
Ask HN: What are you reading? What've you read lately? - heydenberk
The last two truly great books I read were:<p>- James Gleick's _The Information: A History, a Theory, A Flood_ (http://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/0375423729/), an interdisciplinary overview of the human history of the creation, understanding and exchange of information.<p>- Manuel de Landa's _Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason_ (http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Simulation-Emergence-Synthetic-Reason/dp/1441170286/), about how computer simulations have allowed humans to begin to truly understand emergentism and to advance science at a level between theory and experimentalism.<p>EDIT: I'm asking about books -- not necessarily dead trees, of course, but long-form non-fiction or fiction.
======
da02
The Unheavenly City by Edward Banfield: PDF:
[http://www.kevinrkosar.com/Edward-C-Banfield/Edward-C-
Banfie...](http://www.kevinrkosar.com/Edward-C-Banfield/Edward-C-Banfield-The-
Unheavenly-City-Revisited.pdf)

Review: <http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/92789.html>

His time preference classes explains so much of people regardless of race,
religion, nationality, etc.

Rise of the Fourth Reich: [http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fourth-Reich-Societies-
Threaten/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fourth-Reich-Societies-
Threaten/dp/0061245593/)

This is where I learned about Konrad Zuse creating a digital computer and
programming language miles away from Bletchley Park in the early 40s.

Dealers of Lightning: [http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-
Computer/...](http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-
Computer/dp/0887309895)

It's about XEROX PARC. Unfortunately, they did not talk about how PARC made
the OS and apps obsolete by using objects communicating over a network. I had
to learn about that from an Alan Kay video. It did show how PARC contributed
to the Internet by creating an internet before ARPANET.

Last and best of all: <http://vpri.org/html/writings.php>

The latest report, "Steps Toward Expressive Programming Systems", describes a
computer system without an OS. They seem to be refining what PARC did back in
the late 1970s.

------
unignorant
Reading or recently finished:

The Book of the New Sun:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun>

Influence: Science and Practice: [http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Practice-
Robert-B-Cialdini/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Practice-Robert-B-
Cialdini/dp/0205609996)

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: [http://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-
Writers-Second-Yo...](http://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-
Second-
Yourself/dp/0060545690/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323492182&sr=1-1)

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

Wraeththu: [http://www.amazon.com/Wraeththu-Storm-
Constantine/dp/0312890...](http://www.amazon.com/Wraeththu-Storm-
Constantine/dp/0312890001)

~~~
gruseom
Cialdini is classic. It's the only science book I've stayed up all night to
finish, it's such a page turner. Plus I remember astonishingly more of it than
I do of most books. His anecdotes really help with that.

(It was a different edition though.)

~~~
tptacek
I read Cialdini years ago because Joel Spolsky recommended it here:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html>

From that list, I also highly recommend:

* Peopleware (get your cofounders to read it too)

* Godel Escher Bach

* A Pattern Language (but don't bother reading it straight through)

* Growing A Business

~~~
gruseom
I love _Pattern Language_ and use ideas from it all the time. It, and
Alexander, are much more interesting than the mechanistic stuff that software
people reduced him to. I think Chris Alexander is one of those rare cases
where it's possible to see that an individual is right and an entire field is
wrong.

 _Growing a Business_ I read because you recommended it on HN a few years ago!

 _Peopleware_ I remember as being pretty enlightened in spirit and ahead of
its time for software projects, but one of those once-you-get-it-you-get-it
things. Also, they totally made shit up in that book
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=333694>).

 _GEB_ , meh. Hofstadter always struck me as the pseudo-profound type. Perhaps
I am unfair.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not as rigorous as you are; the idea that Demarco and Lister made up
historical anecdotes in the book doesn't perturb me too much, because the
value of the book isn't so much prescriptive ("break your company into tiny
teams and let them each pick a far-flung cool-looking skunkworks office") ---
it's more that it provides a new way of looking at how your company is
organized.

On the other hand, I didn't "get" Surfer Rosa for like a year after I bought
it, because by the time I had (in the early 90's) almost all the music I
listened to was more or less cribbed from Pixies songs. Maybe the same thing
happened with Peopleware, where pretty much every blog post we read about dev
teams expresses a sentiment traceable to some part of Peopleware.

In my defense with GEB: I didn't read it because Joel Spolsky told me to, I
read it because a girlfriend did. A similar logic had me pretending to enjoy
Faulkner. My take on Hofstadter may be oddly colored. Also: I haven't read any
of his other books and am not a Lisper, so he's had fewer opportunities to
annoy me.

