
Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020? - ellinoora
Any great books you cannot wait to read next year? Maybe something you wish to learn? Curious about all kinds of great book suggestions for 2020. Thank you for sharing! (And I wish you all a great, educational new year)
======
pjmorris
I hilariously overestimate the number of books I can get through when I make
these lists, but my current list for 2020 is as follows:

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution

Book of Proof

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable,
Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation,
Reorientation, and Activation

Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War (for a friend)

Master and Commander

Educated

Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark

Stretch goal: The Power Broker, as a warm-up for Caro's LBJ series

The Bible (perpetual, I don't get through it every year, but I get through
much of it, often)

EDIT: I also hilariously underestimate the number of books I want to read.
Here's one more I think is vital for my 2020:

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers
of Brain Science

~~~
techstrategist
Depending on your current habits, starting with Digital Minimalism will help
get through the others in one year.

~~~
nireyal
Have you read my book, Indistractable, @techstrategist? Would love to know
what you think of it! I spent 5 years researching and writing a tech positive
guide to the deeper psychology of distraction.

~~~
tren
Hey Nir, I just finished your book (loaned from the library). I feel like it
has a lot of good information, however the people who are most likely to
benefit from it are least likely to read it, or read anything at all for that
matter.

I'd already implemented most of your recommendations before reading it, and
this year I feel like I've finally balanced tech consumption so that it's at a
healthy level. It's allowed me to read over 20 books, pursue my hobbies in
more depth and spend more time with my kid.

Things that worked for me:

\- no tech in the bedroom, I leave my phone in the living room every night. \-
start a morning routine without tech every day, I meditate, do stretches and a
light work out. \- i try to read as much as possible in hard copy from the
library. 3 week loans push me to finish things. I look forward to getting a
notification that one of my reserves has arrived. If the library doesn't have
a book it will inter library loan or purchase it for me most of the time. \-
all phone alerts turned off except for text msg/calls \- only use FB messenger
light if I'm going to use FB at all \- plenty of time to do nothing. I don't
think the human machine is meant to be on all the time

~~~
nireyal
I love that you’ve become Indistractable! Congrats!! What did you think about
the section on “how to raise Indistractable kids”?

~~~
tren
I think it's good advice for a lot of people. You're a role model for them, if
you're always checking your phone your distraction will rub off on them. I try
to spend a couple of hours each day with my kid focusing 100% on what we're
doing.

I try to follow Derek Sivers advice as much as possible:
[https://sivers.org/pa](https://sivers.org/pa)

------
douglaswlance
My top priority books:

    
    
        Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers
    
        Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny
    
        Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan
    
        Design Patterns - Gang of Four
    
        Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler
    
        Programming Pearls - Jon Bentley
    
        Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler
    
        The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt
    
        CSS: The Definitive Guide - Eric A. Meyer, Estelle Weyl
    
        Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers
    
        Head First Design Patterns - Eric Freeman, Bert Bates
    
        Code Complete - Steve McConnell
    
        Peopleware - Tim Lister, Tom DeMarco
    
        Clean Code - Robert C. Martin
    
        The Clean Coder - Robert C. Martin
    
        Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin
    
        Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug
    
        Functional Design Patterns for Express.js - Jonathan Lee Martin
    
        The Surrender Experiment - Michael A. Singer
    
    

The best books I've ever read:

    
    
        Principles - Ray Dalio
    
        The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
    
        The Effective Executive - Peter F. Drucker
    
        Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
    
        Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
    
        Influence - Robert B. Cialdini
    
        The Startup Way - Eric Ries
    
        The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
    
        12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson
    
        Measure What Matters - John Doerr, Larry Page
    
        The Fish That Ate the Whale - Rich Cohen
    
        The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber
    
        The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh
    
        Management - Peter F. Drucker
    
        Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows
    
        Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne

~~~
crimsonalucard
Skip design patterns, I think it locks developers into a sort of religious
loyalty towards OOP abstractions. When you understand the pattern it describes
you get a sort of catharsis for discovering a new interesting thing. In
reality, any of these patterns are just bad despite the cleverness.

