
Bret Victor's Bookshelf - jarmitage
http://worrydream.com/Shelf2015/
======
jarmitage
Rotated version:

[http://i.imgur.com/pKscQRm.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/pKscQRm.jpg)

Edit: working on typing these up with links, Tesseract couldn't handle it :P

Anyone know how to retrieve Amazon links from book titles?

If anyone wants to help:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lWnncM61FsDb47jMheTc...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lWnncM61FsDb47jMheTc2BP-c1YaWo6BYeblpd0Iiqk/edit?usp=sharing)

~~~
myth_buster

      Scrollable rotated version.
    

Thanks.

Edit: I tried running the image against couple of OCRs but was futile.

Found categorized list [0] on his site. May be dated.

[0] [http://worrydream.com/#!/Links](http://worrydream.com/#!/Links)

~~~
didgeoridoo
Procrastination to the rescue! I want this list for myself so I decided to
hand-transcribe it while I avoid doing a bit of real work. I'm 1/5 of the way
through but figured I'd share what I've got so far:

(edit: deleted link, use Jack's instead)

~~~
jarmitage
Haha, damn. Was about to suggest we merge spreadsheets but we've both done the
same bit!

Come join?

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lWnncM61FsDb47jMheTc...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lWnncM61FsDb47jMheTc2BP-c1YaWo6BYeblpd0Iiqk/edit#gid=0)

~~~
didgeoridoo
I'm on it!

Although I SHUDDER to think of the combined hourly billing rate of everyone
who's contributing here :)

------
kzhahou
I stopped buying printed books a few years ago, with a couple of exceptions
which I kinda regret because they take up space. I love my collection, but
it's now split between <20 books at home, and several boxes in storage. Yay,
cramped California living!

That said, the bulk of my book collection is now digital, with thousands of
PDFs and DJVUs on my laptop, ipad, and network storage. It doesn't have the
cachet of a physical bookshelf, though. Maybe I'll print out "ls -R" and tape
that to an empty wall?

~~~
louprado
With rare exception, if I read a good book, I then gift it to someone, loan it
to a co-worker, or donate it.

Ironically a bookshelf might be a collection of books the owner wouldn't
recommend reading over some other title. Not saying this is the case in the OP
photo.

~~~
WalterBright
A friend of mine looked over my Netflix streaming queue. He remarked that all
of the shows on there sucked. I pointed out that after I watched a show, I
deleted it from the queue, so what was left was the dregs :-)

------
questerzen
You can tell a lot about a person from his bookshelves and I know this is a
guy after my own heart.

He has almost every non-fiction book on my Goodreads list: Books Scientists
Should Read Before The Age Of 20.
[https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/75031.Books_Scientists_S...](https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/75031.Books_Scientists_Should_Read_Before_The_Age_of_20)

Forget Amazon recommendations: this is the basis for my 2016 reading list.

Thanks for those that have worked hard to list the books!

------
tsunamifury
I would strongly recommend "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." It
will help you balance out Silicon Valley's ideal that everything should be
large, efficient, and centrally controlled.

~~~
mehrdada
Efficient, perhaps; Centrally controlled, I'm not so sure it is a Silicon
Valley ideal (i.e. one likes it when they own it, but it's not generally an
ideal preached by the SV community.)

~~~
tsunamifury
You see the hypocrisy inherent to that then yes? They want it to be large and
owned by "them"... but not centrally controlled?

~~~
mehrdada
It might be hypocritical, but it is a logically consistent point of view. If
you desire to exert control on X and it is feasible, you advocate central
control when you are the center. On the other hand, if you do not have the
power to be the central control and you see some other entity controlling it
centrally, you advocate for decentralization.

------
steveeq1
How is it possible that this guy can read so many books? SICP alone, for me
anyway, takes me about a year to get through. And a lot of these books are
pretty dense.

~~~
steveklabnik
You might like

    
    
      * http://blog.fogus.me/2012/02/22/reading/
      * http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/23/extreme-reading/
    

(Not written by Victor, but a perspective from someone who has similar things
said to them on the regular)

~~~
biot
Clickable:

[http://blog.fogus.me/2012/02/22/reading/](http://blog.fogus.me/2012/02/22/reading/)

[http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/23/extreme-
reading/](http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/23/extreme-reading/)

~~~
steveklabnik
You'd think after years I would remember that it doesn't automatically link,
the way I did it. Thanks.

------
ElijahLynn
I wonder how many were fully read? I have started tracking my books with
little star stickers after I fully read them. My goal is to get 1 star on all
of them, 2 stars if I want to consider myself knowledgeable and 3 stars for
expert level.

~~~
ElijahLynn
I also wonder which ones Bret actually recommends. I have what I call are my
"top shelf" books, right now they actually do fit on the top shelf.

~~~
mynegation
There is a separate list of recommended books on his site:
[http://worrydream.com/#!/Links](http://worrydream.com/#!/Links) and
corresponding HN discussion from a while ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578795)

------
smithbits
His shelf seems to be an almost perfect superset of mine, the only obvious
thing I don't see is Fire In The Valley by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger,
a very nice history of the early PC revolution in Silicon Valley. I should
probably get him a copy so I can just use a picture of his wall with the stuff
I don't have blacked out.

------
ljw1001
Just as I thought, he's smarter than I am.

~~~
kzhahou
Because he has books on display? Nah.

If you listed every worthwhile book or article you'd read in the last ten
years, and all the thoughtful discussions you'd had, you'd probably be
surprised. And even more important, the number of books read is not really a
great metric. I might take 2 months to go through a math book while the next
guy read 15 sci-fi and economics books. But here's the real kicker: neither of
us will remember more than a handful of top takeaways two years from now.

~~~
ljw1001
I have a lot of the books on his shelf, but his do cover a lot of dense
material that I avoid through sloth.

But seriously, he's _very_ good at what he does.

------
gohrt
Interesting that Bret is a big fan of Geometric Algebra (keeping several books
on the topic), which is alluring to amateurs, but dismissed by professional
mathematicians/physicists as a vanity effort to rename standard concepts.

~~~
questerzen
Roger Penrose's Road to Reality makes use of Clifford Algebra and Grassmann
Products, so at least some serious physicists are using it seriously.

Even though I had come across it before, I had a real revelation when I read
David Hestenes short paper on it (from Bret Victor's website)
[http://worrydream.com/refs/Hestenes-
ReformingTheMathematical...](http://worrydream.com/refs/Hestenes-
ReformingTheMathematicalLanguageOfPhysics.pdf) It is indeed beautiful to see
how complex geometry and vector fields are connected via GA. I found
especially revealing the relationship between electric and magnetic fields. I
agree with the article that whatever its absolute merits, it would be a good
way to teach new physicists. I have already ordered my copy of "Clifford
Algebra to Geometric Calculus".

Whether it is actually more practical to do work in General Relativity or
Quantum Mechanics, or indeed Quantum Field Theory etc., I'll have to leave for
the experts in those fields. From an outsider's perspective, it is a delight
to understand some of the connections between different disciplines in a more
intuitive way.

In any case, I would imagine that GA is exceptionally useful for computer
graphics and physical simulations.

------
emmelaich
I believe they're called _shelfies_

------
adam930
If you read the original bookshelf as a matrix look at row 3 column 3. I
recognized at least 5 books on geometric algebra and geometric calculus. This
is the way geometry will be done in the future.

~~~
i336_
This comment is the opposite opinion to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10849162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10849162).
Interesting

~~~
adam930
We pursue unification in physics, so why not in math?

[http://faculty.luther.edu/~macdonal/](http://faculty.luther.edu/~macdonal/)
[http://geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk/2015/10/geometric-
algebra-201...](http://geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk/2015/10/geometric-
algebra-2015/)

------
skilesare
Timeless way of building is right there where I thought it would be.

------
curuinor
Are any of the CDG kids sharing the computer-that-fits-in-a-room dealie they
have in this library?

~~~
jarmitage
Curious as to what you meant by this comment?

~~~
curuinor
The actual space is really really cool and is the instantiation of their
longer-term project, which is supposed to be an attempt to reify D.
Engelbart's vision for what computation is to be.

~~~
jarmitage
I've heard rumours about it, I guess it's not open to the public in any way?

What did you mean by connecting it with Bret's bookshelf though?

~~~
kabr
This bookshelf is located at CDG.

------
RBerenguel
Lots of food for thought. I scanned the rotated version by jarmitage,
increasingly worried Byrne's version of Euclid's elements wasn't tere. Wrong,
it was further away :)

------
jestinjoy1
This is mine. [http://i.imgur.com/9KuR1Hz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/9KuR1Hz.jpg)

~~~
i336_
Seconding the low-res thing.

Another person here took a sequence of shots and just linked the individual
images.

If you like tinkering, the step up from that would be stitching the images
together with something like Hugin.

------
misiti3780
lots of great stuff on this bookshelf! does anyone know how old he is? this is
a lot of years of reading!

------
monksy
Who is Bret Victor?

~~~
emcq
A bay area resident who has several thoughtful writings and talks about human
computer interaction and more recently a piece on global climate change. AFAIK
he is unemployed so he has lots of free time to work on personal projects
which may be inspired by the readings on his bookshelf.

~~~
curuinor
He's one of the PI-like people at the CDG.

([http://www.fastcodesign.com/3046437/5-steps-to-recreate-
xero...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3046437/5-steps-to-recreate-xerox-parcs-
design-magic-from-the-guy-who-helped-make-it))

~~~
clebio
Thanks for the link. But what do you mean by "PI-like people"? I can't match
that acronym to anything off-hand.

~~~
sdbryan
Probably refers to "PI", the 1998 movie written and directed by Darren
Aronofsky. The main character was an eccentric mathematician who was obsessed
with patterns in the decimal expansion of the transcendal number pi. If you
have not seen the movie I would encourage you to look for it as my summary is
not adequate.

~~~
curuinor
No, I'm afraid not. He didn't seem incredibly eccentric to me, anyhow, just a
ridiculously hard worker

------
Dowwie
the whole earth catalogs :)

------
magoghm
I estimate that I also own about 20% of those same books.

------
mushishi
Why particularly Bret Victor's bookshelf is of importance?

------
searine
HERE IN MY GARAGE.

Books on a shelf aren't impressive.

------
emdid
Who is Brett Victor and why is his bookshelf/collection so small?

~~~
steveklabnik
This is his bookshelf from this year.

~~~
andars
Is this really just books he read in 2015? I know some people read
exceptionally fast, but 600 books (> 2 a day) strikes me as too many.

~~~
curuinor
it's the CDG's library, there's other people in there and it's definitely not
just 2015

