
Ask HN: Books you read in 2015? - dbalan
I&#x27;d like to know which books HN read this year. Did you like them or hate them?
======
dcolgan
Some of the books I enjoyed the most and found most helpful:

\- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan
Cain - Helped me better understand myself and others, highly recommend

\- The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey - Advice on mastering the
mental part of doing anything, not just tennis

\- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo - actually maybe the
most important book I've read in a while, helped me throw away a lot of stuff
I didn't need

\- Models by Mark Manson - very helpful and ethical advice on attracting women
for people like me who never really quite figured it out

\- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B.
Irvine- discussion of a philosophy of life that seems like it would work well
for modern living

~~~
jdimov10
I can vouch for two of these. I read "The Inner Game of Tennis" last year,
because it was recommended to me. It is the kind of book that I would never
pick up on my own based on the title. Luckily, the book contents has almost
nothing to do with the title :)

Marie Kondo's book on tidying up is also of delightfully broader utility than
the title implies. I just recently finished it - it is a surprisingly
insightful book and a real pleasure to read. Highly recommended!

------
DanBC
Mostly kids books. These stood out - I've read each of these at least 30
times.

This is not my hat: [http://www.amazon.com/This-Is-Not-My-
Hat/dp/0763655996](http://www.amazon.com/This-Is-Not-My-Hat/dp/0763655996)

Smelly Louie: [http://www.amazon.com/Smelly-Louie-Catherine-
Rayner/dp/14472...](http://www.amazon.com/Smelly-Louie-Catherine-
Rayner/dp/1447271807/)

WOLVES: [http://www.amazon.com/Wolves-Emily-
Gravett/dp/1405053623/](http://www.amazon.com/Wolves-Emily-
Gravett/dp/1405053623/)

Gorilla: [http://www.amazon.com/Gorilla-Anthony-
Browne/dp/0763673668/](http://www.amazon.com/Gorilla-Anthony-
Browne/dp/0763673668/)

Goodnight, goodnight, construction site: [http://www.amazon.com/Goodnight-
Construction-Sherri-Duskey-R...](http://www.amazon.com/Goodnight-Construction-
Sherri-Duskey-Rinker/dp/0811877825/)

The Promise: [http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Nicola-
Davies/dp/0763666335/](http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Nicola-
Davies/dp/0763666335/)

Some of these won the Kate Greenaway Award - an award for excellent
illustration. I've made a partial list here (this is an ugly list because I
just needed a list of all the books in one place, with links to amazon, and
I'm too lazy to do more now it works):
[http://danbc.neocities.org/index.html](http://danbc.neocities.org/index.html)

The official list is here.
[http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/](http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/)

~~~
japhyr
Have you seen The Boy Who Loved Math? It's a bio of Paul Erdos written for
kids, and we've really enjoyed it.

[http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Loved-Math-
Improbable/dp/15964...](http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Loved-Math-
Improbable/dp/1596433078/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

------
Jach
_Meditations_ \- Marcus Aurelius -- A fine classic I enjoyed.

Might count, might not, since it finished in March but was going on before. I
loved _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ \- Eliezer Yudkowsky -
[http://hpmor.com/](http://hpmor.com/)

Loved _Masters of Doom_ \- David Kushner

I liked _Worm_ \- Wildbow - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-
contents/](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/) \-- but it
falls short of overall greatness and I don't think it's worth its 22-average-
books length if I were to go back in time and decide on rereading...

 _Learn to Play Go: A Master 's Guide to the Ultimate Game (Volume I)_ \-
Janice Kim -- I've been learning Go and thought this book was particularly
excellent for beginners.

There are at least 4 other books I'm close to finishing and I might get one
done before the end of the month... Volume 2 of the above Go series, _Mythical
Man-Month_ , _A handbook of traditional living_ , or _The Waking Dream_.

~~~
sundarurfriend
> Meditations - Marcus Aurelius -- A fine classic I enjoyed.

Which version did read, and where did you get it? The translation I found on
Gutenberg was too archaic and hard to understand.

~~~
Jach
Sorry, missed this. For _Meditations_ I actually listened to it on audio book:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXcmkSqAqTI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXcmkSqAqTI)
I'm not sure which translation it is, looks like George Long's from
[http://www.amazon.com/Meditations/dp/B004INMVDY](http://www.amazon.com/Meditations/dp/B004INMVDY)
but I also remember browsing
[http://www.bartleby.com/2/3/](http://www.bartleby.com/2/3/) a few times
afterwards and thought it was readable (much better than the Gutenberg one).

------
n3on_net
There are several books I read, still want to increase my reading amount:

1\. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", nice bio about Feynman

2\. "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future",
inspiring biography and business book.

3\. "Apollo" by Catherine Bly Cox. Awesome book about Apollo Programm. Goes
even in some technical details.

4\. "Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies". Very good and
thorough book about bitcoins, the author implements most import concept in the
book.

5\. "F'D Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts". I seldom don't recommend a
book, but this one is hard to tell. It is interesting read about a lot of
failed dot-com era companies. But the layout and writing style looks like an
automatic rip-off of some blog articles (I read on kindle). It's not totally
bad, but be warned before buying. Try some free chapters.

6\. "Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down", good layman general
introduction into static. Nice overview why all the buildings/bridges etc
around you don't fall apart.

7\. "Never Eat Alone", Classics of networking. Actually basic stuff that
people probably already know about networking. But still good to read, and
author always shows examples on successful persons or himself.

8\. "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for
the Ultimate Theory", reading this at the moment. Very nice and simple
introduction to relativity theory and quantum mechanics. I finished around 100
pages and like it.

I read 8 books this year. My aim is around 2 books/month.

Reading can make difference.

~~~
thomnottom
Good luck. I was just getting back into regularly reading a couple years ago.
Tried for 1/month. Then it was 1-2. Now it's 3-4. Feels great - although I
have to remind myself that it's okay if I don't reach some sort of quota each
month.

~~~
n3on_net
Very nice. How many hours per day do you read for 3-4 books/month?

~~~
thomnottom
About 30-60 minutes per day. Every couple of weeks I'll hit a point in one of
the books where I'll just read the rest of it in a couple hours. Of course
these numbers all depend on the books - this year did not include anything
longer than 500 pages.

Also, don't get too hung up on the numbers. The past couple months were hectic
and my pace has really slowed down, and that's totally fine.

~~~
ocfx
Aha I get that way with the end of most books. I just power through the last
20 percent of it in one sitting. Must... have... closure...

------
projektir
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown - discussion of shame culture, its effects on
people, and how to combat it - pretty good book about a topic that doesn't get
raised often enough, even if I don't agree with everything the author says.

The Sports Gene by David Epstein - how genetics may affect sport performance
(and not only that); a bit of a counterpoint to Gladwell's Outliers - probably
my favorite book this year.

The Martian by Andy Weir - a guy tries to survive on Mars - found this one
rather bland. I would have liked to see more psychology and less calculations,
and I am not sure how I feel about its presentation of the scientific
community.

~~~
jharohit
you found The Martian bland ?! That's...I am...speechless. It is an amazing
book. The characters are superbly fleshed out and Andy Weir's humour is par
excellence. The calculations were not tedious at all. LOL - if you stuck on
Mars, calculations are you best friend. I think the author has actually dumbed
it down quite a lot TBH.

~~~
EliRivers
I also found it bland; it became repetitive and dull. Problem, exposition of
solution, repeat. The character interaction, by the nature of the plot, was
pretty minimal and almost all the problems were technical - there was very
little inter-character conflict or character development. At the end of the
novel, everyone was pretty much the same as they were at the beginning. The
journey was entirely physical, and the dangers were personal.

I am befuddled that you say the characters were superbly fleshed out; I found
them rather two-dimensional, and some of them clearly existed only because
there needed to be more people hanging around.

~~~
palimpsests
I completely agree – very unrealistic characters (maybe that's why there was
no character development). Also there was a lot of exposition about how
extraordinarily 'funny' the main character was and I didn't get that at all,
it felt very heavy handed with the jokes. Also, the bit about cannibalism made
no sense whatsoever.

------
Pietertje
I'll skip some mentioned already by others. Books I really enjoyed this year:

The Wright Brothers, David McCullough - wonderful book on the Wright Brothers,
easy to read, shows that persistence and logic thinking pays out. 5/5

The autobiography of Malcom X, Malcolm X - Nice bio, a bit repetitive
sometimes. 3/5

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - Although the book has more than 1200 pages it
really kept me going. I read this book to get a better understanding of the
ideology of some republicans. Fun read. 4.5/5

Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt - Levitt studies all kind of different everyday
questions using economics. 4/5, short, easy to read

Guantanamo Diary, Mohamedou Ould Slahi - Diary of a Guantanamo prisoner who
has been imprisoned since 2002. The US has never charged him with a crime.
Profound and disturbing. 5/5

No place to hide, Glenn Greenwald - Story on Edward Snowden, probably read by
most of HN. Enjoyed it, that's it. 4/5

How to lie with statistics, Darrel Huff - Short book on statistics, easy to
read and fun. 4/5

~~~
iandanforth
Atlas Shrugged needs to come with a warning label.

"If you are male and between the ages of 13 and 21 this book should be
considered harmful and potentially dangerous. If you are high achieving
academically but socially awkward you should not read this book as it may
exacerbate anti-social personality disorders."

~~~
Pietertje
Well... yes and no... Rand divides all the characters into two groups, to put
it simple into the socialists and the capitalists. The capitalists get the
virtues of honesty, integrity and are rational and so on, while the socialists
are depicted as dishonest, corrupt, irrational etc.

If you fail to understand these characteristics are not necessarily tied to
either of the groups, yes the warning label is appropriate. If you do
understand this - and I hope some males between the ages of 13 and 21 do -
this book can help you improve your attitude towards work. After reading Atlas
Shrugged I must say I'm more eager to get things done and ignore pessimistic
people who think things simply cannot be done because it is a lot of work.

It definitely helped me.

------
hkmurakami
"Shopgirl" \- Steve Martin - short and poignant. Recommended.

"Madame Bovary" \- Gustave Flaubert - Considered to be one of the masterpieces
of literature, but it's so long that I can't really recommend it.

"The Sales Acceleration Formula" \- Mark Roberge - I'd recommend this to any
entrepreneur.

"Status Anxiety" \- Alain de Botton - A pretty good pop scienc-y psychology
book.

"Zero to One" \- Peter Thiel - A philosophy book imo.

"Tokyo Vice" \- Jake Adelstein - A look at the underbelly of Japanese society.

"Capitalism and the Jews" \- Jerry Muller - A very good overview of the
intersection of the Jewish faith and culture with their business success.

"The Richest Man in Babylon" \- George S. Clayson - A personal finance
parable. Recommended.

"The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" \- Marie Kondo - A philosophy book.
Worth a look even if you don't ascribe to its teachings.