Modern programming is heading in a different direction already so it'd be
better to move forward without it.

~~~
criddell
I disagree because people often don't have the luxury of working on greenfield
projects.

When you are working with an old codebase, you are going to run across design
patterns. You will see terms like _factory, builder, observer, decorator,
pool, flyweight, etc..._ and it's going to be helpful to know what those are.
A lot of the value of design patterns was in the terminology.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Times have changed where few non-greenfield projects use these patterns as
well. Languages like Go and javascript will rarely have these patterns. I
would avoid depending on the programming language.

If you are working with Java or C++ these are the two languages where these
patterns will appear, even in greenfield projects due to developer loyalty. If
you are working with languages other than this, then you are more likely not
to encounter these patterns that often.

Thus avoid the book unless you want to become an expert in Java. Also these
patterns can be learned without the GoF book just off of quick scans of
articles on the internet.

~~~
james_s_tayler
What has replaced them?

Presumably some of the problems they intend to solve still exist.

Is there some resource you can point to that says in the past when faced with
situation X developers tended to use pattern Y, these days that has been
superseded with way of doing things Z?

I've seen some of those patterns leveraged to great effect in modern software.
But genuinely curious about alternative ways to solve the same problems.

I've definitely noticed the trend towards more and more functional programming
these days. I doubt it's simply a case of "just use FP and there are no more
problems".

~~~
crimsonalucard
This isn't about OOP vs. FP.

This is about OOP vs. everything else.

Rust, Go and javascript are three languages that are moving away from the OOP
paradigm. None of those three languages are classified as functional.

>Is there some resource you can point to that says in the past when faced with
situation X developers tended to use pattern Y, these days that has been
superseded with way of doing things Z?

No. A general trend is an anecdotal observation. Still a quick google search
yielded: [https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-
bob/images/fpvsoo.jpg](https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-
bob/images/fpvsoo.jpg)

Take a look at the following video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM)

While I don't agree with a lot of it, I think it sums up my opinion really
clearly. It's not about DP's but because DP's focus around OOP and the video
is a criticism of OOP therefore the arguments apply to DPs.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Thanks. I've observed this as a general trend too. I'm starting to become more
and more interested in the functional way of thinking.

The image you linked it interesting. I want to dive more in on the
how/specifics. I don't necessarily buy the argument it's trying to make that
"just make a function and you no longer have a need for factory pattern".
You're trying to accomplish something fairly specific with that. Functions
compose, I could see how there are properties they have that can be leveraged
to achieve the same goal, but I'm guessing the functions you write or the way
you write functions to achieve each of those specific aims likely differ in
subtle yet important ways. I'm very interested in those details.

~~~
crimsonalucard
>I don't necessarily buy the argument it's trying to make that "just make a
function and you no longer have a need for factory pattern".

The same pattern is achievable with functions but the implementation is so
trivial in FP that it doesn't even need a name:

Just have a function return another function. That's a function factory.

Same thing with dependency injection:

Just have a function take another function as a parameter.

Outside of this I wouldn't even recommend either pattern at all. It's bad
practice in all paradigms. Only have data flow through your execution path,
don't have new "execution paths" flowing through your execution paths, such
architectures tend to be over-engineered.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Do you have a good example of a reference architecture or implementation of a
non-trivial system you can point me to?

I've recently gotten a copy of the book Domain Modelling Made Functional. I'm
yet to read it, but I'm pretty intrigued by some of what I've seen and I have
heard it comes highly recommend.

I'd be very keen to hear of other high quality examples of things people
consider good reference material.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Functional programming is rare. It's sort of like the PS3 when it came out.
Better specs across the board but harder to use and understand so it's hard
for me to point to production level examples. Facebook does have one big
project done in haskell you can look into that. Also whatsapp is done entirely
in erlang.

Also note that the trend I see in the industry is not exactly movement towards
functional programs but more movement towards borrowing features popular in
functional programming as well as getting rid of classes.

------
dmos62
I've begun reading The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, his first novel. It's
left a very good impression so far. It's a fourteenth century murder mystery,
set in a monastery, where the mystery is mostly an excuse for exploring the
historical and cultural contexts, which are very interesting. Wikipedia has a
nice summary: "an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction,
biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory". Eco was a
semiotician and a philosopher and he brings the best of that to the table in
this book.

~~~
madhadron
I have resorted to his phrase "what is good for an old monk may not be so for
a young novice" from that book about Emacs over the years. The quote above
will not be exact since I was reading it in Italian.

------
puszczyk
I look forward to read “Meditations”[1] by Marcus Aurelius and re-read “Black
Swan”[2]. On the _craftsperson_ front I’ve heard good things about “Designing
Data-Intensive Applications”[3] by Martin Kleppman.

Also hope to get some good recommendations here :)

[1]:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30659.Meditations?ac=1&f...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30659.Meditations?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=6PGKWaSVqW&rank=1)

[2]:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242472.The_Black_Swan?ac...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242472.The_Black_Swan?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=jVPTaf8bzO&rank=1)

[3]: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23463279-designing-
data-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23463279-designing-data-
intensive-applications)

~~~
0kl
Re Aurelius: preview a couple different translations if you can - I have found
there to be significant differences.

