What happens when humankind on the verge of post-scarcity suffers its first alien contact -- truly alien contact. A team of engineered humans is sent to meet them.
What really stuck out to me is how the content of the book could be applied to a potential AGI -- an alien, intelligent entity that we can't really understand and still have to interact with. I can't go further without delving into spoilers. It's really good. But, also, very bleak.
Incredible book and your post has reminded me that I need to reread it.
This is definitely a book that stuck with me over the years. The concepts were very foreign and unusual at the time I read it, and I still find them novel to think about. Definitely in my top five recommendations for sci-fi reading.
Trying to summarize a half-remembered book, but the big revelation is that the aliens are not sentient at all. They are rather operating on instinct. The point of the book was more to discuss the nature of being human and is consciousness/sentience all that necessary. Lots of philosophical waxing on the nature of thought.
As to your question about other species, I think you are posing a rather challenging problem. How does an author write from the perspective of a being significantly more intelligent than themselves? Their actions and motivations become wholly alien as comprehension is not within our reach. One can justify any alien action as the unknowable motivations of a capacious god.
Watts wrote a loosely related sequel called Echopraxia that was not nearly as good as Blindsight but expands on some of the concepts. It was much more of a slog to read through and a bit confusing to follow the story and I had to force myself to finish it. If you are thinking of picking that up after reading Blindsight.
Both books have a good section after the story where Watts explains the research and citations of how he came up with the story. If you read that part it may break your brain in a questioning existence kind of way.
On the good side, I think the author is brilliant, the way he created this new race of aliens, how he explains their physiology, faster than what it takes for your brain to process images, their camouflage, how their body is a whole lens, their communication system, their way to accumulate energy, etc... that was amazing and worth reading.
On the bad side, I hated every character in the book, it's maybe expected to not like the protagonist with his "lack of empathy", but who makes a crew of such a bunch of uncooperative people, is like nobody wanted to do their job properly; All their conversations felt hostile, not sure how to put it, but I would expect a sense of wonder, curiosity and cooperation from the people sent to do a first alien contact.
The part that I disliked the most is how the human ship felt so abstract, they are in a ship, but everyone stays in some sort of independent tent, I thought this was my problem maybe I missed some key information about it, but after reading some critics, other people also have this feeling of disorientation.
Overall, it's worth it if you really like the genre, but not a must in my opinion.
* Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive. Best pop-sci book I've read in a while. Strikes the right balance between including pertinent information without being overwhelming, explaining things in a digestible way without dumbing down, etc. Inspired me to read a proper immunology primer (How the Immune System Works), which was also very good.
* How Rights Went Wrong. An excellent, level-headed take on the U.S. conception of rights, and how it leads to zero-sum thinking in supreme court cases. The author is so relentlessly reasonable that it's hard not to buy into his argument. Even though this book is about the U.S., it has lots of case studies where it contrasts with various other countries, which helped me understand my country's (Canada's) court system and system of rights better.
Let-downs:
* Seeing Like a State. The first few chapters are interesting, and do a good job of explaining the world-view of the author. Worth buying just for this. However, the last half or two-thirds of the book is a tedious re-hashing of the same ideas through various examples.
* The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Many interesting factoids in here (killer asteroids: solved problem). However, the book's central argument failed to convince me. Many of the analyses and probability estimates were disappointingly shallow and hand-wavy, especially for the #1 risk cited in the book--unaligned AI--which he thinks has a 10% chance of ending civilization this century.
Because it's a terrible book.
It epitomizes the sort of sci Fi that sci Fi people keep recommending, with it's kinda interesting concept and embarrassingly bad writing. It's just hundreds of pages of unreadable.
And it ends abruptly before resolving anything so it tricks you into getting the sequel. Which is somehow even more poorly written.
See also: children of time
For me it was harder to read, but still very enjoyable experience.
>And it ends abruptly before resolving anything hmmm, I wonder what kind of books you usually read. Because this is very common approach, when authors don't do full LoTR ending, but end story at the point when reaching it would be rewarding, but won't everything to the last bit, so readers can still think about for a while.
Sci-fi generally sacrifices prose quality and character depth to pack in more interesting ideas; great literature generally makes the opposite tradeoff. If you read a sci-fi novel expecting great writing you’ll be frustrated.
Three Body Problem had enough interesting ideas to keep me turning the page, where most sci-fi novels don’t—I prefer short stories for sci-fi exactly because of the generally low quality writing.
What are your other favorite sci-fi novels, and books in general?
(Send some general fiction recs on my way if you feel like it.)
As far as sci-fi novels, I have pretty generic tastes for this crowd: Dune, The Dispossessed, The Martian. The Crying of Lot 49 is one of my favourite books. Not exactly sci-fi but close.
2. War and Peace / Anna Karenina - I wanted some sort of insight into Russian Imperialism and was surprised by how much my father was like some of the characters (his grandfather was a 'count'). I thought his personality was just a quirk of his since he was unlike anyone I knew growing up. He fit the Tolstoyan characterization of a noble like a glove, warts and all.
3. History of the Peloponnesian War - So many of the conflicts today are exemplified in the ancient Greek world and the relationships between the city states as described in the book. Hard to believe (I don't believe) that Thucydides could remember these lengthy speeches given by emissaries in various scenarios, but what is written is nonetheless riveting. It's great context for my current read, Plato's Republic, which was heavily influenced by the Athenian (democracy's) defeat against the Spartan oligarchy.
4. Come As You Are - Emily Nagoski
Shedding light on different sexual perspectives and experiences for something that is usually kept deep in the dark.
It really helped me understand better how to deal with stress, burnout, and how to talk about it at work.
What was your solution for nighttime mouth breathing?
Standard E-books made an excellently formatted version: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/joseph-conrad/lord-jim
In the book, Rovelli explores the concept of time and how it has been understood by scientists and philosophers throughout history. An intellectually stimulating and not overly technical read about the concept of a universe without time and some of the latest developments in Loop Quantum Gravity (Rovelli’s field of work).
I also have a blog post on my Top 10 books from last year: https://medium.data4sci.com/top-10-books-we-read-in-2022-c3d...
1)The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Tasting_Tea This book is about the history of Statistics which is weaved through the some remarkable personal stories behind the history of Statistics. If you have ever used statistics, some of the words will sound familiar and will help to understand the history behind it.
2)The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Song-of-the-Cell/... I am still reading this book but I have read his previous book, "The Emperor of All Maladies" so knew his style. Again I enjoy historical perspective and this one tells about how we thought of the cell. It almost reads like textbook but is much interesting read than textbook. Brought some of the memories from my cell biology class. Always fascinating on how we take some things for granted such as blood transfusion came along in first place. He also narrates some his personal experience in between to make it even more readable.
In short, I love tech and biology sparkled with history.
How the globalisation is coming to an end, how the US Navy made Chinese power possible, how the 21st Century will be American after all, and many other counter-intuitive things. A must read IMO.
* Atlas of AI, by Kate Crawford
Politics of AI: power, exploitation, colonialism, global surveillance and control... Fascinating. Another must read.
The book is full of describing some different fictional city (or is it? one passage suggests maybe that's not the case), often with a different theme or flavor of strangeness that might be a metaphor for something in our lives. Every so often it changes it up by having Marco Polo (who is telling the stories of these cities) have a conversation with Kublai Khan.
I don't know if I enjoyed it as much as everyone else did (going off the almost universal glowing critic and reader reviews). Part of that might have been because I kept assuming the story was leading to some big reveal or something bigger than the structure of '4 chapters each describing a fantastical city followed by 1 chapter of conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan'. I wanted something that tied it all together and made me go 'Aha! That's clever!'.
I never got that. If it was just billed as like a bunch of short vignettes about fantastical cities and that's it (no conversations), I might have just enjoyed picking it up, flipping to a random city, reading it, and enjoying it that way. The conversations periodically kept misleading me into thinking it was more than that, and I ended up getting impatient with the city chapters, wanting to get to the conversations where I was hoping a little more of the real story got revealed.
I'm still somewhat hopeful there really is more to it and I just missed it, although reading some reader reviews didn't seem to suggest otherwise.
That being said, maybe check it out, and if you go into it without the expectation that there's a grand overarching story to it you might enjoy it more. And some of the city vignettes were quite interesting. Although there were more misses than hits for me amongst them.
Edit: Just had a quick look at the Wikipedia page.
> In one key exchange in the middle of the book, Kublai prods Polo to tell him of the one city he has never mentioned directly—his hometown. Polo's response: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."
That was interesting to think about when I got to that point, but wasn't enough for me.
The gene: an intimate history by Siddhartha Mukherjee - fascinating book about genes and medicine. Author explains ~150 years of experiments and findings in genetic science without going into technical details.
The child in you by Stefanie Stahl - it is one of the most important books I ever read. This book helped me understand myself, discover and overcome some of my traumas.
Nonviolent communication: a language of life by Marshall Rosenberg - very good handbook for improving your communication skills.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus - when I think of this book word "charming" comes to my mind.
On The Clock by Emily Guendelsberger - Gave me a glimpse into how it is to work at Amazon, McDonalds and Convergys. Though the subject is not the most positive. her style of writing is quite funny, and the combination worked well.
Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series. He drops you into the middle of his universe without explaining it all at once, and he's very eager about explaining all the new technology he's dreamed up. He also makes sure the books are written so that they could all have been a standalone title. Depending on what you've read before, things he mentions will often remain a "mystery" until you find the answer later in the series, or in one of the standalone short stories.
Maus av Art Spiegelman - Graphical novel about being a Jewish WW2 concentration camp prisoner. Highly recommended.
Flowers for Algernon by David Keyes. From 1959, I liked it a lot. About a mentally handicapped man who receives a surgery that gradually turns him into the smartest man alive. Lots of focus on how empathy, humility and respect has to go alongside pure knowledge. And also that mentally handicapped are people too.
Gateway by Frederik Pohl - Sci-fi from the 70s. Quite good. A comet is discovered, full of million-year old ships pre-programmed for roundtrip flights to unknown destinations.
Next year I'd like to look more into Haruki Murakami's books. The one I've read was slow to get started, but I liked it a lot in the end. It had some things in common with regular sci-fi, but he seems to lean more towards the dreamy/odd/artsy side of things than what I'm used to.
Also if you want to hear me blather on about his cannon:
Morpho is pretty easy to recommend as a way of getting better at human figures; it has a lot of coverage, and while many of the drawings are a bit on the scribbly side, they're easy to follow and show lots of poses and perspectives. The Hultgren book, OTOH, is definitely a tough one to study from - lots of detailed ink work with hatch lines flung all over, shrunk down to cram them five to a page, and an uneven grabbag of topics(half of the book is horses, which are used to show animation, construction, various phases of sketching, and cartooning - nothing gets a very detailed anatomy treatment or a lot of structure). Working through it was a bit like reverse-engineering, but at the halfway point, I find the exercise worth the effort.
Also, "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir as many others have mentioned. I enjoyed the scale and interleaved timeline in this book, the only bit it's slightly lacking is the humor found in "The Martian".
* Three Simple Steps, Trevor Blake - Biography based inspiration for mental success
* The Price You Pay for College, Ron Lieber - Data driven look at the true cost of college for parents and teens
* Die With Zero, Bill Perkins - Counterpoint to FIRE movement, consider time value of money today vs. saving all for a future that might not exist
* Economics of Star Trek, Rick Webb - Exploration of how finances could work in the fictional world of the Federation
* The Creature from Jekyll Island, G Edward Griffin - How did the Federal Reserve come to exist?
Have you read “Trekonomics, Manu Saadia”? How do they compare? Are these same books?
Best fiction read was Tim Winton's Breath or (there's probably some recency bias at play here) Sebastian de Castel's Traitor's Blade.
I also read a few comic books. I love the East of West series (at least the first three books).
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/06/1619-s06.html
lmao
I have no opinion myself (haven't read the book, don't know much beyond the official grade school history curriculum), but some of the criticisms come from superficially reasonable people.
If you take the book content to be meaningful, you should at least survey the criticisms. Of course you'll want to ignore the virulently anti brigade, which is numerous, very loud, and insufferably stupid.
Did not downvote. I think this is what the downvoters meant. As a reader, you deserve an explanation, IMO.
Subversive content in general tends to get that reaction from intelligent people and that book is more rightly considered propaganda than actual history.
If you understand what propaganda is, what its goals are, and can recognize it easily you probably wouldn't have been blindsided.
> What Is The 1619 Project? - The 1619 Project And Socialism
> 1619 Project Debunked - What parents should know.
So i assume there's a certain section that disagrees with the book so much that they're paying for ads to counter it! Maybe there's an answer lying there. i.e. it triggers the left versus right debate and hard!
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
The Great Demographic Reversal by Charles Goodhart - this book changed my life, but now that inflation and the retirements are in full swing it might be harder to make early moves on the knowledge. The graphs are also beginning to become outdated since the book was written in the end of 2019/early 2020? Either way, it inspired my decision to move closer to family.
The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan - this book is well worth the read. Peter is a very educated and factual guy, and it's hard to disagree with the normalized vectors of change he is describing. The magnitude of these vectors however are up for much debate. Lots to think on, agree with, and disagree with.
American Icon by Bryce G. Hoffman - a book on Ford's handling of the 2008 crisis. It's got some flowery parts that idolize these men too much IMO but a great book on leadership and problem solving.
Lights Out - a book on how GE failed. If hypothetically American Icon was paid for to make Ford look good, Lights Out would have been paid for by disgruntled investors to burn that company's reputation to the ground. By some Wall Street Journal employees, this book is bonkers and a really frigid lesson about how incentives play out and a sober view of work in the real world.
(Note: I listed to these all via the Audible audiobooks, they were all very well narrated and I’d highly recommend listening this way.)
#1: The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
This is amazingly fascinating from beginning to end, if you like speculative evolution zenofiction space operas, you’re in for a real treat. I feel like these books were written for me. I went the audiobook route and chugged through each (roughly 600 page) book, neglecting focus to almost anything else in my life. I would be playing Tetris on my phone (via the Tappy app) while listening at 1.1x speed, which is the perfect amount of mental stimulation to have massive amounts of time go by without noticing.
#2: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
I don’t want to spoil too much, but this is a must-read for engineer-brain nerds like me that yearn to understand complex systems recreationally. Enough said. Mandatory. I read Artemis by Andy Weir afterwards and enjoyed it too, but Hail Mary is my fave.
#3: The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
After obsessively finishing the Children of Time series there was a huge hole in my heart, so I started this series. I didn’t really latch on until 15% through the first book, but once I did I was once again obsessively hooked.
#4 (Bonus) I’m now reading Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward and am very excited to report back when I eventually finish. It involves alien life that evolved in the atomic strata of neutron stars (nerd drool).
I’ve now mostly taken a break from reading as it became all-consuming. But it was very worth it overall, best reading year in my life so far.
2) Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man. I really enjoyed the writing, among other things, and how he captures short moments and scenes with sort of a hard-to-describe quality of a visual art, almost.
3) Ilya Somin. Free To Move. To me most of the book was "duh" but I think it would be a good read for people on the fence about immigration and private vs public institutions.
4) Vaclav Smil. Energy And Civilization; possibly How the World Really Works, still reading that one. Really dense and detailed examination of energy history of mankind for the former, and infrastructure of technological civilization for the latter.
5) Pluckrose & Lindsday. Cynical Theories. Good 101 on CRT and modern woke movement.
6) Alexander. New Jim Crow. Good 101 on war on drugs, although some broader social arguments the book makes straightforwardly don't seem to follow, or are contradicted by, its factual base IMHO.
7) Stephenson. Seveneves - really good hard sci-fi imho, although felt very, very long.
8) Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London. A good book about poverty only 70-100 years ago. Also a good perspective for modern complaints about poverty - I have some non-US background for that, so I think many US readers might benefit more.
On the fence. 1) I want to plug Seleukid Royal Economy, just for the hell of it, if you are interested in ancient economy :)
2) Galef. Scout Mindset - on the fence about this one, but it seemed like it was way too long for what it offers. Maybe I've just read a lot of the same stuff ago.
3) Okorafor. Binti - not bad as a YA book, but sci-fi aspects are remarkably bad.
A few more I'm too lazy to type out ;)
But still, here are some I probably bought for $0.99 and enjoyed:
Lost Restaurants of Seattle
This Outcast Generation by Taijun Takeda
The Royal Navy Lynx: An Operational History
A Doctor's War by Aidan MacCarthy
Sniping in France by Hesketh-Prichard
The Art of Whittling by Faurot
Moscow Calling by Angus Roxburgh
Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow
Icelandic Folk Tales by Stefansson
If you like any of those topics then you have my random recommendation, and possibly the indulgent vanity of once more having avoided consumer risk, or maybe consumer regret.
These were fun in 2022, in addition to 1) web browsing, which I find is definitely reading, despite all its numbered-pagelessness, and 2) dipping back into lots of classics and favorites, from Blacksad to Darwin to Scaramouche and Tom Sawyer.
(Possibly throwing in a volume on the adventures of Groo, a Weird Tales, a Comics Cavalcade, some TTRPGs, and a Scooby-Doo Team-Up...)
Nice.
For some more local flavor, you might also enjoy Seattle Justice (eg SPD started as a protection racket) and Woodland for the "stone soup" origins of a local institution.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/seattle-justice-the-rise-and-f...
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/woodland-the-story-of-the-anim...
-The Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett. Could not stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading it and was pretty bummed when it was over. Its about a cathedral being built in the 1100's. My most favorite book this year and probably ever.
-The Knowledge - Lewis Dartnell If all people were to suddenly disappear leaving the current world infrastructure still in place, how you could go about restarting civilization. Its more a manual than a story, but I enjoyed learning how so many different things work.
-Alas Babylon Pat Frank - A story about a family and some friends and how they survive in Florida after a nuclear attack on the US.
Same, one of my favourite books ever. The others in the series are not quite as good, but I think you will enjoy them.
If a book opens your eyes to something you used to ignore, it's a good book.
This is a few years old but I found it at a library. As the title says its a walkthru of London and British culture from 1945 covering artists, and musicians during this period
Barry Miles was at the centre of this culture running the indica bookshop - so knows a lot of the people
The one thing that sticks out is his discussion whether counter culture exists or can exist in the internet age because everything that happens now is filmed and on social media so quick it finds an audience or is drowned out.
- Hard Drive by Wallace
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Cooper
These three books are some of the best books in their respective categories. All three are about product design in a way. Build is about the development of the iPhone and Nest. Hard Drive is about the early history of MS and about the stunts Gates pulled to win. Inmates argues that programmers tend to hijack the product design process because they can (programmers write the code after all), and that products suffer as a result.
Yikes! The typical HN post says MBAs ruin everything. Who knew programmers who have troubles interacting with people would build products which have troubles interacting with people!? (i'm not an MBA)
BTW, look at HN. It can have so many more functions but it does not. As a result it's very easy to use for everyone no PhD in HN needed.
Yeah, believe the hype. Definitely the most important novel of this century.
The story revolves around the deaths of over 500 women and children in a small border town in Mexico. Absolutely devastating read, It feels like most novels are rather silly in comparison (2666 even pokes fun at literature in general for ignoring the atrocities in Mexico.) 5 stars.
There is no such thing as “the most important novel of this century”. “Importance” is subjective based on the values of the beholder.
It’s an especially ludicrous claim if by “this century” we are to assume you mean 2000 - 2100 considering we are not even a quarter of the way through it.
> It feels like most novels are rather silly in comparison (2666 even pokes fun at literature in general for ignoring the atrocities in Mexico.
I for one am glad that J K Rowling chose not to mention the atrocities occurring in Mexico in the Harry Potter series as it has zero relevance to the plot, as it probably does in 99.99% of all novels written.
No, not really. "Importance" is a rough proxy for legacy and influence. This is why one can say without any trace of subjectivism that Shakespeare is the most important writer of the English language, or Kafka the most important writer in modern German, etc. Maybe this is slightly less rigorous in the case of '2666' which is still a relatively young work, but it is widely hailed as a landmark novel.
Really solid cli-fi (climate-science-fiction). Tells the story of a fictional United Nations that begins to seriously take on the role of ensuring the survival of the human species.
I used to be scared of tackling big books because I don't feel strongly committed. But with these I did audiobooks for the first time, while cleaning and driving and cooking and it has made reading big books merely a matter of time.
Other than Caro's books this year, I really liked the three-volume Churchill biography by William Manchester. And the first two volumes of the Teddy Roosevelt biography by Edmund Morris.
I also read Don Quixote this year - Edith Grossman's translation is excellent, capturing the joy of the original, and laugh-out-loud funny in places.
It's a webnovel, litRPG, slice of life, rememeberable cast of characters, with most of the characters getting extensive character building. Has dragons, aliens, time travel, fae etc. Also has modern pop references. For e.g. "arrow to the knee"
Also it's massive. You can spend an year reading it to reach the current chapters.
I probably spent more time reading this then watching webseries.
Standouts,
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
Lakota Woman - Mary Crow Dog
Beautiful Country: A Memoir of An Undocumented Childhood - Qian Julie Wang
Gather Around in My Name - Maya Angelou
The entire autobiographical series by Maya is a must read imo, but this one is my favorite. Maybe also my favorite book I read this year.
Religious:
- Guru Granth Sahib - Bible (King James Version) - Q’uran - The Book of Mormon - Tipitaka
Fantasy:
- Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw - The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan - The Way of Kings series by Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn also by Brandon Sanderson - Red Rising by Pierce Brown - The Licanius trilogy by James Islington - Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series by Larry Correia
Biography - John Adams by David McCullough
2. The open society and its enemies by Karl Popper. This is a great book on open society and liberal democracy. Broadly the book is a critic of historicist theories of Plato and Marx. There is also good philosophy on essentialism and the futility of getting closer to the truth by defining things more precisely.
3. Printing Press as an agent of change by Elizabeth Eisenstein. This account of the impact of the printing press on Europe is very long but worth it. The parts on the scientific revolution are particularly good.
I also really enjoyed Andy Weir's _Project_Hail_Mary_, and _The_Martian_.
Behave - Robert Sapolsky
Human Behavioral Biology - https://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/intro-to-human-behaviora...
As a side effect of the course I also read Chaos by James Gleick and my mind was blown.
- Scattered (How Attention Deficit Disorder originates and what you can do about it) by Gabor Mate
Question: how do folks discover new books to read — Goodeads? Friend recommendations? Book Clubs? Any other sort of niche, online recommendation engine? Podcasts?
Oftentimes the books I read cover only part of a very large topic, and this leads me to seek out books covering the rest; for instance, I do not expect my interests in political/societal structure and economics will ever stop yielding new books to read.
I have a local bookstore and browse the new releases and staff recommendations they have, and all together that can usually keep me busy.
1. News sites with book reviews. I read Vox's book critic reviews for a while, as well as my local paper's book review section. Definitely better for fiction or current events than other non-fiction.
2. Asking the people working at the bookstore. I'm consistently surprised by the breadth of book recommendations bookstore employees can give. Even asking for something incredibly specific (like "young adult fiction featuring a trans male protagonist" or "modern fantasy takes on mythologies other than Greek or Norse") usually yields a few interesting results. Again, better for fiction than technical non-fiction.
3. Friends, newsletters, and podcasts.
4. Wandering around bookstores, especially boutiques, and thumbing through the books on display. This still yields mostly new releases, but stretches me outside my comfort zone. I found both Paddling Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman (entertaining) and Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines by Jaime Lowe (well-researched non-fiction) this way.
I do track all books I want to read and have read in Goodreads. And I sometimes learn about cool new books from others on there.
But mostly I have topics in mind I want to read about so I search lists online and reddit to find a good book on the topic.
True Biz, Sara Nović - A year in the life of a boarding school for the deaf.
Upgrade, Blake Crouch
Blindsight: The (Mostly) Hidden Ways Marketing Reshapes Our Brains, Matt Johnson & Prince Ghuman - Interesting angle of examining neurology.
Treasure & Dirt, and The Tilt, Chris Hammer - Good Australian rural crime fiction.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Eliezer Yudkowsky - Alternate fan fic depiction of Harry Potter as a hyper-rationalist. My review linked below.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60034663-ten-steps-to-na...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58395049-true-biz
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59838811-upgrade
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52225003-blindsight
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58520598-treasure-dirt
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61413297-the-tilt
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33951086-harry-potter-an...
(My review) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5124124732
The book is the biography of Alfred Lee Loomis, a tycoon that played an important role in World War II and somehow did not received the deserved acknowledgement.
It is an interesting book for a technical audience, mainly for electronics engineers and physicist, because the main character was involved in lots of breakthroughs during his lifetime.
I wrote a full review here:
Having been written in 1778 it still stands prominent with regard to its descriptions of how markets work, and the importance of the division of labor.
The latter book, also describes common pitfalls, often unknown to those living in the northern hemispheres with regard to Civilization development in tropical regions, and why Africa and Latin America are not more developed, and by extension what we can expect as climate change drives those tropical climates north.
- Edward O. Wilson - Biophilia
- Will Durant - The Lessons Of History
- Freeman J. Dyson - A Many-Colored Glass
- Venkatesh Rao - The Gervais Principle
- Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
- Colin Wilson - The Outsider
- Stanislaw Lem - Cyberiad
- Antonio Martinez - Chaos Monkeys
- Ben Horowitz - What You Do Is Who You Are
- Alice Flaherty - The Midnight Disease
- Oliver Sacks - Musicophilia
- Ken Binmore - Rational Decisions
- Josh Kaufman - The Personal MBA
Edit: All these books made the cut, there were others that I never completed / disliked / wouldn't recommend, or were just plain mediocre / bad.
Non-Fiction, work: - The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition by David Thomas, Andrew Hunt: I’m not a programmer and still found this one of the most useful books I read this year. - Working Backwards by Colin Bryar, Bill Carr: The Amazon/Bezos love choked me a couple of times but I’ve put in practice some of what learned in this book to good effect.
Non-Fiction, history: - Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy D. Snyder: This is a hard book to read. Not slow hard. Terrifying and apocalyptic and true hard. Gives a lot of context to current events. - The Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson: Pirates. The seafaring kind.
The style is a bit of Terry Pratchett, a bit of Douglas Adams, a bit of Christopher Moore, with some very unique items thrown in.
Warning: the transgender portion is brutal on the negative aspects of being a transgender teen in America.
Illuminations, by Alan Moore, the author famous for watchmen, v for vendetta, etc. A short story collection with some unique story structures and great settings
This is a fine book.
But what this book needed is a good editor. Most space of most chapters of the book is written like a preface.
This book also suffers from what many technical books suffers from- uneven assumption of background. While some easy, trivial part is explained with more space, more hand-holding, harder parts receive briefer, relatively unfriendlier treatment.
Despite these flaws, the book is great.
Judgement in Managerial Decision Making by Bazerman - Things which bias your thinking and how to avoid them.
My Life and Work by Henry Ford - How Henry Ford thinks. Stories about engineering and building a company.
Homage to Catalonia by Orwell - The famous author's experience in the Spanish civil war which colored much of his work.
Many lessons for modern times. A recent history lesson. Game of Thrones in real life.
— Flow: The most fitting for the HN crowd. A fantastic read about the state of flow in work and leisure. Great framework for unlocking what drives the mind towards fulfillment and happiness. I liked the ideas around how "order of thought" relates to personal satisfaction. I wished it talked about the "how" not just the "what".
— Man's Search For Meaning: An absolute classic. A moving but most of all inspiring book about the experience of a man in the Nazi camps. Stoic optimism. It opened my eyes to the relationship between suffering and self-actualization.
— I Remember: A book by Joe Brainard to be found in the poetry section but written in a unique unconventional style. Accessible, playful and moving. It created a lot of noise with it came out because of its format.
— Never Say You Can't Survive: How To Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories: The book I needed to read to reconnect me to writing to cultivate the spirit.
— Carbon & Silicon: This last one is a comic book. The story is an intimate (yet grand) robot saga that expands over centuries. A battle between immortality and decay. A joy to read. It hit me hard.
The Body Electric by Dr. Robert Becker and The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Firstenberg - these books made me aware of the impact electricity may have on life - including us! Much of these two books would likely be dismissed as quackery to most, but the implication of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease as piezoelectric illnesses, the idea that limbs can be regrown, in part by electric signaling, and the massive ecological issues associated with widespread electromagnetic radiation all were things I’d never have considered. Since the latter book made me aware, I haven’t been able to stop noticing the constant tinnitus I experience.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau - this had been on my list for a while. I finally reached a mental state where this felt like the right book to read next; I felt that technology had gone too far, and a simple life would be a better life. If nothing else, gleaning the perspective of a man almost two hundred years ago and seeing both how different and how similar the issues regarding technology were, made me feel far less alone, and enlightened me toward ways I could make progress in feeling liberated from the ever-increasing grasp of technology on my life.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber - after spending four years working on defense systems that, in a best-case scenario, will never be used, I felt my job was useless. I saw jobs in the tech field that I thought were worse than useless - social media developers, advertisement company developers, etc. What I didn’t see, and this book discusses, is the vast swath of workers in all fields who feel, who know, that their job is worthless too. The book discusses the vast impact that this has on human mental health and societal direction. Highly recommend.
10% Human by Alanna Collen - I find myself referencing this book very frequently. It is all about the power of microbes in the human body (they make up 90% of us, by cell count!). That small imbalances can cause illnesses and influence our thought processes, habits, and behaviors is starting to become mainstream scientific knowledge. The implications this has for treatment of illness and prevention of illness (e.g. avoiding unnecessary bouts of antibiotics, fecal transplants, the value of breast feeding and natural birth) excite me due to the improvement they can cause in human health and quality of life.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - Does one have to pay their debts? What does it mean to owe someone a debt? What implications does the widespread holding of debt cause for our society? Is it morally right? All these questions and more are answered in this excellent book. It changed how I saw macroeconomics, and the structure of our society.
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul - This book, written in the 1960s, is astonishingly prescient about the state of humans in relation to “technique”. While the end of the book’s predictions for the 21st century are wrong (more progress was expected than was delivered), that does not diminish the rest of this book’s observations that technology can cause a great deal of issues in our society.
I hope at least one person can experience the joy I have from reading one of these books. I’m looking forward to what I’ll learn from your recommendations.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170211015067
Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
[3] https://crookedtimber.org/category/david-graeber-debt-semina...
[4] https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-human...
Whenever I hear or see such descriptions, I start discounting the opinions of those who made them, because they're often hyperbolic. I'd put someone like Genghis Khan at the level of being a "horrible human being," not some random author, because it indeed is a very high insult to levy against someone. That, or the person is just engaging in semantic drift [0].
Anyway, why was he a "horrible human being?" I couldn't find any controversy regarding his views or actions that would classify him as "horrible," at least in my limited search.
When you question competence of state, usefulness of bureaucracy, purpose of police, laws and basically dependence society on state.
In a similar vein, I’m reading Walden now after having been to Walden Pond, seeing Thoreau’s cabin spot, and wondering if I could do the same, maybe to a lesser extreme.
Also interested in reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
I heard Vladimir Lenin was keeping this one at his desk.
Maybe that doesn't make an interesting book?
Books I highly recommend:
Churchill by Andrew Roberts (p:1105)
A biography about one of the most interesting figures in politics and WWII. Roberts gives a very detailed description of the life of Churchill and manages to keep you interested the entire length of the book.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (p:374)
In The God Delusion Dawkins gives arguments why there is no God, why we do not need a God and why religion is damaging to our society. If you are religious it might not be the book for you unless you are open to hear his arguments and line of reasoning. Dawkins will challenge your worldview.
The Bomb by Fred Kaplan (p:384)
Kaplan describes the policy of different US presidents on the atomic bomb and war in general. And primarily on the inability of US presidents and policy-makers to tune down its military. A chilling read which makes you appreciate a nuclear holocaust did not happen (yet)....
Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (p:320)
Banerjee and Duflo give a gripping portrait of how poor people live. They offer an insight in the choices and decisions people make surviving on less than 1 USD a day (corrected for purchasing power). It made me completely rethink my own view on poverty and development aid; stressing even more that in order to help one need to have a complete understanding of the individual's situation and the local boundary conditions.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (p:476)
This book triggered my science fiction reading. For some reason I never was interested in science fiction. Most likely triggered by reading Foundation by Asimov a few years back which apparently is not a book to my taste. But Andy Weir completely annihilated that wrong perspective on science fiction. Project Hail Mary is interesting, funny and gripping book.
Kindred by Octavia Butler (p:287)
This book.... From page one I was hooked and almost read it in one go. Butler is a wonderful author and Kindred is a must-read. The book is about a woman traveling back in time to end up on a slave plantation. It's a chilling account of slavery.
Other books I read this year, ask me anything about one of these books. I've added a + if I think its worth a recommendation
Biography:
Navalny by Dollbaum, Lallouet and Noble (p:280); The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya (p:354) +
Sociology; Politics; Economics; Business:
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove (p:224); The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (p:140); Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov (p:290); Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum (p:224) +; Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl (p:164) +; We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins (p:272); De Zeven Vinkjes by Joris Luyendijk (p:200); Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers by Rutger Bregman (p:104)
Comedy: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams (p:336)
History:
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (p:432); The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (p:413) +; The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre (p:384) +; De Heineken Ontvoering by Peter R. de Vries (p:347); Red Famine by Anne Apllebaum (p:384); Night by Elie Wiesel (p:115) +
Science, Technology, Mathematics:
Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh (p:315) +; A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy (p:153); The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (p:546); The Rise and Fall of the Dinousaurs by Stephen Brusatte (p:404) ++; The Double Helix by James Watson (p:144)
Sport:
Run or Die by Killian Jornet (p:208); The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (p:290) +; The Rise of the Ultra Runners by (p:304); Tom Dumoulin by Patrick Bernhart (p:203)
Fiction:
Anthem by Ayn Rand (p:105); Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (p:704); The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (p:566); Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (p:466); Live and Let die by Ian Fleming (p:229)
Classics:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (p:104); The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (p:201); The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzergerald (p:180); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (p:139); Animal Farm by George Orwell (p:122) +; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (p:227) +; The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (p:118)
Science Fiction:
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (p:399); All Systems Red by Martha Wells (p:144) +; A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (p:462) +; A Psalm built for the Wild by Becky Chambers (p:160); Dune by Frank Herbert (p:658); Foundation by Isaac Asimov (p:244); The Martian by Andy Weir (p:384) +; The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (p:278)
Something which I discovered this year is reading multiple books in parallel. And start reading the book which you feel like reading, not the book which you think you should read. That way I always had the mindset to enjoy a particular book.
