

Ask YC: favorite books - cellis

with the exception of programming/technical books, what are your faves? <p>Mine: lotr,ugly americans,the new new thing....<p>
======
jamiepitts
"Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn

This philosophy of science masterpiece illustrates how a community evolves its
mental model or paradigm - from a long-accepted world view, to a crisis caused
by evidence that contradicts the prevailing model, and then at last to an
acceptance of a new paradigm.

<http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html>

~~~
robg
My other favorite bit is how the old dying dinosaurs fight the on-coming
revolution.

------
jey
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Richard Feynman)

What do you care what other people think? (Richard Feynman)

------
rugoso
\- Godel Esher Bach

\- The Development of Mathematics, by E. T. Bell

not that i understand mathematics that well, but this book gave me many ideas
of how an abstract/complex thing like mathematics can evolve through history,
i found that exciting

\- when i was a teenager i liked a couple of books by Martin Gardner

~~~
mrtron
I like how GEB ties together everything with 'strange loops'.

The concept of how small pieces of something can form into something else
entirely, is fascinating. How does a bunch of your cells form into you? How do
a bunch of notes from a song form something so grand? How does a collection of
'inanimate' material form something animate?

~~~
rugoso
Yes that kind of mental-masturbation excites me too ;)

from reading other posts (comments) I've remembered another good book, sort of
on the same flavor as the "biological" parts in GEB:

-"Investigations", by Stuart Kauffman

exciting lecture too

------
Xichekolas
Ender Series - Orson Scott Card

Rama Series - Arthur C Clarke

Firestar Series - Michael Flynn

1984 - George Orwell

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Some guys at MIT (I know
it's technical, but couldn't resist, it's just too good)

Anything by Bret Easton Ellis, Greg Bear, Stephen Baxter, and the above
mentioned authors.

------
mov
\- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP)

\- Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (PAIP)

\- Godel Escher Bach (GEB)

\- All books from Gibson, Asimov, Sterlig, Huxley and Douglas Adams

~~~
hhm
Why GEB? I read the original Godel paper and I studied on the subject, and I
read a lot of related material... so I found GEB to be rather boring when
talking about Godel (and pretty repetitive), and when not talking about it, I
found it to be almost unscientific: unfocused, always going into unproved
conjectures (or shallow theorems), and very little times explaining about
stablished and scientific work that has proven to be useful.

So I could never understand this... why all the hype with GEB? What's the big
thing with it?

~~~
rugoso
GEB is not a scientific paper ... if you don't realize this, then there is no
point in continuing with this answer

~~~
hhm
I know it's not a paper, but I'm not sure it's a science divulgation book
either. Sometimes I read it and I found it fun (as a sophisticated book-game
of science), but most of the times it makes me nervous, for the reasons I
pointed above, and because I feel it's taken as a book a lot more serious than
what at least I feel it is.

Maybe it's a mistake in my appreciation of the book, but I can't help it. What
do you think about it?

~~~
rugoso
i think it's a great book, not a "serious" book, whatever that means

as i mention in another comment, I'm willing to call it mental-masturbation,
in the sense of exciting one's mind (the nerdy mind anyway), so in a way I'm
probably not too far from your vision of the book

i also think this kind of excitement is the basic motivation of the nerdy
minded persons, and any text/experience that can get you in that state is
something to appreciate.

lastly it exposes the reader to many topics, the reader may get interested in
some of those topics and make some further investigations on its own, and at
least in that sense it is a science divulgation book (it's more important for
science divulgation to get you interested in the topics that to give you some
raw facts)

~~~
hhm
Ok, thank you, next time I'll approach it from that perspective.

------
shayan
Unfortunately I can't read fiction too much, I feel like what I read must
directly help me with what I do, so I feel a lot better reading either
technical stuff or business related (I love business). Since we are excluding
technical, most of the following are business related, or helps you in dealing
with people and solving problems)

Netscape Time - Jim Clark (very educational for those interested in startups,
good piece of Internet history, interesting insights to the culture of the
first Internet companies)

How To Win Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie (found it through YC
recommendations, THANK YOU. one of the best educational books I have ever
read, it will teach you how to make friends, be a good leader, get along at
home, encourage people, make them follow you and so much more...)

Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston (I found it relevant to what I am doing,
good lessons, and interesting insights)

Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher, William L. Ury (teaches you how to negotiate
and how to get the best out of each situation for yourself and the other part,
will be useful both at work and personal life, a bit dry)

Winning - Jack Welch (great advices on leadership, might be more useful to
someone that is running a big company)

Leadership Is an Art - Max Depree (great leadership advices, it will give you
the right mindset of how to be a great leader)

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

Animal Farm (George Orwell), Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), Interpreting Your
Dreams(Freud)

------
gensym
The Evolution of Cooperation - Robert Axelrod

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clark

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

The Informant - Kurt Eichenwald

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte

Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis

------
sri
The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence by Josh Waitzkin
(the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher was about him): talks about the higher
stages of mastery. Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/Art-Learning-Journey-
Pursuit-Excellenc...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Learning-Journey-Pursuit-
Excellence/dp/0743277457)

------
icky
Fiction:

\- The Time Machine (still holds up very well, and seems strangely eerie and
prescient in places)... (H. G. Wells)

\- Dune (Frank Herbert)

\- The Hobbit (and LotR) (Tolkien)

\- Neuromancer (William Gibson)

\- Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties (I picked up Idoru first, so I haven't yet
read Virtual Light) (also Gibson)

\- The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling)

\- Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)

\- Cryptonomicon (" ")

\- Circuit of Heaven, End of Days (Dennis Danvers)

\- All of the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories and novels. (Fritz Leiber)

\- The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin)

\- 'salem's Lot (Stephen King)

\- Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)

\- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)

\- the Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman)

\- various Cory Doctorow short stories

\- Kamikaze L'Amour (Richard Kadrey)

\- Lightpaths (Howard V. Hendrix)

\- A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.)

\- Moonwar, Venus (Ben Bova)

\- the Stainless Steel Rat series (Harry Harrison)

\- Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)

\- Ringworld (Larry Niven)

\- Cthon (Piers Anthony) -- Trippiness level approaching Philip Jose Farmer
;-)

\- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)

\- The Black Company (Glen Cook)

\- there's one particularly good post-cyberpunk series that takes place in a
world in which Canada emerged as a major world power, but for the life of me I
can't rememeber the title.

\- the 1632 series (Eric Flint)... see also S. M. Stirling's Nantucket series
("Island in the Sea of Time", et al.), and H. Beam Piper's novel Kalvan of
Otherwhen

Non-fiction:

\- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume)

\- the surviving words and works of Epicurus, and Diogenes the Cynic

\- Freakonomics (Levitt, Dubner)

\- The Gay Science (Nietzsche)

\- The Jefferson Bible (Christ, Jefferson (ed.))

\- The Devil's Dictionary (Bierce)

\- Brain Droppings (George Carlin)

\- anything by P. J. O'Rourke

\- anything by Dave Barry

------
jdale27
(I'm going to ignore the prohibition on "programming/technical books".)

\- GEB

\- SICP

\- anything by Paul Auster or Hermann Hesse

\- most Haruki Murakami, especially "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle"

\- Joan Didion, "Where I Was From"

\- Richard P. Gabriel, "Patterns of Software"

\- Durbin, Eddy, Krogh, and Mitchison, "Biological Sequence Analysis"

\- Italo Calvino, "if on a winter's night a traveller"

------
s_baar
Watership Down. It is surprisingly epic and immersing for a book about rabbits
traveling through the English countryside.

~~~
ajmoir
The animated film is a classic :-)

~~~
jgrahamc
Oh, no. I should never have read that, now I've got the damn Art Garfunkel
theme song stuck in my head
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Eyes_%28Art_Garfunkel_so...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Eyes_%28Art_Garfunkel_song%29)).

Curse be upon you :-)

------
nfriedly
The Bible,

Wild at Heart,

How to Win Friends and Influence People,

Songs for Martha <\-- I have an autographed copy,

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,

Rainbow Six (and most other Clancy books)

------
jraines
1984

The Silmarillion

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

Dune

Walden (about half the chapters anyway)

------
jsomers
Godel, Escher, Bach (An Eternal Golden Braid) by Douglas Hofstadter. Also, The
Mind's I (more philosophical) edited by the same guy.

------
tel
V. by Thomas Pynchon

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

the McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (Not a book per se, but very enjoyable)

Shakespeare (Everything, I'm surprised he's only been mentioned once so far)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Shogun by James Clavell

Then, of course, the regular hodgepodge of Card, Asimov, Adams, Gaiman,
Pratchet, Stephenson, Feynman, and that LOTR guy, Tolkey or sommat. (In all
seriousness, though, all of these authors are phenomenal, if well-known for
being such)

------
Alex3917
No Contest / Punished by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)

The Underground History of American Education (John Taylor Gatto)

------
pierrefar
Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Material which kicks off with the Golden
Compass is a great read.

Sherlock Holmes stories are fun.

The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick is also a good read.

Pierre

------
shawndrost
I'm analytical to a fault, but Neil Gaiman's novels genuinely make me believe
in magic at some level. I love that.

------
mgummelt
Snow Crash (Neil Stephenson)

The Bible (Various chaps)

~~~
nfriedly
Which books/chapters? I love Psalms and Philippians, but I really love the
beauty of how it all fits together.

(Not trying to belittle, just curious)

~~~
mgummelt
John and Genesis.

Genesis is a necessary read for anyone, regardless of religious affiliation.

------
maurycy
Many.

In short:

All books written by Witold Gombrowicz (Diary if have to pick one),

All books written by Slavoj Zizek (Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five
Essays on September 11 and Related Dates if have to pick one)

Recently read and significant:

The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper,

Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders, Jack Schwager

------
diversityhire
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience

William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying &amp; The Sound and the Fury

Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral
Mind

Peter Medawar's The Art of the Soluable

Designed by Peter Saville

Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols

Bloom County Babylon

------
falsestprophet
It is hard to say what my favorite book is. But the book that impacted my life
most was Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Read it.

My favorite authors and playwrights are (in no meaningful order) Michael
Lewis, Carl Sagan, Siddhartha Gautama, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway,
Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, Patrick Marber, Arthur Miller, and Shakespeare.

------
Locke
A few sort of random selections from my bookshelf (in no particular order):

    
    
     * GEB:EGB - Hofstader
     * The Pragmatic Programmer - Hunt / Thomas
     * Peopleware - DeMarco / Lister
     * The Mythical Man Month - Brooks
     * Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming - Norvig
     * Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - Miyazaki

------
breily
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

~~~
jkush
House of Leaves is so good! I have yet to come up with a good description of
what it's about, but I always try when I tell people about it.

I usually describe it as a story about a guy who finds a manuscript. The
manuscript is a collection of essays that detail a documentary that was made
about a house that randomly changes rooms.

So at the center of the novel, you have this really creepy story. But there
are all the layers above that storyline that you have to read to get there.
There's the storyline concerning the people who make the documentary. Then
there's the storyline of the guy who wrote the manuscript ABOUT the
documentary. Then you have the storyline of the guy who's reading the
documentary.

Then there's you. You're reading about a guy who is in turn reading a
manuscript about a documentary which was made about a house. It was so well
done that at the end, I found myself not really sure what the hell I was
reading anymore.

I'm still not sure what the book is, but it's certainly a stroke of genius.

------
jimbokun
Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep

[http://books.google.com/books?id=UGAKB3r0sZQC&dq=Vernor+...](http://books.google.com/books?id=UGAKB3r0sZQC&dq=Vernor+Vinge&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dvernor%2Bvinge%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-
US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=3&cad=author-
navigational)

I'm sure his other books are good, too, but this is the only one I've read.
I've never seen anyone else able to extrapolate the consequences of entire
races advancing past the Singularity and how mortals manage to get by in such
a galaxy (if you're able to accept faster-than-light travel as a premise, but
he has a very interesting take on even that). A ton of innovative sci-fi ideas
in one novel.

~~~
sspencer
Read his other stuff, it is equally good!

~~~
akkartik
Indeed. I think his best book is A deepness in the sky.

------
kirse
The Bible

Autobiography of Ben Franklin

Mastering the Winds of Change (solid self-improvement book)

------
bockris
All of William Gibson and all of Neal Stephenson (especially Cryptonomicon and
Baroque cycle series)

~~~
sspencer
Same, and with special emphasis on The Diamond Age.

Also Douglas Adams, Vernor Vinge, Richard K. Morgan, and all kinds of other
stuff. I like to read almost as much as I like to program.

Best nonfiction I have read in a while: "Leaving Microsoft To Change The
World" by John Wood. A Microsoft VP leaves to pursue his dream of changing the
world with books, and ends up founding Room to Read
(<http://www.roomtoread.org/> .) Highly recommended.

~~~
bockris
Hmmm. Diamond Age didn't do it for me for some reason. I liked it but not
nearly as much as Cryptonomicon. But I have had several people tell me the
same thing that you did wrt DA, so it just must be me.

------
oditogre
\- Brave New World

\- Night

\- Hitchhiker's Guide series

\- Dark Tower series (Mostly just the first 4, though)

\- Eats, Shoots & Leaves

\- Just about any George Carlin or Patrick F. McManus books

\- Wheel of Time Series

\- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

------
anupamkapoor
\- use of weapons (ian m banks)

\- surely you are joking mr feynman (rpf)

\- origin of order (stuart kauffman)

\- slaughter house five (kurt vonnegut)

\- goedel escher bach (douglas hofstadter)

\- theta-magical memas errr metamagical themas (dogulas hofsta)

------
terpua
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

------
rms
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect -- Read it free online!
<http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html>

------
gills
The First Circle (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

LOTR

Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)

The Odyssey (Homer)

The Dilbert Principle (Scott Adams) -- Alright, not literature! But come on,
it's Dilbert :)

------
ericb
For anyone looking for more ideas, there's a related thread here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=56618>

------
wbornor
1984 (George Orwell)

Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C Clarke, Space Elevator SciFi)

Dune Series (Herbert)

Ender Series (Orson Scott Card)

2001 Series (Arthur C Clarke)

------
daniel-cussen
The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)

I, Claudius (Robert Graves)

------
estherschindler
For sheer enjoyment (measured in how many times I've re-read them, at least at
various times in my life): Heinlein's _The Door into Summer_. Connie Willis'
_Bellwether_ (these can be funny, right?). Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_ (more
in my youth than today, but I can probably still recite passages by heart).

Non-fiction: Gerry Weinberg's _Secrets of Consulting_. Lynn Truss' _Eats
Shoots & Leaves_.

------
brianmckenzie
LOTR

Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

Devil in the White City (Erik Larson)

------
david
\- What the Dormouse Said, John Markoff

\- Alongside Night, J Neil Schulman,

\- Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson

\- Anything by Doug Rushkoff, Get Back in the Box is a good one for
business/entrepreneurship

\- The Dubliners, James Joyce

\- The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst

------
jgrahamc
You reminded me of a great little book published a long time ago which is
still very relevant: "The Ugly
American"(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American>). A recent really
good read was Le Carre's "The Mission Song"

------
dottertrotter
Rebel Without a Crew (Robert Rodriguez), The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho),
Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

------
Darmani
This Perfect Day by Ira Levin (out of print, yet much more worthwhile in my
opinion than other dystopic novels) Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Books of the Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Artemis Fowl series by Eoin
Colfer The Deathgate Cycle by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis

------
asmosoinio
Cradle to cradle, by William McDonough & Michael Braungart

<http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm>

About environmental design of, well, everything. Might fall into the
"technical" category, though.

------
paulgb
I enjoyed The Undercover Economist. I especially recommend it if you liked
Freakonomics.

------
h3st
The Ego and its Own, by Max Stirner. The Open Society and its Enemies, by Karl
Popper. The Illuminatus! trilogy.

Robin Hobb books (with special mention of the farseer trilogy), Neal
Stephenson, Alan Moore, Terry Pratchett.

------
Tichy
Some more SF/Fantasy yarns:

\- Hyperion by Dan Simmons \- 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear and all the
other Zamonien books (only know german version) \- Pollen by Jeff Noon \-
Otherland by Tad Williams \- Ubik by PK Dick

------
tmm1
The Design of Everyday Things

~~~
Kaizyn
This is a great book. It delves into the psychology of how we think about and
use the built world and explains why some things are simply hard to use as
compared to other, better designed things.

------
terpua
Against the Odds (James Dyson)

------
vikram
Are your lights on - Jerry Weinberg The blind watchmaker - Richard Dawkins

------
dr
I'll go with anything written by Vonnegut. Feynman books too.

------
scylla
Godel Escher Bach - non fiction

The Tomorrow File - fiction. Written in the 1970s as the author's only foray
into science fiction. Seriously, it's that good.

------
comatose_kid
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy

------
jsb
1984 (George Orwell)

The Four Hour Work Week (Tim Ferriss)

Getting Things Done (David Allen)

Deception Point (Dan Brown)

------
greg
How about... How the mind works (Pinker) Zen and the art of motorcycle
maintenance (Pirsig) Sophie's World (Gaarder)

------
Prabakeryc
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (bit of a beast, but well worth it).

------
modulus
Confessions of an Economic Hitman, The Wealth of Nations, The Great Gatsby,
See No Evil, Hannibal

------
jkush
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)

House Of Leaves (Mark Danielewski)

------
ptn
Sherlock Holmes

~~~
Tichy
Definitely among my favorites, too.

------
initself
Phenomenology of Spirit - G.W.F. Hegel

------
electric
The "Captain Underpants" series.

------
croby
Blink