If you have the time/inclination and haven’t already I’d also suggest reading
Epictetus and Seneca first.

NB: My favorite of all the available Aurelius translations so far is Martin
Hammond (Penguin Classics)

~~~
criddell
Is Hammond's your favorite because it's the best read or because it's the most
faithful to the source material?

~~~
shantly
I surveyed a ton of translations a few years ago and found Maxwell
Staniforth's to be the best balance between readability and fidelity to the
original text. Older translations (as is typical of older translations of
ancient works) tend to use needlessly "elevated" language, while a lot of
newer ones seem to be convinced the Greek is even more simple and informal
than it actually is, for whatever reason.

------
kidintech
My compiled list for 2020, as suggested by friends I respect and HN:

General

====

\- Master & Margarita (w reader's guide)

\- Why we sleep

\- The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion

\- The wisdom of insecurity

\- The denial of death

\- The three body problem (friend's advice: slow burn, stick with it)

\- The dubliners

\- The devils (Dostoyevski)

\- The name of the rose

\- Enten-Oller (Kierkegaard)

\- Zero to one (Peter Thiel, recommended reading as palantir new joiner - not
fantastic but has some thought provoking ideas; i.e. which very important
truth would very few people agree with you on?)

Economy/finance

===

\- Basic economics (Thomas Sowell)

\- How an economy grows and why it crashes

\- Know the city

Math

===

\- Coffee time in Memphis

\- Real analysis (mathematics textbook)

\- Problems from the book (Halfway through this one, and I found it really
enjoyable, even with only a CS bachelors)

If anyone has read any and has feedback/notes, I'm looking forward to hearing
them!

~~~
CaRDiaK
My fiancée is an avid reader of fiction and canonical literature, she averages
around 40 books a year. I was looking for something interesting to get her one
Birthday for a change and was recommended "The Master & Margarita" by some
folks on reddit. She loved it. It's a very strange book apparently but it
steered her into some other Russian authors since.

I've read "Why we sleep" on your list—I average about 20 non fiction a year.
It made me think about my own sleeping habits, although I believe there is a
blog post out there that claims there is little scientific evidence to back up
some of the medical claims made in the book, I still found it beneficial and
thought provoking. The history and theory around sleep and it's role in human
evolution I found particularly interesting.

~~~
vesinisa
Here is the blog post regarding factual errors in "Why we sleep" in case
anyone is interested: [https://guzey.com/books/why-we-
sleep/](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/)

I was about to read the book based on a colleague's recommendation, but the
blog post and a separate article in my local newspaper debunking few of the
claims made me decide against it.

------
MattConfluence
The Dune movie isn't due until December 2020, but I figured I'd get started
with Dune the book, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while. Maybe
if I enjoy it I will get my hands on the rest of the Dune series.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
The first book is great but the sequels are awful. So yeah

~~~
the_watcher
I really enjoy expanded universes (I'll forgive a lot on the quality side in
exchange for coloring in the world), and I also just couldn't get through the
sequels.

~~~
Scarblac
And I love the sequels...

~~~
the_watcher
Huh, maybe someday I'll try again. I did find that Dune took me a few attempts
to truly get into.

------
0kl
I plan to reread a couple core works for myself. Of that list the ones that
I’d recommend for others are: Aurelius (trans. Martin Hammond) Fear and
Trembling Man’s Search for Meaning Tolstoy’s Confessions Kundera’s The Art of
the Novel

After doing a thorough reading of “How to Read a Book” I decided to try
rereading a few books to pull more out of them.

I can’t recommend “How to Read a Book” enough - despite its anachronisms and
glaring faults, it’s the only book I’ve found that has genuinely made me feel
that I’ve not really read a single book in my life.

