
Books I've read in the third quarter of 2017 - Metalnem
https://mijailovic.net/2017/09/30/books-2017-q3/
======
freehunter
Is this a wishlist or are these books the author has _actually_ read in the
last three months?

The Art of Software Security Assessment is 1200 pages long. Hitler: A
Biography is 1000 pages long. Ordinary Men is shorter at around 400 pages,
Ordinary Injustice is about 300, Blood in the Water is 750, Reversing is 600,
The Box is 550. Combined those are about 5,000 pages.

I'm even ignoring the programming-specific books because they may not be read
cover-to-cover (even though they're likely read at a slower pace in order to
try their concepts), but that still seems like too many pages to read and
absorb in a three-month period.

~~~
peapicker
I've been tracking just my entertainment reading (fiction and
nonfiction/history/biography etc) (not my tech book reading) on Goodreads the
last four years, and I'm averaging just over 16,000 pages a year on
entertainment reading... (the high point was over 18,000 a couple years ago,
but I've decided to take some of my reading time and use that time to write
music now) -- ~8000 pages every six months.

I usually read another 1000-1500 pages of tech reading on top of that every
six months.

Certainly doable.

~~~
Scarbutt
I think the important question is, how much of that do you retain?

~~~
mfoy_
The point of reading for entertainment is to:

1\. Have fun.

If you don't like the book you're reading, put it down. Life is too short for
bad books.

2\. Leave a general impression on you.

For example, some books just change your outlook on life. Margaret Atwood's
MaddAddam trilogy, or Pierce Brown's Red Rising trilogy, or Scott Lynch's
Gentlemen Bastard's trilogy are all great series that take you on emotional
roller-coasters, make you change you perspective on life, etc.

Reading makes people more empathic, and kinder. It helps give you different
points of view.
([https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315838511_Turner_R_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315838511_Turner_R_2017_Bookworm_Film-
buff_or_Thespian_Investigating_the_relationship_between_fictional_worlds_and_real-
world_social_abilities))

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never
reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

~~~
acchow
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never
reads lives only one.”

Presumably you can also get this from film and television?

~~~
posterboy
there are not 40+ episodes or even multipart movies of discworld, sadly. And
while there are a few adaptions, I don't see how spending _less_ time absorbed
into the fantasy would be desirable ;)

~~~
mfoy_
Discworld just could not be adapted to the screen... you'd lose the puns, the
outrageous descriptions and the hilarity of it all. I mean... maybe if it was
stylistically something like A Series of Unfortunate Events with the over-the-
top costumes, make up, and set pieces... but it still wouldn't _quite_ capture
Pratchett's little piece of un-reality.

------
forapurpose
From a 4-star Amazon user review of The Art of Software Security Assessment:

 _This book was like a blow to the head for me. I 'm not a security person,
I'm not coveting ever more arcane vulnerabilities. Rather, I'm the poor guy at
the other end of things: I'm a programmer. It's my job to avoid all the known
and imaginable vulnerabilities while at the same time providing some useful
functionality to my customers.

You bet I wouldn't like some self-styled security "researcher" tear apart my
poor little programs and expose all their failings. What's troubling me, after
reading this book, is that it looks very much like I hardly stand a chance.
Security would be hard with the best of tools, unfortunately, at least when it
comes to systems programming, the tools -- C, low-level APIs -- are dubious at
best and introduce lots and lots of problems of their own. These tools hail
from a happier time long ago when we were still trusting trust. I was overcome
by a mixture of horror and chagrin when I saw proof in this book that not even
the people writing sensitive security software (such as OpenSSH) wield these
tools artfully enough to avoid vulnerabilities._

------
praxis23
TOASSA is indeed a book every responsible software engineer has to read these
days. Apart from finding bugs, this book is extremely helpful in understanding
how bugs come to be, and hints on ways to avoid them.

------
yellowapple
It blows my mind that it's possible for anyone to read books - plural - in a
quarter. I've always been a slow reader; I can't digest information when
speed-reading, and I tend to want to backtrack quite a bit to really absorb
what's going on in a book. A single book would therefore take months for me,
meaning that it'd have to be a _really_ good book for me to want to commit to
reading it front-to-back.

~~~
flukus
As a fellow slow reader, you should give ebooks a try. The speed is about the
same as I would read them anyway (which is why I think I read slow, I'm
vocalizing in my head) and you can "read" at a lot of otherwise inconvenient
times.

------
wiremine
Just a thought: would be great to see a "What Books is HN Reading" once a
month, similar to the "Who's Hiring" thread.

~~~
dysoco
[http://lobste.rs](http://lobste.rs) has that

~~~
Kaibeezy
Edging off topic, but... thx for the link to lobste.rs. That's new to me and I
really like the look of it, but it's too tech for my daily consumption. Can
anyone suggest other similar sites with more in the non-tech topics direction?
A list of them somewhere? I feel like I've gotten in a bit of a rut, plus
lethargic since Imzy went down (/k).

Edit: Answered my own question - [https://www.quora.com/Are-there-news-
aggregators-like-YC-Hac...](https://www.quora.com/Are-there-news-aggregators-
like-YC-Hacker-News-for-other-niches)

Edit2: Answered it again, even better -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14020313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14020313)

------
matty22
I usually set a goal to read 20 books every year. They can be any mix of
fiction/non-fiction/tech/etc genres. That allows me the flexibility to focus
on learning something new in some of my free time or reading for fun in my
free time. Comes out to a finishing a book every ~2.5 weeks. Setting a yearly
goal also allows for flexibility for busy seasons of the year. Maybe March is
just super busy and I get very little reading done, I can make up for it over
the remaining 9 months.

No required length to qualify as a 'book'. A 100 page novella counts and so
does a 1000 page reference book.

------
hownottowrite
"Never before in history has such destruction been caused by a single person."

~~~
tomcam
That bothered me too. Stalin and Mao have him beat by a long shot.

------
kirubakaran
Perhaps this is a good time to share my progress so far :-)
[https://kirubakaran.com/bookshelf/](https://kirubakaran.com/bookshelf/)

------
dannylandau
The Hitler biography should be very interesting, but I've still need to read
William Shirer's iconic Rise and Fall or the 3rd Reich. Will look into
Ordinary Men as well now.

------
fwdslash
Off topic, but how'd you get HTTPS working for GitHub pages?

~~~
Metalnem
You can’t do it with GitHub pages only (if you want to use a custom domain).
I’m actually using free Cloudflare plan for terminating TLS connections.

~~~
fwdslash
Yeah that's what I thought. Well, thanks for the idea! :)

------
cerealbad
every now and then try to read something you hate. it builds character and
patience, something everyone finds moreish.

------
ianai
What’s the view on tmux? In general on HN.

~~~
bitdeveloper
It's great, once you remap CTRL-B to CTRL-A.

~~~
schemathings
But CTRL-A is muscle memory beginning of line for me.

------
padobson
Add more fiction.