~~~
orky56
Just curious why you found "Zero to One" to be a philosophy book? Despite its
academic approach, it was surprisingly practical even if not many
startups/entrepreneurs would find it accessible right away in their first
venture.

~~~
hkmurakami
I think the book is predominantly about Thiel's view of the world, which in
turn is his philosophy.

------
fmax30
I had read zero books by April 2015. Have read the following since then.

1\. 1984 by Orwell

2\. Animal Farm by Orwell

3\. 40 Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

4\. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

5\. The Man in the high castle by Philip k Dic

6\. Tuesdays with morrie by Mitch Albom

7\. Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie

8\. The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell

9\. Veronica Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

10\. The Little Prince by antoine saint exupery

11\. A Monster calls by Patrick ness

Books that I am currently reading very very slowly ( 1-3 chapters per week )

1\. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking

2\. The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Murakami (I am really enjoying the slow
reading here)

3\. Zen and art of motorcycle by Robert Pirsig

Edit: Formatting

------
yetanotheracc
Absolutely amazing, changed the way I look at the society, will re-read:

\- George Orwell, _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_

Loved:

\- Alastair Reynolds, _House of Suns_

\- Andy Weir, _The Martian_

\- Neal Stephenson, _Seveneves_

\- Greg Egan, _Teranesia_

Liked:

\- Arthur C. Clarke, _3001: The Final Odyssey_

\- Arthur C. Clarke, _2061: Odyssey Three_

\- Richard Feynman, _The Character of Physical Laws_

\- Richard Feynman, _The Pleasure of Finding Things Out_

\- Jonathan Slack, _Stem Cells: A Very Short Introduction_

\- John Scalzi, _Fuzzy Nation_ (bought the audiobook for Wil Wheaton's
narration)

\- Ray Monk, _Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center_

\- Alastair Reynolds, _Revelation Space_

\- David C. Cassidy, _Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the
Bomb_

Found full of BS, did not finish:

\- Noam Chomsky, _Understanding Power_

Textbooks:

\- order of 10^3 pages of Open University textbooks

\- Klauber, _Student Friendly Quantum Field Theory_

\- Feynman & Hibbs, _Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals_

\- Wald, _General Relativity_ (5 chapters)

\- Peskin & Schroeder, _An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory_ (5 chapters)

Not as bad as I felt before making the list, but underwhelming in terms of
quantity. I intend to read a whole lot more in 2016.

~~~
proxyswapi
I just bought "Understanding Power". Why do you think it's BS?

~~~
yetanotheracc
Overall, I think the views presented in the book are superficial and do not
give significant insight into power relations underlying the decision making.
The wider context is often ignored. A lot of bold, unjustified statements that
sound like a piece of propaganda. I just opened the book at a random page and
found this: _There are lots of planned economies-the United States is a
planned economy, for example. I mean, we talk about ourselves as a "free
market," but that's baloney. The only parts of the U.S. economy that are
internationally competitive are the planned parts._

For example, his treatment of the Cold War. Like many people whose countries
fell on the dark side of the Iron Curtain, I am grateful for all that the US
did to contain and defeat the Soviet Union. When countries like Poland were
oppressed under the communist rule which was in some ways more destructive
than the second world war, Chomsky would have liked to let a large chunk of
the third world fall under the same yoke just to avoid confrontation and
casualties. This is a view that I find dangerous, ignorant and BS.

One could get a much more objective, fuller and clearer picture of things as
well as appreciation of the complexities involved by getting an international
relations textbook such as _International Relations Since 1945_ by Kent or a
lighter read, _The Global Cold War_ by Westad.

------
scorchio
Leave it to Psmith - 10/10 Anna Karenina - 8/10 The Code of the Woosters 8/10
Fooled by Randomness 7/10 Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with
Everyday Life 8/10 How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia 9/10 Reluctant
Fundamentalist 9/10 The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes 8/10 The Last
Question - Asimov - 9/10 The Magic of Thinking Big - 6/10 The catcher in the
Rye 8/10 Models 7/10 High Fidelity - Nick Hornby 8/10 The Ocean at the End of
the Lane - Neil Gaiman 7/10 The Surrender Experiment - 10/10 Untethered Soul -
9/10 The Autobiography of a Yogi - 7/10 Raja Yoga - Swami Vikekandanda - 7/10
Something Fresh, something new - 7/10 Karma Yoga - Swami Vikekandanda - 8/10
Thinking, Fast and Slow - 9/10 Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates 10/10
The Pearl by John Steinbeck 7/10

~~~
martythemaniak
Leave it to Psmith - 10/10

Anna Karenina - 8/10

The Code of the Woosters 8/10

Fooled by Randomness 7/10

Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life 8/10

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia 9/10

Reluctant Fundamentalist 9/10

The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes 8/10

The Last Question - Asimov - 9/10

The Magic of Thinking Big - 6/10

The catcher in the Rye 8/10

Models 7/10

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby 8/10

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman 7/10

The Surrender Experiment - 10/10

Untethered Soul - 9/10

The Autobiography of a Yogi - 7/10

Raja Yoga - Swami Vikekandanda - 7/10

Something Fresh, something new - 7/10

Karma Yoga - Swami Vikekandanda - 8/10

Thinking, Fast and Slow - 9/10

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates 10/10

The Pearl by John Steinbeck 7/10

------
Hortinstein
I read quite a few others that have been mentioned here, but I finally read
two that hard sci-fi books that should appeal to the Hacker News crowd

Permutation City: People can run simulations of themselves or entirely migrate
their consciousness into computer programs, but existence is often limited to
the amount of computation that you can afford, leading to slow existences that
stretch time into fractions of realtime. That premise had me hooked, but the
book has fantastic thought provoking plot points throughout. Highly
recommended. [http://www.amazon.com/Permutation-City-Novel-Greg-
Egan/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/Permutation-City-Novel-Greg-
Egan/dp/1597805394)

Blindsight: Amazing first alien encounter book that should be read by everyone
that is a fan of the genre. Memorable cast of characters...the Vampires are
really interesting. All kinds of introductory scientific concepts throughout.
Entertaining and educational. [http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-
Watts/dp/0765319640/r...](http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-
Watts/dp/0765319640/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450882718&sr=1-1&keywords=blindsite)

~~~
stuxnet79
Permutation City has a brilliant premise but I found sections of it mostly
unreadable and I can't say I enjoyed it very much. Egan would have been better
served presenting the content in an essay format.

Egan's more unforgiving stories are an acquired taste IMO. I started out with
his short stories and found them enjoyable when there wasn't so much
pretentious info-dumping and preaching. Permutation City felt like one of his
harder to parse short stories stretched to the length of a novel.

Blindsight is on my Kobo right now, but after reading Permutation City I'm
scared to start reading it because I don't want to reach halfway and want to
chuck it like I did Permutation City.

On a more positive note, I just want to say that I liked how prescient the
novel was in foretelling AWS.

~~~
birdperson
> Blindsight is on my Kobo right now, but after reading Permutation City I'm
> scared to start reading it because I don't want to reach halfway and want to
> chuck it like I did Permutation City.

I read Blindsight before Permutation City. The way he describes the situations
and the way his characters are often extremely confusing. But you get used to
it at some point along the way. The story line itself and the Aliens are
somewhat off the left field which makes the story very interesting. I
personally liked it.

Permutation City is, on the other hand, simply boring as hell. Drier than ye
olde Abstract Algebra textbook.

------
musgravepeter
"Leaving Orbit - Notes from the last days of American spaceflight" \-
pleasantly sentimental view of the wind down of the shuttle program.

"The Dark Forest" 2nd installment in Three Body Problem series. Quite clever.

"This Changes Everything" \- triggered by a quote from the doc on the radio
about trying not to think about climate change and whether it's possible to be
bored by the end of the world. Lots of good info (including a visit to a
climate deniers conference), bit long winded.

"The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics". If I read only 10% still
worth it. Lots of things to dip into.

"The Astronomer and the Witch" Kepler fights to save his mother from
persecution.

~~~
bargl
I loved the Dark Forest. The whole series is awesome.

------
Sherlock
"The Magicians", "The Magician King", "The Magician's Land" \- Lev Grossman.
4/5

"Inside Job" \- Connie Willis. 4/5

"Norwegian Wood (Tokio Blues)" \- Haruki Murakami. 4/5

"Old Man's War" \- John Scalzi. 5/5

"Persepolis" \- Marjane Satrapi. 5/5

Non fiction:

"The 10,000 year explosion" about recent evolution. 3/5 ton of evidence for
their thesis, but lacks predictions.

"What if" well known by HN. 5/5

"The nurture assumption" about education, 2/5\. Maybe a 4/5 when it was
published, but now their ideas are in the water supply.

"The man who mistook his wife for a hat", by Oliver Sacks 4/5\. Several
stories about neurological deficits.

------
ycom13__
Here are all the ones I read this year

    
    
      A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin
      A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin
      The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth
      House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk
      To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
      Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
      Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender
      George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade
      Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt
      Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
      Finders Keepers: A Novel by Stephen King
      The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman
      The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
      Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
      The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
      Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute by Emma Craigie
      The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
      Robopocalypse: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by Daniel H. Wilson
      Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson
      In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
    
    
    

My 5 favorite ones from that list are

    
    
      In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
      Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
      To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
      Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
      The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

~~~
Pietertje
What is your opinion on The Guns of August? I'm still looking for a good book
on World War I.

~~~
ycom13__
I liked it a lot, it is really good. I would definitely recommend it to anyone
wanting to learn about WW I. Also highly recommended is Dan Carlin's 6 part
podcast series Blueprint for Armageddon Here is the link to episode I
[http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-50-bluepri...](http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/)

~~~
Pietertje
Thanks for the info, I've added it to my to-read list.

------
acj
"Chasing the Scream" \- a timely and interesting summary of the war on drugs
and its (in)effectiveness.

"Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard" \- a fun book about fungi from a mycologist with a
solid sense of humor.

"On the Move" \- Oliver Sacks's biography. Insightful and uplifting,
especially if you enjoy writing.

"Ready Player One" \- a dystopian cyber thriller. Reminded me of Snow Crash.
Good stuff.

"The Last Place on Earth" \- a good (if labored) summary of the races to the
north and south poles and their geopolitical impacts.

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" \- been on my list for years. Long
but good.

"Steve Jobs" \- needs no introduction. Got me interested in Isaacson's other
books.

"Hallucinations" (Oliver Sacks) - insightful analysis of the prevalence and
for-reaching effects of hallucination. It's a lot more common (and puzzling)
than most of us realize.

------
wushupork
Traction by Justin Mares, Gabriel Weinberg - would probably reread

Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

How to Fail at Almost Everything by Scott Adams - great read Scaling Up By
Verne Harnish

Great By Choice by Jim Collins - love the whole series

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes - probably worth a reread

How to Win at the Sport of Business By Mark Cuban - good read

Elon Mush by Ashlee Vance - need I say more

The Hard Thing about Hard Things By Ben Horowitz

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg - probably need to deeply absorb this - a
lot of good stuff

Copy This! By Paul Orfalea - another good "small business" entrepreneur book

The E-Myth Revisited By Michael Gerber - 2nd time read. Got more out of it
this time.

