Through a Camel's Eye by Dorothy Johnston although admit I'm having trouble getting into it. Will give it another 50 pages before I decide.
And today started listening to Dune Messiah on audiobook. I loved the first book which I've reread many times, but didn't enjoy the following books at all when I read them years and years ago. Decided to give them another try.
Recommend:
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North for beautiful prose, charming writing and an inventive story. Her first and best book under that pseudonym.
Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard and The Moons of Barsk by Lawrence M. Schoen for making me care about anthropomorphic elephants.
Children of Time and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky for almost making me care about non-anthropomorphic spiders.
I Am Not a Serial Killer and sequels by Dan Wells for tricking me into reading a horror novel when I at first thought it was a thriller, but really enjoying it anyway.
The Lost Man by Jane Harper for being similar but so far a lot better than Through a Camel's Eye.
To narrow it down a bit... I just read Start at the End, and that motivated me to finally pick up Human Universals (which I originally discovered via a talk from Alan Kay). So I'm reading Human Universals now, and then intend to re-read Start at the End again after that. I sort of feel like there's a connection between the content of these two that I want to explore.
Beyond that, picking my way through the various items on that Goodreads list. Some are getting more attention than others, and some are only still on my "currently reading" shelf because I've been to lazy to take them off, despite that title having been "stalled out" for years.
That's a great list, and thank you for including works in Spanish. Do you have more recommendations? I've been neglecting my Spanish reading and losing it little by little.
Bartleby y compañía by Enrique Vila-Matas, on why writers give up or why they may be reluctant to write. It’s a mixture of fiction and biography, hard to tell which but fun searching for authors who may not exist.
Las Constelaciones Oscuras by Pola Oloixarac. I think many in HN would like her work, this novel in particular.
Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson: I assume a HN classic. Good read nonetheless. Crazy imaginative. Prior experience with Stephenson is limited to Snowcrash, which I found to be quite good as well.
Benjamin Franklin - Walter Isaacson: Biographies are immensely underrated. A good biography has had the effect of raising my own aspirations by orders of magnitude. Not sure what it is exactly about them. Being reminded that accomplished figures were humans first and foremost is always good. Either way, struck by the practicality of the man -- something I'm looking to emulate in my own life.
“Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill” by Matthieu Ricard
Phenomenal book by a molecular biologist turned monk who talks about happiness being a skill that can be developed through practice. Powerful, well grounded in science, one of those books that can shift your worldview in a supremely positive way.
Right now: "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Judith Grisel)
Recommend. Addict turned neuroscientist who doesn't hold back, so a good mix of gritty details—
> After I got sober, it took me a little over a year to go a single day without wishing for a drink, but it was more than nine years before my craving to get high abated.
—and science.
Before that: "Educated: A Memoir" (Tara Westover)
Recommend. A good break from typical non-fiction books: easy to read, sometimes thrilling, and emotional.
Before that: "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America" (Margaret Pugh O'Mara)
Don't recommend. I really wanted to like this book, and I believe some of the themes are important and aren't often discussed. E.g., the support the Valley received from politicians, the lobby groups, the size of military spending back in the day…
It's possible my expectations were in the wrong place—I wanted to be inspired like with "The Idea Factory" (Jon Gertner), "The Soul of a New Machine" (Tracy Kidder), "Dealers of Lightning" (Michael A Hiltzik), etc.
I've followed his wild ride since the beginning and have always had mixed opinions about his motives, but this book is as craftily written as it is interesting/informative.
He quite purposefully and methodically shares many personal anecdotes and intimate details of his life that put a very human face onto his story. Whoever helped craft and edit this book (with Snowden) deserves much credit - if not second billing.
A worthy read as it fills in many of the missing details of when and how.
How to Hide an Empire: a short history of the greater United States. It includes an excellent discussion of how technological advancements in the 20th century (such as synthetic rubber, airplanes, and radio) changed the physical structure of empires, with the result of the US empire existing primarily in bases scattered around the world rather than the large swaths of conquered territories that had traditionally characterized empires.
