
Ask HN: What book are you reading right now? - bsiddiqui
Looking for something new to read, curious to hear what others are reading
======
xrange
The Shape of Space: How to Visualize Surfaces and Three-Dimensional Manifolds
by Jeffrey R. Weeks

...this one has been a good read so far, but it is quite mind bending, I only
read like a half chapter at a time slowly, and then I have to spend some time
contemplating.

Cupid's Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships by
Marnia Robinson

...I just finished this one, and it has quite the interesting premise, and
300+ footnotes and references to scientific research, but I don't quite know
if I'll be trying it out. The testimonials don't comport with my experiences,
but they are somehow compelling. It is worth a read if you are looking for
something different, and it definitely has some challenging thoughts to
ponder. The main theory is that there is mammalian programming in your brain
that releases oxytocin to make you feel good when you touch someone or engage
in other bonding behavior. And there is a contrary effect that after orgasm
your dopamine levels drop which causes people to get bored with their current
partner and seek novel partners (to spread their gene further). The
recommendation is to engage in intercourse, but avoid orgasm. And that it
takes 2-3 weeks of avoiding orgasm to reset the neurochemistry in your brain,
so that you get the blissful effects of oxytocin, without the dopamine
depletion of orgasm.

~~~
wetmore
Shape of Space is a really neat book.

------
film42
"Flash Boys" by Michael Lewis

It's about High Frequency Trading (algorithmic trading) and how the market
reacted; and what a few individuals did to solve the problem. It's a seriously
addicting book.

~~~
dllthomas
Flash Boys is a little strange. It's presented as David vs. Goliath, but "the
little guy" is J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Which is not to say there's nothing that could be done to improve our
financial infrastructure, or no problems relating to anything deserving the
HFT label - there's plenty of both.

------
gglitch
I'm halfway through the last volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and I
admit I'm proud of it. I don't know what can be said in a small space about a
novel so large and canonical, but I've deeply enjoyed it. An unexpected quirk
of the novel is that though I've been heavily absorbed in it the whole way,
and found it moving, funny, and in general a complete literary experience, I
can't really recommend it to others without absurd sounding qualifiers, e.g.,
"As long as you can put up with hundreds of pages on end of detailed
descriptions of things like churches, landscapes, flowers, parties, dinners,
families, manners, morals, and the like, you'll find it immeasurably beautiful
and immediately personally meaningful!" \--where I'd of course have never
previously taken that bait.

~~~
acheron
Translation or in French?

~~~
gglitch
I hoped my French would be up to Proust, but sadly it wasn't, and I didn't
want re-learning French to be an impediment to the enjoyment of the story. So
I've read the Enright versions.

~~~
acheron
Ok. I know no French at all (il y a un poisson dans votre bibliotheque) but
that novel is something I've been interested in trying. Maybe I'll give that a
shot.

------
Jach
Recently finished Robert Cialdini's _Influence: Science and Practice_ , a
great horrifying psychology book. Now I've started Iain Banks' _Excession_ ,
giving his Culture universe another go. ( _Player of Games_ was good, but not
great.)

~~~
jh3
> Influence: Science and Practice, a great horrifying psychology book.