The People's Tycoon (Ford) by Steven Watts - I love reading about businessmen
from this age

Scrum by JJ Sutherland Jeff Sutherland - good read for development teams

------
danso
I re-read Dune for the first time since I was a kid. Boy that did not hold up
well. The world and lore building, which is what I guess I fondly remember,
were still fantastic. The constant inner dialogues, not so much.

------
dbalan
I finished "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman - A slow read, but a good one.
He talks about the intricacies and surprising observations about how me take
decisions.

"Logicomix" \- A brief "history" of logic, its not always historically
accurate. Did I tell you its a graphic novel?

"Show Your work" \- Aston Kleon - A short motivating read about sharing ones
work, he makes some good arguments for sharing the process as well, not just
the product.

Picked up "Coders at work" \- read two chapters, a great read so far (I know
its pretty popular one amoung HN)

------
louisrochal
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" \- Nietzsche (French Translation) - 5/5 An absolute
Must read.

"1984" \- Orwell - 5/5 French law on surveillance made me want to read it
again

"Fahrenheit 451" \- Ray Bradbury - 4/5

"La zone du dehors" \- Alain Damasio - 4/5

"The name of the wind" \- Patrick Rothfuss - 4/5 A great fantasy story. It's a
big book, there is a lot of details, but very well written.

"Stranger in a Strange Land" \- Robert A. Heinlein - 3/5 Awesome concept, but
very slow

"The Inverted World" \- Christopher Priest - 4/5 Great short book

~~~
partomniscient
Robert A. Heinlein, not Valentine Michael Smith (although he features heavily
in the story).

~~~
louisrochal
Haha sorry! Edited

------
necessity
Philip K. Dicks's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?": Liked the movie
(Blade Runner) better, but not bad.

Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms": While reading it I found it extremely
boring, though there was this feel to it that still made it pleasant to read.
I can't really describe it.

Plutarch's "Lives" from the main figures from the end of the Republic (Penguin
Classics collection): By far the best books on Roman history I've ever read.

Livy's books on the Second Punic War (Penguin Classics collection): A bit
extensive, very detailed. I liked Plutarch's better (even though he's a bit
more imaginative according to modern historians), but nevertheless a great
read.

Various books by Machado De Assis (Quincas Borba, Helena, among others):
National author, I just love his books, even though they all share a common
plot.

A book on Alexander the Great. Can't remember the author. It was a summary of
his life and conquers, very short but entertaining reading.

This year I'm planning to read some more Ancient History narrated by the
classics, some Shakespeare and maybe Nietzsche or Dante (heavy reading I
guess). I'm just as fond of history as of fiction, as Livy puts it:

 _I shall find in antiquity a rewarding study, if only because, while I am
absolved in it, I shall be able to turn my eyes from the troubles which for so
long have tormented the modern world..._

~~~
thomnottom
Reading "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was such a disappointment to me
because I loved the movie so much. I would like to revisit it - maybe I would
understand the parts about the empathy boxes and the wife's mood thing better
now.

~~~
scandox
I think it's important to recognise there is a minimal relationship between
book and movie. If one keeps them mentally discrete it is much easier to enjoy
both. Do Androids Dream... is a very spiritual book. The movie doesn't / can't
capture that element and wisely creates a totally different experience from
the same elements...

------
tmaly
The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway ( great book )

Hooked How to Build Habit-Forming Products - Nir Eyal ( great book very
insightful )

The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg ( interesting topic, long book )

Bandit Algorithms - John White ( great book, very short and easy to get
through )

Ask - Ryan Levesque ( interesting ideas on sales funnels for websites )

Predictable Revenue - Aaron Ross ( so so, I liked some of the sales ideas but
I see them used too often now )

Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley ( good book if you like the original
and want some fresh material )

------
1812Overture
Dune by Frank Herbert- I'm one of the few people on Earth who enjoys the David
Lynch adaptation so I finally had to get around to reading the book. Kind of
awkward stylistically and structurally but a lot of fun.

Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen - It's seemed to me that there are
political philosophies that focus on economic needs and those that focus on
personal freedom. This is the best I've read at uniting those concepts.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - A blast to read and great insight into
the thinking of a great mind.

The LA Quartet by James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA
Confidential, White Jazz) - Really the pinnacle of dark gritty noir. If you
like that I can't recommend highly enough.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett - I like a lot of Hammett's other work but
this seemed to have a lot of wheel spinning.

City of Quartz by Mike Davis - As an Angeleno this gave me so much insight
into the city I love. I have no idea if it would be of any interest to an
outsider.

Antifragile by Nassim Taleb - Nassim Taleb is great and I've definitely been
influenced a lot by his ideas, but he's getting too in love with the smell of
his own farts.

Various books/textbooks on programming and databases - Nothing thrilling in
this category. Gotta eat your vegetables.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
agree on Taleb Antifragile and it is an awesome book but oh man what an angry
person to follow on twitter or facebook. he is really becoming annoying and
breeds the same character in his followers which is quite a shame considering
the potential of his ideas.

~~~
bewe42
absolutely agree, in fact, for me I need to look beyond his constant anger to
not lose the value of his ideas. I also read "Bed of Procrustes" which I
couldn't finish.

------
thomnottom
I read a lot this year, so I'll just point out some highlights:

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - The highlight of the year. I'm now
partially through the 3rd book in the series. And amazing portrait of the
friendship between 2 girls as they grow up and try to escape the violence and
poverty of their small town in Naples.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - My guess is that plenty of people
here have read it. Great read about the fall of civilization due to a massive
flu outbreak.

Room by Emma Donoghue - Beautiful, heartbreaking, troubling and uplifting.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - A classic, glad to finally read it.

The Room by Jonas Karlsson - Absurdist take on corporate life about a man who
finds a room in his office building that shouldn't be there.

Welcome To Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor - For fans of the
podcast. I highly recommend both.

Uglies/Pretties/Specials by Scott Westerfeld - YA trilogy about a future in
which everybody is made pretty once they reach a certain age. Not great
literature, but a fun read. Although the second one is a little blah.

Get In Trouble by Kelly Link - Excellent collection of fantastical yet mundane
short stories.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine - Powerful exploration of race
in America. I feel like I need to read it a few more times.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - Still one of my favorite authors. Story of
a baby whose family is brutally murdered and ends up being raised by spirits
in a graveyard.

------
Diederich
One of the most interesting books I read was mentioned here on HN early this
year: A Thread Across the Ocean

[http://www.amazon.com/Thread-Across-Ocean-Heroic-
Transatlant...](http://www.amazon.com/Thread-Across-Ocean-Heroic-
Transatlantic/dp/0060524464)

It covers the beginnings of one of the most important historical legs that
most of our amazing technology rests on.

------
MuEta
The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson - It was 3000+ pages all told, and I LOVED
it. His writing has always enthralled me, and I was hooked from the start

Every Discworld Novel - Terry Pratchett - Not much can be said that hasn't
already been said a million times over. If you haven't read them yet, start
now

The Theory of Poker - David Sklansky - Helped out my poker game tremendously.
I'm much more ev+ now

~~~
gardano
Baroque Cycle, for sure.

And I'm stuck in a loop where I continue to read all the Discworld novels,
over and over…

~~~
MuEta
I can see that being an issue. I'm in the same habit with LOTR, ASOIAF and
Harry Potter, reading each series once every two years or so, and it crushes
my ability to read a lot of new books. I've avoided rereading Discworld so far
because I know that it will never be as magical as the first read through.

But oh god, Baroque Cycle was unparalleled from a character-building
perspective. I loved every second of it.

------
agentultra
Fifteen Dogs: an apologue of rare insight. Apollo and Hermes make a wager that
if dogs were given human intelligence they would die miserable, not happy.
This was my favorite this year.

The End of Vandalism: a tale of a love triangle in a small mid-western town.
Funny, dark, and a vivid portrait of that kind of town. A huge cast of
characters, some only on stage for a moment or two and yet each integral and
colorful.

The Annihilation Score: I love the series but this wasn't my favorite despite
starring one of my favorite characters for the first time.

The Rhesus Chart: Another of the Laundry Files series. A sanguinary disease
nearly brings down the Laundry. This one was snarky, good fun. One of my
favorites from the series.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A creepy masterpiece of haute fan-fiction.

Without Their Permission: The tale of a privileged, mediocre man extolling the
Libertarian virtues of the Internet. Anyone can open a laptop and get super
rich! Without anyone's permission! _Because that 's why we're not all rich
yet_.

The Internet Is Not The Answer: A counter-point from Andrew Keene to Alexis
Ohanian's unbridled optimism. Decent but not strong enough.

21st Century C: Amazing! Finally a practical book about C. The modern tool-set
available, the notable language features of C99 and C11, and a few in-depth
projects to pull it all together. Great book.

On Numbers And Games: A fabulous book by one of my mathematical heroes. Well
worth getting through it.

Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's classic. I started collecting the new Penguin
Classics line and the introductions are really insightful. These are well-
researched and produced editions.

The Nature of Things: The epic from Lucretius. It was really eye-opening to
finally read this book. Atomism, psychology, and poetic metaphors... from
thousands of years ago.

... probably more I'm forgetting.

------
laxatives
The Memory Book - Fantastic, maybe not always practical unless you have a lot
of practice, but extremely useful to at least understand some of the
strategies to memorizing strings

Understanding Weatherfax - for an attempted (and failed) circumnavigation

Sail Power

Kon Tiki

Shogun

Art of the Sailor

Business Adventures

Metamorphoses (by Ovid, not Kafka)

Guns, Germs, Steel

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - this book had so many rave
reviews. it has a tremendous hook and style for the first 50 pages, but
overall I thought it was terrible

Cryptonomicon -- fantastic

Simulacra and simulation -- started, but I need to start over. this is not an
easy read...

Predictably Irrational -- another book with great reviews, but reading this
book was not time well spent. the author just summarizes psychology
experiments with pages of dumbed down explanations and tedious anecdotes

The Alliance -- read this on my last day at my old job, a good reminder on the
social contract between you and your employer and how it should be mutually
beneficial, lots of boring filler though

Triple your reading speed -- I wanted to take a speed reading course when I
was in elementary school, but my dad thought it was a waste of time. I think I
really missed out on something, but late is better than never.

Siddhartha -- rereading of one of my favorite books of all time

The Alchemist -- rereading of one of my favorite books of all time

Jazz (by Leveaux)

The Jazz Piano Book

Mastering the Piano

Big Blue Book of bicycle maintenance

Probability (by Pitman) -- its embarassing statistics/probability isn't a
required course in many programs

Elements of Statistical Learning

Advanced Analytics with Spark -- feels like this book was published only 80%
done

Optimization Models (by Calafiore and El Ghaoui) -- going to finish this is
2016

Functional Programming with Scala -- going to finish this is 2016

Linux Programming Interface -- going to finish this is 2016

Finished 18 books cover to cover in 2015, 6 of which were textbooks/academic
texts. Currently have 7 in progress, 2 of which are piano workbooks and 3 are
textbooks.

Goal for 2016 is 30 books cover to cover, at least 8 textbooks/academic texts.