I recently read "The Black Swan" which I thought was an important read in spite of how unlikeable I find the author, how long the book is, and how tangled up the ideas are. It felt like a bit of a crazy rant, but worthwhile.
Funny, that jibes with my perception of Taleb as well. He seems a bit smug, and I'm not sure if I'd like him or not if we met in person, but his books still seem valuable and worth reading. I would say that I'm better off for having read both The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. Still waiting to get around to reading Anti-Fragile, but it's definitely on the list.
It is a book about how we got to wear the clothing we are wearing, essentially a book about the history of fashion over the last 2000 years.
For a guy who owns 20ish pairs of black t-shirts you might not think I cared about fashion, but it is really the history of the ordinary person, politics and technological change.
I'm only a third of the way into it, but so far it's been about how ADD generally appears in a child as a response to a parent's heightened stress levels over a prolonged period of time. He shows a few examples that parallel what I remember from my childhood, so I'm interested in seeing where it goes from here. All "origins" and no "healing" yet though, which is what I'm primarily interested in. It's too early to say if I'd recommend it but it's promising so far.
I just started this yesterday! Thoroughly enjoying it. Another great one is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It's main idea is that we decided to destroy all possibility of disagreement to make us all more comfortable by banning and burning books. Really takes you to the discussions of censorship taking place today! Highly recommended.
The Book by Alan Watts. It metaphorically and literally puts a lot of thoughts I’ve had into words while also pushing the limits of my own perspective and philosophical thought.
My struggle book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Good, though I think I preferred the earlier books. It's still very compelling, but a little too much Hitler in this one
Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane. Poetic landscape history, reminiscent of Sebald. Good stuff.
Click here to kill everybody by Bruce Schneier. Scary.
Machines like me by Ian McEwan. First McEwan I read for a while but I liked it more than I expected. I thought the AI bits were quite good.
The deep history of ourselves : the four-billion-year story of how we got conscious brains by Joseph LeDoux. Bit disappointed in this one, it seemed like there should have been a better story here.
The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life: David Quammen.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. Makes CS careers look less appealing.
Oh man, Super Sad True Love Story had me seeing its storylines surface in American culture for months. Even new news I’m like; “this is just how it happened in the book!” Great read and great author.
Lately, I've had this fascination/idea of reading about world history (or at least major events in world history) through the history of seemingly-mundane, everyday objects. The search for literature in this vein has been predictably difficult but I've been fortunate to come across two great books of this theme.
The first is A History of the World in 12 Maps by Jerry Brotton. The main idea of the book is somewhat like a visual variant of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: that our maps shape our perception of the world and, in turn, our place in it. I actually tried going into this book with a skeptical mind. I first took on the premise that you can't say much about world history by just looking at maps; maybe the crudeness of various Mappaemundi make them unsuitable for educated speculation. I am pleased to say that, by the end of the book, my premise has been completely obliterated.
HN Readers might find the final chapter particularly interesting. It reads on Google Maps and demonstrates that even today in an age of satellite imagery, a map can't claim complete objectivity.
(I'd like to note that in a couple of instances, Brotton gets some technical details wrong. There is an especially glaring one in the Google Maps chapter the hunt for which is left as an exercise to the reader. It does not really affect his main arguments and I really enjoyed the book despite these errors that bite at my attention to detail.)
The next one is Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. This is lighter in content than 12 Maps and deals mostly with obscure figures (in world history) and yet has emerged influential to the modern-day library. The big thing that piqued my interest in this book is the part about Nazi Germany. I know, I know, any discussion can be maneuvered towards Hitler and especially one about censorship. But Battles shows how libraries are, more than anything, social institutions; how even in a bleak time and place such as Nazi-occupied Europe, make-do libraries can support a community.
He also touches on the other side of the coin. We are used to thinking of libraries as benevolent institutions of knowledge but we rarely think of them as ideological apparatuses to curtail knowledge. Highly recommended even for non-bibliophiles. At least, enjoy entertaining stories behind libraries even if you don't get a grand takeaway lesson from it all.