What do you mean by horrifying?

~~~
rglover
It's more or less a guide book on how to get people to do things you want them
to do, especially in respect to spending money.

------
smartial_arts
"Zebras don't get ulcers" by Robert Sapolsky [
[http://amzn.to/1kFszdH](http://amzn.to/1kFszdH) ] Great book on stress, it's
evolutionary role and how it's screwing us up now, in the modern environment
that's quite different from our evolutionary past.

"Brain Rules" by John Medina [[http://amzn.to/UCgCPG](http://amzn.to/UCgCPG)]
John, a molecular biologist, looks at things such as health and cognitive
development and performance of kids and adults from an evolutionary
perspective. He highlights problems with our approaches to work and study, how
these are at odds with the way our brains evolved to work and what we can do
about it. Great collection of actionable advice backed up by current research.
See more at [http://brainrules.net/](http://brainrules.net/)

"The world until yesterday" by Jared Diamond
[http://amzn.to/1AAJjNL](http://amzn.to/1AAJjNL) Great book on how
"traditional" societies handle trade, war and interpersonal conflicts. Lots of
thing to consider taking on board in "modern" societies - such as restorative
justice.

"The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" by
Oliver Burkeman [http://amzn.to/1rITiKX](http://amzn.to/1rITiKX) Great
overview of pitfalls that "positive thinking" approach brings and how one can
start employing alternative ways of attaining happiness.

------
chmielewski
Grimoires: A History of Magical Books Which is about the rise of Christian
conversion and the loss (destruction) of or condemnation of older natural
pagan healing practices and the manuals or compilations which held that
knowledge... burning of books through the millenia which took with it history
and culture. From antiquity/pre-history to medieval ages to the Spanish
Inquisition to modern times, I've learned so much and I'm not even half-way
finished. Usually this sort of thing is extremely hokey and superstitious,
except this book is 20% citations, sources and bibliography, further reading
suggestions, and historical references. It focuses on the actual history of
magic (be it Kabalistic or Enochian) instead of trying to legitimize it. In
fact, it quite debunks "magic".

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Edward FitzGerald's translation) After much
study and reading multiple translations of this book, I'm currently reading
one quatrain each day and committing it to memory. I so far cannot help but
think about each throughout the day, often reciting the day's rhyme in an
applicable situation (that no doubt will arise) much to the delight and
enlightenment of others.

------
DarkTree
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles
Petzold.

A great book that explains how computers actually work through number systems
and the logic that acts on those systems. You start with the theory behind
binary numbers and work your way through electrical circuits, logic gates,
RAM, transistors, and the operating system as you build your fundamental
knowledge of the inner workings of computers. It's pretty cool.

~~~
gatesphere
Finished that recently -- great book! His "Annotated Turing" is pretty great
too, for machine heads.

------
XaspR8d
_3D Shape: Its Unique Place in Visual Perception_ by Zygmunt Pizlo. (I studied
human gesture briefly in college so it caught my eye at a used book store.
Pretty good cognitive science survey so far. Haven't gotten to the CS part
yet, but I'm not knowledgeable in computer vision anyway so I couldn't really
review it from that perspective.)

 _Quantum Computing and Quantum Information_ by Michael Nielsen and Isaac
Chuang. (Beastly book. I actually find it to be a pretty well-written
introduction so far, but I just barely have the background to plod through
it.)

 _Hocus Pocus_ by Kurt Vonnegut. (S.O. loves Vonnegut, so I'm working my way
through his collection. Great so far, though I don't always have the patience
for goofy midwestern people humor, despite being a midwesterner myself.)

 _Alif the Unseen_ by G Willow Wilson. (Only a few pages in, but I have a
weakness for fantasy-in-modern-day-setting novels and it came on a
recommendation from a friend outside of the genre. On a similar note, I
_strongly_ recommend both of Nick Harkaway's novels, _Angelmaker_ and _Gone-
Away World_ , which I recently reread.)

------
eccp
"Good Math: A Geek's Guide to the Beauty of Numbers, Logic, and Computation"
by Mark C. Chu-Carroll

"Seven Databases in Seven Weeks: A Guide to Modern Databases and the NoSQL
Movement" by Eric Redmond and Jim R. Wilson

"The Joy of Clojure, Second Edition" by Michael Fogus and Chris Houser

------
eldude
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horrowitz.

It's pretty good, though I personally find his view of business management to
be dated and out of touch like his view of title inflation vs Facebook's title
normalization. Still a good and insightful read.

------
sparkzilla
I just finished reading _1984_. You should read it as a warning, not a manual.

------
loarabia
Just finished reading Hugh Howey's "Dust". The Wool, Shift, and Dust series
from Hugh Howey are great dystopic sci-fi. Picked up The Signal and the Noise
from Nate Silver as my next book.

------
jrlocke
Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. It's great, now I'm equipped to
annoy my friends with arguments like 'dogs are not sentient but computers
could be.'

------
11001
Just finished Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A time of gifts" and I can't recommend
it enough! One of the best English books that I have read. You will
particularly like it if you're interested in European history (political, as
well as art history), if you like traveling, if you're into foreign languages
and if you don't mind using a dictionary once in a while. I'm really excited
to start its sequel "Between the woods and the water".

------
ExceptionRaised
Moby Dick. It's great so far, with wonderfully diverse, dense writing. For
some reason I have trouble reading anything but the so-called "literary
classics". Perhaps it's the fact that there are so many I could quite
literally never read them all in my lifetime, so why waste time with anything
else? I understand that's a somewhat flawed argument ("classics" are somewhat
subjective), but I cannot bring myself to read much else.