~~~
sp527
Could you expand a bit on your inclusion of 'Elements of Statistical
Learning'? That book is essentially the holy grail of ML understanding and I
find it difficult to believe you were able to grasp any meaningful proportion
of it in what must have been a very condensed span of reading/study time. But
maybe you're some kind of genius, in which case pardon me.

~~~
laxatives
No you're right, I read/skimmed it cover to cover, but that doesn't do that
book justice. I didn't do a single exercise and I really focused on the
sections that were relevant to what I was doing (Random Forests,
testing/validation). The author recommends maybe 4 or 5 chapters as required
reading in the forward so I read those much more thoroughly, but again,
skipped all of the exercises and the appendices. At the end of the day though,
I'm not going to be implementing these algorithms, I'm just using existing
libraries so I couldn't really justify the year+ of effort to go in depth on
everything. That book is also a summarization of a lot of techniques. If you
wanted more depth, I wouldn't think Elements of Statistical Learning is the
book for it. I'm hoping to get fill in some of those gaps through reading
Optimization Models a bit more closely.

------
garysieling
These are the ones I've liked best

Neal Thompson - "Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels,
and the Birth of NASCAR"

Dee Brown - "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"

Nicholas Johnson - "Big Dead Place" \- about living in Antartica

Mark Noll - "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis"

David Halberstam - "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War"

Stanley Karnnow - "In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines"

Esmerelda Santiago - "When I was Puerto Rican"

Lara Pawson - "In the Name of the People" (about Angola)

Marc Benioff - "Behind the Cloud" (surprisingly good for a business book)

Keith Anderson - "The Digital Cathedral" (book a friend of mine wrote, hard to
describe, but suprised me at how good it is)

Adam Hochschild - "King Leopold's Ghost" (how the Congo became a colony)

Jessica Livingston - "Founders at Work"

"The Singapore Story: The memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew" (a little dry / long at
points, but otherwise very instructive)

"Listening spirituality, Vol. 1: Personal Spiritual Practices Among Friends"
(a book about Quakerism that was surprisingly good)

Michael Fogus - "Functional Javascript"

David Shi - "The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American
Culture" (traces the historical movements in the U.S. that value "simplicity"
as a virtue, this was an interesting way to look at history)

A.J. Swoboda and studies, "Blood Cries Out" (recommended to me by someone I
know who is in seminary, this is Pentacostal theologians writing about
ecology)

Frank Moraes - "The Importance of Being Black" (an Indian journalist in the
60s who took a tour of Africa and wrote a book; his books are hard to find
though)

------
profEpcot
"Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years" \- David Graeber - Bit of
a slog, but worth it for an in depth look at the historic mechanisms of debt
that are inexorably tied to violence and control

"Confessions of a Venture Capitalist" \- Ruthann Quindlen - Peak into the
world of VC, mostly interesting bc it was written in 2001 and her expertise
was in tech. Not much has changed in that world it seems.

"One Plus One Equals Three: A Masterclass in Creative Thinking" \- David Trott
- Pithy treatment of design thinking from a writer with a staccato style.

"The Best Interface Is No Interface" \- Golden Krishna - The best book on
design out there IMO. Make it invisible. Plus the dude's name is fucking
GOLDEN KRISHNA. Winner.

------
smcl
I had a weird year, reading no new 2015 books. Here's a handful I enjoyed the
most:

"Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynmann" \- probably needs no introduction here on
HN, but some wonderful anecdotes by Richard Feynmann.

"Red Plenty" by Francis Spufforth. Enjoyable (and apparently thoroughly well
researched) depiction of life in the Soviet Union during its rise and decline

"My Ten Years Imprisonment" by Silvio Pellico. An autobiographical account of
an Italian revolutionary during the times of the Austro-Hungarian empire, he
was imprisoned in a castle I live next to.

"Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer - luckily a couple of months before Everest
was released (it was recommended in an HN discussion)

------
mlent
"The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared" by
Jonas Jonasson (Love it -- hilarious, witty, a pleasure to read)

"Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami (Strange good -- but I'm not sure if I
liked it as much as liked "The Wild Sheep Chase")

"One hundred years of solitude" by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez (Very slow, had a
hard time honestly)

"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn (A fast, exciting read but found the ending
unsatisfying. But would recommend)

"Still Life with Woodpecker" by Tom Robbins (Fantastic prose, fantastical
characters and situations. Will read more from him)

And for technical books, I read "The Art of Agile Development". Was alright.

------
haylem
This will be an unlikely HN entry, but as there was not pre-requirement, I
thoroughly enjoyed a French book named "Peste et Cholera" by Patrick Deville,
about Alexandre Yersin [1]. Yersin is mostly known for identified the bacillus
responsible for the plague [2]. Not that it relates to our field, but the
guy's dedication and hard-work was inspiring (similarly, Pasteur's life is
quite interesting to read about).

Also out of our usual targets here, though somewhat more related, I enjoyed
"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" [3] by Haruki Murakami. I
found the universes interesting and enjoyed the setting of a world were
programmers learn to compute and encrypt things in their brains (even if it's
a small part of the story).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Yersin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Yersin)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yersinia_pestis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yersinia_pestis)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard-
Boiled_Wonderland_and_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard-
Boiled_Wonderland_and_the_End_of_the_World)

------
mziel
_Not-technical_

"The World's Toughest Endurance Challenges" \- Very nicely illustrated

"Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words" \- Extremely enjoyable.
People here certainly are aware of xkcd and it's type of humor.

 _Technical_

"Functional programming in Scala" \- good read for Scala beginners, especially
after "Scala for the Impatient"

"Learning Spark" \- the best book on Spark so far

"Assessing and Improving Prediction and Classification" \- couple of
interesting ideas for ML and Data Science

"Neural Network Design" \- Quite basic, but I like the flow and introducing
mathematical concepts just before they're needed.

------
HCIdivision17
"The Long Earth" \- Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - First in trilogy
about parallel worlds; the combination of those two authors makes it both
fanciful and grounded, which is a bit odd.

"Clockwork Rocket" \- Greg Egan - First in the Orthagonal trilogy; An alien
story where physics is different.

"Seveneves" \- Neal Stephenson - Goes great with the recent hard sci-fi space
movies.

EDIT: "What-if" \- Randall Munroe - Saw this on another list and need to make
sure is shows up as often as possible. This is the thing to hand every kid as
part of their back-to-school pack.

------
oerb
The other Books that are not so live changing this Year: \- "Fitness für den
Kopf mit Superlearning" \- Sheila Ostrander, Lynn Schroeder (not much news,
but good)

\- "Menschen lesen" \- Joe Navarro (not much news, but good)

\- "Intros und Extros" \- Sylvia Löhken (now I'm clear - I am an Intro" :)

\- "Lassen Sie Ihr Hirn nicht unbeaufsichtigt" \- Christine Strenger - (nice
book about how to remember things, but I decided that it is not my way to
remember. Need to fix my memory to real things)

\- "Thinking, Fast and Slow" \- Daniel Kahneman - ( something about thinking I
descoverd 20 years ago by my selve)

\- "Assertiveness at work" \- Ken Back, Kate Back ( The way I walk now to Hack
passive agressive behavior )

\- "Emotional Vampires at Work" \- Albert J. Bernstein - (Helped me to
discover the passive agressive behavior I never noticed as what it is before.)

\- Profile Books about: 1. Michel Foucault, 2. Jacques Derrida, 3. Villém
Flusser

\- "Theorie des kommunkativen Handelns Band1" \- Jürgen Habermas (started Band
2 _Book 2_ month ago)

\- "Super-Brain" Deepak Chopra, Rudolph E. Tanzi - ( uhhh... you need to find
a better book, but easy to read)

\- "Der Pychopath in mir -engl.:The Psychopath Inside" \- James Fallon (nice
Book - found some Psychopath around me and give them hinds now not to stumble)

------
SuperChihuahua
I've read 33 books so I'm not going to publish the list here, but i blogged
about it: [http://blog.habrador.com/2015/12/books-ive-read-
in-2015.html](http://blog.habrador.com/2015/12/books-ive-read-in-2015.html)

The books I liked the most were:

\- The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

\- On Intelligence

\- The Martian

\- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the
Digital Revolution

\- Einstein: His Life and Universe

\- Alan Turing: The Enigma

\- Neuroscience for Dummies

\- Thunder Run - (which is about the battle of Baghdad in 2003)

------
lmcnish14
A few books I read for fun this year:

\- Armada: Ernest Cline - Very disappointing and predictable

\- Library of Souls: Ransom Riggs - Easy but engrossing book

\- Ruby Under a Microscope: Pat Shaughnessy - I find his style of explaining
things very accessible

\- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End: Atul Gawande - It's a
hard subject to think about but helped me to understand that prolonging life
and continuing treatment shouldn't necessarily be the end goal for every case.

\- Go in Action: William Kennedy - A must if you're learning Go lang

~~~
EliRivers
_\- Armada: Ernest Cline - Very disappointing and predictable_ ... but much
improved (although still bad) if you take the interpretation that everything
that happens after he almost beats someone's head in with a tire iron happens
_inside his head_ during his full-on psychotic break. You can push some of the
earlier events into being clues towards that, mix in his father's conspiracy
theory insanity for a genetic component, and then view everything that happens
as purely a story he tells himself, fuelled by his obsession with eighties sf.
It's a push, but it makes it a better book (although still pretty bad) :)

------
brikis98
My full list of books, including reviews, is here:
[https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015](https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015)

From that list, my favorite ones were:

The Four Steps to the Epiphany:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/827338560](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/827338560)

Made to Stick:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/897777811](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/897777811)

How to Measure Anything:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/698402984](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/698402984)

The Non-Designer's Design Book:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1170518622](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1170518622)

Masters of Doom:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/899580915](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/899580915)

The Martian:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1136330196](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1136330196)

The Mistborn Trilogy:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1388373037](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1388373037)

~~~
imrehg
Hey, just a heads up, that the first link on Goodreads links to each Goodreads
user's own book list. Can get the correct link by clicking "share on Twitter"
and copying the link from there. E.g. mine is
[https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015/3669238](https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015/3669238)

Good stuff, though, thanks for sharing your highlights!

Looking at back my own list, a lot of good, but few if any great books on
it... The good effect is more in the aggregate learning than any one of them
in particular.

~~~
brikis98
Ah, thanks for the heads up! Doesn't look like I can edit my post anymore, but
the proper link is:
[https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015/1363537](https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015/1363537)

------
ThrustVectoring
Books I'm glad I've read:

The Inner Game of Tennis

Impro by Keith Johnstone

Seeing Like a State

The Timeless Way of Building

Linear and Geometric Algebra by Alan Macdonald

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (read this one thrice)

The Tao of Pooh

Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd

The Drama of the Gifted Child

Interaction Ritual

What Do You Say After You Say Hello?

