Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024 Always found some interesting reads like this. Looking to add to my tbr to hit my yearly goal. I just finished the three body problem, found it fantastic. I'm most of the way through 'The will of the many', and I'm finding it amazing - one of the best fantasies I've read in a while. |
On Lisp
1. The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. They present a compelling argument for their framework to understand political structure and action based on the size of the coalition. The book is actually a condensed, much more readable version of the academic research of both authors. It was both a depressing and exhilarating read (as implied by the title, the whole book has a very sarcastic tone). It was also very interesting many of their arguments also apply in corporate environments just as they do in "normal politics"; the corporate power structure is not that far removed from the royal palaces of the kingdom or more generally from a dictatorship. Recommended read.
2. Social Acceleration by Hartmut Rosa. This one was a though read, but absolutely illuminating. It presents an extremely clear analytic analysis on why we increasingly feel like like "we don't have enough time".
It starts by arguing how the preception of time in the preindustrial age was slower than the industrialized one (in short, mostly because in the preindustrialized society major sociotechnological change took longer than thee generations to occurr, making your life look not that different than from those of your parents and grandparents), and then it discusses the age of industrialization (standardization of national time, introduction of schedules for factory working hours) which by necessity introduced "temporal structures" to coordinate these new massive social structures. Also, the rate of technological progress became such that your life was no longer like your parents and grandparent's one, i.e. there were major inter-generational sociotechnological changes; Further, compounded on top of that was the secularization of western society and the romantic belief that enjoying more wordly experiences (as opposed to the afterlife) implied living a fuller or "more complete" life, introducing the need to experience more and faster to the masses (cf. mass tourism etc.).
Finally it reaches the (post)modern age where the author argues that the introduction of instant worldwide communication (& internet) began eroding the temporal structure of the 20th century since they are no longer needed, as the technology now allows for (nearly) instantaneous coordination (eg. home working, international firms, etc). Moreover, technological progress is also accelerated as the internet allows for faster global exchange of ideas between more people.
However, even though we are freed from the "temporal structures" of the 20th century we are not going back to the preindustrial slower perception of time. On the contrary, because we still have these structures and can now bring about major changes even faster there is intra-generational sociotechnological change, i.e. society can change by a lot more than before within your own lifetime. So even though we have supposedly "more time" thanks to the efficiency introduced by technological advancements, we actually end up feeling like we have less because of how fast change occurrs. And this is does not refer only to greater social change, but also to the life of the individual that is increasingly filled with last minute rescheduling and planning changes that reach them outside of working hours.
Parallel to all of this, the internet also allows to experience more, faster than any other technology before. This latches on the romatic idea of the previous century and naturally leads to the current "attention span crisis" induced by the exploitation of this myth by tech companies. All of this, of course, is not good for your psyche as people need to have some constants in their lives, and the author concludes with a warning on the effects of indefinitely sustained social acceleration.
So that was the gist of it, more or less. The book has a lot more (eg. connections to the capitalist economic model, the problem(s) all of this causes to the construction your own identity) but as I said it is rather though to read because of its academic style of writing. Not recommended unless you're motivated, but I wanted to share the author's ideas, since reading this book really helped me to find more time in my life by seeing _why_ I felt like I had none.
(Read it before the controversy.)
Actively reading:
- Mistborn : Final Empire (~90% finished ding)
- 3rd novella in The Murderbot Diaries
- Dive into Design Patterns
- Fullstack D3 and Data Viz
Passively reading:
- The Design of everyday things (I don't think I will ever finish this book)
- Bhagavad-Gita as it is
- LOTR (mostly a re-read)
How are the Murderbot books? I've been intending to pick them up
Murderbot is exciting! There is very little world building, you are thrown into the world and you slowly figure things out. Each novella is a new adventure, but as a whole(the series) its a lot more; an android seeing and understanding humans in a very different way.
It also explores how a world of robots would have various bots with each having a different personality(they develop) based on their lifelong assigned task.
The Muderbot itself is sulky, tired of incompetent humans and its dry behavior adds humor to the narration. Plus it addicted to watching soap operas so it has a very unique understanding of human creativity and reality.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_t...
For much better Geopolitical books, check these out:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52962238-principles-for-...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56696339-the-power-of-ge...
[1] https://store.schrammsmead.com/the-compleat-meadmaker-p78.as...
Finished the latest from Jim Butcher's "new" series, The Olympian Affair, before that.
Just polishing up my fundamentals
- The Art of Thinking Clearly
The Science of Self-Realization - A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Ashtavakra Gita - https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakr...
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
- Pachinko
- Homegoing (just started)
Susan L. Shirk
2022, Oxford University Press
So far i am very pleased!
Am about half way through "The constitution of Liberty" by Friedrich A. Hayek (it's got a lot of correct in it but is way too preachy/needed a better editor to cut down on some of the repetition. It's nowhere near as bad as something like Ayn Rand's Atlas shrugged in this regard though).