Don’t have time to read but certainly will bookmark this page and forget about it
Currently:
Through a Camel's Eye by Dorothy Johnston although admit I'm having trouble getting into it. Will give it another 50 pages before I decide.
And today started listening to Dune Messiah on audiobook. I loved the first book which I've reread many times, but didn't enjoy the following books at all when I read them years and years ago. Decided to give them another try.
Recommend:
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North for beautiful prose, charming writing and an inventive story. Her first and best book under that pseudonym.
Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard and The Moons of Barsk by Lawrence M. Schoen for making me care about anthropomorphic elephants.
Children of Time and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky for almost making me care about non-anthropomorphic spiders.
I Am Not a Serial Killer and sequels by Dan Wells for tricking me into reading a horror novel when I at first thought it was a thriller, but really enjoying it anyway.
The Lost Man by Jane Harper for being similar but so far a lot better than Through a Camel's Eye.
The full list:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/33942804-phillip-rhode...
To narrow it down a bit... I just read Start at the End, and that motivated me to finally pick up Human Universals (which I originally discovered via a talk from Alan Kay). So I'm reading Human Universals now, and then intend to re-read Start at the End again after that. I sort of feel like there's a connection between the content of these two that I want to explore.
Beyond that, picking my way through the various items on that Goodreads list. Some are getting more attention than others, and some are only still on my "currently reading" shelf because I've been to lazy to take them off, despite that title having been "stalled out" for years.
During the past six months I have been challenged intellectually and aesthetically by these works:
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol 1-3, by Werner Jaeger
Diary by Witold Gombrowicz
Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Sedgewick
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk
Tomie: No Use Escaping by Junji Ito
L’homme aux cercles by Fred Vargas
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.
The Weird by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Federalist Papers, ed. by Kesler
The Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. by Ketcham
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, new translation by John Woods
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman
Loren Eiseley in the Library of America Edition
Tu rostro mañana by Javier Marías
The Complete Essays by Michel De Montaigne, translation by Screech
Earning The Rockies by Kaplan
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
Nature Stories by Jules Renard
Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas
Olinger Stories by John Updike
Greek Science in Antiquity by Marshall Clagett
At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
100 Diagrams That Changed The World by Scott Christianson
Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson
Alec "The Years Have Pants" by Eddie Campbell
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
That's a great list, and thank you for including works in Spanish. Do you have more recommendations? I've been neglecting my Spanish reading and losing it little by little.
Yes, here are some I’ve read in the last year:
Bartleby y compañía by Enrique Vila-Matas, on why writers give up or why they may be reluctant to write. It’s a mixture of fiction and biography, hard to tell which but fun searching for authors who may not exist.
Las Constelaciones Oscuras by Pola Oloixarac. I think many in HN would like her work, this novel in particular.
El Ejército Iluminado by David Toscana.
Primavera con una esquina rota by Mario Benedetti
La Casa Verde by Mario Varga Llosa
1. Wealth of Nations. finished book #1, and now taking a break since it's tough to read it, but very rewarding to do it.
2. Crafting Interpreters. Would recommend this to people curious about compilers/Interpreters over the dragon book. Much much easier to read.
Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson: I assume a HN classic. Good read nonetheless. Crazy imaginative. Prior experience with Stephenson is limited to Snowcrash, which I found to be quite good as well.
Benjamin Franklin - Walter Isaacson: Biographies are immensely underrated. A good biography has had the effect of raising my own aspirations by orders of magnitude. Not sure what it is exactly about them. Being reminded that accomplished figures were humans first and foremost is always good. Either way, struck by the practicality of the man -- something I'm looking to emulate in my own life.
“Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill” by Matthieu Ricard
Phenomenal book by a molecular biologist turned monk who talks about happiness being a skill that can be developed through practice. Powerful, well grounded in science, one of those books that can shift your worldview in a supremely positive way.
https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Guide-Developing-Lifes-Impo...