Of niche use:

Mathematics: its Content, Methods and Meaning - mostly useful for figuring out
what math you don't know. I recommend reading it at a fairly decent pace, and
noting what subjects don't sound like an overview of something you've already
learned.

~~~
randcraw
What did you think of MacDonald's book? Did you feel the content could have
practical use to you? I'm intrigued, but reluctant to invest the time/effort
if the topic has only theoretical implications.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
It's the kind of book that lets you solve the same amount of problems with
much more concise mathematical knowledge and structure. I didn't have a
pressing need for linear algebra, so I didn't get everything out of it that I
could have, but overall it helped clarify the way I thought about many math
concepts. For example, in two dimensions there is one direction for
"sideways", so complex numbers have a one-dimensional vector `i`. In three,
there are three coherent directions for "sideways", so quaternions have a
three-dimensional vector `i`. If you have coordinate-free ways of thinking
about linear algebra, you can treat both complex numbers and quaternions as
"the same kind of thing" in many ways.

I especially recommend this book if you need mathematical elegance in order to
learn things and have a low tolerance for explanations that amount to "that's
just how things work, go memorize stuff".

------
theologic
Got a new job in May so slowed me down, but got through around 8 this year.

I'm a Lencioni fan:

Death by Meeting -- Describes 3 types of meetings

Getting Naked -- Describes how to consult

I'm also a Marshall Goldsmith fan:

What Got You Here Won't Get You There - Once you get beyond a Director level
with some mistakes, read this book

Mojo, How to Get It, How To Keep It - Another "look yourself in the mirror"
book

Also:

21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John Maxwell. A little prod to act more
like a leader.

Ready Player One -- Ernest Cline, Great Young Adult Book. Escapist fantasy.

Every Shot Counts -- Mark Broady, Statistical Look At Golf, but has some smell
of Kahnemann

To Kill A Mockingbird -- Timeless Classic I Never Got To. Loved Atticus. I
won't read a Watchman if it spoils my view of what Atticus was all about.

Started But Not Finished:

Business Dynamics Thinking -- Sterman (out of MIT). I need to take off work to
read this 'cause it is so massive. Basically it is control theory applied to
business modelling. However, I am convinced if somebody can apply these
models, it really is the best competitive advantage. However, too people
willing to stick with it.

How to Measure Anything -- Douglas Hubbard. Sort of makes me mad because it is
so commonsense, yet most businesses don't apply this commonsense approach.

------
eibrahim
I broke all my records for reading in 2015. I set off to read 12 books and
ended up reading 49. You can see them at
[https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/15981902-emad-
ibrahim](https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/15981902-emad-ibrahim)

There were some helpful books but a ton of fiction. I got hooked on Mitch Rapp
and Jack Reacher series and couldn't stop :) Not educational but lots of fun.

------
wycx
All consumed as audiobooks.

 _American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North
America - Colin Woodard_ ; I learned much about early US history.

 _Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman - Jon Krakauer_

 _Find Me - Laura van den Berg_

 _Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel_

 _The Dog Stars - Peter Heller_

 _Endurance: Shackleton 's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing_; I was
fortunate enough to read this right before Seveneves, so the references made
immediate sense. Endurance looks to be popular on this list/this year. How
many were inspired by Seveneves?

 _Seveneves - Neal Stephenson_

 _The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson_

 _Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age - Michael Riordan, Lillian
Hoddeson_ ; I highly recommend this book. Like The Making of the Atomic Bomb,
but for the transistor. Lots of background on John Bardeen, William Shockley
and Walter Brattain. I was unaware of the great legacy of John Bardeen:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen)

 _The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes_ ; If you have not read this
book, read it, just for the summary of discoveries that lead to the atomic
bomb.

 _Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank_

 _The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the
Northwest Passage - Anthony Brandt_

 _The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard_

 _The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen - Stephen R. Bown_

I am looking for other books similar to Crystal Fire and The Making of the
Atomic Bomb, that cover the history of scientific and technological
discoveries. Any recommendations?

~~~
pknerd
Would you like to share your experience about audio books?

~~~
wycx
I listen as I drive to and from work (25-30 mins each way) and over lunch (~40
mins). For a little while this year I had a <10 min commute, which was too
short to start listening, and thus I missed my longer commute. I did
Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney drives a few times this year, but usually mix it up
with some podcasts rather than a single 8 hour session.

When you start an new audiobook, I find it takes time for me to warm to the
narrator. Initially, some narrators can be quite grating, but eventually I get
used to them.

I find I have to look out for when my mind wanders. The 30 second rewind
button gets used a lot, though sometimes when I am still thinking about things
from work on my drive home, I need to relisten to the entire 30 mins again.
Its as if I paid no attention at all. The same for any driving that is not
autopilot driving, e.g. to new places/complex traffic-an audiobook is too
distracting so I turn it off.

I wish the Audible app would put the 30 second rewind button on the lock
screen rather than next/previous track. Having to unlock just to rewind whilst
driving sucks. The audible widget does not consistently appear on the lock
screen.

------
ifoundthetao
The Hobbit - Liked, classic.

How Ideas Spread - It was decent, I feel like it could be condensed into an
infographic after the fact, and hold great value.

The Lean Startup - Excellent. Changed the way I do business.

A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1 - Great book, wonderful
universe. Apparently Martin loves himself a good descriptions of clothes.

A Clash of Kings: A song of Ice and Fire, Book 2 - Great book.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Good book for a kid, pretty irritating kid though (the
kid in the book, not mine).

The Andromeda Strain - Excellent!

Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things - Great book! Very healthy view of a
Christocentric theology.

Dracula - Sleeper hit of the year. This book was awesome.

Pippi Longstocking - Read this to my son, and we really enjoyed it.

The Secrets of Power Negotiating - Helped me out during the process of buying
a house by understanding various negotiation gambits. Would recommend.

Scrum - Another book that changed the way I work. Would absolutely recommend
it.

The Wizard of Oz - Much better than the movie.

The 4-Hour Workweek - .... It was "okay". I don't know. I'm still torn.

The Swiss Family Robinson - Awesome book, full of fun things to talk about
with your kids.

The BFG - This was the start of the Roald Dahl stage for bedtime reading..
It's a great book, one of my favorite Dahl books.

Matilda - Reading this as an adult, it was not nearly as fun as when I was a
kid, however my son loved it.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox - Fun and easy read for the kids.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Pretty decent book.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

------
skorgu
I was on a sf kick this year apparently.

Full list (why can't amazon show me the read dates of my kindle books?!):

\- Ancillary Sword

\- The Magician's Land

\- The Three Body Problem (incomplete)

\- Libriomancer, Codex Born, Unbound

\- Thank You, Jeeves

\- Omon Ra (incomplete)

\- Stations of the Tide

\- 1Q84 (staggeringly incomplete)

\- The Desert Spear (incomplete)

\- The Lost Fleet: {Dauntless,Fearless,Courageous} (third one incomplete)

\- Superintelligence

\- Nexus, Crux (incomplete)

\- Another Fine Myth

\- The Annihilation Score

\- The Man with the Golden Torc, Daemons are Forever

\- The Fractal Prince (incomplete)

\- Crooked

\- Ancillary Mercy

\- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

\- The Traitor Baru Cormarant

\- Excession

\- Hive Mind

\- Seveneves

------
nkzednan
Riyria Revelations trilogy - quite good. Follows two thieves for hire. Read
the books in publication order

Ready player one - liked it

samurai's garden

Expanse series by James Corey entertaining

Steelheart and Firefight by Sanderson- good but like Mistborn better

Worm online serial parahumans good

Nonfiction I read: Delivering happiness, Drive, Power of Habit, Power of full
engagement

------
jpalmer
Freedom - Daniel Suarez - Follow up to "Daemon".
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7132363-freedom](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7132363-freedom)

Old Man's War - John Scalzi - My first Scalzi book and won't be the last.
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51964.Old_Man_s_War](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51964.Old_Man_s_War)

Red Rising / Golden Son - Pierce Brown - I'm a sucker for these YA SF series.
Lots of fun. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15839976-red-
rising](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15839976-red-rising)

------
satyajeet23
Check out the books i read in 2015 (16 books or 5309 pages or 14 pages/day)
[https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015/9692204](https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015/9692204)

------
arethuza
Books this year that I loved:

"A Place of Greater Safety" \- Hilary Mantel [French Revolution - Danton,
Robespierre, Desmoulins ...]

"One Summer: America 1927" \- Bill Bryson

"Napoleon the Great" \- Andrew Roberts

"Seveneves" \- Neal Stephenson

Reading "The Box" at the moment which is pretty interesting.

~~~
MuEta
Just started Seveneves (still in part one), and, as usual, I am blown away by
Stephenson's world-building and character development. I freaking love his
stuff.

------
nothingpersonal
Do audio books count? If so my favorites from this year would be Snow Crash by
Neil Stephenson, and Armada by Ernest Cline.

Books I actually read which were good: The Informationist by Taylor Stevens
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

------
noxToken
Was light year for me:

 _Confessions of a D-List Supervillain_ \- Jim Bernheimer

 _Origins of a D-List Supervillain_ \- Jim Bernheimer

The second is a prequel of the first. I haven't read the third in the series.
Light reading about a guy's descent into villainy.

 _Yes Please_ \- Amy Poehler: I love memoirs. I just didn't love this one. It
read a lot like Leslie Knope was the author, but there was an obscene amount
of name dropping that kept interrupting the flow of the book for me.

 _Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir_ \- Eddie Huang: Like I said, I'm a sucker for
these things. Picked it up, because the series reminded me of a 90s Asian
version of _Everybody Hates Chris_. The absurdity and random profanity was a
little off-putting at first. Remembering how I felt as a black boy doing some
of the same dumb things in the 90s really put it into perspective though.

 _The Serpent of Venice: A Novel_ \- Christopher Moore: The follow up to
_Fool_. It's a different take on Shakespearian story-telling. I can't
recommend his novels enough.

 _Quantum Lens_ \- Douglas E. Richards: I read this solely because I liked
_Wired_ and _Amped_. No-frills action with a sci-fi element. You probably
won't get engrossed, but you will be entertained.

 _Spell or High Water_ & _An Unwelcome Quest_ \- Scott Meyer: Books 2 & 3 in a
series about a group of guys who can manipulate reality through writing
scripts. Good, but not my favorite.

 _Armada: A Novel_ \- Ernest Cline: Ah yes. The long awaited sophomore effort
from the author of _Ready Player One_. This book fell harder than it deserved
to, because people where expecting it to be analogous to _Ready Player One_.
Spoiler: it's not. The novel does have its short-comings. Repetitive dialogue,
shoe-horned classic pop-culture references and shallow writing plague this
book. If you've got time for a short novel, give it a whirl, but don't expect
anything amazing.

 _Words of Radiance_ \- Brandon Sanderson: Book 2 of the Stormlight Archives.
If it's an epic by Sanderson, do yourself a favor and board the hype train.
You won't be disappointed. It's everything you want in a long fantasy novel
without being bogged down with side-plots and details.

 _Warbreaker_ \- Brandon Sanderson: This is a standalone novel with a tie-on
to _Words of Radiance_. I'm only halfway through it. Would recommend so far,
especially since it's free from the author.