~~~
gruseom
Oh, the making shit up part doesn't perturb me (well, maybe a little) - I just
think it's worth mentioning. Your Pixies analogy is very clever. If Peopleware
is the Pixies then maybe Jerry Weinberg would be the Velvets? Maybe not. The
Velvets kind of stand on their own pretty well. Maybe the MC5. There's a band
I never got, though they were pretty influential pre-punk. (My point is that
Weinberg's early stuff on human factors in software -- Psychology of Computer
Programming -- was seminal, but not particularly readable now.)

~~~
akkartik
I wish I could grok these references :/ I didn't grow up in the US, so my
musical knowledge ends with classical rock (and even that's not very deep).

~~~
tptacek
The Velvets are The Velvet Underground, a New York band best known for songs
like "Who Loves The Sun", "Sweet Jane", and "Heroin". They're one of the
precursors to punk music.

Listen:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE>

The joke is, almost nobody bought the first Velvets album, but everyone who
did started a band. Which brings us to the Pixies, which is a Boston band from
the late eighties that combined sounds from the Velvets, surf rock, punk, and
"college rock" indie like Husker Du and is more or less the greatest band of
all time sorry Daniel but it's true.

Listen:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdzoK5jwESM>

All this is just to build an elaborate and overwrought metaphor; Kurt Cobain
from Nirvana famously claimed that everything on Nevermind, their best-known
album, was more or less lifted directly from the Pixies. The Pixies are
another band notorious for being more influential than commercially
successful.

So the point being, Peopleware, decades old, blog posts today, &c, you get it.

~~~
gruseom
The line about everyone who bought the first VU album started a band is
usually attributed to Brian Eno. I wouldn't say they were a precursor to punk
so much as to all things indie. The Stooges were the biggest precursor to
punk. John Cale, the avant-garde genius from the Velvets, did produce the
Stooges, but that was after Lou Reed had kicked him out. I've never been a
huge VU fan musically though I like them fine, but there's no denying they
were sui generis and everything art-cool in rock music since can be traced
back to them. (I was a huge fan of Cale's 1970s solo albums though. Do you
know them? Equal parts exquisite and menacing.)

Pixies... why sorry? I admit I never got them though - not then and not since.
I need more melody and song structure than that, and the ironic-detached thing
only gets me so far.

Re Cobain, he may have said that, but it isn't true. Nevermind is classic
because he pulled off what no one else had and blended the indie-noise thing
with classic pop songwriting. I think that was genius and his tragedy was
being embedded in a subculture that didn't respect that. There's a documentary
floating around online (edit: at
[http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_s...](http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_son))
in which he says that his original idea for a band was Black Sabbath crossed
with bubblegum and that no one else got it. In that subculture (which I
remember well, and the pretentious twattage that went with it) it was de
rigeur to piss all over the pop side; that was how you established your cred.
It was also a limiting move: it's why the music from that period isn't
anywhere close to the level of the Ramones or Pistols or many others. (I
suppose we disagree here.) Anyway, Cobain put them together and millions of
people loved it and he never lived that down. Nor alas did he ever do it
again.

Re the Pixies - have you seen
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw)?
David Sanborn, yuppy purveyor of intolerable smooth-jazz, somehow had the
coolest musical thing going on TV in the late 80s. It was canceled after he
had the Residents perform with Conway Twitty!

~~~
tptacek
I think Nirvana picked up a thread that had already been running through REM
and the Replacements and that started with Big Star; I'm hesitant to give him
too much credit for the an idea as big as "revitalizing serious pop music",
but it's hard to put a finger on why I listen to Nirvana so much more than I
listen to The Replacements.

Love John Cale. Not so much a Lou Reed fan.

Night Music! Had no idea! That hair! How could this not be great? Thank you!