Started Vernor Vinge's "rainbow's end", so far it's decent but I am also very early in so that isn't really a qualified opinion until I get through another 50 or 60 pages at least.
It is a book (accessible to non-chinese) that helps one understand a population of >1.4 billion in less than 180 pages. Wouldn’t one call this a bargain?
The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, which I read many years ago, as a teenager or young adult.
I was quite moved by it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Earth
Excerpt:
[ The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a 20th-century Chinese village in Anhwei. It is the first book in her House of Earth trilogy, continued in Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. ]
It is only today that I got to know, due to googling for the links, that she won both the Pulitzer prize and the Nobel prize for Literature, partly for that book.
I listened to both audiobooks. Something about the paperbacks I couldn’t get in to. Now that I think about it, I don’t want to read a novel about work when I’m not at work. Also, audiobooks lend themselves really well to a commute.
At any rate, the narrator of The Phoenix Project is male and the narrator of the audiobook for The Unicorn Project is female. But that’s not why I liked The Phoenix Project more. The male narrator _really_ got into the voices of the different characters, which I appreciated.
[1] https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803...
The SICP might take me a year.
I always find it odd that no one talks about the lisp book where you write a hardware simulation of a computer to run the compiler you also wrote on.
Siddhartha is great book, I read it years back and it sparked my interest in other works of Herman Hesse.
I have also been reading the essays in David Foster Wallace in Context[1], published in November of 2022.
And I'm looking forward to reading here soon the seemingly first ever English translation of Philipp Mainländer's The Philosophy of Redemption[2], just published several weeks ago.
1: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/david-foster-wallace-in...
2: https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Redemption-Philipp-Mainl%C...
1: For example, ranging from "...Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk..." to "...at leisure intervals I looked a little into 'Edwards on the Will,' and 'Priestly on Necessity'..."
But I highly recommend the book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/101438
On to The Magos now, I usually get my Black Library fix from bundles, but I might make an exception for this one.
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - And then there were none - Evil under the sun
All brilliant in their own right but the first is a masterpiece. Don't google any of these because spoilers come up, but I've had a lot more fun and been a lot more active reading than I have in years.
Last year I read two books, this year I've read 3 books in January and have thoroughly enjoyed it way more than my usual nights of watching Netflix.
I started reading her works to my daughter because she loves mysteries.
Quite a few stories are available for free at Guttenberg and, of course, Libby.
Currently reading "The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews." Shakespeare and Co. is a bookstore in Paris with a long history of inviting authors to reside at and give talks there. A nice and fun pot-pourri of down-to-earth wisdom, it does not exude the typical literary snobbery from this kind of book. I like it so far.
Currently reading Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow which I like but I only started reading because I found a copy in a free pile.
I'd like to read some nonfiction next and I think it'll be A City is Not a Tree by Christopher W. Alexander. I think it was recommended on HN recently but I'm also doing and Urban Studies master program so the urban things have been on my mind lately.
A book you might like: “The Geography Of Nowhere”
I'll give that book a gander. Based on the reviews I think I'll like it given my context of growing in Florida and now living in Amsterdam and wondering how things can be so different.
A book about the FS19 deployment of Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan in 2010, written by an experienced war reporter. Some chapters reminded me about Generation Kill, with regards to lack of proper equipment (wrong colour, missing etc...) or purpose of deployment (too much bodyguarding of politicians visiting etc).
1. ISBN: 9789143510737, ISBN-10: 9143510736 https://books.google.se/books/about/Krigare.html?id=LpJjAgAA...
These are her earliest, published novels. The introduction is a bit odd as the author hasn't read much le Guin including her most popular, award winning books other than The Wizard of Earthsea.
I'm not much of a critical reader, but these definitely do not have the philosophical depth (or I don't have the philosophical depth to pic up on it) of The Dispossessed and friends, but they are interesting and well written.
https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Exile-Illusion-Rocannons-Illus...
Excellent history of firearms and war tactics from around 1300 to the present day
- One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon
How can 400k people collaborate to achieve something so big? Fascinating read.
I'm in my late 40s and the book reads to me as a nice time capsule of how computing has reshaped our society, and sets good context for considering the effects of AI, the pandemic and our more connected and increasingly-remote world overall, and looking to the future.
I see a lot of early criticisms of his research in book reviews, but I have a tough time dismissing the observations in the book, based on what I've seen
It says it's not a self-help book, but in practice it's the first book ever that helped me with my lifelong anxiety.
On the fiction front, I just finished "Queen City Jazz", by Kathleen Ann Goonan, and I've got "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez queued up as well.
"The Two Towers" by Tolkien, I last read them in high school and wanted to revisit Middle-earth.
"Python Distilled" by Beazley - I'm using it to iron out some of my knowledge gaps with the language. It's well-written and informative!
Again I have no idea why no one talks about those. They are the most mind bending parts of the book.
Best case scenario, you've found a new resource. Worse case scenario, you learn what works for you.