------
thelonelygod
Pretty terrible data viz of everything I read this year:
[http://ruparel.co/book-viz/](http://ruparel.co/book-viz/)

TL:DR is I read too many comic books.

~~~
ing33k
nice !

------
r3bl
I've started keeping a file on my GitHub account where I'm listing every book
I have read (or at least remember reading). Most of those listed there I have
read in 2015 (there's also a score next to each one):
[https://github.com/aleksandar-
todorovic/notes/blob/master/00...](https://github.com/aleksandar-
todorovic/notes/blob/master/00_books.md)

Unfortunately I am quite a bit behind the goal I gave to myself (14/25 at the
moment).

~~~
Maultasche
I started doing something like this, but then I discovered goodreads.com. I
use it to not only keep track and rate what I have read, but to keep a list of
books I want to read. It's probably nearing 300 items by now.

------
horofox
\- Make me a German(great read, even if you aren't into germany, nice
read/comedy).

Still reading "Meditations" from Marcus Aurelius, definitely a must read. You
can easily see why he was an imperator and can probably guess how much far a
human can get even in today's society with the mindset he provided in the
book. Maybe it's a good idea to finish this up this xmas.

It was a very poor year in reading for me, but compensated by the fact I've
moved to Germany.

------
6footgeek
Ready Player One. by Ernest Cline. Brilliant geeky read (fiction) :)

~~~
smcl
I haven't read it, but it was featured on I Don't Even Own A Television with
hilarious results:
[http://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/2014/06/19/010-ready-...](http://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/2014/06/19/010-ready-
player-one-w-mike-sacco/)

------
pyotrgalois
Two great books:

\- "Functional Programming in Scala" by Paul Chiusano and Rúnar Bjarnason

\- "Big Data: Principles and best practices of scalable realtime data systems"
by Nathan Marz and James Warren

~~~
lghh
I just looked over the first chapter or so of "Big Data" that's online with
the intent of purchasing it yesterday. It seemed decent enough.

What were you general thoughts on it?

------
galfarragem
Would be interesting to have kind of a poll with HN top recommended books. If
somebody as a good idea on how to make/implement it.

edit: not only programming oriented books

~~~
simula67
[http://hn-books.com/](http://hn-books.com/)

------
mjhoy
My reading slowed to a crawl this year. Here were a few:

\- _Chronicles Vol 1_ , Bob Dylan. Inspiring, I felt very open to the world
after. I loved his descriptions of Dave Van Ronk: "No puppet strings on him
ever. He was big, sky high, and I looked up to him. He came from the land of
giants."

\- _Peregrine_ , J.A. Baker. Intense, spiritual, like some sort of modern Moby
Dick, but sparse, focused, elemental.

Next year I hope to read more Roberto Bolaño and start Elena Ferrante.

------
neilsharma
"The Righteous Mind" \- Jonathan Haidt. This book helped me understand
conservative thinking, made me less heated in my opinions, and provided a
convincing framework for me to understand moral arguments

"Emperor of All Maladies" \- Siddhartha Mukherjee. An excellently written
history of cancer.

"Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" \- Lansing Alfred. A true story of
one of the last great explorations man has taken

~~~
todd8
I just want to add that for a cross country drive, there is no better audio
book than "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage". The audio version is
absolutely gripping; the suspense is incredible, more so because of the strict
linearity of the story as audio (no peeking ahead). I also liked "Into Thin
Air" on audio.

------
jaylitt
"Debt: The First 5000 Years" David Graeber

"Kokoro" Natsume Soseki

"The Politics of Dialogical Imagination" Hirano Katsuya

"History and Repetition" Karatani Kojin

"The Structure of World History" Karatani Kojin

"Anti-Oedipus" Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari

"Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors" Nicholas Wade

"Capital, Volume I" Karl Marx

These books have been the most informative and thought-provoking for me this
year.

------
FatalBaboon
I've been trying to up my game on reading:

\- Founders at Work: Jessica Livingston. Good. Less repetitive than Coders at
Work.

\- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. Awfuly boring. But I don't care
at all about sailing (it was a gift).

\- Terre des Hommmes: Antoine de St Exupéry. Brilliant, the chapter with the 2
girls made me decide to read all his work in 2016.

\- Practical Common Lisp: Peter Siebel. Had to start Lisp!

------
ing33k
Not including technical books

"The Four Steps to the Epiphany" \- I got a very detailed view on customer
development.

"Zero to One" \- got some fresh ideas on how to think differently wrt
business.

"Dhandha: How Gujaratis Do Business" \- collection of stories , which
highlight why/how Gujaratis are so successful in businesses.

------
kirk21
Best books I have read this year:

\- Shareholder letters of Warren Buffett:
[http://amzn.to/1OgZVh9](http://amzn.to/1OgZVh9)

\- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage:
[http://amzn.to/1Oh09oz](http://amzn.to/1Oh09oz)

------
onion2k
"Chance: The science and secrets of luck, randomness and probability" It's a
collection of New Scientist essays based around probability. Well worth
reading, and because it's just short essays it's easy to pick up for just a
few minutes at a time.

------
Church-
Oh where to start... too many to name of course. But several new favorites of
mine from this yewr would have to be: Blindsight, Essentials of Programming
Languages, Welcome to Nightvale, Glasshouse and finally after puttering around
it for three years, Accelerando.

------
bryogenic
"Cryptonomicon" \- Neal Stephenson

"Expecting Better" \- Emily Oster

"The 9/11 Commission Report" \- National Commission on Terrorist Attacks

"Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS" \- Joby Warrick

"Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency" \- Charlie Savage (not
finished yet)

~~~
arethuza
I can strongly recommend The Baroque Cycle - the loosely connected "prequels"
to Cryptonomicon:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle)

[Jack Shaftoe is probably my favourite fictional character]

------
oerb
german translation to "the Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature."
-Steven Pinker - opens me a new view into Hell of Live

german Book "Darm mit Charm" \- Giuelia Enders - Never laught so often by
reading a Science book about my bowel.

"The angry Smile" \- Jody E. Long, Nicholas J. Long, Signe Whitson - in 2014 i
discovered passive agressive behavior arround and against me. But all Books I
found since, had the one solution "get around them - do not talk to them - get
rid of them" but if you need to work with passive agressive behavior, that
isn't what you need. So this book gives me the hinds to hack this behavior.

------
aws_ls
1) Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree - Rating 3/5 - Got an idea about the times
in receding Muslim powers, at the end of the 15th Century, in Spain - The
author is an historian so positive point is that fiction rooted in history.
But some of the fictional narratives could have been better, as he was not a
fiction writer when he started out.

2) Zero to One - Rating 4/5 - Thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. Insights
into and anecdotal examples of _Paypal mafia_ , among the numerous over there.

3) Liar's Poker - Rating 4/5 - The first of several best seller's by Michael
Lewis, gives insights into the working of Investment Finance business, and in
a very interesting way (lots of humor)

4) Devotion of Suspect X - Rating 4/5 - Work of fiction by the Japanese best
seller author Keigo Higashino. Enjoyable read - contrasts a Physicist and a
Mathematician trying to out think each other in a crime context (reference to
Maths/Physics are just pop-level so don't expect too much)

5) 'Digital Gold...' by Nathaniel Popper - Currently reading (very enjoyable
at around 41%) - Captures the history of evolution of Bitcoin. Also made me
sad for various people for different reasons, e.g. Hal Finney, who was the
first adopter of Satoshi Nakamoto's idea. Reading this book made me appreciate
why not knowing who is SN is important. I am no longer curious.

6) Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - Rating 5/5 - A perspective
changing book, if there can be one. Had picked it up from Gates notes' reading
list couple years back. After reading this, my entire perspective on
religions, politics, culture changed and I view everything from the reference
point of when we started to do agriculture some 20,000 years ago, and of
course geographical perspective.

Some others in my to-read list (hope to pick one before the turn of the year):

1) Emperor of all maladies - book on cancer research

2) Ashley Vance's book on Elon Musk

3) 100 years of solitude

4) The selfish gene

5) The hard thing about hard things

6) Or, if I see any other book: either on this page, or on Gates Notes or on
HN reading share the other day. Am a big fan of exchanging/sharing reading
lists.

Edit: Formatting. HN post editor needs two new lines ('\n') to display one

Edit 2: Had wrongly named book #4 as Salvation of a saint (which is another
book, I read earlier by the same author)

------
dllthomas
Off the top of my head: reread "The Left Hand Of Darkness", "The Mythical Man-
Month", and the end of "A Mote In God's Eye"; read "A Night In The Lonesome
October".

All worth reading, the last probably the least enduring.

------
adrianhoward
This year's finished reading so far
[https://gist.github.com/adrianh/f6aca0e6ac3b2e9aec94](https://gist.github.com/adrianh/f6aca0e6ac3b2e9aec94)

(doesn't include stuff skimmed or unfinished)

------
gadders
I re-read all the Akady Renko books by Martin Cruz Smith, and the Harry Bosch
by Michael Connolly. I enjoyed both very much, but I would say the Cruz Smith
books edge it.

------
pmcpinto
Thoughts on Design - Paul Rand, Design as Art - Bruno Munari, Meditations -
Marcus Aurelius, Ways of Seeing - John Berger, The War of Art - Steven
Pressfield

------
benajibayassine
1- The Emperor's Handbook by Marcus Aurelius. Jan, 10th 2015 2- The crowd, a
study of the popular mind by Gustave Le Bon. Jan, 10th 2015 3- Remote by Jason
Fried. Jan, 11th 2015 4- The shape of the world to come by Laurent Cohen-
Tanugi, Jan, 20th, 2015 5- Post office by Charles Bukowski. Jan, 23rd 2015 6-
Gang leader for a day by Sudhir Venkatesh. Feb, 6th 2015 7- Zen mind,
beginner's mind by Shunryu Suzuki. Feb, 8th 2015 8- The Black Swan by Nassim
Nicholas Taleb. Feb, 23rd 2015 9- Darkness Visible by William Styron. March,
1st 2015 10- Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters. March, 9th 2015 11-
The Kaizen way: One small step can change your life by Robert Mauter. March,
11th 2015 12- Time by Alexander Waugh. March, 12th 2015 13- Max and the cats
by Moacyr Scliar. March, 14th 2015 14- Scattered by Gabor Mate. March, 20th
2015 15- East of Eden by John Steinbeck. March, 30th 2015 16- Crossing the
unknown sea by David Whyte. April, 7th 2015 17- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim
Nicholas Taleb. April, 13th 2015 18- The World beyond your Head by Matthew
Crawford. April, 22nd 2015 19- How to Think about Exercise by Damon Young.
April, 23rd 2015 20- Solitude by Anthony Storr. May, 8th 2015 21- Antifragile
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. June, 10th 2015 22- The bastard of Istanbul (in
Arabic) by Elif Shafak. June, 21st 2015 23- L’ordre libertaire: la vie
philosophique d’Albert Camus by Michel Onfray. July, 7th 2015 24- Steppenwolf
by Hermann Hesse. July, 10th 2015 25- The arab uprisings by James Gelvin.
July, 13th 2015 26- How to worry less about money by John Armstrong. July,
13th 2015 27- Self comes to mind by Antonio Damasio. July, 31st2015 28-
Muhammad: The First Muslim by Lesley Hazleton. August, 4th t2015 29- Sapiens
by Yuval Noah Harari. August, 15th 2015 30- Heidegger's Being and Time by
William Blattner. August, 18th 2015 31- Heidegger and a hippo walk through
those pearly gates by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. August, 19th 2015 32-
Why nations fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. October, 3rd 2015 33-
Charlie Munger: the complete investor by Tren Griffin October, 9th 2015 34-
The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins October, 23rd 2015 35- The philosophical
baby by Alison Gopnik October, 28th 2015 36- The three-body problem by Cixin
Liu November, 1st 2015 37- Open letter to a young man by Andre Maurois
November, 13th 2015 38- Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman November,
16th 2015 39- What do you care what people think by Richard Feynman November,
18th 2015 40- When the body says No by Gabor Maté November, 29th 2015 41- The
truth will set you free by Alice Miller. December, 5th 2015 42- The shallows
by Nicholar Carr. December, 7th 2015 43- What matters most byJames Hollis.
December, 14th 2015 44- Finding meaning in the second jalf of life byJames
Hollis. December, 20yh2015

------
DrNuke
My favourite has been "Industrial Applications of High-Performance Computing:
Best Global Practices", CRC Press, April 2015.

------
anatoly
Non-fiction, best to worst:

Henry Marsh, _Do No Harm_. A brilliant memoir by a neurosurgeon about his
work, the nature of his profession, successes and mistakes (especially the
latter). Frequently touches or verges into the personal. Not morbid, but often
sad.

Keith Johnstone, _Impro for Storytellers_. Viola Spolin, _Improvisation for
the Theater_

Two very good books about improvisation, although Spolin's is too dry and
theory-laden for me (it's meant for teachers more than practitioners). Both,
however, pale compared to Keith Johnstone's earlier Impro: Improvisation and
the Theater, which is a life-changing book about what improvisation can teach
us about spontaneous creativity and relationships between people. I recommend
that one first and foremost if you know nothing about improvisation and are
curious.

Martinus J G Veltman, _Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics_. A
readable account - necessarily simplified, of course - of the current state of
affairs in elementary particles and much of the last 50 years of history, by
one of the participants (a Nobel prize winner). Not as organized and
methodical as I thought it would be, and half a year later I forgot most of
the physical explanations, but it was an interesting read.

Robert B. Edgerton, _Sick Societies_. A thorough examination of the hundreds
of horrible examples when "natural" societies studied by anthropologists have
customs that are not only bad from our modern Western point of view, but
arguably fail in achieving their own objectives. The whole book exists to
counter lazy cultural relativism of the "maybe we don't like X, but if they do
it, it must be for a good reason and it must be a useful adaptation for them"
kind.

Michael Harris, _Mathematics Without Apologies_. A very eclectic and
idiosyncratic book by a mathematician on the sociology and epistemology of
mathematics as a discipline. To be appreciated for its wealth of ideas and
references to other interesting books and theories, rather than for any
particular argument or thread.

Milton Rokeach, _The Three Christs of Ypsilanti_. A story on what happened
when a psychologist tried to bring three psychiatric patients, each believing
themselves to be Christ, together and to talk it out amongst themselves.
Happened in the 1960s. The idea is more interesting than the outcome.

Fiction, best to worst:

Patrick O'Brian, _The Hundred Days_. The penultimate book in the series of the
best historical novels (the Aubrey-Maturin series) ever written, by a huge
margin. The series transcend the genre and I count the Aubrey-Maturin books
among the very best books I read in the last decade.

Dodie Smith, _I Capture the Castle_. A brilliantly written coming-of-age story
about a girl growing up in an impoverished family occupying a decaying castle
in the English countryside, set in the 1930s. Reminded me in many ways of
Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows, a novel in the similar genre (but with
a younger protagonist) that's known much less than it deserves.

Juan Rulfo, _Pedro Paramo_. If you read and liked Garcia Marquez's A Hundred
Years of Solitude, this one is shorter, darker, involves many more dead
people, and you may want to give it a try.

Alfred Hayes, _In Love_. A story of a man obsessed by love in a mid-century
NYC. Unexpectedly touching, very convincing psychologically.

Iain M. Banks, _Against a Dark Background_. SF, a grand heist novel set in a
advanced civilization living in a star system located unimaginably far away
from any other stars and galaxies, and so doomed to a lone struggle with its
own long history. A wealth of technological and social ideas you'd expect from
Banks. The ending felt a bit forced.

Gene Wolfe, _There Are Doors_. Gene Wolfe, _Nightsite of the Long Sun /Lake of
the Long Sun_.

Gene Wolfe is the best writer American science fiction produced in the last
half-century. "There are Doors" is a pretty weird fantasy novel about an
alternate world where men die after their first intercourse (as some spiders
do in ours), and the hero travels back and forth between that world and ours.
It's good, but not as strong as Wolfe's best, which to my taste is the Book of
the New Sun tetralogy, the novellas in the Fifth Head of Cerberus collection,
and many of his short stories (well-collected in The Best of Gene Wolfe). The
other two are the first half of the "Book of the Long Sun" series that I'm
still reading through.

Ursula K. Le Guin, _The Dispossessed_. Superb political SF about an imagined
anarchist [anti-]utopia. A serious attempt to describe a human society with no
central power structures and no ownership. The hero is a physicist born and
raised in that society who escapes to a sibling planet with the more typical
modern states. This novel took all the awards in the 1970s when it was
published, and deservedly so.

[cont'd]