Right now: "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Judith Grisel)
Recommend. Addict turned neuroscientist who doesn't hold back, so a good mix of gritty details—
> After I got sober, it took me a little over a year to go a single day without wishing for a drink, but it was more than nine years before my craving to get high abated.
—and science.
Before that: "Educated: A Memoir" (Tara Westover)
Recommend. A good break from typical non-fiction books: easy to read, sometimes thrilling, and emotional.
Before that: "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America" (Margaret Pugh O'Mara)
Don't recommend. I really wanted to like this book, and I believe some of the themes are important and aren't often discussed. E.g., the support the Valley received from politicians, the lobby groups, the size of military spending back in the day…
It's possible my expectations were in the wrong place—I wanted to be inspired like with "The Idea Factory" (Jon Gertner), "The Soul of a New Machine" (Tracy Kidder), "Dealers of Lightning" (Michael A Hiltzik), etc.
Permanent Record by Edward Snowden.
I've followed his wild ride since the beginning and have always had mixed opinions about his motives, but this book is as craftily written as it is interesting/informative.
He quite purposefully and methodically shares many personal anecdotes and intimate details of his life that put a very human face onto his story. Whoever helped craft and edit this book (with Snowden) deserves much credit - if not second billing.
A worthy read as it fills in many of the missing details of when and how.
How to Hide an Empire: a short history of the greater United States. It includes an excellent discussion of how technological advancements in the 20th century (such as synthetic rubber, airplanes, and radio) changed the physical structure of empires, with the result of the US empire existing primarily in bases scattered around the world rather than the large swaths of conquered territories that had traditionally characterized empires.
Why We Sleep https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep
Firelfy Lane https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1472878.Firefly_Lane
Why We Sleep is really good. It really changed my view on sleep.
Thanks yes! Also changed my view about coffee
Just finished reading "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and started "Guns, germs and steel"
Adding the Taleb book to my list.
I recently read "The Black Swan" which I thought was an important read in spite of how unlikeable I find the author, how long the book is, and how tangled up the ideas are. It felt like a bit of a crazy rant, but worthwhile.
Thanks!
That's exactly my impression of "The Black Swan" and all his newer books. But "Fooled By Randomness", I think, is really good!
Wow this rings so true. I just read antifragile and while I like the ideas I can't imagine how insufferable the author is in person
Funny, that jibes with my perception of Taleb as well. He seems a bit smug, and I'm not sure if I'd like him or not if we met in person, but his books still seem valuable and worth reading. I would say that I'm better off for having read both The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. Still waiting to get around to reading Anti-Fragile, but it's definitely on the list.
A stitch in Time.
It is a book about how we got to wear the clothing we are wearing, essentially a book about the history of fashion over the last 2000 years.
For a guy who owns 20ish pairs of black t-shirts you might not think I cared about fashion, but it is really the history of the ordinary person, politics and technological change.
Sapiens (re-read) :) It's one of those books that gives you a different perspective every time you read it
Atomic Habits - Certainly, I am building some of the habits which I wanted to create for a while.
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0...
Recently read "Quiet" by Susan Cain, about introverts and extroverts. Highly recommended :)
Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder by Gabor Mate.
Any big take away from this book so far? I was diagnosed with ADD in my early twenties, been trying to learn as much as I can.
I'm only a third of the way into it, but so far it's been about how ADD generally appears in a child as a response to a parent's heightened stress levels over a prolonged period of time. He shows a few examples that parallel what I remember from my childhood, so I'm interested in seeing where it goes from here. All "origins" and no "healing" yet though, which is what I'm primarily interested in. It's too early to say if I'd recommend it but it's promising so far.
Thanks!
Punished by Rewards https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewar...
Never split the difference by Chris Voss - so many practical tips to ensure that you get the better side of a bargain.
Mythos by Stephen Fry - an irreverent take on Greek mythology which is fun and entertaining.
"Brave New World " Aldous Leonard Huxley
This book is a wonderful book that anticipates the present future.
