
Books I Recommend - ingve
https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/books/
======
lbacaj
I read/listen to a lot of books and the only book on there I’ve read so far is
The Managers Path, which is about the transition of the software engineer in
his/her career. It’s a great book for any software engineer, it’s short too.

Given that I haven’t heard of many of the other books on the list, I’d say
this is a good list I’ll be checking out a few of the titles.

One trick about “reading” (listening) to a good chunk of books has been
Audible, to retain the content I’m listening to on my commutes and on the go I
take a lot of notes.

As a little self promotion I created a cross platform App that lets you listen
to any Article from the web by using great sounding AI/ML to convert the text
to audio. I built it recently because I feel really strongly that Audio is a
great way to learn and maximize that dead on the go time rather than waste it.

If you’d like to check my app out it’s here:

[https://articulu.com](https://articulu.com)

~~~
brm
Counterpoint: while I agree that audio is useful for learning, I’d encourage
everyone to not consider mental downtime wasted. And that we should resist the
urge to fill it with content constantly. We must be able as humans to simply
sit alone with our own thoughts. It’s as important for creativity and mental
output as anything learned in those “dead”, “wasted” times.

~~~
lbacaj
Makes sense actually.. we all need time to think. I thinn walks where one
could just let their mind wander are great.

If I didn’t spend some time thinking I would’ve never built this thing :)

Still though on these busy commutes, especially while standing, I find the
time much better spent staying informed and learning but that’s just me.

~~~
marxama
That's why I prefer to listen to podcasts when taking walks etc, rather than
full-on audiobooks - if my mind wanders and I start thinking about something
else, it's not a big deal if I missed an episode of some tech podcast. With an
audiobook, I have to try and find where my mind left off! (which is usually a
lot more cumbersome than when the same thing happens while eye-reading)

~~~
HNLurker2
Contra argument: this means podcast too. You need total solitude. Most podcast
are useless, the only one I found useful (people in podcast just shit talk
unlike audio books or/and crafted essays). Econ talk is great one (was
recommended on HN) and every other where the guest is smart

------
sevensor
Maybe I know too many physics grad students who self-consciously model
themselves on him, but wouldn't recommend the Feynmann books to young people.
It's too easy to end up as a pile of somebody else's quirks without his unique
brilliance and humanity. Wait to read Feynmann until you have a fully formed
ego.

~~~
goldfeld
The same could generally be said about anyone under 25 and philosophy books.
Read the literature classics, sure (they're about philosophy and politics
too), but reading treatises on someone else's hard-won idiosyncratic view of
the world without the emotional barriers and critical filter erected by years
of trial and error may just turn the young person into a parrot, or worse, a
nihilist without a cause.

~~~
voidhorse
I have read philosophy before turning 25 and hence, and I both agree and
disagree with this advice. On the one hand, I’ve certainly had my fair share
of realizations of how daft I was when I read the works when I was younger and
how quick I was to adopt the ideas of others without really understanding
them. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be able to contend with a vast number of
texts that I do now without the background and terminology I absorbed by being
a bit arrogant and tackling some of the works that I had when I was younger.

In general, you can bolster your defenses against unwitting influence if you
have a good teacher guiding you and reminding you to be critical. This is more
or less the point of dialectic.

~~~
goldfeld
Your last advice is critical, but I've seen people fall into voids and make
twitch decisions and statements about important things in their lives with
consequences spanning years, because they have a philosopher's aura around
their fledgling heads. Besides, we can still be plenty arrogant at 25, 30 and
40 but with a bit more consistency.

------
gordon_freeman
One of the great books I am currently reading is Meditations* by Marcus
Aurelius. This book reminds me time and again not to worry about things that I
don't control and only focus on things that I can. This book introduces Stoic
philosophy and I am surprised it is not that popular among Tech community
(rarely being mentioned in Best Books HN posts).

*There are many translations of this book and the one I feel is easy to read is the one by Gregory Hays: [https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Au...](https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0812968255/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1551114321&sr=8-2&keywords=Meditations%3A+A+New+Translation)

~~~
gnclmorais
I can’t recommend this book enough.