------
squeee
Just finished Tower Lord, it's the sequel to Blood Song, by Anthony Ryan.
Blood Song stands pretty strong all on its own, I'm not even sure if he ever
planned for this to become a series. But book two (Tower Lord) makes it quite
clear that this is now a Game of Thrones esq series.

Just started Old Mans War last night, haven't gotten far enough into it to
form an opinion.

------
crisnoble
Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth - R. Buckminster Fuller

It turns out Bucky was a lot more than the man who invented Bucky Balls, this
book was written in 1971 and is still incredibly accurate.

As an aside, I have been logging the books I read over the past two years
here:
[http://crismannoble.github.io/tabula/](http://crismannoble.github.io/tabula/)

------
jaguar86
Reading Lawrence of Arabia by Scott Anderson - So far I have got a vivid
picture of the events leading up to World War I and how opportunistic the
Standard Oil Company were. This is a long book. So, I plan to interleave my
reading with either "The Map Thief" by Michael Blanding or "Diary of a nobody"
by George Grossmith.

------
acheron
_Vanished Kingdoms_ by Norman Davies. History of Europe from the perspective
of "countries" that don't exist anymore. Covers medieval kingdoms (Tolosa,
Strathclyde, Aragon); more recent countries (Poland-Lithuania, Saxe-Coburg-
Gotha); up to very recent times (USSR). Very interesting perspective on
history.

------
msluyter
The Joy of Clojure. I highly recommend it.

------
bane
Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood - Martin Booth

[http://www.amazon.com/Gweilo-Memories-Hong-Kong-
Childhood/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Gweilo-Memories-Hong-Kong-
Childhood/dp/0553816721/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406737887&sr=8-1&keywords=gweilo)

------
AnimalMuppet
Currently re-reading "Escape From Reason" by Francis Schaeffer. Interesting as
a history of western thought, even if you don't buy his conclusions. It's
concise to the point of terseness, though - you're going to have to fill in
some blanks that he doesn't.

------
ninjakeyboard
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. Pretty basic - looking for a
good read though and my reading list is running dry. Manning is releasing some
good stuff on reactive development that I'd recommend - the Reactive Design
Patterns material that is available is super good.

------
xiaoma
I just finished Zero to One.

It's the most thought provoking book I've ever read on entrepreneurship and
some of Peter Theil's stories are jaw-dropping. It's the first book that has
had me thinking I'm actually a pretty conventional thinker and not nearly
ambitious enough.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Does it have much content beyond the CS183 class notes on Blake Masters' web
site?

I saw a pre-release copy on sale on abebooks but wanted to wait for the
reviews.

~~~
xiaoma
Yes, it's an entire book. It has a better organized superset of the material
from the lectures. Many things missing from the lectures are in the book and
many things explained briefly in the lectures are explained in detail in the
book.

If I can scrounge up the time, I'll write a review soon.

------
teshima82
In terms of studying, I am half way in Case Study Research, Contextual design
and Constructing Grounded Theory. In terms of leisure, I just finished enders
games, and fault in our stars, and I will begin physics of the impossible and
the future of the mind

------
pumblechook
Blindsight, by Peter Watts. One of the better sci-fi novels I've read in
awhile. Reminds me a lot of Arthur C. Clark in that it successfully strikes a
really hard balance between scientific accuracy/feasibility and imaginative
storytelling.

~~~
bmneely
He's a fantastic author. You picked the right time to read that too, a sequel
is coming out in August that continues the story. His Rifters series is well
worth reading too.

------
nicknorena
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I can honestly say it's not only
impacted the way I think about habits, but it's impacted my actual habits as
well, and for the better I might add! Leisure read turned life hack textbook
:)

------
MattGrommes
Currently reading Cibola Burn - the 4th in the Expanse series by James SA
Corey. Very good hard-ish SF series.

I also just finished Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull's book about Pixar. Extremely
valuable insights about running a creative organization.

------
nooron
William Vollmann's Rising Up & Rising Down is worth your time. If you're
inclined towards philosophy of science or epistemology, I'd also recommend R
Nozick's Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World.

------
kooshball
Just started The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17660462](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17660462)

It's been pretty good so far.