------
euroclydon
The Confusion - Neal Stephenson (I'm starting to tire a little of the female
hero character who's in all his books, but on the whole, The Baroque Cycle,
which this is the second volume of, has been very educational and always
entertaining)

The Visual Display of Quantative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual
Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence (I picked up all four books by Edward
Tufte at his one day training course. At the 2011 SVG Open, I was blown away
by Mike Bostock's D3 demo, and Niel Fraser told me to read all of Tuftes books
to see where these revolutionary ways of displaying information came from)

ESV Bible, actually hoping to find time to get my Python script running so I
can download the audio, chapter by chapter, because the audio version I bought
is nigh impossible to navigate.

~~~
tptacek
Is Beautiful Evidence good?

VDQA is an all-time favorite of mine, and I've even paid to see him talk live
about this stuff, but I've found his books got fuzzier and increasingly
subjective over time, so that I really don't even remember what Visual
Explanations was trying to say anymore.

------
tokenadult
Visible Learning, by John Hattie

[http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-
Analys...](http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-
Achievement/dp/0415476186/)

Teaching as Leadership, by Teach for America

<http://www.teachingasleadership.org/>

[http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-As-Leadership-Effective-
Achie...](http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-As-Leadership-Effective-
Achievement/dp/0470432861/)

Understanding Numbers in Elementary School Mathematics by Hung-hsi Wu

[http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Numbers-Elementary-
Schoo...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Numbers-Elementary-School-
Mathematics/dp/0821852604/)

------
tangentcity
I've noticed too that when people recommend books or say what they're reading,
it's almost never novels. It's either technical, or memoirs.

Here's one novel I just finished rereading that's almost like an anti-Oprah
book in that you won't identify with any of the characters, it doesn't build
to sweet resolution, it doesn't say great things about the human spirit, yet
at the end you feel enobled for having spent time with such a true work of
art: Michel Faber's Under the Skin. [http://www.amazon.com/Under-Skin-Novel-
Michel-Faber/dp/01560...](http://www.amazon.com/Under-Skin-Novel-Michel-
Faber/dp/0156011603)

------
happyrichpinoy
Ready Player One
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030788743X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030788743X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hapricpin-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=030788743X)

The Wise Man's Fear
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0756404738/ref=as_li_qf_sp_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0756404738/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hapricpin-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0756404738)

------
gruseom
I'm almost at the end of _Vanity Fair_. It is long, surprisingly light, and
psychologically astute. There's one passage where Thackeray nails the concept
of cognitive dissonance so strikingly (100 years before Festinger) that it
ought to be in textbooks. Many of his observations have made me laugh with
their classic English wit. He also has one hell of an anti-heroine. This book
reminded me why I used to love literature.

Also, _Strangers to Ourselves_ by Timothy Wilson - a good book on research
into unconscious thought processes.

------
m0nastic
Right now I'm reading:

Fiction- \- Reamde (Bought it when it came out, but had to wait to start until
I finished some other stuff on my list)

\- The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos

Nonfiction- \- Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia (Volume 1) -- primarily
for research, but it's fascinating.

\- Dark Markets by Misha Glenny

\- How to Live on Mars by robert Zubrin

\- The Lightness of Being by Frank Wilczek

\- This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin

\- Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier

\- and Strange Things Happen by Stewart Copeland

Technical- \- Tangled Web (I saw someone else mention it, and it's really
really good so far)

\- Skiena's Algorithms book (making slower progress than I'd like).

~~~
tptacek
I read Misha Glenny's _McMafia_ and it kind of left a bad taste, even before
they got to the cybercrime stuff where I knew some of his sources were just
making things up. How's _Dark Markets_?

Love that Skiena book.

~~~
m0nastic
So far, Dark Market is a little too "Dateline expose" for my taste, but I'm
only about a third of the way in (maybe it gets better).

I actually picked up Skiena purely from your recommendation of it on here. I
wanted to go back to algo fundamentals, and I was irrationally opposed to
buying CLRS for the second time (having bought and then sold it back in
college), so I figured I'd give it a try. I like the presentation of material
a lot better, but I've just been a lazy git about plowing through it.

------
bmajz
Dive Into Python (<http://www.diveintopython.net/>)

The Facebook Effect ([http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-
Connect...](http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-
Connecting/dp/B005DI7YAS))

The Name of the Wind ([http://www.amazon.com/Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicles-
Day/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicles-
Day/dp/075640407X))

------
dtwwtd
The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications:
<http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/tangled/>

~~~
tptacek
Have heard absolutely nothing but great things about this book.