Great writing by a young bi-polar feminist writer with a great future.
Also, the introduction and the first few chapters of "Letters from the Desert" by Carlo Carretto.
Published in 2020, someone gave it to me for a Christmas present. I'm surprised how quickly I turned the pages....
In the process of reading:
Parable of a Sower’s Daughter by Octavia Butler
Read this year:
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Here is the list of some of the good books I read this year https://brajeshwar.com/2022/books/
Starting this year, instead of writing the list at the year-end, I have decided that I will just write as I read along. Besides the 5 odd I listed from a comment on this thread, here are others I have listed from other threads on Hackernews and Twitter. The URL is a pattern anyway, so it will be https://brajeshwar.com/2023/books/
- How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Be-Perfect/Mic...
- [How to Stop Worrying and Start Living](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Stop_Worrying_and_Start...) is from the popular author [Dale Carnegie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie) of the [How to Win Friends and Influence People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...) fame.
- A young girl's diary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl)
- Greenlights by [Matthew McConaughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_McConaughey)
- How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World's Most Dynamic Region
- How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil
- How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry by [Adele Faber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_Faber)
- Impact Mapping: Making a big impact with software products and projects
- Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price
- Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself
- Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry
- The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness
- [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...) by [Douglas Adams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams)
- [Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming](https://www.amazon.com/Windfall-Booming-Business-Global-Warm...) by [McKenzie Funk](https://www.mckenziefunk.com)
- The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read: (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry
Greek Mythology series by Steven Fry. Not literary adaptations nor scholarly treatises; just accessible, fun reads with enough accuracy and attention to detail for a layman like me.
I’m working my way through Cormac McCarthy. This year I read Suttree and The Crossing, which are both excellent IMO.
I discovered these beautifully written character observations: Matrix (Lauren Groff), Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan), and The Crimson Petal and the White (Michael Farber).
Not exactly unknown in the fantasy genre, but Joe Abercrombie’s Age of Madness trilogy is great. I think Abercrombie is actually an awesome writer. For instance, he has this trick for composing his big action sequences almost entirely through POV vignettes from disposable characters, which I think is a remarkable idea that essentially fixes one of the commonest problems in fantasy (plot over characters).
On Writing (Stephen King). I read a few writing guides this year and was by far freshest.
Collected Fictions (Borges).
Darkness at Noon (Arthur Koestler) is a classic in the same vein as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Shadow Divers (Robert Kurson) is a true-life story about divers discovering and exploring a remarkable wreck. Read this by accident, turned out awesome.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (George Saunders) was one of those times where I knew little about a topic going in but got swept up by the author’s eloquence and enthusiasm.
I rediscovered Michael Moorcock’s Elric series thanks to new audiobook recordings. The Witcher but good.
Second Place (Rachel Cusk) was a batshit boilerroom melodrama. My first Cusk, will read more.
The first three books of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series are great, but particularly The Eyes of the Overworld, which I was surprised to find was hilarious.
I reread some classic Philip K Dick, including Flow My Tears and Stigmata, and More than Human (Theodore Sturgeon).
The first two books of The Dark Star trilogy by Marlon James are both huge things, but worth it for fans of super dark fantasy. The setting really works for me, as far too much of this genre is basically set in a hyper caricature of medieval Europe.
Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle might be the best fantasy series for me. Tenahu might be one of my favourite books of all time.
The first two books in Gene Wolfe’s Latro series are superb and perhaps just as good as his New Sun novels.
Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett is a gross, super dark, and fun little horror collection.
I read East of Eden for the first time.
Here are some books that were enjoyable but had some problems for me:
The Royal Game (Stephan Zweig) was a super interesting novella that just sort of stopped.
The Elementals (Michael McDowell) was an awesome horror novella with a mostly excellent cast of characters and plot, whicho was almost totally let down by an unsavory trope that’s unforgivable in something written in 2014.
The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Beuhlman) is the first novel in a new grimdark series with some interesting variations on familiar tropes, although the characters were somewhat flat overall.
Here are some books I read in previous years but have stuck in my head: Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Roadside Picnic, The Vegetarian, The House on Vesper Sands, My Name is Red, The Lathe or Heaven, The Gloaming, The Worst Journey in the World, The Fisherman, At Night All Blood is Black.
Things I read this year I wouldn’t recommend: Lord Foul’s Bane (offensive, poor writing), The Cement Garden (tries to be shocking but is quite boring), Lapvona (major disappointment), Them: Adventures with Extremists (superficial), The Wrack (feels trivial post COVID).