~~~
anatoly
[cont'd]

Michael Frayn, Democracy. A compulsively readable play about an episode in the
politics of West Germany in the 1970s, a subject I didn't know could be made
so interesting to me. Superb.

Michael Flynn, Eifelheim. Excellent and profound SF/historical novel about
aliens crashing in the Germany of the Middle Ages, and how that would work
out. Avoids cheap tricks, very strong on historical research and
verisimilitude.

Ross Thomas, The Cold War Swap, Cast a Yellow Shadow, Chinaman's Chance. Very
well-written thrillers, typically stories about spying or political
corruption. I'm usually bored by this genre, couldn't put these down. Will
read more by this (hitherto unknown to me) author.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wizard of Earthsea. (reread) Still as good as I
remembered it to be.

P.K.Dick, The Man in the High Castle. (reread) Very inventive and weird in a
good way, but I wish the characters would be a little different (everyone is
the same highly neurotic mouthpiece for the author), and the obsession with I
Ching does nothing for me. Still worth reading.

Robert Ryan, Dead Man's Land. A Sherlock Holmes novel in which 90% of the
action is with John Watson rejoining the Army to help in World War I at his
late middle age, and Holmes appears only briefly. Works quite well. Very
detailed on day-to-day trench warfare and medicine at the front.

Michael Frayn, Noises Off. A funny short play, very meta, not as good as his
"Democracy".

Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Better than his two long novels
of the 2000s. A self-contained fairy tale, fun to read and well-written, but
not beyond that. Gaiman's unsurpassed masterpiece, to me, is still The
Sandman.

Michael Swansick, Chasing the Phoenix. SF, set on a future Earth where
computers and electronic communication are outlawed following problems with
runaway AIs, but there's lots of high technology (e.g. genetics) otherwise.
Funny and amusing, a light read.

[edit: deleted about 20 books I didn't like or hated]

~~~
walterbell
Since you liked Gene Wolfe's work, have you read R.A. Lafferty?

~~~
anatoly
I have, actually this year too (missed it in the list because it didn't come
from Amazon). I read the collection _Nine Hundred Grandmothers_. I thought it
was pretty uneven, but the highs were very high. There were 4 or 5 stories in
that collection that were just amazing, of the "how the hell does he DO that"
kind. Some others were kind of preachy, or little more than sketches.

