

Ask HN: Great book that you read recently? - thunga


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mixonic
I don't tend to read biz books, but recently I've read a ton of _great_
Russian texts.

The Master & Margarita

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita>

Goethe's Faust & the story of Pontius Pilate retold in 1930s Russia. Really, I
mean _really_ damn good. Very readable.

Books 1 & 2 of The Gulag Archipelago

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago>

An expansive history of the Soviet prison camp system, almost a folk history.

Petersburg

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_(novel)>

Think Joyce writing about a revolutionary plot in the Petersburg of
1910-something, involving patricide and a time-bomb set for 24 hours from now.
Yeah.

That and slowly working through Proust (book 5). I'm not sure if I really
recommend it, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts from other smarty-pants
HN people.

~~~
yolesaber
Petersburg is exactly what I wanted to read once school ends. All this CS and
math work makes me want to just discorporate myself into a ridiculous,
subjective work.

Which translation would you recommend?

Also, if you enjoyed the darker parts of The Master and Margarita, I highly
recommend Blaise Cendras' Moravagine ([http://www.amazon.com/Moravagine-York-
Review-Books-Classics/...](http://www.amazon.com/Moravagine-York-Review-Books-
Classics/dp/1590170636)).

~~~
mixonic
This Maguire & Malmstad translation is what I read:

<http://www.amazon.com/Petersburg-Andrei-Bely/dp/0253202191>

And I found it pretty tolerable. The footnotes are in the back (I think?)
which kind of stinks for your first read. Unless you're a serious student of
Petersburg history, the footnotes are requisite for understanding half of the
nuance. Bely is doing all these tricks shifting the geography of the city and
playing off places and events, and that's lost to the modern reader without
help. I'm eager to read it again without paying attention to the notes though.

I'll take a look at Moravagine, it looks great. It's in line after Volume 3 of
Gulag A. and Orlando Figes's history of the Russian revolutions. I need more
context for all this pre-WWI stuff!

------
jnorthrop
Practical Irrationality - Dan Ariely

It changed the way I think about pricing, among other things, forever. He
makes some wild conclusions then backs them up with scientific experiments.
Its a fun read to boot.

~~~
steventruong
I think you meant Predictably Irrational. I haven't heard of Practical
Irrationality.

~~~
jnorthrop
Ooops! You're correct but it's too late for me to edit the post now. Maybe
Ariely has some explanation why I can't get his title right.

------
mindcrime
_Atlas Shrugged_ \- Ayn Rand

 _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

 _Blue Ocean Strategy_ \- W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

 _Business Model Generation_ \- Alexander Osterwalder

------
pg
Doris Stenton's _English Society in the Early Middle Ages_

------
DanBC
Short story collection: This is not your city, by Caitlin Horrocks

(<http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your-City/dp/1932511911>)

"The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson - he's really good journalist and writes
well. This is an interesting read about the newish "psychopaths everywhere"
meme.

------
brudgers
I recently reread Cormac McCarthy's _All the Pretty Horses_.

I was prompted to do so by another book discussion. Not his best book - I
think _Blood Meridian_ and _The Road_ are better - but McCarthy is a great
writer.

For nerd non-fiction, I just read Jim Lovell's _Lost Moon_ which though not a
great book, is a good solid book about greatness.

------
omgsean
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
([http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-
Colorblindn...](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-
Colorblindness/dp/1595581030))

------
dtbx
The Game, by Neil Strauss.

------
klaut
How To Get Rich - Felix Dennis

Accidental Genius - Mark Levy

------
semira
The Monk and the Riddle - Randy Komisar

------
aorshan
I just re-read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Always makes me laugh and
is a great read.

------
latch
_Old Man's War_ \- John Scalzi

~~~
brudgers
I'll put this in the recently read rather than great science fiction thread:

 _Robopocalypse: A Novel_ by Daniel H. Wilson

~~~
latch
I find Robopocalypse silly, and not just the title.

 _SPOILER_

It seems to me that, despite how the turn of events are explained, we'd have
no..none, zero, chance at winning that war.

------
blrsk
The Startup Owner's Manual - Steve Blank

Discours de la Methode - Descartes

------
tchock
Understanding Media: the extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan

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gyardley
Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" was terrific.

------
jdelard
Breakfast for Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

------
tiplus
daemon - daniel suarez,

freedom - daniel suarez

------
peterwiese
The Strangest Man - Graham Farmelo

A biography of Paul Dirac. Very good.

\---------------

The Fabric of the Universe - David Deutsch

What picture can we paint of the universe if we take together the best
theories we have about fundamental things like time, life, virtual reality,
cosmology etc. Easily the best book i've read in recent years. Consider that
Deutsch is a very distinguished scientist in the field of quantum
cryptography/computing. He is really good at explaining things in terms that
non-physicists and experts alike can learn a lot!

\---------------

Roadside Picnic - Strugatzky

Soviet Science Fiction book about the first and only visit of earth by aliens.
The approach is very unusual since there is never any direct contact between
humans and the extra terrestrial intelligence. The book is more like a study
of human society and how it could develop if suddenly there was some extremely
advanced technology available to us which we are too primitive to
understand/control.

------
xxiao
sigh , i read HN all day long and have no time left for books.

seriously though, i use books as a reference and just hack along, i mean
technical books, for non-tech books, i have not read them for years.