------
tptacek
Just bought a (physical) Kindle; it has:

_Wolf Hall_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Hall-Novel-Booker-
Prize/dp/080508...](http://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Hall-Novel-Booker-
Prize/dp/0805080686))

_Tree of Smoke_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Smoke-Novel-Denis-
Johnson/dp/0374...](http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Smoke-Novel-Denis-
Johnson/dp/0374279128))

(I'm about halfway through both; I'm trying to get better about reading
fiction).

_The Lean Startup_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-
Continuous-...](http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-
Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323540517&sr=1-1))

(Having trouble getting myself propelled into this one)

_Imbibe!_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Imbibe-Absinthe-Cocktail-Professor-
Fea...](http://www.amazon.com/Imbibe-Absinthe-Cocktail-Professor-
Featuringthe/dp/0399532870/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323540560&sr=1-1))

(Probably the best book on booze ever written, my favorite thing I've read all
year)

_Bitters_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Bitters-Spirited-Cure-All-Cocktails-
Fo...](http://www.amazon.com/Bitters-Spirited-Cure-All-Cocktails-
Formulas/dp/1580083595/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323540592&sr=1-1))

(The Atlantic liked this book, but I found it slight --- although we're going
to make bitters from this book in our office, so maybe I'll appreciate it more
later)

Finally, I didn't read this "recently", but I'll take the opportunity to
STRONGLY RECOMMEND IT TO EVERYONE:

_Ideas in Food_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-Food-Great-Recipes-
They/dp/03077...](http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-Food-Great-Recipes-
They/dp/0307717402/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323540682&sr=1-1))

This book blew my freaking head off. The authors are modernist ("molecular",
gag) consultant/chefs with a very popular blog; the book adapts the stuff on
their blog to home and professional cooking.

What's amazing about it is that they did such a great job translating
modernist techniques not just to home kitchens but to home cooking, so that
the same concepts that give you wanking spherification and foam dishes in
restaurants give you hands-free bulletproof risotto at home. I could go on and
on about this thing. It is simultaneously the geekiest and most useful food
book I've ever bought. Own it immediately.

(Do audiobooks count? If so, add to the list _Thinking Fast And Slow_ by
Daniel Kahneman, _Blood, Bones & Butter_ by Gabrielle Hamilton, and Caro's
_Power Broker_).

~~~
wallflower
> (Probably the best book on booze ever written, my favorite thing I've read
> all year

Highly recommend:

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0971958769>

------
japhyr
The End of Faith by Sam Harris - [http://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-
Terror-Future/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-
Future/dp/0393327655/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323544076&sr=1-1)

It's the first non-technical book I've read in a while, and I am loving it.

------
gforces
Philip Roth's 'Indignation. Julian Barnes 'The sense of an ending'. And a few
other novels. Plus I'm reading 'The Price of Civilization: Reawakening
American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey Sachs. I would recommend one and
all.

------
riffraff
You should probably clarify if you want to know the last X we read in general,
fiction/non-fiction/both/specific topics, the last X great books, whether
books or else (e.g. graphic novels, comics).

------
pettinato
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson - for pleasure

Hadoop: The Definitive Guide - for fun

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software - for work

Effective C++ by Scott Meyers - for work

More Effective C++ by Scott Meyers - for work

------
tangentcity
And before that I read, back-to-back, George W. Bush's and Keith Richards'
autobiographies - both great reads though odd shelf-fellows.

------
aestetix_
The Baroque Cycle. It's absolutely brilliant, I recommend it to anyone with an
interest in security or economics.

------
ashconnor
Currently reading:

iOS Programming - Big Nerd Ranch - 2nd Edition

Agile Web Dev with Rails - Pragmatic Programmers - 4th Edition

A Clash of Kings - GRR Martin

------
limita
Fiction: Carl Sagan - Contact Non-fiction: Uresh Vahalia - Unix Internals

------
sidcool
I am reading 'Facebook App development for Dummies'

------
renownedmedia
The Lean Startup and Crossing The Chasm

