Banks, The Algebraist
D F Jones, Colossus
James S A Corey, The Mercy of Gods
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Own-Neural-Network-ebook/dp/B01EER4Z4G
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-First-GAN-PyTorch-ebook/dp/B085Z96M9PNine lies about work by Marcus Buckingham
How to know a person by David Brooks
The Divine Reality - Hamza Andreas Tzortzis
A little more dense: "Chip War" by Chris Miller... a macro economic/political picture of silicon valley growth that fills in so many holes in popular lore.
Paul Richard Halmos
Libra by Don Delilo
Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith