I love reading, here's a few meatier books I've read recently:
* Seeing Like a State - great overview of how states (and corporations) lose visibility into reality due to the abstraction levels they operate at
* Normal Accidents - all about how things like nuclear reactors, ships and large systems naturally have accidents
* Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty - great easy read about how high reliability organizations manage complexity and dangerous, high tempo situations.
I'm also reading Seeing Like a State, and finding it fascinating. A lot of Scott's theory seems to apply equally well to any large organisation, like a corporation. I think it is fundamentally about how in any unwieldy system, the people in charge tend want to have some sort of comprehensible map of that system to make decisions, and they also want more effective apparatuses of power order to steer the system, and the fundamental complexity of reality has to be smoothed over to achieve those things.
For example, business intelligence systems provide ways to impose consistent measures on an organisation, which makes the org more legible to executive decision makers, but that consistency also tends to erode local team autonomy and undermine specialist knowledge. This type of tension shows up everywhere once you start noticing it.
Oh I've got some recs for you if you want meaty! I've been reading classics this year. It started with East of Eden; if you've got a philosophical leaning and appreciate your characters deeply fleshed out, you owe it to yourself to read this book.
The next one was Lonesome Dove, this was my first time reading a western and I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did. The book is also absolutely hilarious and has one of my favorite characters in a book(shoutout to Gus).
I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cresto and, boy, it's turning out to be quite the epic tale of revenge(no spoilers please!).
Also read Lonesome Dove this year, also my first Western. I'd watched the amazing miniseries I thought it was great. I'm honestly not sure the book has much over the miniseries which is a rare statement.
If you liked Lonesome Dove and attempted to read the prequel and sequels I strongly recommend against it.
I like a good thick book but I could not finish Monte Cristo. After about the 40th character introduction I just had to put it down. The problem is me, not the book.
"Collapse" - A friend gave me the book in a bag he was going to donate. its been great. Theres obviously a huge undertone of preachy "humans struggle with sustainable resource utilization" but the views into failed societies are just fascinating. Really enjoying it, though I've slowed down and might not finish.
"7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy" - Recommended by @pc in an interview. I'm ~50 pages in and not really blown away. Its a nice accumulation of Alpha creating strategy... but I think its really missing some nuance. I do LOVE that they take an economist approach and actually provide the math/algorithms behind the concepts. Theres some good stuff in here but so far it feels like 30 pages stretched out to make a book.
"Monetizing Innovation" - dropped this book, do not recommend. I was expecting a really nice accumulation of how pricing should work with companies who are innovating... and it came no where near that hopeful concept. The case studies were weak, the hypothesis were weak, the writing was weak.
I'm on Book Two of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Non-Fiction:
More than I can count, as far as "I've read at least some, put a bookmark in it, and intend to finish it eventually." But in terms of the books I'm really actively engaging with right now, the top one is:
Neuroscience: Exploring The Brain[1] by Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, and Michael A. Paradiso
And sort of in parallel with that, is
Analog Computing: Development, Programming, Applications, and Future Directions[2] by Bernd Ulmann
I'm reading Matt's latest movie from Dungeon Crawler Carl series. A great fun way to unwind after programming all day! Will check the two other books you mentioned, thanks!
The Story of my Experiments with Truth - Mahatma Gandhi.
I recently read another book (Autobiography of a Yogi) that included an excerpt from this book, and it piqued my curiosity into Gandhi’s struggles in India. So far I’ve found it different than other biographies I’ve read because the author is self-critical and reflective which helps in understanding him as a person and his actions.
I really loved The Story of my Experiments with Truth. It even inspired me to visit India. There were moments reading it when I just sat down kind of in awe — Gandhi really was an exceptional person. And there are also excruciatingly boring parts where he is detailing the minutiae of his diet.
I recently discovered Charles Soule who started in comic books and ventured into novels. I read The Oracle Year recently and now I'm reading The Endless Vessel.
'Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States', Alex Wellerstein.
> "Over the course of this book, we have looked at some eighty years of this history. We have seen how the idea of nuclear secrecy was initially born out of a very specific fear—that the world’s worst nation could achieve nation-destroying power—that, over the course of many transformations, morphed into something more generalized. More than totalitarian regimes were the target of this secrecy: allied nations, private industry, democratic institutions, and “the public” more broadly became understood as targets as well, for reasons both justifiable and not. The secrecy problem moved wherever the problem of the bomb went, which was far indeed. The desirability of control over nuclear knowledge became totalizing because the threat of loss of control was tied to the almost unimaginable power of the bomb itself. These two forces—the desire for control, the fear of its loss—became locked in a vicious cycle, each driving the other."
I agree so strongly that I moved it from my 'to buy' list to bought.
Also of note is Wellerstein's more recent 'The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age – The Anti-Nuclear President, the Bomb Decision, and Cold War History', which I read earlier this year and thought it was excellent.
A clipping from its closing pages:
> “What is the measure of a civilized man?” The proper answer, Lilienthal suggested, was to consider the sense that a “civilized man” was one who believed they had a responsibility to others. The invention of nuclear weapons had clearly magnified the problem: “One sees that the mark of a civilized man must be some quality that will help the world from destroying itself. He is most civilized who has those qualities and talents of leadership, by example and precept and character and ideas, that will help civilization to survive.”
To extend the reading list, I was completely floored by 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', Richard Rhodes, but that was 20 years ago. I need to re-read it, and add 'Dark Sun' and 'American Prometheus' to round out that part of my picture of the military-industrial complex.
Just finished a David Foster Wallace kick. I listened to the new 30th anniversary audiobook of Infinite Jest (twice) and then The Pale King (twice). Then I listened to "Of course you end up becoming yourself" which is a long-form interview with Wallace by David Lipsky, traveling with him on the Infinite Jest book tour.
I had to listen to the books twice because there are a lot of details that you won't get the first time through unless you're extremely intentional and detail oriented, but I found it was worth it to listen again. I'll probably listen to Infinite Jest again sometime soon, even though it's 64 hours long. IJ is actually really great sci-fi with some important questions for our time.
I attempted infinite jest and really tried to like it but I hated it. The prose is extremely smart, interesting and insightful and wildly connective. But the overall tone is so oppressively nihilistic I decided life's too short and put it down.
I have become a huge fan of AudioBooks lately, but how in the /hell/ do you listen to Infinite Jest?? With the end notes? With end notes of end notes? With whole chapters hidden in an end note? It was challenging enough on paper. That would do my nut in.
Isn't it called Stories of your life and other stories? Ted Chiang is my favorite living science fiction author. Everything I've read by him ranges from very good to sublime.
I generally prefer novels despite having originally got into SF via collections of Asimov stories, but I read the "Stories of your life" collection recently and it was quite stunning. I think "Tower of Babylon" was my favourite but they were all excellent in different ways.
About halfway through- it’s really good so far. He makes a compelling case for how our culture has changed in many ways, often for the worse, with the introduction of television.
If you haven't read about his (technical) system for writing, do so. Very geeky. He described it (including notes) in my ebook copy of Fire Upon The Deep
I don't tend to be great at finishing (or starting) books, and this is a big one. I've also never had any interest in Medieval or Renaissance history, for me it's been a black hole between the fall of Rome and the modern age.
But recently I saw some Youtube videos of Ada, and her enthusiasm is totally infectious [2]. She's fun and paints these vivid pictures of Florence and renaissance Europe that are incredible, absurd, and relatable, which makes sense since given she's also an accomplished sci-fi writer. She also reminds me of one of my favourite high school teachers. So I ordered the book right away.
The book is in the same tone as her videos, so it won't be for everyone, but I've really been enjoying it and now I'm fascinated by Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli, merchant republics, etc.
I'm considering checking it out despite not really being a science-fiction reader. Though I've been reading this terrifying slow-burn about superintelligent autonomous swarms breaking containment and stopping at nothing to complete the impossible tasks given by their feckless masters.
Just got done reading The Wager - historical nonfiction - same author as Killers of the Flower Moon.
It's quite good - not as good as Killers of the Flower Moon. I won't spoil anything you won't learn from the first few pages. The Wager was a British naval ship in the early 1700s that was lost to inclement weather. All were presumed dead. Some time later a boat arrives in England with a small number of survivors. Then a while later, another boat arrives with some more survivors. They each accuse the other of terrible acts.
The book tells the story of what happened after the ship went down.
The Outsider (L'Étranger) will give you something to think about. Camus' idea with this novel was to see what would happen to a character who went through life only telling the truth.
I'm reading singer song-writer Lily Allen's 2019 autobiography My Thoughts Exactly. I really liked her last album West End Girl (2025) and I wanted to know more about her and her creative process and inspirations. She tells about lots of different things having happened in her life, her relationship with her parents, how she grew up like. Really enjoyable read so far!
People complain about how it's written, but it's nevertheless an interesting exploration of the parallels between natural ecosystems and human economies. As someone with no particular interest or background in economics (and who hasn't read anything else by Jane Jacobs), I find it a fascinating and easy read.
If you enjoy The Expanse, definitely pick up The Mercy of Gods, also by James S A Corey. It, and the recent sequel (The Faith of Beasts) are some of the best sci-fi I've read in a long time.
So for my unofficial book club with a good friend, we're in the final act of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, after having finished A Room with a View a few weeks before. I enjoy 19th and early 20th century literature for the prose quality quite a lot, and Forster does not disappoint on that score. It's also fascinating getting an inside view on Anglo-Indian relations during British rule. It's thematically similar To Kill a Mockingbird, in that both feature prominent "White Knight" type characters.
I'm also reading some less highbrow, yet highly entertaining novels that I'm obsessed with. I'm currently on book 16 in in Lindsey Davis' Falco series[0], which are murder mysteries set in Ancient Rome. I've been enjoying them non-stop ever since HN user "vintagedave" recommended[1] them around 4 months ago.
Finally started reading "A Philosophy of Software Design". It was on my shelf for ages. I have the 1st edition; luckily, you can grab new chapters from the 2nd edition from the author's website.
Value(s): Building a Better World for All by Mark Carney, the current prime minister of Canada. He starts out with his perspective on the history of economics and money - it reads a bit like a textbook.
He has a knack for being critical and optimistic at the same time. Funny too!
I'm 50% of the way through and it's good but I don't entirely see the hype. Brontë is more atmospheric, Austen funnier and more incisive, Dickens more immersive. But I've still got a way to go.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Recently passed the bit where Ammianus complained the rich had bought up much of the property in Rome and turned so many into renters and gave stats to show it. Amongst his many other complaints.
Sadly found I could have been reading a better abridgement, which I'll get for the 2nd reading now.
I'm reading Dero Saunders penguin classic which I picked up from a used book store. It's fine, but I'm at the point where the last 6 books of the original should kick in and Saunders treats it as an epilogue. I didn't even realize there were multiple abridgements when I started, and reviews of the others seem to include more about that and retain more of that special "Gibbonness" that's been so much delightful effort to parse. It's been a slow and halting first read I'm looking forward to a more uninterrupted story the second run through. I'll probably go for the Wormesly one and try to spot the differences. You only really start to know a great book after the second reading anyway.
Austin worked for British Intelligence during World War II, running the Martians section and helping assess possible invasion sites for D-Day. After the war, as a philosopher of language, he helped bring ideas such as performative utterances and speech acts into the discussion.
A fascinating overlap between intelligence work and philosophy of language.
And because the Brewers are in the playoffs, "Catcher in the Wry" by Bob Uecker. Despite being a Cleveland fan, I have to admit the book is amazingly fun. Uecker was Uecker long before he became everybody's favorite baseball storyteller, and he was the Cleveland announcer in Major League.
After my father died last year I’ve started going through his collection of popular-science paperbacks.
Done: QED, Richard Feynman. Lectures on explaining quantum electrodynamics but with no more math than geometry.
Currently: One Good Turn: A natural history of the screwdriver and the screw, Witold Rybczynski. The discourse goes into his references in depth. It has yielded an excellent list of museums to visit.
On deck: Impossibility: The limits science and the science of limits, John Barrow. A re-read for me. Barrow discusses what we can never know in a way that’s like P vs NP but for the physical world.*
I just finished Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and it had so many “aha” moments for me. Definitely recommended if you have even a passing interest in reading or making graphic novels or comics.
"What Happened to Liberal Democracy" by Daron Acemoglu (Nobel laureate).
As someone who fled the desolation of the rust belt this book spoke to me and I found it credible and compelling. My book club spent 4 hours discussing this book.
Avatar: The Last Airbender books. Yangchen's series. Nothing you'd use to try to show off your knowledge over coffee, but fun well-written read with great world building.
About two thirds of the way through "Flaw of Averages". Thankfully the chapters are short but it's written for business students and is aggressively anti-jargon, which can be annoying at times.
It started off promising, with some hints about monte carlo methods implemented in spreadsheets, but kind of detours into statistics basics, layman summaries of the author's prior scholarly work, and various business consulting anecdotes. I did not, for example, expect to read a chapter on the FASB-II's flaws regarding options pricing. And a few are downright concerning a decade later. I would not, for example, brag about advising Wells Fargo executives on their employee incentive programs after the cross-selling scandal came to light.
The final chapters, which I have not yet gotten to, supposedly cover the solution to the flaw of averages. Given the book is 15 years old, I'm expecting it to be pretty dated implementation wise, but I might be able to apply it to Prometheus histograms or t-digests. And I've learned a few things, like Jensen's inequality, and found a few sheets demoing a sampling approach.
Working my way through Elle Cordova's sci-fi book club[1]. Currently on Hyperion, but have read "The Man In The High Castle," "Sea of Tranquility," "Exhalation," "Neuromancer," "The Power," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," "Parable of the Sower," and "I, Robot."
I was very happy to find this. I heard complaints that it's just a Tolkien clone and Jordan doesn't portray women well. But what I found was kind of a relic. It's an excellent fantasy series that probably couldn't be written again. Wish we had more like it.
I really enjoyed the books but there is a lot of issues around pacing. One of the books(7 maybe? it's been a while) was pretty much several hundred pages of them just walking. Had the same experience recently with book 3 of Otherland.
the pacing and consistency are atrocious, unfortunately. I loved the first six books, hated the seventh, and straight up abandoned the series halfway through book 8. tempted to do a full read through now that Sanderson has completed the series in a way that people seem happy with but it's a lot when I know I'm going to run into at least those two bad books in the middle and possibly more after that.
I recently finished "Warbreaker" by Brandon Sanderson, now plan to go back to reading "Designing data-intensive applications" since it's been a long time (for me) since I read anything educational. Warbreaker was amazing, I still think about it, a week after finishing, about the characters and how much fun I had while reading it. It's one of those books that you smile when you read it because of how pleasant it is and how enjoyable the characters are.
I started the cosmere this year and have officially consumed every available book in the cosmere, really enjoyable brain junk food! He has written so much and I love the different systems and characters development. Highly recommend his works! I daydream in the various parts of cosmere weekly and am excited for more books to come out.
I vaguely remember the RSC doing a Christmas BBC Radio 4 skit years ago the gist of which was repeating "If you're <common phrase>, then you're quoting Shakespeare" for about 20 minutes straight.
I'm reading Sagas of the Icelanders as prep for a trip there, but I can feel it pulling me down into a rabbithole of older Scandinavian medieval writing. I've already got an order placed for a saga that's not in this book, along with the Poetic Edda and Havamal to learn more about Norse mythology.
Just started Homer's Iliad (Fagles translation) and Christopher Logue's War Music (2015).
Just finished re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1980). I think it holds up well. Last time I read it, I was much younger than Arthur Dent; now I'm much older. And now that we have computers with Genuine People Personalities, it's hard to remember what it was like in the Before Times.
Recently finished Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908). For better or worse (no spoilers here), it kept me guessing.
On the Origin of Sex - real life examples that seem like science fiction. How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch, I read last year but goes into most recent discoveries in physics.
I'm reading the neuromancer triology. It makes me think that book ended up predicting (or maybe shaping) many things that really are happening right now.
I recently reread Neuromancer and I don't get why people think it's so prophetic. The real world is shaped by ubiquitous smartphones and surveillance capitalism and social media feeds. Gibson predicted none of that and not even close. Instead he predicted all kinds of things that never came to be, like neural interfaces consumer space stations. He didn't even predict income inequality - Case is in Chiba City for a very specific reason and for all we know it's quite unique. Even his predictions around the internet are way off because as far as I can tell the only medium that explains how it works in his book is telepathy - literally no one ever mentions or cares about physical connectivity, and there's no mechanism for Case to get online without repairing his nervous system. Which of course makes no sense if you could just look at a screen. The cultural aspects are way off although very atmospheric- the smoking the paper newspapers pay phones.... I think the only thing that it shaped was the cyberpunk aesthetic, which is as fundamentally retro-futuristic and silly as steampunk.
Well in theory I'm reading "Blind Corner" by Dornford Yates, but it's so terrible I may not finish it. I adore Dorothy Sayers and have a sort of forlorn hope that another of the golden age crime writers will have something approaching her flair. In practice this is a third rate John Buchan-ish boys-own bit of tatt. So far. I suppose it might improve.
Instead I'm sneaking off to reread a Pratchett novel (he had very few duds until the Alzheimers really got its teeth into him).
After that/those I'm dithering between SS/GB by Deighton and some other re-read.
I'm on book 3 of Romlyn Domingue's "Keeper of Tales" trilogy. One unusual touch I liked is that each book is written in a different person - book 1 is a second person autobiography written as the protagonist talking to her past self, book 2 is third person with a different protagonist, and then book 3 is a continuation of book 2 but with the voice switched to first person.
> I'm looking for something a little meaty to keep the brain working...
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes to mind. I had no idea how rampant purposeful discrimination was so recently for example, but the point of the book is the HeLa cells - and biology is also not my forté so loads of new information there as well. It was very interesting in expected and unexpected areas for me
- Daniel Suarez' Kill Decision has only gotten more relevant since its release in 2012. Not sure I'd call this meaty though, but his thrillers are always good (near-ish future tech) and the author iirc also said this particular one is meant as food for thought and not only entertainment
Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life And Others. Just finished the short story behind Arrival, the way it frames free is something the film doesn't capture. Other stories in the book have been brilliant too.
I hated Arrival. Years later when I read the original story, it was one of the most beautiful ones I've ever read. Particularly great if you've studied the calculus of variations.
It was a mix of fantasy & humor. It is a bit long but it is extremely funny & entertaining. It is the first fantasy book I have read other than the Harry Potter series (not sure if it is considered fantasy) but I loved it.
Nothing currently, but most recently, the various audiobooks of The Wind in the Willows to fall asleep, and Diana Wynne Jones' (of Howl's Moving Castle fame) Chrestomanci series while awake.
I read 3/4 of "The Soul of a new Machine" and thought it was good, but I sort of fizzled out. What makes you recommend it so highly (trying to understand if I should go back)
Humble Bundle frequently has nice bundles of genre fiction or comics by specific authors. I've picked up large sets of Ebooks from them over the last few years by numerous authors: Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Jordan, comics by Moebius, and recently Timothy Zahn and various scifi/fantasy authors with careers spanning decades.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.
It's an autobiographical history which recounts the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history.
I went into this knowing little to no Chinese history, and it has opened my eyes to this fascinating country. I hope to visit China for the first time in 2027. Before I go, I'm doing a deep dive into Chinese history. Open to recommendations on what to read next!
As a follow up you can read Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls, an autobiographical history in graphic novel format recounting the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history, across continents (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States).
I just finished "The Emergency". Heard about it on Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz [0]. Is a fictional story about what it might be like if a modern government empire collapses. Im interested in writers that are thinking about the future.
Ooh, do try "Farthest North" too, about Nansen's North Polar expedition. Quite fascinating and (I found) quite amusing to a modern reader for various reasons.
I read a lot so I'll toss out some fiction titles you might like if you're a DCC fan:
* Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer -- post-apoc dystopian, somewhat cozy, told from a robot's perspective (who is joined by a companion cyborg dog)
* Blacktongue Thief by Chris Buehlman -- witty and snarky fantasy, solid character development and world building; and, if you like it, book 2 in the series (book 3 if you count a prequel) comes out soon
* Mortedant's Peril -- Fantasy mystery in a world where magic allows the "detectives" to touch the dead and sense their final thoughts/words; in that world, someone learns a dark secret from a victim...
* Trade of Blood -- Another fantasy mystery that is exceptionally well told; it's Book 3 in a series so I'd start with Tainted Cup if you haven't read that already
* The Infinite State -- new SciFi by Richard Swan (usually a fantasy author); a universe where ultra wealthy can establish colony planets, someone attempts to start a democracy.
One of the books I'm reading now is Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, by George Ewart Evans. Set in 1957 Suffolk county, England. I often read in a theme and this theme is about cultural and technological transitions.
I've got a history of picking up the 2 top books of the airports best sellers. Have been my strategy for a while, right now it's FLESH. Feels like I'm being part of the mainstream, reading something everyone else reading.
I am reading The dream of enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb.
My goal is to read the history of ideas from Renaissance period till 2000s. Started with The Florentines by Paul Strathern. Then read The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick. Now at the enlightenment era. It has been eye opening to read about the life and times of some of the great minds like Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Locke and more.
if you're into litrpg, have you tried the wandering inn? it's not so meaty but it's above almost all other litrpgs in that department and the storytelling is great
"A man in the Maze" by Robert Silverberg. Don't know why but I felt the urge to re-read it, last time I read it 30 years ago and remembered the plot very well.
Radiant Star (the new Ann Leckie book, in the “Ancillary Justice” series). Not as good as her earlier books in the series, but very worthwhile if you enjoyed them.
Currently listening to I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. A fascinating exploration of consciousness written 20 years ago but very relevant in the age of AI.
I havent read PSS but I loved The Vital Question and Transformer. It was so much better than a book on the Krebs cycle had any business being. I probably liked VQ better though.
nearing the end. i've found it a bit complicated to follow in some spots (there are several 'main' protagonists and it switches between them without much warning or introduction) but overall it's scratched the fantasy itch.
(i suppose it's actually 3 books, but i have the omnibus version)
i'm enjoying it enough that i would read more, do you have a recommendation of what i should pick up from him next? this was the first book of his ive read.
Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet by Lindsay Owens became available today, and I have purchased ebook and will begin reading today.
Currently on the final book of James Clavell’s Asia Saga, it’s been a long road and I’m frankly kind of over it but 90% through the final book and I’m glad I read them. First read Shogun maybe ~10 years ago but read the other four back to back. Gai-Jin wasn’t very good but the others have been pretty solid overall. A bit long winded and sometimes I wish he’d’ve had a more aggressive editor, but happy with em enough to finish them all.
I'd say it's some of best science (?) fiction written, so I'm biased, but yes books 3 & 4 are worth it. It gets very bizarre and the ending has stuck with me for a long time.
Boom Town by Sam Anderson. Its an intertwined history of Oklahoma City and its basketball team, the Thunder. I'm about halfway through, and I'm loving it so far.
I finished Quantum Radio last week and Im quite far in Rainbows End. I think the former is ok, not great; the latter is a better book (with AR future vibes), but still lacking something that makes u never drop it before u finish it.
I am currently listening to VC An American History by Tom Nicholas, Audible 2019. I am reading Predictable Winners, A Handbook for Developing, Forecasting, and Launching New Products and Services, Stanford Business Books, 2025. I have cracked open, but not gotten very far in reading, The Rise And Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2026. The Jill Lepore book is very interesting.
Fiction I recently enjoyed: The Ana and Din series by Robert Jackson Bennett. Sherlock Holmes vibes, with Kaiju. Also The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.
Currently reading and enjoying: Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
"Lost Worlds" - by Patrick Wyman, fascinating prehistory about meso and neolithic 'civilizations', their lives, their rises and downfalls. Really amazing stuff
I like his podcast a lot, brief vignettes into… whatever. Really fun production and not a deep dive into topics generally, but that’s a feature and not a bug in the context in which I listen to him
A beautifully written travelogue/nature book/eco activist screed that tours the world visiting rivers and the people engaged in living with and protecting them. Fascinating, hopeful, heartbreaking and lyrical. Really enjoying it (evidently)!
The Overstory is rad fiction. Just started listening to Ordinary Men which is about a Polish police battalion responsible for a great many murders during the Holocaust. The members of that battalion were, I guess, welcomed back into society afterwards? Idk, I just started. I'll tell you one thing, though: it's weird to absorb facts about the Shoah as digestible statistics fun facts (for lack of a better term) but those little snippets are very necessary to get my arms around the scale of things such as it. It's the same as happened when I listened to Late Victorian Holocausts. So now I have stats like
- Most Jewish victims of the Holocaust died by gunshot in the occupied USSR
- In March 1942, 80% of Holocaust victims were still alive and by February 1943 80% were dead.
- Per capita incomes were equal in the first and last years of the British Raj
- Indian grain exports increased in the 1880s and 90s and there were 3(?) different famines at that time
rattling around in my head in the same part that holds on to "Pakistan has never had a PM finish a 5 year term," "The Lions, Falcons, and Bills (non-exhaustive) have never won a Super Bowl," "There are no surviving contemperaneous attestations of Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca" and "the first drummer of the Beatles was called Pete Best and made an album called Best of the Beatles"
"A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for the 21st Century" - really enjoying the modern take on Darwinian natural selection (the first part of the book). In short nature diversifies in good times, to stock resilience for weathering the bad times. Just a few chapters in, waiting for that hope to kick in any minute...
"The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst" - This story is about the first round-the-world solo yacht race, and the one contestant who died at sea. His story is really strange - an anti-hero tragedy with a touch of mental illness. The author does a great job bringing the reader on this descent into madness.
"Protocols" - Andrew Huberman's recent book. Like his podcast, it's full of solid advice backed by published science - but also with some repetitive filler and product name drops. The sections on exercise and diet were not very informative to me, mainly because I've already incorporated most of that into my life already. The sections on light exposure and its relationship to sleep, melatonin and cortisol is the most fascinating new-to-me info. I've started morning/evening walking without my sunglasses to get those sweet sweet photons.
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh.
A book which depicts tale of a family across the East and West Bengal amidst Partition of India. This book is very renowned and well written. Being a programmer, its better to read on different topics(which is rarity these days)
I’m reading The Well of Ascension, the second book of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy
I like how he has the slow, almost clinical way of revealing interesting worlds and systems. It’s not the kind of book that’ll make me cry, but I really like world building with fun enough characters
I was just listening to a Sanderson interview. He's annoyed by it too. It's his publisher wanting the books to be easy to get into. He's dealing with it in Mistborn era 3 where's he's trying to figure out how to re-explain everything and it's annoying him because he just wants to show allomancers doing cool stuff.
For keep the brain working and sci-fi I recommend you "EVO - Padres" by Ignacio Fernandez Moreno, spanish only but easy to read with B2 level or upper. It's a science fiction novel exploring politics based in evolution in a far away planet.
I'm reading Purge (not to be confused with the film franchise), by a Finnish-Estonian writer about two women with dark pasts during the waning days of the Soviet Occupation of Estonia
I also vouch for this series! Some of my favorite character work and worldbuilding in recent years, and I'm super excited to see where the series goes!
I recently ran across an edition of the Selfish Gene which adds two chapters from The Extended Phenotype that are supposed to fix/clarify some things. I haven't read any of the 3 books mentioned in this thread, but it makes me curious if there's any connection between the criticism and the updates.
I do not know if this is related to this comments but if you are reading The London Review of Books so that you do not have to read the whole book, maybe it is. I do not watch movies much anymore. Sometime though I want to know what a movie is all about. So, I just read the wikipedia plot review on it. It saves me the time by not having to sit through much tedium but I get a scenes of what it is about.
I have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.
I am an atheist but I have read a little bit of the bible, mostly early OT. I recommend reading a scholarly / literal translation, because there is a lot of nuance in the Hebrew
I'm about 100 pages into "Dune Messiah" (the 2 movies out are both for the first book, the 3rd movie is going to be this book), 50 pages into "Analysis I" by Terence Tao, 100 pages into "Thinking in bets"
Material world and chip wars. Both brilliant. Material world highlights our human ingenuity with an optimism for the future as it outlines our exploitation of the worlds resources over history up to the present time.
Chips wars, for me as a dev without a strong hardware background is a fascinating read into the history of Silicon Valley, from the 50s right up to nvidia and Taiwan semiconductor.
I just got done with a second read of 2666 by Bolaño.
There was an article on HN a month or two ago about how some books drive people to the kind of madness that would make them do a degree in literature. This is probably the one for me. Excited to read it again in 5 years and see it differently again.
I'm not reading anything at the moment since I'm taking a break and watching season one of Deadwood and also re-watching season one of Boston Legal.
But when I'm done, I plan to re-read "The Cold War A Very Short Introduction" by Robert J. McMahon. I read it about five years ago and it's time to read it again.
Having said that, I can't pass on this opportunity to share the books I've read (some are re-reads) thus far this year that I recommend. I'll just list them while saying that they all come highly recommended by me.
In the famous words of Frank Zappa - So many books, so little time.
1. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
2. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
3. Lying by Sam Harris
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
6. Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
7. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
8. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
9. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
10. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
11. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
13. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
14. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
15. Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan
16. Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins
I love reading, here's a few meatier books I've read recently:
* Seeing Like a State - great overview of how states (and corporations) lose visibility into reality due to the abstraction levels they operate at
* Normal Accidents - all about how things like nuclear reactors, ships and large systems naturally have accidents
* Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty - great easy read about how high reliability organizations manage complexity and dangerous, high tempo situations.
I'm also reading Seeing Like a State, and finding it fascinating. A lot of Scott's theory seems to apply equally well to any large organisation, like a corporation. I think it is fundamentally about how in any unwieldy system, the people in charge tend want to have some sort of comprehensible map of that system to make decisions, and they also want more effective apparatuses of power order to steer the system, and the fundamental complexity of reality has to be smoothed over to achieve those things.
For example, business intelligence systems provide ways to impose consistent measures on an organisation, which makes the org more legible to executive decision makers, but that consistency also tends to erode local team autonomy and undermine specialist knowledge. This type of tension shows up everywhere once you start noticing it.
Very facinating book.
Seeing like a state is my next book to read. Weirdly, I cannot recall the chain of interests that led me to it.
I’m also reading Seeing Like a State!
Oh I've got some recs for you if you want meaty! I've been reading classics this year. It started with East of Eden; if you've got a philosophical leaning and appreciate your characters deeply fleshed out, you owe it to yourself to read this book.
The next one was Lonesome Dove, this was my first time reading a western and I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did. The book is also absolutely hilarious and has one of my favorite characters in a book(shoutout to Gus).
I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cresto and, boy, it's turning out to be quite the epic tale of revenge(no spoilers please!).
I am also reading the Count of Monte Cristo -- I suggest reading up on its origin, it's fairly interesting.
This was eerie to read, you just named my 3 favorite works of fiction in the reverse order that I read them. All brilliant books.
Also read Lonesome Dove this year, also my first Western. I'd watched the amazing miniseries I thought it was great. I'm honestly not sure the book has much over the miniseries which is a rare statement.
If you liked Lonesome Dove and attempted to read the prequel and sequels I strongly recommend against it.
I like a good thick book but I could not finish Monte Cristo. After about the 40th character introduction I just had to put it down. The problem is me, not the book.
Read The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time this year too. Kinda obsessed with it for a month
when you’re done, read Umberto Eco on it: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/10/28/the-cult-of-t...
"Collapse" - A friend gave me the book in a bag he was going to donate. its been great. Theres obviously a huge undertone of preachy "humans struggle with sustainable resource utilization" but the views into failed societies are just fascinating. Really enjoying it, though I've slowed down and might not finish.
"7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy" - Recommended by @pc in an interview. I'm ~50 pages in and not really blown away. Its a nice accumulation of Alpha creating strategy... but I think its really missing some nuance. I do LOVE that they take an economist approach and actually provide the math/algorithms behind the concepts. Theres some good stuff in here but so far it feels like 30 pages stretched out to make a book.
"Monetizing Innovation" - dropped this book, do not recommend. I was expecting a really nice accumulation of how pricing should work with companies who are innovating... and it came no where near that hopeful concept. The case studies were weak, the hypothesis were weak, the writing was weak.
Fiction:
I'm on Book Two of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Non-Fiction:
More than I can count, as far as "I've read at least some, put a bookmark in it, and intend to finish it eventually." But in terms of the books I'm really actively engaging with right now, the top one is:
Neuroscience: Exploring The Brain[1] by Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, and Michael A. Paradiso
And sort of in parallel with that, is
Analog Computing: Development, Programming, Applications, and Future Directions[2] by Bernd Ulmann
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0781760038/
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Computing-Development-Programm...
I just started book 6 of Dungeon Crawler Carl. You are in for a treat.
I'm on Book Seven of DCC. Very fun. Looking forward to reading Book Eight.
I'm reading Matt's latest movie from Dungeon Crawler Carl series. A great fun way to unwind after programming all day! Will check the two other books you mentioned, thanks!
The Story of my Experiments with Truth - Mahatma Gandhi.
I recently read another book (Autobiography of a Yogi) that included an excerpt from this book, and it piqued my curiosity into Gandhi’s struggles in India. So far I’ve found it different than other biographies I’ve read because the author is self-critical and reflective which helps in understanding him as a person and his actions.
I really loved The Story of my Experiments with Truth. It even inspired me to visit India. There were moments reading it when I just sat down kind of in awe — Gandhi really was an exceptional person. And there are also excruciatingly boring parts where he is detailing the minutiae of his diet.
I would also highly recommend Gandhi the Man, by Eknath Easwaran.
Actually, Nevermind: Essays by Taylor Tomlinson
Taxation The Peoples Business by Mellon, Andrew W.
https://archive.org/details/taxationthepeopl033026mbp
It's from 1924 and US centric, old new ideas in there.
I recently discovered Charles Soule who started in comic books and ventured into novels. I read The Oracle Year recently and now I'm reading The Endless Vessel.
'Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States', Alex Wellerstein.
> "Over the course of this book, we have looked at some eighty years of this history. We have seen how the idea of nuclear secrecy was initially born out of a very specific fear—that the world’s worst nation could achieve nation-destroying power—that, over the course of many transformations, morphed into something more generalized. More than totalitarian regimes were the target of this secrecy: allied nations, private industry, democratic institutions, and “the public” more broadly became understood as targets as well, for reasons both justifiable and not. The secrecy problem moved wherever the problem of the bomb went, which was far indeed. The desirability of control over nuclear knowledge became totalizing because the threat of loss of control was tied to the almost unimaginable power of the bomb itself. These two forces—the desire for control, the fear of its loss—became locked in a vicious cycle, each driving the other."
that would probably be a great companion to 'Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety'.
I agree so strongly that I moved it from my 'to buy' list to bought.
Also of note is Wellerstein's more recent 'The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age – The Anti-Nuclear President, the Bomb Decision, and Cold War History', which I read earlier this year and thought it was excellent.
A clipping from its closing pages:
> “What is the measure of a civilized man?” The proper answer, Lilienthal suggested, was to consider the sense that a “civilized man” was one who believed they had a responsibility to others. The invention of nuclear weapons had clearly magnified the problem: “One sees that the mark of a civilized man must be some quality that will help the world from destroying itself. He is most civilized who has those qualities and talents of leadership, by example and precept and character and ideas, that will help civilization to survive.”
To extend the reading list, I was completely floored by 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', Richard Rhodes, but that was 20 years ago. I need to re-read it, and add 'Dark Sun' and 'American Prometheus' to round out that part of my picture of the military-industrial complex.
> The Making of the Atomic Bomb
I read it this summer. I learned a lot but got lost remembering who is who..
Could you recommend titles about discovery of radio-activity and after ? I'm fascinated by this subject.
If those titles were also a gentle introduction to the physics involved, I'd be delighted.
Just finished a David Foster Wallace kick. I listened to the new 30th anniversary audiobook of Infinite Jest (twice) and then The Pale King (twice). Then I listened to "Of course you end up becoming yourself" which is a long-form interview with Wallace by David Lipsky, traveling with him on the Infinite Jest book tour.
I had to listen to the books twice because there are a lot of details that you won't get the first time through unless you're extremely intentional and detail oriented, but I found it was worth it to listen again. I'll probably listen to Infinite Jest again sometime soon, even though it's 64 hours long. IJ is actually really great sci-fi with some important questions for our time.
I attempted infinite jest and really tried to like it but I hated it. The prose is extremely smart, interesting and insightful and wildly connective. But the overall tone is so oppressively nihilistic I decided life's too short and put it down.
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's bad... but it's not for me. did not finish.
I have become a huge fan of AudioBooks lately, but how in the /hell/ do you listen to Infinite Jest?? With the end notes? With end notes of end notes? With whole chapters hidden in an end note? It was challenging enough on paper. That would do my nut in.
The audiobook version I listened to had different narrators for main text and footnote with audio cue when footnote started as well.
I'm jumping across several short story collections:
- "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang - "Ficciones" by Borges - "I have no Mouth and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison.
I'm also slowly plowing through "The Big Book of Science Fiction" edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer.
I love short speculative fiction. And the above are among my favorites.
Isn't it called Stories of your life and other stories? Ted Chiang is my favorite living science fiction author. Everything I've read by him ranges from very good to sublime.
I generally prefer novels despite having originally got into SF via collections of Asimov stories, but I read the "Stories of your life" collection recently and it was quite stunning. I think "Tower of Babylon" was my favourite but they were all excellent in different ways.
I should get Exhalation.
"Exhalation" was very good. Not every story was great, but as a whole is was lovely
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.
About halfway through- it’s really good so far. He makes a compelling case for how our culture has changed in many ways, often for the worse, with the introduction of television.
Last year I read 'Amusing Ourselves' and 'Technopoly'. A very interesting thinker.
Two of Vernor Vinge's books in particular (science fiction): A Fire Upon The Deep, and A Deepness In The Sky.
They have a special place in my heart. Vinge didn't write much, but what he did write I think is very special indeed.
I've also taken to buying hardbacks of my favourite books from ebay.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/77711.A_Fire_Upon_the...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/226004.A_Deepness_in_the...
Don't miss out on his "The blabber", a novella in that universe with an adorable character.
If you haven't read about his (technical) system for writing, do so. Very geeky. He described it (including notes) in my ebook copy of Fire Upon The Deep
Great series! Give Children of Time a go next if you haven’t already.
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer [1].
I don't tend to be great at finishing (or starting) books, and this is a big one. I've also never had any interest in Medieval or Renaissance history, for me it's been a black hole between the fall of Rome and the modern age.
But recently I saw some Youtube videos of Ada, and her enthusiasm is totally infectious [2]. She's fun and paints these vivid pictures of Florence and renaissance Europe that are incredible, absurd, and relatable, which makes sense since given she's also an accomplished sci-fi writer. She also reminds me of one of my favourite high school teachers. So I ordered the book right away.
The book is in the same tone as her videos, so it won't be for everyone, but I've really been enjoying it and now I'm fascinated by Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli, merchant republics, etc.
1. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo246135...
2. (My favourite example) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68p3jVQQdFk
I'm currently reading her Terra Ignota series and it's great, so I was already planning to tackle this one next.
I'm considering checking it out despite not really being a science-fiction reader. Though I've been reading this terrifying slow-burn about superintelligent autonomous swarms breaking containment and stopping at nothing to complete the impossible tasks given by their feckless masters.
SSC Boston member by chance?
I am not, looking it up it seems to be a Boston rationalist meetup, if that's the what you're referring to. I'm not in the US or even very rational!
Just got done reading The Wager - historical nonfiction - same author as Killers of the Flower Moon.
It's quite good - not as good as Killers of the Flower Moon. I won't spoil anything you won't learn from the first few pages. The Wager was a British naval ship in the early 1700s that was lost to inclement weather. All were presumed dead. Some time later a boat arrives in England with a small number of survivors. Then a while later, another boat arrives with some more survivors. They each accuse the other of terrible acts.
The book tells the story of what happened after the ship went down.
It's a good read.
The Outsider (L'Étranger) will give you something to think about. Camus' idea with this novel was to see what would happen to a character who went through life only telling the truth.
Big fan of Camus; I found The Fall and The Plague to both be stronger books than The Stranger
I didn't realize it was published under two separate english translated titles
I'm reading singer song-writer Lily Allen's 2019 autobiography My Thoughts Exactly. I really liked her last album West End Girl (2025) and I wanted to know more about her and her creative process and inspirations. She tells about lots of different things having happened in her life, her relationship with her parents, how she grew up like. Really enjoyable read so far!
The Nature of Economies by Jane Jacobs
People complain about how it's written, but it's nevertheless an interesting exploration of the parallels between natural ecosystems and human economies. As someone with no particular interest or background in economics (and who hasn't read anything else by Jane Jacobs), I find it a fascinating and easy read.
I stick mostly to fiction these days. Best books I've read this year:
- The Women by Kristin Hannah
- Jurassic Park by Micheal Crichton
- Platform Decay by Martha Wells
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
- Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the End of the World by Eric Jay Dolin
- All the Sinners Bleed by S A Cosby
- Project Hail Mary and Artemis by Andy Weir
- Cibola Burn and Nemesis Games by James S A Corey (the Expanse series)
If you enjoy The Expanse, definitely pick up The Mercy of Gods, also by James S A Corey. It, and the recent sequel (The Faith of Beasts) are some of the best sci-fi I've read in a long time.
So for my unofficial book club with a good friend, we're in the final act of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, after having finished A Room with a View a few weeks before. I enjoy 19th and early 20th century literature for the prose quality quite a lot, and Forster does not disappoint on that score. It's also fascinating getting an inside view on Anglo-Indian relations during British rule. It's thematically similar To Kill a Mockingbird, in that both feature prominent "White Knight" type characters.
I'm also reading some less highbrow, yet highly entertaining novels that I'm obsessed with. I'm currently on book 16 in in Lindsey Davis' Falco series[0], which are murder mysteries set in Ancient Rome. I've been enjoying them non-stop ever since HN user "vintagedave" recommended[1] them around 4 months ago.
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/series/42173-marcus-didius-falco
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48323766
Finally started reading "A Philosophy of Software Design". It was on my shelf for ages. I have the 1st edition; luckily, you can grab new chapters from the 2nd edition from the author's website.
Reading this now as well! Also was on the bookshelf for over a year, glad I finally cracked it open
This is an excellent book! We give a copy to everyone that joins our team.
Value(s): Building a Better World for All by Mark Carney, the current prime minister of Canada. He starts out with his perspective on the history of economics and money - it reads a bit like a textbook.
He has a knack for being critical and optimistic at the same time. Funny too!
Middlemarch, finally!
I'm 50% of the way through and it's good but I don't entirely see the hype. Brontë is more atmospheric, Austen funnier and more incisive, Dickens more immersive. But I've still got a way to go.
You can't entirely judge a George Sand novel partway through. For my money, it destroys any Brontë, Austen, or Dickens.
Something about it though, feels good to meet folks that have read it.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Recently passed the bit where Ammianus complained the rich had bought up much of the property in Rome and turned so many into renters and gave stats to show it. Amongst his many other complaints.
Sadly found I could have been reading a better abridgement, which I'll get for the 2nd reading now.
Tell me more about the abridgements. Which one now, which one next?
I'm reading Dero Saunders penguin classic which I picked up from a used book store. It's fine, but I'm at the point where the last 6 books of the original should kick in and Saunders treats it as an epilogue. I didn't even realize there were multiple abridgements when I started, and reviews of the others seem to include more about that and retain more of that special "Gibbonness" that's been so much delightful effort to parse. It's been a slow and halting first read I'm looking forward to a more uninterrupted story the second run through. I'll probably go for the Wormesly one and try to spot the differences. You only really start to know a great book after the second reading anyway.
J.L. Austin: Philosopher & D-Day Intelligence Officer.
Austin worked for British Intelligence during World War II, running the Martians section and helping assess possible invasion sites for D-Day. After the war, as a philosopher of language, he helped bring ideas such as performative utterances and speech acts into the discussion.
A fascinating overlap between intelligence work and philosophy of language.
And because the Brewers are in the playoffs, "Catcher in the Wry" by Bob Uecker. Despite being a Cleveland fan, I have to admit the book is amazingly fun. Uecker was Uecker long before he became everybody's favorite baseball storyteller, and he was the Cleveland announcer in Major League.
Recently finished: - Tau Zero by Poul Anderson (Hard Sci-Fi) - Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (blew my mind)
Reading now: - Hyperion by Dan Simmons (getting harder than two above, but enjoying it so far)
Hyperion is amazing, it's one of those books I wish I could read again for the first time. Enjoy!
Ooo - my favourite genre. Just added Tau Zero to my list. Children of Time was amazing as was Hyperion. Have you read the Quantum Magician series?
Unfortunately not, took a break in sci-fi for more than 10 years and only getting back. Noted Quantum Magician, quick glance suggests it should be fun
After my father died last year I’ve started going through his collection of popular-science paperbacks.
Done: QED, Richard Feynman. Lectures on explaining quantum electrodynamics but with no more math than geometry.
Currently: One Good Turn: A natural history of the screwdriver and the screw, Witold Rybczynski. The discourse goes into his references in depth. It has yielded an excellent list of museums to visit.
On deck: Impossibility: The limits science and the science of limits, John Barrow. A re-read for me. Barrow discusses what we can never know in a way that’s like P vs NP but for the physical world.*
I just finished Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and it had so many “aha” moments for me. Definitely recommended if you have even a passing interest in reading or making graphic novels or comics.
So, so good. Changed the way I read comics and I've been a lifelong fan of the medium.
"What Happened to Liberal Democracy" by Daron Acemoglu (Nobel laureate).
As someone who fled the desolation of the rust belt this book spoke to me and I found it credible and compelling. My book club spent 4 hours discussing this book.
I just finished Wilfred Sellars “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”
I’m slowly rereading Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.
I am perpetually rereading the works of Richard Rorty.
On Audible, revisiting a childhood favorite: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
On my Kindle I have two ham radio books I'm reading, one is about grounding antennas, the other a General test prep.
- Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur - Ham Radio General Class License Study Guide
Avatar: The Last Airbender books. Yangchen's series. Nothing you'd use to try to show off your knowledge over coffee, but fun well-written read with great world building.
About two thirds of the way through "Flaw of Averages". Thankfully the chapters are short but it's written for business students and is aggressively anti-jargon, which can be annoying at times.
It started off promising, with some hints about monte carlo methods implemented in spreadsheets, but kind of detours into statistics basics, layman summaries of the author's prior scholarly work, and various business consulting anecdotes. I did not, for example, expect to read a chapter on the FASB-II's flaws regarding options pricing. And a few are downright concerning a decade later. I would not, for example, brag about advising Wells Fargo executives on their employee incentive programs after the cross-selling scandal came to light.
The final chapters, which I have not yet gotten to, supposedly cover the solution to the flaw of averages. Given the book is 15 years old, I'm expecting it to be pretty dated implementation wise, but I might be able to apply it to Prometheus histograms or t-digests. And I've learned a few things, like Jensen's inequality, and found a few sheets demoing a sampling approach.
Working my way through Elle Cordova's sci-fi book club[1]. Currently on Hyperion, but have read "The Man In The High Castle," "Sea of Tranquility," "Exhalation," "Neuromancer," "The Power," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," "Parable of the Sower," and "I, Robot."
[1] https://bookshop.org/lists/elle-s-sci-fi-book-club
Warning: Hyperion ends on a cliffhanger, you'll want to get The Fall of Hyperion (the sequel).
The entire cantos is great, tho I prefer the first two to the Endymion/Rise of Endymion.
[delayed]
The Wheel of Time.
I was very happy to find this. I heard complaints that it's just a Tolkien clone and Jordan doesn't portray women well. But what I found was kind of a relic. It's an excellent fantasy series that probably couldn't be written again. Wish we had more like it.
I really enjoyed the books but there is a lot of issues around pacing. One of the books(7 maybe? it's been a while) was pretty much several hundred pages of them just walking. Had the same experience recently with book 3 of Otherland.
the pacing and consistency are atrocious, unfortunately. I loved the first six books, hated the seventh, and straight up abandoned the series halfway through book 8. tempted to do a full read through now that Sanderson has completed the series in a way that people seem happy with but it's a lot when I know I'm going to run into at least those two bad books in the middle and possibly more after that.
If you don't like to be sad, at least wait to forget most of it before watching the Prime Video series.
The series is also cancelled, so no point wasting time watching it either.
It’s a classic, but this is absolutely true
> Jordan doesn't portray women well.
tugs braid
The most recent book I read that I really loved was A Gentleman in Moscow: https://recleague.com/james/r/144458-a-gentleman-in-moscow. It got me on a Russia kick, which has been fun and enlightening.
I keep track of all my favorite books here: https://recleague.com/james/collections/books
(Full disclosure: I'm a cofounder of Rec League)
I recently finished "Warbreaker" by Brandon Sanderson, now plan to go back to reading "Designing data-intensive applications" since it's been a long time (for me) since I read anything educational. Warbreaker was amazing, I still think about it, a week after finishing, about the characters and how much fun I had while reading it. It's one of those books that you smile when you read it because of how pleasant it is and how enjoyable the characters are.
I started the cosmere this year and have officially consumed every available book in the cosmere, really enjoyable brain junk food! He has written so much and I love the different systems and characters development. Highly recommend his works! I daydream in the various parts of cosmere weekly and am excited for more books to come out.
I couldn't remember which Shakespeare plays I had or hadn't read, so I've spent the summer going through them alphabetically. It's been a blast!
I knew many everyday expressions and phrases come from his work but I had no idea it was so many.
I'm currently about halfway through at 3.2k pages.
I vaguely remember the RSC doing a Christmas BBC Radio 4 skit years ago the gist of which was repeating "If you're <common phrase>, then you're quoting Shakespeare" for about 20 minutes straight.
I’m reading the gospel! It’s super interesting and accurate account to my understanding.
I’m specifically talking about the New Testament.
I’m currently reading Hebrews 6.
The Score, by C. Thi Nguyen.
It explores why we love metrics in games, but hate them at work.
I'm reading Sagas of the Icelanders as prep for a trip there, but I can feel it pulling me down into a rabbithole of older Scandinavian medieval writing. I've already got an order placed for a saga that's not in this book, along with the Poetic Edda and Havamal to learn more about Norse mythology.
I've mostly been reading short SF stories recently, most of them from Dangerous Visions.
Here's a few of the ones I've read and enjoyed:
“The Jigsaw Man” by Larry Niven
“The Night That All Time Broke Out” by Brian W. Aldiss
“A Toy for Juliette” by Robert Bloch (although I was surprisingly not a fan of Harlan's continuation)
“The Man Who Went to the Moon — Twice” by Howard Rodman
“Flies” by Robert Silverberg
I’ve been reading about bureaucracy, power, and civic engagement:
The Power Broker by Robert Caro.
Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka.
The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey.
Helliconia Summer
„Practical Engineering for Inventors“. It’s not really made to be read from beginning to end but I do like to le
Iain M Banks' Culture series. It's hilarious (not really) how badly these books are mis-read by wannabe tech dictators.
You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting (1989), about baseball in Japan in the 1980s.
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818/1831), https://frankendiff.com; and Tales of the Dead, by Mrs. Utterson (1813), https://archive.org/details/talesofdead00utte
Just started Homer's Iliad (Fagles translation) and Christopher Logue's War Music (2015).
Just finished re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1980). I think it holds up well. Last time I read it, I was much younger than Arthur Dent; now I'm much older. And now that we have computers with Genuine People Personalities, it's hard to remember what it was like in the Before Times.
Recently finished Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908). For better or worse (no spoilers here), it kept me guessing.
Chat GPT and Claude's infuriatingly obsequious ways make GPP seem distressingly prophetic.
The electric monk in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency makes me a bit twitchy these days too.
On the Origin of Sex - real life examples that seem like science fiction. How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch, I read last year but goes into most recent discoveries in physics.
I'm reading the neuromancer triology. It makes me think that book ended up predicting (or maybe shaping) many things that really are happening right now.
I recently reread Neuromancer and I don't get why people think it's so prophetic. The real world is shaped by ubiquitous smartphones and surveillance capitalism and social media feeds. Gibson predicted none of that and not even close. Instead he predicted all kinds of things that never came to be, like neural interfaces consumer space stations. He didn't even predict income inequality - Case is in Chiba City for a very specific reason and for all we know it's quite unique. Even his predictions around the internet are way off because as far as I can tell the only medium that explains how it works in his book is telepathy - literally no one ever mentions or cares about physical connectivity, and there's no mechanism for Case to get online without repairing his nervous system. Which of course makes no sense if you could just look at a screen. The cultural aspects are way off although very atmospheric- the smoking the paper newspapers pay phones.... I think the only thing that it shaped was the cyberpunk aesthetic, which is as fundamentally retro-futuristic and silly as steampunk.
I read that recently. Neuromancer I had read before and found excellent again (and in places pithier in the era of AI). It's very quotable too.
The other two were much weaker; of the two Count Zero was least interesting though so at least it wraps up on a fairly high note.
I read the Bridge trilogy a decade or so ago (?) and I must re-read that soon too - I suspect Idoru will hit harder these days.
Well in theory I'm reading "Blind Corner" by Dornford Yates, but it's so terrible I may not finish it. I adore Dorothy Sayers and have a sort of forlorn hope that another of the golden age crime writers will have something approaching her flair. In practice this is a third rate John Buchan-ish boys-own bit of tatt. So far. I suppose it might improve.
Instead I'm sneaking off to reread a Pratchett novel (he had very few duds until the Alzheimers really got its teeth into him).
After that/those I'm dithering between SS/GB by Deighton and some other re-read.
I'm on book 3 of Romlyn Domingue's "Keeper of Tales" trilogy. One unusual touch I liked is that each book is written in a different person - book 1 is a second person autobiography written as the protagonist talking to her past self, book 2 is third person with a different protagonist, and then book 3 is a continuation of book 2 but with the voice switched to first person.
> I'm looking for something a little meaty to keep the brain working...
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes to mind. I had no idea how rampant purposeful discrimination was so recently for example, but the point of the book is the HeLa cells - and biology is also not my forté so loads of new information there as well. It was very interesting in expected and unexpected areas for me
- Daniel Suarez' Kill Decision has only gotten more relevant since its release in 2012. Not sure I'd call this meaty though, but his thrillers are always good (near-ish future tech) and the author iirc also said this particular one is meant as food for thought and not only entertainment
Non fiction: The Dawn of Everything.
Fiction: just finished The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott; about to read The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (for the 2nd or 3rd time)
Iain Banks - Excession - 5 stars and the most optimistic series on AI
Dungeon Crawler Card - Not for me but I might give it another chance
Bukowski - Post Office - Worth reading, Gen-Z might get triggered
Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life And Others. Just finished the short story behind Arrival, the way it frames free is something the film doesn't capture. Other stories in the book have been brilliant too.
Great set of stories.
I hated Arrival. Years later when I read the original story, it was one of the most beautiful ones I've ever read. Particularly great if you've studied the calculus of variations.
You've Been Pooping All Wrong by Trisha Pasricha MD. Get a bidet, eat more fiber and kiwis.
Do we really need a whole book for this?
“Depends”. This is a good tldr from NPR with the author of the book: https://www.npr.org/2026/04/11/nx-s1-5780065/gut-constipatio...
And don't peel your kiwi, either.
The primary study for kiwis notes: “Participants were instructed to consume the [green] kiwifruit without the skin.”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10226473/
The skin does add both fiber and nutritional value (gold skin is more enjoyable then green IMO), but it may not be well tolerated by all.
I recently enjoyed the Dark Profit Saga by Zachary Pike: https://www.goodreads.com/series/207236-the-dark-profit-saga
It was a mix of fantasy & humor. It is a bit long but it is extremely funny & entertaining. It is the first fantasy book I have read other than the Harry Potter series (not sure if it is considered fantasy) but I loved it.
One of the best non-fiction books I read this year was Doppleganger: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/138505710.
Nothing currently, but most recently, the various audiobooks of The Wind in the Willows to fall asleep, and Diana Wynne Jones' (of Howl's Moving Castle fame) Chrestomanci series while awake.
On the recommendation of a friend, the spiral wars series (https://spiral-wars-shepherd.fandom.com/wiki/Spiral_history).
It started slow (booting) but I'm enjoying the books (currently on #3), the universe-building and the length (10 books) of it.
This is my 13th round to recommend "The Soul of a new Machine" as well as "Showstoppers".
I liked those as well (I assume you meant "Show-Stopper!" about windows NT) and also remember "Dreaming in code" as a good one in the same-ish genre.
I read 3/4 of "The Soul of a new Machine" and thought it was good, but I sort of fizzled out. What makes you recommend it so highly (trying to understand if I should go back)
I've taken a hiatus in my journey through Iain M. Banks' Culture novels to reread 1984.
Terry Pratchet's entire corpus
Re-reading C.J. Cherryh's Chanur books and various other Alliance-Union novels from her Humble Bundle.
I'd be re-reading Tolkien's _Old English Exodus_, but proofreading the typos got to be too much.
Humble Bundle frequently has nice bundles of genre fiction or comics by specific authors. I've picked up large sets of Ebooks from them over the last few years by numerous authors: Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Jordan, comics by Moebius, and recently Timothy Zahn and various scifi/fantasy authors with careers spanning decades.
It's a great resource!
I'm reading tons of Claude, all I do everyday is read all day
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.
It's an autobiographical history which recounts the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history.
I went into this knowing little to no Chinese history, and it has opened my eyes to this fascinating country. I hope to visit China for the first time in 2027. Before I go, I'm doing a deep dive into Chinese history. Open to recommendations on what to read next!
As a follow up you can read Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls, an autobiographical history in graphic novel format recounting the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history, across continents (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States).
I just finished "The Emergency". Heard about it on Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz [0]. Is a fictional story about what it might be like if a modern government empire collapses. Im interested in writers that are thinking about the future.
[0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emergency-with-geo...
I just finished the full cast Harry Potter audiobooks and they were fantastic.
Currently reading and recommending - Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Sir Earnest Shackleton’s attempt to cross the Antarctic.
Ooh, do try "Farthest North" too, about Nansen's North Polar expedition. Quite fascinating and (I found) quite amusing to a modern reader for various reasons.
I read a lot so I'll toss out some fiction titles you might like if you're a DCC fan:
* Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer -- post-apoc dystopian, somewhat cozy, told from a robot's perspective (who is joined by a companion cyborg dog)
* Blacktongue Thief by Chris Buehlman -- witty and snarky fantasy, solid character development and world building; and, if you like it, book 2 in the series (book 3 if you count a prequel) comes out soon
* Mortedant's Peril -- Fantasy mystery in a world where magic allows the "detectives" to touch the dead and sense their final thoughts/words; in that world, someone learns a dark secret from a victim...
* Trade of Blood -- Another fantasy mystery that is exceptionally well told; it's Book 3 in a series so I'd start with Tainted Cup if you haven't read that already
* The Infinite State -- new SciFi by Richard Swan (usually a fantasy author); a universe where ultra wealthy can establish colony planets, someone attempts to start a democracy.
- "Foundations of Analysis" by Belding & Mitchell
- "On Writing Well" by Zinsser
One of the books I'm reading now is Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, by George Ewart Evans. Set in 1957 Suffolk county, England. I often read in a theme and this theme is about cultural and technological transitions.
Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky
Well, I guess that was inevitable, wasn't it?
I've got a history of picking up the 2 top books of the airports best sellers. Have been my strategy for a while, right now it's FLESH. Feels like I'm being part of the mainstream, reading something everyone else reading.
I am reading The dream of enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb.
My goal is to read the history of ideas from Renaissance period till 2000s. Started with The Florentines by Paul Strathern. Then read The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick. Now at the enlightenment era. It has been eye opening to read about the life and times of some of the great minds like Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Locke and more.
if you're into litrpg, have you tried the wandering inn? it's not so meaty but it's above almost all other litrpgs in that department and the storytelling is great
Glen Cook's Garrett P.I. series[0]. It's a perennial fave (I've read it many times, in the past).
I'm reading Deadly Quicksilver Lies, right now.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/series/49491-garrett-files
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_P.I.
That link is dicey. I'm not sure why, but it doesn't always land in the correct page. It usually ends up in a disambiguation page.
Goodreads is commercial, but it does a good job of describing books and series of books.
[UPDATE] Ah. Figured it out. It's the trailing period. I think HN removes it from the link.
"A man in the Maze" by Robert Silverberg. Don't know why but I felt the urge to re-read it, last time I read it 30 years ago and remembered the plot very well.
Radiant Star (the new Ann Leckie book, in the “Ancillary Justice” series). Not as good as her earlier books in the series, but very worthwhile if you enjoyed them.
Currently listening to I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. A fascinating exploration of consciousness written 20 years ago but very relevant in the age of AI.
Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nick Lane.
I read Lane's The Vital Question this year and enjoyed it quite a bit. If you've read both, would you compare them for me?
I havent read PSS but I loved The Vital Question and Transformer. It was so much better than a book on the Krebs cycle had any business being. I probably liked VQ better though.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimgar_of_Fantasy_and_Ash
I have grown playing MMORPG's and this one brings the nostalgia vibes without investing the time into grinding for gear.
I just wrapped up the Murderbot Diaries series and am starting in on Dungeon Crawler Carl.
I normally read a lot of nonfiction and history and am trying to make a point to read more fiction this year.
Haha I've been trying to do the reverse :)
the fionavar tapestry by guy gavriel kay.
nearing the end. i've found it a bit complicated to follow in some spots (there are several 'main' protagonists and it switches between them without much warning or introduction) but overall it's scratched the fantasy itch.
(i suppose it's actually 3 books, but i have the omnibus version)
I’ve read most of GGK’s books but never got to that one.
i'm enjoying it enough that i would read more, do you have a recommendation of what i should pick up from him next? this was the first book of his ive read.
Just for fun—past examples with > 30 comments:
Ask HN: What Are You Reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283087 - Sept 2025 (42 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39248780 - Feb 2024 (92 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading these days? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237730 - Nov 2023 (281 comments)
Ask HN: What Are You Reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21457827 - Nov 2019 (49 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you currently reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160091 - Jan 2018 (43 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you currently reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859274 - July 2017 (80 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14608397 - June 2017 (36 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175465 - Sept 2015 (79 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636361 - June 2015 (37 comments)
Ask HN: What book are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8108932 - July 2014 (86 comments)
Ask HN: What Books Are You Reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7968124 - June 2014 (80 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4596721 - Oct 2012 (40 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading? What've you read lately? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3335496 - Dec 2011 (41 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3230965 - Nov 2011 (59 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615647 - June 2011 (53 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865350 - Nov 2010 (298 comments)
What are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=797070 - Sept 2009 (214 comments)
The Cuckoo's Egg, by Cliff Stoll
Such a good one, enjoy!
Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet by Lindsay Owens became available today, and I have purchased ebook and will begin reading today.
Currently on the final book of James Clavell’s Asia Saga, it’s been a long road and I’m frankly kind of over it but 90% through the final book and I’m glad I read them. First read Shogun maybe ~10 years ago but read the other four back to back. Gai-Jin wasn’t very good but the others have been pretty solid overall. A bit long winded and sometimes I wish he’d’ve had a more aggressive editor, but happy with em enough to finish them all.
Book 2 of Hyperion Cantos. Really enjoying it, but am unsure if I want to do books 3 & 4. Anyone read them and recommend either way?
I'd say it's some of best science (?) fiction written, so I'm biased, but yes books 3 & 4 are worth it. It gets very bizarre and the ending has stuck with me for a long time.
I liked 1 & 2 a lot (I happened to read 2 before realising that 1 existed and that worked well for me).
3 & 4 I thought were quite poor.
Rereading Pale, slowly:
https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/
Three books.
These two feel especially relevant:
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered - E.F. Schumacher
Tools for Conviviality - Ivan Illich
and
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - John Koenig
"Correction" from Bernhard. Wow. This is in its own league of weirdness and yet it flows...
An Introduction to General Systems Thinking by Gerald Weinberg. I've found his writing style to really land with my brain.
Boom Town by Sam Anderson. Its an intertwined history of Oklahoma City and its basketball team, the Thunder. I'm about halfway through, and I'm loving it so far.
I finished Quantum Radio last week and Im quite far in Rainbows End. I think the former is ok, not great; the latter is a better book (with AR future vibes), but still lacking something that makes u never drop it before u finish it.
I am currently listening to VC An American History by Tom Nicholas, Audible 2019. I am reading Predictable Winners, A Handbook for Developing, Forecasting, and Launching New Products and Services, Stanford Business Books, 2025. I have cracked open, but not gotten very far in reading, The Rise And Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2026. The Jill Lepore book is very interesting.
Just finished:
- Selected Stories - Anton Chekhov
- Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
- The Burnout Society - Byung-Chul Han
Currently I am reading an Austrian economics classic - Economics in one lesson by Henry Hazlitt
Currently reading "Beyond Tube-and-Wing: The X-48 Blended Wing-Body and NASA's Quest to Reshape Future Transport Aircraft".
Its a pretty good history of the X-48 program.
Edit: also reading the "The Anduril Thesis" in parallel.
Airframe by Michael Crichton. It's riveting.
Just started Dark Tower Series Book 4: Wizard and Glass. I crushed the first 3 books, then took a break to read dungeon crawler carl.
Fiction I recently enjoyed: The Ana and Din series by Robert Jackson Bennett. Sherlock Holmes vibes, with Kaiju. Also The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.
Currently reading and enjoying: Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
Next to Read: Hollywood, Ending by John Green.
almost done with exit party and ctrl-f'd to see if someone else was also reading. I like it a lot so far.
Just got Exit Party from my public library, looking forward to it!
The first volume of Software Foundations, and the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust. Both very very slowly.
I guess it will take me years to have reason of both.
"Lost Worlds" - by Patrick Wyman, fascinating prehistory about meso and neolithic 'civilizations', their lives, their rises and downfalls. Really amazing stuff
I like his podcast a lot, brief vignettes into… whatever. Really fun production and not a deep dive into topics generally, but that’s a feature and not a bug in the context in which I listen to him
The output of LLMs, largely :-/
Is a river alive by Robert McFarlane
A beautifully written travelogue/nature book/eco activist screed that tours the world visiting rivers and the people engaged in living with and protecting them. Fascinating, hopeful, heartbreaking and lyrical. Really enjoying it (evidently)!
The Overstory is rad fiction. Just started listening to Ordinary Men which is about a Polish police battalion responsible for a great many murders during the Holocaust. The members of that battalion were, I guess, welcomed back into society afterwards? Idk, I just started. I'll tell you one thing, though: it's weird to absorb facts about the Shoah as digestible statistics fun facts (for lack of a better term) but those little snippets are very necessary to get my arms around the scale of things such as it. It's the same as happened when I listened to Late Victorian Holocausts. So now I have stats like
- Most Jewish victims of the Holocaust died by gunshot in the occupied USSR
- In March 1942, 80% of Holocaust victims were still alive and by February 1943 80% were dead.
- Per capita incomes were equal in the first and last years of the British Raj
- Indian grain exports increased in the 1880s and 90s and there were 3(?) different famines at that time
rattling around in my head in the same part that holds on to "Pakistan has never had a PM finish a 5 year term," "The Lions, Falcons, and Bills (non-exhaustive) have never won a Super Bowl," "There are no surviving contemperaneous attestations of Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca" and "the first drummer of the Beatles was called Pete Best and made an album called Best of the Beatles"
> - Most Jewish victims of the Holocaust died by gunshot in the occupied USSR
> - In March 1942, 80% of Holocaust victims were still alive and by February 1943 80% were dead.
Makes sense. A couple of things happened: 1942 Wannsee Conference in January 1942 - which I assume took some time during 1942 to get into motion.
Germany started losing, they realized they did not have the logistics to feed additional millions of people in the occupied territories.
The Intellectual Life by AG Sertillanges. Note that it does presuppose a Christian worldview, so ymmv depending on your belief.
Carl was hilarious, can’t wait for the final books
Nettle and Bone I really enjoyed
Some desperate glory also enjoyed
East of Eden very meaty if you want an epic
"A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for the 21st Century" - really enjoying the modern take on Darwinian natural selection (the first part of the book). In short nature diversifies in good times, to stock resilience for weathering the bad times. Just a few chapters in, waiting for that hope to kick in any minute...
"The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst" - This story is about the first round-the-world solo yacht race, and the one contestant who died at sea. His story is really strange - an anti-hero tragedy with a touch of mental illness. The author does a great job bringing the reader on this descent into madness.
"Protocols" - Andrew Huberman's recent book. Like his podcast, it's full of solid advice backed by published science - but also with some repetitive filler and product name drops. The sections on exercise and diet were not very informative to me, mainly because I've already incorporated most of that into my life already. The sections on light exposure and its relationship to sleep, melatonin and cortisol is the most fascinating new-to-me info. I've started morning/evening walking without my sunglasses to get those sweet sweet photons.
"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. My first time though this one and it's...well...a trip.
London Falling, fascinating story about a piece of London's underbelly. Same guy that wrote Say Nothing, which is also great.
Half way through Dungeon Crawler Carl book 8, really got hooked on the whole universe haha.
A bleak and appalling nuclear triptych:
- Hiroshima
- The Doomsday Machine
- Command and Control
Highly recommended if you’re feeling too happy and full of faith in humanity.
I could almost see these being darkly encouraging. Yes, everything is awful, but everything was _already_ awful, and most of us are still mostly okay?
Arkady Martine right now. Pretty good.
Le Comte de MonteChristo, an African history of Africa and Hold me tight
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, the manga adaptations of The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Shadow out of Time, Progress and Poverty.
Binging on Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickeled and Dimed, Dancing in the Streets, Natural Causes
City of Stairs
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. A book which depicts tale of a family across the East and West Bengal amidst Partition of India. This book is very renowned and well written. Being a programmer, its better to read on different topics(which is rarity these days)
Why Greatness cannot be Planned.
The authors argue that rigid, goal-oriented planning and metric-driven objectives actively prevent true innovation and groundbreaking achievement.
I’m reading The Well of Ascension, the second book of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy
I like how he has the slow, almost clinical way of revealing interesting worlds and systems. It’s not the kind of book that’ll make me cry, but I really like world building with fun enough characters
> It’s not the kind of book that’ll make me cry
I thought so too, until I read the 2nd Mistborn trilogy!
Wait until you hear a detailed explanation of the magic system for the 5th time. Still a good series.
I was just listening to a Sanderson interview. He's annoyed by it too. It's his publisher wanting the books to be easy to get into. He's dealing with it in Mistborn era 3 where's he's trying to figure out how to re-explain everything and it's annoying him because he just wants to show allomancers doing cool stuff.
Well I often forget the rules, so its useful :)
Lots of scifi and fantasy.
The Works of Vermin. Exceptionally well written. Not an ounce of flab anywhere.
The Carryx series, 2 books so far. Best villains ever.
Tainted Cup and sequel. Sherlock Holmes meets Godzilla.
Goblin Emperor
The Prophet (Gibran)
Los Alamos (Kanon)
Hyperion (reread)
Finally, a shout out to the best book I read in 2025: Terra Ignota. Yes, the whole series.
>The Carryx series
Weird. There's a species called Carryx too in a series from James S.A. Corey called "The Captive's War".
That's the one I mean! Can never remember the names of the books/series, hence the gesture.
Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker
For keep the brain working and sci-fi I recommend you "EVO - Padres" by Ignacio Fernandez Moreno, spanish only but easy to read with B2 level or upper. It's a science fiction novel exploring politics based in evolution in a far away planet.
I haven't read books in years. I read an incredible amount of code, does that count?
Non-Fiction(on breaks): Indistractable
Fiction(before bed): Quicksilver Neal Stephenson
Audio(during chores): Dungeon Crawler Carl(Up to book 6)
Next up:
Non-Fiction: Ten things I wish I knew about raising boys, Outdoor kids in an indoor world, Intentional(Chris Bailey)
Fiction: The rest of the Baroque Cycle, then moving onto The Laundry Files by Charles Stross, then the rest of Discworld
Audio: The rest of DCC then I'm going to switch to podcasts for a while nothing else planned after this right now.
Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.
Just started Quantum Break: Zero State
Highly recommend the game for anyone who liked Dark or Primer (or any other fiction that features stable time loops).
Just recently started watching Reacher S1 and it was absolutely amazing so started reading the book and wow - like its absolutely amazing
Infinite Jest. Enjoying it so far, but the length keeps on killing me. I'm like 5% of the way in after a couple of weeks...
Took me a year. Loved it! Planning to go back when I have the energy. The Pale King was also really good and a little easier going.
Samuel Butler's adaptation of Homer.
Reading a number of books on the Manhattan Project / Cold War / Soviet Nuclear Program
* Dead Hand
* Atomic Accidents
* Hiroshima
* Command and Control
The Nerd Reich
15,000 miles in a ketch
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff. Can't recommend it enough
Discourses by Epictetus
I'm reading Purge (not to be confused with the film franchise), by a Finnish-Estonian writer about two women with dark pasts during the waning days of the Soviet Occupation of Estonia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge_(novel)
The Immortal Great Souls from Phil Tucker. Very enjoyable fantasy with unique world and characters.
The Immortal Great Souls by Phil Tucker. Very enjoyable fantasy with great world and characters.
I also vouch for this series! Some of my favorite character work and worldbuilding in recent years, and I'm super excited to see where the series goes!
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Don't bother with this.
I'm reading Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes by Harms and it goes off on how weak Dawkins is.
I recently ran across an edition of the Selfish Gene which adds two chapters from The Extended Phenotype that are supposed to fix/clarify some things. I haven't read any of the 3 books mentioned in this thread, but it makes me curious if there's any connection between the criticism and the updates.
Oh, I plan to re-read this in the near future!
"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence"
In my original comment, I Iisted some other books by Dawkins if you're interested -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896133
Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China's New Social Order
Not sure if this one qualifies as more meaty :)
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Always.
Finally got to Dostoevsky's Brother Karamazov. This will take a while.
It's good.
Try to get a modern translation if you're not reading in original language.
This is my K2. Grapes of Wrath is my Everest. I've started it ~7 times and never made it past 120 pages. Good Luck!
For me, I took a copy of it with me on a solo backpacking trip. It was the only entertainment I had for a week.
I'm hyped for you. This one is a massive banger.
Read Crime and Punishment?
In my bag right now I have: The Fox and the Jewel by Karen A. Smeyers and The Spiral Dance by Starhawk.
Back issues of The London Review of Books.
I do not know if this is related to this comments but if you are reading The London Review of Books so that you do not have to read the whole book, maybe it is. I do not watch movies much anymore. Sometime though I want to know what a movie is all about. So, I just read the wikipedia plot review on it. It saves me the time by not having to sit through much tedium but I get a scenes of what it is about.
I have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.
I am an atheist but I have read a little bit of the bible, mostly early OT. I recommend reading a scholarly / literal translation, because there is a lot of nuance in the Hebrew
Do you have any recommendations for translations? I have been reading from some I just have laying around.
I have been wanting to read Donald Knuth's "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated".
(https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html)
Right now I’m reading Biological War. Before this one I finished reading:
- The Left Hand of Darkness
- The Nerd Reich
- What Happened to Liberal Democracy?
"Escape from Capitalism", by Clara Mattei
Reading Gödel, Escher, Bach but I've been stuck on the MU puzzle for days
A copy of Resurrection by Tolstoy I found on the street. Really enjoying the way he is able to portray characters in such profound ways.
Also still working through Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel.
What I finished recently and was really surprised by: Der Geisterbanner by Karl Friedrich Kahlert from 1792.
I'm about 100 pages into "Dune Messiah" (the 2 movies out are both for the first book, the 3rd movie is going to be this book), 50 pages into "Analysis I" by Terence Tao, 100 pages into "Thinking in bets"
President Lincoln by William Lee Miller about the magnanimity of Lincoln
God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre by Richard Grant about hiking through cartel-run Mexico alone
The Rouse by China Miéville, great read so far.
Antigone by Sophocles
Material world and chip wars. Both brilliant. Material world highlights our human ingenuity with an optimism for the future as it outlines our exploitation of the worlds resources over history up to the present time.
Chips wars, for me as a dev without a strong hardware background is a fascinating read into the history of Silicon Valley, from the 50s right up to nvidia and Taiwan semiconductor.
I recently read this and followed it up with "Only the paranoid survive", a story of Intel by Andy Grove.
I just got done with a second read of 2666 by Bolaño.
There was an article on HN a month or two ago about how some books drive people to the kind of madness that would make them do a degree in literature. This is probably the one for me. Excited to read it again in 5 years and see it differently again.
Thanks for this question!
I'm not reading anything at the moment since I'm taking a break and watching season one of Deadwood and also re-watching season one of Boston Legal.
But when I'm done, I plan to re-read "The Cold War A Very Short Introduction" by Robert J. McMahon. I read it about five years ago and it's time to read it again.
Having said that, I can't pass on this opportunity to share the books I've read (some are re-reads) thus far this year that I recommend. I'll just list them while saying that they all come highly recommended by me.
In the famous words of Frank Zappa - So many books, so little time.
1. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
2. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
3. Lying by Sam Harris
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
6. Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
7. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
8. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
9. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
10. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
11. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
13. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
14. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
15. Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan
16. Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins
Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century by W. David Marx. A fascinating and approachable read.
Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris - a re-read about the history of Silicon Valley, highly recommended.