
Ask HN: What are you reading? - selmat
What book would you recommend to read next?
======
kazinator
I'm reading a book called "じょうぶな子どもをつくる基本食": Joubuna Kodomo-o Tsukuru
Kihonshoku. ("Base Diet for making Strong/Healthy Kids").

It's a book about child nutrition that disparages all foreign influences in
Japanese eating and encourages everything traditional. Steamed rice, miso
soup, tsukemono and so on. Plus various parenting advice around food as well
as not.

Non-traditional foods influenced by foreign cultures, in particular Europe and
America, are blamed for all sorts of ills and ailments of the skin, bowel and
whatnot, not to mention cancer.

Quite entertaining.

[https://www.amazon.co.JP/じょうぶな子どもをつくる基本食-幕内-
秀夫/dp/4072292281](https://www.amazon.co.JP/じょうぶな子どもをつくる基本食-幕内-
秀夫/dp/4072292281)

~~~
jamessantiago
Interesting. Reminds me of the life story of a safety inspector that was born
and lived in Okinawa. He basically went through a period where rice was mostly
for the rich and then through WWII as a child to which americans prescribed a
ration of milk and cheese to kids to improve nutritian. He was fairly short in
stature and said he regretted not taking the milk and cheese as he though it
would have helped him grow taller. Okinawans were famed for living a really
long time though. I think the running theory at the time was due to pork and
that pickle looking vegetable (can't think of the name).

------
quietthrow
1) Man’s Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl 2) Can’t hurt me - David Goggins
3) Meditations -Marcus Aurelius

#LifeChanging

~~~
drakonka
I just finished Can't Hurt Me, it was a solid read though not quite the kind
of thing I usually go for. I can't say I want to follow Goggins-level
suffering by his example, but reading about his commitment to self-improvement
and accomplishment really drove home just how far one can push on sheer
willpower and hard work. I've certainly taken some actionable learnings. I
hope you're enjoying the book.

~~~
quietthrow
I loved the book. Totally agree with you. It’s not about being like him; it
about finding your own limits and hopefully in the process do more that you
could have ever imagined.

------
gashaw
Programming on Purpose - best book I read on software design so far.

Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst - explaing human behavior
from many points of view, well written and mind blowing.

~~~
tmaly
Which volume of Programming on Purpose are you reading?

~~~
gashaw
I read the first one, "essays on software design".

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tmaly
I am currently reading How to Read a Book. I would recommend it as it covers
how to read different kinds of text and analytical reading.

Its a practical book

~~~
mbrock
Ironically I started that one but never managed to finish it.

I still got something out of it though, so I suppose that's one way to read a
book.

The basic advice I took from it is to treat a book like it's an artifact that
you're investigating, almost like a city. You start by looking at the map to
get an overview, then you can visit some of the major attractions, and then
you can start to spend more time really getting to know some neighborhoods.

So with a book you familiarize yourself with the table of contents to know
roughly how the argument or presentation proceeds; then you might for example
skim the conclusion to see more clearly what the author is trying to
accomplish; then you can pick a particular chapter or section that's of
definite interest to you; and so on.

(This is all centered on reading for learning, not for pleasure.)

It's a lot like how to read a program. A book is presented much more linearly
than a program, but actually nothing is really linear. Narrative plots may be,
but you don't have to follow the plot of a monograph.

It makes me weirdly excited to think about book-length arguments as _being_
programs, or functions in a kind of stoner misreading of the Curry-Howard
isomorphism. So maybe you can even make an analysis of the "data structures"
and "algorithms" used by a certain book. You might see one book as resembling
a compiler, another as resembling a compression program. This may stretch the
analogy too far.

But certainly books refer in a similar way that programs do. They make calls
out to external sources, hopefully unambiguously declared and semantically
versioned. Sometimes it's crucial to actually check those references. Truly
reading a book might be a larger project than just reading one particular
book.

I think there could be a deeper argument about relating the freedom of thought
in the public sphere of literacy to the free software movement, which you can
see a glimpse of in Richard Stallman's essay _The Right to Read_...

~~~
tmaly
I am still early on in the book, but I agree I have gotten something out of it
already. I always read the preface and the dust cover, but I never thought to
look at the table of contents.

The part I am most interested in is in regards to the analytical reading and
discerning the structure of the arguments.

------
WMCRUN
Superintelligence - Nick Bostrom

The most cogent survey of the existential risk posed by superintelligent AGI
that I’ve come across.

------
leahcim
The Hidden Life of Trees [https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-
Communicate_Discove...](https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-
Communicate_Discoveries-Secret/dp/1771642483)

------
jriot
City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300 -> Great
insight into the history of New Orleans, and how the diverse culture from its
beginning has shaped the city we love today.

and

A Confederacy of Dunces -> Hilarious yet well-written book.

------
rmason
The messy middle by Scott Belsky

The founder of Behance covers the journey towards product market fit. It's
where most startup's fail and yet very little has been written about that part
of the software entrepreneurs journey.

------
FilthyAnalyst
Seveneves. By Neal Stevenson. Lots of great ideas. A bit slow at times.

------
petecox
I recently read the short story Omnilingual by H Beam Piper (1957).

A planet becomes extinct due to climate change and a team of archaelogists are
sent to study its civilisation.

------
croo
Why we sleep

Great readable book with lots of experiments, results and conclusions. It also
made me stop drinking coffee after ~2 pm

------
MattLeBlanc001
Lean Startup.

This is an eye opener for me as a SaaS newbie. A must read for anyone trying
to build a startup.

------
drakonka
Right now I'm reading Essentials of Discrete Mathematics and going through the
exercises.

------
karolist
The Go Programming Language

------
ozychhi
Skin in the Game by Taleb

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darnkavi
13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do by Amy Morin

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paulorlando
The Fractal Geometry of Nature, by Benoit Mandlebrot

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pknerd
\- Thinking Fast and Slow \- Dollar Trap.

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notomorrow
Permutation city

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zgniatacz
Egypt Before The Pharaohs - Michael A Hoffman

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TearsOfTheRiver
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Memosyne
The Transparent Society by David Brin.

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preordained
Dune