Going to read more Lafferty next year, I'm pretty sure.

~~~
walterbell
Lafferty has his own niche ... some of his stories won awards,
[http://www.ralafferty.org/works/collections/honors/](http://www.ralafferty.org/works/collections/honors/)

------
Symmetry
Here are the ones I'd be willing to recommend, in reverse chronological order
of when I read them. I read 59 total. Listen to books on tape while working
out has maybe doubled my reading rate.

 _Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy_ \- Great book on how
the Mongol Empire came to be, who Genghis was, and it put the whole thing in
perspective for me in a useful way.

 _The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch_ \- What it says on the
tin. Actually a good overview how some important technologies interrelate.

 _Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction_ \- How to be wrong less
often. Based on the Good Judgement Project results.

 _The Three-Body Problem_ \- Decent enough science fiction but extra
interesting because it's science fiction from a different culture.

 _Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants_ \- A history of
things that go boom. Engaging writing and I learned things about chemistry.

 _The Traitor Baru Cormorant_ \- I'm nominating this for a Hugo. It tells you
it's going to stab you in the gut but when it does you don't see it coming.
Plus high quality scheming and speculation on economics, society, and empire.

 _The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps_ \- Excellent use of voice and an overall good
book.

 _Bloom_ \- Made my skin crawl in places and also was good at making you feel
a radical change in perspective.

 _Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed_ \- An interesting perspective on certain aspects of government. A bit
too negative for the topic, the factors outlined are also why commercial
economies were able to develop more centralized economies than agrarian ones
in the early modern era.

 _Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the
Globalization of Democracy_ \- Quite good book on bureaucracy though not as
excellent as the previous book on the origins of states.

 _Last First Snow_ \- It's always great to read books about the struggles
between people with sympathetic motivations.

 _The Unwelcome Warlock_ \- The latest in a series of fantasy books where
people use magic in creative and sensible ways.

 _Asteroid Mining 101: Wealth for the New Space Economy_ -Mostly about all the
different sorts of asteroids.

 _Seveneves_ \- Neal Stephenson's latest. If you like his books read it but
maybe skip the last 1/3 after the timeskip.

 _Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future_ \- Wow he
did a lot of cool stuff.

 _Stories of Your Life and Others_ \- Brilliant and poetic short stories.

 _Darwin 's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life_ \- Some
interesting perspective on materialism.

 _Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life_ \- Best science
book I've read in a while! Shows why mitochondria matter, the fundamental
limits of prochariotic life, and several important ways mitochondria influence
again and evolution.

 _Blue Remembered Earth_ \- Awesome near futureish book that does well at
imagining a future that isn't just a linear extrapolation but is still
believable.

 _A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark_ \- Not enough pacifist badass
grandmothers in urban fantasy.

 _Quantum Computing since Democritus_ \- I understand QM much better now.

------
kwhitefoot
The Child of Time : Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg

Liked it.

------
rodolphoarruda
Disclaimer: I am a manager.

No Hero - M. Owen; Zero to One - P. Thiel; The 7 Principles of Professional
Services - S. Anastasi.

------
irongeek
I would add Poverty Creek Journal by Thomas Gardner

------
joefreeman
I really enjoyed Kevin Kelly's 'What Technology Wants'.

------
jiggaboo
1\. This is a title that demonstrates I'm much smarter than everyone else.

2\. A book that shows I am destined to be a successful entrepreneur.

3\. How to recover from a childhood of being bullied.

------
goddess_divine
i read a shit ton of books, but only keep the ones i'd like enough to read
again. New to my library this year:

the checklist manifesto

friday

the left hand of darkness

banker for the poor

iq52

the pragmatic programmer

star diaries

cat's cradle

the dead mountainer's inn

spanner darkley

------
baby
to kill a mocking bird: it was refreshing, looking for more simple books like
this one

------
krishna2
Here is my list from 2015:

1\. Mark Derby: England my England

2\. Bill Messenger: Elements of Jazz [great courses]

3\. David Mamet: GlenGary Glen Ross

4\. Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Pluto Files

5\. Elizabeth Vandiver: The Illiad by Homer [great courses]

6\. Elizabeth Vandiver: The Odyssey by Homer [great courses]

7\. Elizabeth Vandiver: The Aeneid by Virgil [great courses]

8\. Robert Greenberg: Great Masters: Liszt - His Life and Music [great
courses]

9\. David Christian: Big History [great courses]

10\. Robert Greenberg: Great Masters: Robert and Clara Schumann - Their Lives
and Music [great courses]

11\. Steven Novella: Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical
Thinking Skills [great courses]

12\. Ramesh Menon (Veda Vyasa): Mahabharatha

13\. Mark W. Muesse: Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation
[great courses]

14\. J.K. Rowling: Book 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

15\. J.K. Rowling: Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

16\. Steven Pressfield: The War of Art

17\. Barnaby Conrad, Monte Schulz: Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life

18\. J.K. Rowling: Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

19\. Ramesh Menon (Veda Vyasa): Siva Puranam

20\. Professor Allen C. Guelzo, Professor Gary W. Gallagher, Professor Patrick
N. Allitt: The History of the United States, 2nd Edition [great courses]

21\. Robert Greenberg: Great Masters: Brahms - His Life and Music [great
courses]

22\. Robert Greenberg: Great Masters: Tchaikovsky - His Life and Music [great
courses]

23\. Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni: The Palace of Illusions

24\. J.K. Rowling: Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

25\. Austin Kleon: Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being
Creative

26\. Stephen King: On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

27\. David McCullough: 1776

28\. Prof. Roy Benaroch: Medical School for Everyone [great courses]

29\. J.K. Rowling: Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix

30\. Siddartha Mukherjee: The Emperor Of All Maladies

31\. J.K. Rowling: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

32\. Robert Greenberg: Great Masters: Shostakovich - His Life and Music [great
courses]

33\. J.K. Rowling: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

34\. Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries [great
courses]

35\. Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli: Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a
Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

36\. Shurnyu Suzuki: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

37\. William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

38\. Jhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies

39\. Stephen Greenblatt: The Swerve: How the world became modern

40\. Professor Andrew R. Wilson: The Art of War [great courses]

41\. Prof. Jennifer Paxton: 1066: The Year That Changed Everything [great
courses]

42\. Prof. Sherwin B. Nuland: Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine
Revealed Through Biography [great courses]

43\. Sun Tzu: The Art of War

44\. Prof. Robert Greenberg: Great Masters: Mahler - His Life and Music [great
courses]

45\. Prof. Seth Lerer: The Life and Writings of John Milton [great courses]

46\. Prof. Robert Greenberg: Great Masters: Stravinsky - His Life and Music
[great courses]

47\. Stephen Guise: Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results

48\. J.R.R. Tokien: Hobbit

49\. George Orwell: Animal Farm

50\. Prof. Seth Freeman: The Art of Negotiating the Best Deal [great courses]

51\. Ram Dass: Be Here Now

52\. Prof. Gregory S. Aldrete: The Decisive Battles of World History [great
courses]

53\. Conn Iggulden: Conqueror Series Book 1: Genghis: Birth of an Empire

54\. Conn Iggulden: Conqueror Series Book 2: Genghis: Lords of the Bow

55\. Prof. Frederick Gregory: History of Science 1700-1900 [great courses]

56\. Prof. Indre Viskontas: 12 Essential Scientific Concepts [great courses]

57\. Conn Iggulden: Conqueror Series Book 3: Genghis: Bones of the Hill

58\. Conn Iggulden: Conqueror Series Book 4: Khan: Empire of Silver

59\. Conn Iggulden: Conqueror Series Book 5: Conqueror

60\. Prof. Robert Hazen: Origin and Evolution of Earth [great courses]

61\. Mark Forsyth: Elements of Eloquence

62\. Prof. Patrick Allitt: Industrial Revolution [great courses]

63\. Ramesh Menon (Valmiki): Ramayana

64\. Prof. John McWhorter: Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths of Language Usage
[great courses]

65\. Dava Sobel: Longtitude

66\. Prof. Robert Hazen: Origins of Life [great courses]

67\. Prof. Daniel Robinson: The Great Ideas of Psychology [great courses]

68\. Tracy Kidder: The Soul of a New Machine

69\. Prof. Garrett Fagan: History of Ancient Rome [great courses]

70\. Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five

71\. Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

72\. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

73\. Kalki: Ponniyin Selvan: Book 1: Pudhu Vellam [apple music]

74\. Upton Sinclair : The Jungle

75\. John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath

76\. Kalki: Ponniyin Selvan: Book 2: Suzhar Kaatru [apple music]

77\. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engles: Manifesto of the Communist Party

78\. Kalki: Ponniyin Selvan: Book 3: KoduVaal [apple music]

79\. Kalki: Ponniyin Selvan: Book 4: Mani Magudam [apple music]

80\. Kalki: Ponniyin Selvan: Book 5: Thiyaga Sigaram [apple music]

81\. Kalki: Parthiban Kanavu [apple music]

82\. Hugh Howey: Wool [Silo Series : Book 1 of 3]

83\. Kalki: Sivagamiyin Sabatham: Book 1: Boogambam [apple music]

84\. Kalki: Sivagamiyin Sabatham: Book 2: Kanchi Mutrugai [apple music]

85\. Kalki: Sivagamiyin Sabatham: Book 3: Bhikshuvin Kadhal [apple music]

86\. Kalki: Sivagamiyin Sabatham: Book 4: Sidhaindha Kanavu [apple music]

87\. Thomas Sterner: The Practising Mind

88\. don Miguel Ruiz: The Fifth Agreement

89\. Prof. Jonah Berger: How Ideas Spread [great courses]

90\. Prof. Robert Sapolsky: Being Human [great courses]

91\. Michio Kaku: Einstein's Cosmos

92\. Guy Kawasaki: Art of the Start 2.0

93\. Edward Dolnick: Clockwork Universe

94\. Prof. John Medina: Your Best Brain [great courses]

95\. Sherman Alexie: Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

96\. Prof. Thad Polk: Addictive Brain [great courses]

97\. Jeff Kinney: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

98\. Prof. Scott Huettel: Behavioral Economics [great courses]

99\. Rob Walling: Start Small, Stay Small

100\. Ernest Hemmingway: Old Man and the Sea

101\. Prof. Robert Greenberg: Brief History of Holiday Music [great courses]

~~~
sundarurfriend
Wow, that's quite the inspiring list. I've been thinking about creating a list
of 52 books to read for 2016 (one per week), and I think I'll be stealing a
lot from your list here.

I'm a big fan of Ponniyin Selvan, how do Parthiban Kanavu and Sivagamiyin
Sabatham compare to it?

Here's the 52 I finished this year:
[https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015](https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2015)

~~~
krishna2
Happy my list will cons new lists. :)

PoSe is by far the magnum opus. PaKa was written first and SiSa was written a
dozen or so years later but historically SiSa happens about a decade or two
before PaKa. PaKa is short (one-fifth the size of the other two). I liked the
story of PaKa a lot. [although the movie version was totally butchered]. And
just like how PoSe (which happens about 300 years after PaKa/SiSa) is all
about Chozhas, the other two are about Pallavas. Very fascinating reads - will
totally recommend it.

If you like Science and Music (in this case, western classical music), and
biographies/history related to the science/music characters, then you will
like my list a lot. Please feel free to get in touch offline - can share more
details. [I have the same id as the hn id in google/gmail as well].

PS: the goodreads link you posted takes me to my year_in_books page - can you
please share your public url? Would love to see your reading list. thanks.

------
hackerbloos
I've just updated my list of books I read this year. Scores are out of 5. If
there is a + it means I found it to be extra special for some reason or other.

= Jan =

Smarter Than You Think - Clive Thompson 3

The positives of tech and the internet.

= Feb =

Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart 4

Science fiction set in the not too distant future. Main themes include life
extension and surveillance.

= Mar =

The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 4

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams 3

Had never read this series, thought it might be about time.

= Apr =

What does it all Mean? - Thomas Nagel 2 (though it is kind of meant for people
who have never done any Philosophy, ever, so would recommend to someone like
that. Will pass it on to someone taking an interest in the subject)

An introduction to Philosophy.

Earth - David Brin 5+

Science fiction set in the not too distant future, written in the 90s. Really
interesting themes / vision of post climate change world.

SlaughterHouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut 5

Semi autobiographical account of the bombing of Dresden in WW2. Really funny
and clever ideas. Very good.

= May =

Nick Cohen - What’s Left? 4

Account of how the left has degenerated since the collapse of the hard left
and the winning of liberal battles e.g. LGBT rights. Basic premise is that
those on the left hate the West and the status quo so much they stoop to
allying themselves with anyone who also opposes the status quo.

= June =

Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy won’t go away - Rebecca Newberger
Goldstein 5+

Plato has somehow appeared in the 21st century and is doing a talk at Google!
A really enjoyable account of how Plato’s philosophy could be applied to
modern issues. Really good. I want to go to Athens.

= July =

The Mind Body Problem - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 4

Novel about a female philosophy student shagging around and philosophising
about it.

Believing Bullshit - Stephen Law 4

Book detailing the various tricks / schemes played by charlatans and how to
avoid being taken in by them.

= August =

36 Arguments for the Existence of God: a work of fiction - Rebecca Newberger
Goldstein 3

Novel about an academic and his mentor. It was ok.

= September =

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams 3

Think I’m done reading these for now, don’t feel the urge to finish the set.

Kafka - The Trial 5

Really good. Love the surrealism - the nightmarish / dreamish-ness of it. Saw
it in the Theatre as well after reading it, thought that was great too.

= October =

= November =

Existence - David Brin 3

Not as good as Earth. Glad I read that first. Interesting imagining of what
form contact from alien life could take though. Also interesting look at
existential risks. The main part I didn’t like was how it skipped forward in
time 3 decades about 3/4s of the way through, I had thought the characters
were a little weak in general up until then anyway, and then they were pretty
much gone entirely at that point.

= December =

Alone Together - Sherry Turtle 4

The negatives of tech, robotics and the internet. Interesting and important
read.

Imperium - Robert Harris 5

First in the semi-fictional trilogy accounting the fall of the Roman Republic,
told through the eyes of Cicero’s secretary, Tiro. Really good. The politics,
the corruption, the ancient city really brought to life. Enhanced by having
visited Rome in the Summer.

Also currently reading ‘Reclaiming Conversation’ by Sherry Turkle, an account
of the negative affect being permanently tethered to the internet has on our
conversations, our capacity for empathy and our relationships, and Nietzsche’s
'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'.

------
eecks
1984