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byproxy
I wish this place was a bit more hospitable to literary fiction.

~~~
cjarrett
I try to specialize in American authors--but If you want a random selection of
my favorites to recommend in order to understand this modern era of America, I
present these three:

J.R. - William Gaddis (1975)

(A very nice blog post on it here: [https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-
again-on-william-g...](https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-again-on-
william-gaddiss-enormous-novel-jr-this-time-after-finishing-it/))

J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free
enterprise" and fired up by heady mail-order promises of "success." His
teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president,
his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of
public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a
price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience,
and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.

Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office,
with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-
crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of
surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-
mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."

Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon (2013)

It deals with government paranoia, conspiracy theories for 9/11, It uses
Computer and ‘deepweb’ Internet as the framing device for the novel—which is
why I bring it up in this context. It somehow fits fairly nicely into the
political thriller genre, while addressing modern concerns.

Don Delillo - White Noise (1985)

While Jack Gladney is an intellectual academic, an expert in the unlikely
field of “Hitler studies” (and something of a fraud, to boot), he’s also a
pretty normal dad. Casual reviewers of White Noise tend to overlook the
sublime banality of domesticity represented in DeLillo’s signature novel:
Gladney is an excellent father to his many kids and step-kids, and DeLillo
draws their relationships with a realism that belies–and perhaps helps to
create–the novel’s satirical bent.

~~~
cjarrett
[Some other random american novels I find excellent/significant]

Crossing to Safety - William Gaddis

Chronic City - Jonathan Lethem

Latro in the Mist - Gene Wolfe

Arcadia (Play) - Tom Stoppard

The Last Picture Show & Texasville - Larry McMurtry [Read both]

The Blithdale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy

^One of the most interesting novels touching on Southwestern United States.
The First chapter regarding the Wolf is one of the most uniquely environmental
sections I've seen by prominant American authors. Admittedly, I'm a bit biased
in this regard.

A Scanner Darkly - Phillip K Dick

~~~
ganeumann
Good list. Nit: Crossing to Safety is Wallace Stegner

~~~
cjarrett
Whoopsies, apparently Gaddis has been on my mind lately!

------
gvand
For those interested, the pdf of the datacenter book is freely available on
the publisher's site:
[https://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/10.2200/S00874ED3V01Y2018...](https://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/10.2200/S00874ED3V01Y201809CAC046)

------
jeff76
I don’t understand why people recommend books like “a programmers introduction
to mathematics”.

They’re advertised as books for “programmers” or people that know little math,
yet they hide solutions from the reader.

The reader that doesn’t know proper proofs or deep mathematics likely isn’t
the same ones that know if their solutions are correct.

Programmers like to write code with test cases. We don’t like to write code
once and trust there are no bugs. So, why would we want to write mathematics
any differently? How is a beginner math student even going to know if their
answers are correct? I’m sure someone reading this will say “you’re robbing
the reader” if you provide solutions. I don’t agree with that. That’s a bit of
gatekeeping because not everyone has access to a TA or professor and we’d
really like to learn this stuff and know if we’re on the right track.

Are there any actual math text with solutions that are better than the one
advertised in this list?

~~~
crispyambulance

        > So, why would we want to write mathematics any differently?
    

I think you're stretching the unit-test-to-mathematics analogy a little too
far.

I haven't looked at the book in question, but generally, you don't just "know
if" your solution is correct, you prove it, or at least consider examples that
can demonstrate if your solution works in some conceivable cases. That's how
"unit tests" work in mathematics.

If the book has armed you with enough knowledge to work though a problem to
the end, it has done it's job. The real test will come as you build on that
knowledge later on in the book or in real-life applications.

Moreover, it's not like this stuff is obscure knowledge. You can find help
online or by looking at other books or connecting with others.

~~~
jeff76
The point isn’t we need to do formal verification to test correctness. It’s
that you probably wouldn’t write a program first pass and assume it is but
free. So, why would you assume beginners that don’t know how to write proofs
would write correct proofs without feedback to check?

~~~
crispyambulance
Absolute beginners may not able to write an actual proof that their answer is
correct, but at least they can verify that it satisfies the problem (depending
on the actual problem).

In any case, since the study of mathematics is cumulative. Even if the student
can't prove or verify that their answer to a specific problem is correct they
will eventually reach a point, often within the same problem-set, where
inability to solve a problem will force them to encounter their
gaps/misconceptions.

The most important thing in a mathematics text, as with any other text, is
lucidity of writing and the preparation of the student.

~~~
jeff76
The issue isn’t just that the person can’t write a valid proof, but that the
person thinks they have a valid proof, but it is actually invalid and they
don’t have feedback to know it.