Not all of this book foretells, but I am reading it because I want to be able to have such foresight.
I just started this yesterday! Thoroughly enjoying it. Another great one is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It's main idea is that we decided to destroy all possibility of disagreement to make us all more comfortable by banning and burning books. Really takes you to the discussions of censorship taking place today! Highly recommended.
Software Estimation Crazy Rich Asians Practical TLA+ IoT Foundations
The Book by Alan Watts. It metaphorically and literally puts a lot of thoughts I’ve had into words while also pushing the limits of my own perspective and philosophical thought.
My struggle book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Good, though I think I preferred the earlier books. It's still very compelling, but a little too much Hitler in this one
Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane. Poetic landscape history, reminiscent of Sebald. Good stuff.
Click here to kill everybody by Bruce Schneier. Scary.
Machines like me by Ian McEwan. First McEwan I read for a while but I liked it more than I expected. I thought the AI bits were quite good.
The deep history of ourselves : the four-billion-year story of how we got conscious brains by Joseph LeDoux. Bit disappointed in this one, it seemed like there should have been a better story here.
The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life: David Quammen.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. Makes CS careers look less appealing.
I’m getting into Gary Shteyngart. Just read Lake Success and now reading Super Sad True Love Story. Both sort of dark and really funny.
Oh man, Super Sad True Love Story had me seeing its storylines surface in American culture for months. Even new news I’m like; “this is just how it happened in the book!” Great read and great author.
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 by Sir Max Hastings
Great account of the history of the conflict in Vietnam up to and including the Vietnam War
The complete harvard classics (eireann press) - found this beauty for 1 dollar on Kindle.
Lately, I've had this fascination/idea of reading about world history (or at least major events in world history) through the history of seemingly-mundane, everyday objects. The search for literature in this vein has been predictably difficult but I've been fortunate to come across two great books of this theme.
The first is A History of the World in 12 Maps by Jerry Brotton. The main idea of the book is somewhat like a visual variant of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: that our maps shape our perception of the world and, in turn, our place in it. I actually tried going into this book with a skeptical mind. I first took on the premise that you can't say much about world history by just looking at maps; maybe the crudeness of various Mappaemundi make them unsuitable for educated speculation. I am pleased to say that, by the end of the book, my premise has been completely obliterated.
HN Readers might find the final chapter particularly interesting. It reads on Google Maps and demonstrates that even today in an age of satellite imagery, a map can't claim complete objectivity.
(I'd like to note that in a couple of instances, Brotton gets some technical details wrong. There is an especially glaring one in the Google Maps chapter the hunt for which is left as an exercise to the reader. It does not really affect his main arguments and I really enjoyed the book despite these errors that bite at my attention to detail.)
The next one is Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. This is lighter in content than 12 Maps and deals mostly with obscure figures (in world history) and yet has emerged influential to the modern-day library. The big thing that piqued my interest in this book is the part about Nazi Germany. I know, I know, any discussion can be maneuvered towards Hitler and especially one about censorship. But Battles shows how libraries are, more than anything, social institutions; how even in a bleak time and place such as Nazi-occupied Europe, make-do libraries can support a community.
He also touches on the other side of the coin. We are used to thinking of libraries as benevolent institutions of knowledge but we rarely think of them as ideological apparatuses to curtail knowledge. Highly recommended even for non-bibliophiles. At least, enjoy entertaining stories behind libraries even if you don't get a grand takeaway lesson from it all.
(Edited for formatting.)
Quite possibly related to the first book you mentioned :
“Prisoners of Geography: 10 maps to tell you everything you need to know about World politics ”
I’ve only read a couple of chapters but it’s best read along with a physical map :)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25135194
Tools for Conviviality - Ivan Illich; The Dark Forest - Liu Cixin
The Demon in the Machine by Paul Davies (would recommend)
Just finished "Coders" (Clive Thompson)
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer. Clever book imo.
Indistractible by Nir Eyal.
Shoe Dog: Phil Knight
Hackers by Steven Levy.
Who am i