------
redxblood
You mean technical read or leisure read?

Except you consider them to be tech read to be leisure. ;)

~~~
bsiddiqui
Looking for a mix of both - most of leisurely reading lately has been tech
related but hoping to start reading some more fiction again

------
johnny_utah
Plowing the Dark-Richard Powers

I have tried to finish this book three times, but I have had to start at the
beginning each time. The plot is dense and I can't jump back in after ~150
pages and a month of not reading it.

------
ylansegal
Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman The Rails 4 Way, Obie Fernandez

------
selleck
Morning train ride: The Personal MBA.

Evening train ride: Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using
Python.

Best read in a while: The Obstacle is the Way. Great intro to Stoicism, and
only $4.00 on the kindle.

------
thelonelygod
Mobile Suit Gundam the origin and the new Bryan lee o'malley novel Seconds.

I'm mainly just reading for pleasure right now. But reading these 2 volumes
makes me want more hardback comic books.

------
jestinjoy1
The Drunkards Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

For the uninitiated he is the coauthor of 2005 edition of A Briefer History of
Time. As the title says this is about "how randomness rules our lives".

------
frik
"Idea Man" by Paul Allen

A historical autobiography of Mr. Allen (cofounder of Microsoft). The first
half about Traf-O-Data, Basic and founding Microsoft is especially
interesting.

------
mark_l_watson
I am reading "An Introduction to Category Theory", "Haskell Data Analysis
Cookbook", and I just finished the sci-fi book "Solaris."

------
rglover
Slowly making my way through The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher
Alexander. Also reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and Influence by Robert
Cialdini.

------
lotsofcows
"Big Pharma", Ben Goldacre and a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald short
stories including the eponymous "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz".

------
dllthomas
In terms of studying, I'm revisiting Topics In Algebra and starting on SICP.

In terms of leisure, I'm starting on A Mote In God's Eye (Niven/Pournelle).

------
murtza
Code Complete. I am only halfway through the book, but the lessons I have
learned have already helped me improve how I design and develop software.

------
Glench
Weird Life - The Search for Life That is Very, Very Different from Our Own

An easy introductory survey of the different types of life there are and may
be.

------
mkaziz
The Passionate Programmer.

I read it in college, and now that I'm reading it again with a full time job,
it's amazing how much better it reads.

------
mychaelangelo
Re-reading what I consider to be the best book on Stoic philosophy - Letters
from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium by Seneca

------
monknomo
"America is in the Heart", by Carlos Bulosan, an excellent book on the early
days of Filipino immigrant experience

------
kanakiyajay
"What they teach you at Harvard Business School"

A must if you are thinking of taking the plunge from development to doing an
MBA

------
jrjarrett
Count Zero, by Gibson.

Just finished Neuromancer (for the first time! Bad geek! No cookie!), and plan
to read Mona Lisa Overdrive next.

------
bra-ket
The Regulatory Genome: Gene Regulatory Networks In Development And Evolution,
by Eric Davidson

awesome read.

------
nicholassmith
Reading two books, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and The Devil's Cup by Stewart Lee
Allen.

~~~
11001
"The Devil's Cup" is great! He also has "In the Devil's garden", which is
quite good as well. It presents the history of food in terms of the seven
deadly sins.

~~~
nicholassmith
It's a great book, I think I'm on 5th or 6th reread now.

------
rebolek
Telluriya by Vladimir Sorokin.

Very interesting, especially with current development in Ukraine.

------
jcmurrayii
Mastering Web Application Development in AngularJs Little Book on CoffeeScript

------
miningold
Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold and the rest of the Vorkosigan Saga

------
mojotoad
The Rhesus Chart...the latest Laundry novel by Charles Stross.

------
elyrly
Replay: Ken Grimwood (Second time reading is even better)

------
humility
1984 by George Orwell, very relevant in current times.

------
gatesphere
Moby Dick - Herman Melville

A Gamut of Games - Sid Sackson

Good Math - Mark Chu-Carroll

------
SnacksOnAPlane
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

------
rafael-rinaldi
”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”

------
mbucc
My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon

------
rohan404
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela!

------
melancholy
Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines

------
chegra
On Intelligence - Jeff Hawkins

------
arunabh
Fountainhead

------
Wildmind
how about mathematical universe

------
WorldWideWayne
The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners by Jack Hawley