------
099812477
Is there a HN Goodreads collection, or similar? Lots of lists like this (inc.
my own:
[https://www.productgems.io/library/](https://www.productgems.io/library/))
but would love to see something centralised when in search of a new book to
read (that's not a generic top 10).

~~~
sefrost
This website has a list of books talked about on HN:
[https://hackernewsbooks.com](https://hackernewsbooks.com)

~~~
metaphor
Another functional equivalent:
[https://toptalkedbooks.com/hackernews](https://toptalkedbooks.com/hackernews)

~~~
rgrieselhuber
I personally find Hacker News Books to be easier on the eyes.

------
decebalus1
> The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change:
> Every single book list should include Camille’s book. It is a great read for
> managers and non-managers and has given me the tools for knowing what is
> normal and what is not.

Ugh.. no. If there was a book I read this year which read as if it was written
for the sake of writing a book, it was 'The Manager's Path'. It was a series
of insipid blog posts consisting of frequent itemizations of 'truths'. So many
repetitions that I legit thought I mis-touched my kindle when turning pages a
couple of times as I felt I read the same paragraph twice across a couple of
chapters. Looking at the table of contents it looks as if it's fairly
organized but when you're reading it, it's mostly all over the place. Also, if
you spent more than a couple of years in the industry nothing in the book
should be a surprise.

I was so hyped before reading the book as literally everyone recommended it
but honestly it fell short for a generic non-fiction read.

~~~
iamsomewalrus
I disagree. I found the book enlightening as I was experiencing growing pains
moving to a more senior role on my team (less time for getting things done,
more time helping others, etc) and this book helped me realize that it was to
be expected.

That may be obvious for others, but it wasn't for me.

~~~
decebalus1
I'm glad you found value in reading it, I truly do. And I am well aware I'm
not like others. Just wanted to give my 2c about the book.

------
ai_ia
I recently read Shoe Dogs and boy that was an eye opening experience. I loved
it very much that I re read it. You can literally feel the excitement of Phil
through his words. Maybe it was because I was doing something similar i.e
starting my own thing. But still it's a book, everyone can take away
something. 10/10

~~~
diego_moita
> I recently read Shoe Dogs

I suspect you're referring to "Shoe Dog" (singular, not plural) by Phil Knight
describing the early history of Nike.

It is a fascinating book, indeed.

~~~
ai_ia
Yes. My bad. Shoe Dog.

------
mrmondo
I can’t recommend ‘“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a
Curious Character’ highly enough, a truly brilliant read (or listen) and many
years later I find myself thinking back to it frequently.

------
foamclutching
"Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard" got my attention. Even if
it's from 2010, I still find it valuable. I bought it and now it's just me and
my kindle :D

Thank you for your book recommendations.

------
jogundas
Is there a way to know if "Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to
Detect Deception" is based on solid scientific evidence?

~~~
ChristianGeek
In short, no. It is based on the experience of 3 former CIA officers and
theories and methodology one of them has developed as a result.

------
tammer
Tangent: are we witnessing the beginning of a new design trend? I feel like
every app & website that’s popped up recently is designed in something like a
“modern” version of an 8-bit/retro aesthetic. (Hence the terminal-purple &
courier font here, but many more examples abound).

~~~
alexharrisnyc
I don't see any terminal-purple on this page.

------
zneveu
Ooh, nice TTS, sounds good!

------
miles_matthias
+1 for Quiet. Great book.

~~~
cwbrandsma
I’m reading this now, and am about half way thru. I wish I would have read
this before Deep Work.

------
yuy910616
none of her links are affiliate? Am I reading that correctly?

That might the the more shocking thing lol

------
tugberkk
I would be glad if there was a little information about the author of the
blog. I do not know who jess fraz is, why would I bother to see his/her
recommendations?

It would be pretty nice for posters to put some additional information about
the topic rather than just posting a link.

~~~
kojackst
What I know about her is that she was a member of the Docker team and now
works for Microsoft. She seems like a good professional and is popular among
those who are into twitter, blogging and events, but I don't know if there's
anything particular remarkable about her (if you are thinking about
celebrities such as Ritchie, Linus, Stallman and others).

~~~
codemusings
According to her Twitter that gig at Microsoft already ended.

------
caiocaiocaio
I can't believe someone could read Feynman's sandwich story and still
recommend that book.

~~~
buzzdenver
Feynman's book is definitely super sexist by modern standards. I wasn't around
in the 60s and 70s to know if his was the general attitude, or an outlier.

To me, the book is decent for background listening during chores or driving
(it is a free audiobook if your library has an associated Hoopla account), but
almost all stories boil down to either "I was such a horny guy", or "I used
different math tools which allowed me to solve the physics problem", which
gets old after a while.

~~~
caiocaiocaio
His behaviour was sexist enough to elicit massive protests because he kept
sexually harassing his female students. The earliest protests against him were
in the 60s.