~~~
criddell
_How to Read a Book_ has been on my list for the longest time. I might have to
finally give it a go. Is the book very dense? I think one of the reasons I've
held off is because I have a suspicion that it could probably be distilled
down to the length of a magazine article...

I read a decent amount and enjoy it, but I feel in the end I don't get much
from it. The time doesn't feel well spent. FWIW, I try to alternate fiction
with non-fiction.

~~~
bloudermilk
Anne-Laure Le Cunff just published a blog post that appears to be a summary of
the book, which you might find interesting.

[https://nesslabs.com/how-to-read-a-book](https://nesslabs.com/how-to-read-a-
book)

~~~
criddell
Thanks for the link! Have you read the book? Is the article you linked to a
decent summary of the book?

~~~
0kl
It is a very good summary; matches a lot of my own notes on it. One thing to
note though...

> Adler’s main point in the first section of his work about how to read a book
> is that it’s best to gain knowledge straight from the source. Instead of
> going through a teacher sharing the main points of a book, he considered it
> better to read the book yourself. He called this concept “original
> communication”—the idea that information coming directly from those who
> first discovered an idea is the best way of gaining an understanding.

Also worth checking out is Adler's "How to Mark a Book" :
[http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~pinsky/mark_a_book.htm](http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~pinsky/mark_a_book.htm)

------
bemmu
To start the year off, my casual just-before-sleep reading will be "Ender's
Shadow", which is a story that isn't a prequel or a sequel to "Ender's Game",
but a story parallel to it.

"What We Cannot Know", which is an exploration of all the topics that we might
never be able to know, such as how to predict the weather, is the universe
infinite etc.

"Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder", because it's dauntingly long
and I'm feeling masochistic.

"Commodore - A Company on the Edge" because I really enjoyed "Revolution in
the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", so I think I'll
also like seeing how another computer I really like (the Commodore 64) came
about.

~~~
psv1
> "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder", because it's dauntingly long
> and I'm feeling masochistic.

The length on its own isn't that big of a problem. But if you want a simple
idea which can be explained thoroughly in a couple of pages to be stretched
out for hundreds pages in the most unbearably condescending and arrogant tone
that you can imagine... then Antifragile will fit in great with your
masochistic inclinations.

~~~
ewhizrd
True that it's a simple idea. But the length of the book is worth it for the
breadth it covers(economics, health, politics, etc), the implications of the
idea would be otherwise hard to explore by self.

------
dlojudice
Lifespan: Why We Age-and Why We Don't Have To - David Sinclair [1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age-Dont-Have-
ebook/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age-Dont-Have-
ebook/dp/B07N4C6LGR)

------
Balgair
USMC Commandant's 2020 Reading List.

This year I am finishing up the Harvard Classics and am looking for a new view
point.
[https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1](https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1)

Unfortunately, the military only publish on New Years Day (traditionally as a
sort of holiday gift to those under command), so the 2020 list is not out yet.
Every title is free via either the base library or the Navy Digital Library.
Most have free audio book narration. There are discussion guides also provided
for free. The website is very easy to use and poke around in, I'd suggest
looking at it from a Dev standpoint alone. That said, the 2019 list is here:
[https://grc-usmcu.libguides.com/usmc-reading-list](https://grc-
usmcu.libguides.com/usmc-reading-list)

There are a LOT of titles so here are the Poolee through PFC levels:

Poolee:

BATTLE CRY by Leon Uris

CORPS VALUES by Zell Miller

GATES OF FIRE: AN EPIC NOVEL OF THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE by Steven Pressfield

GRIT: THE POWER OF PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE by Angela Duckworth

STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein

PFC through Lance Corporal:

CHESTY by Jon T. Hoffman

ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card

THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY: A TRUE STORY OF U.S. MARINES IN COMBAT by Bob
Drury

THE MARINES OF MONTFORD POINT: AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK MARINES by Melton Alonza
McLaurin

ON CALL IN HELL by Richard Jadick; Thomas Hayden

READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline

RIFLEMAN DODD: A NOVEL OF THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN by C. S. Forester

THE WARRIOR ETHOS by Steven Pressfield

The 2020 list should have some froth in it (Greitens likely won't stay, but
who knows, judge the art not the artist). I think it'll be a good look into a
Corps that has been punched for a long time in Afghanistan. Still, some great
titles in there.

~~~
aerovistae
I wouldn't bother with Ready Player One, which is an unrewarding story mostly
written as an effort by the author to collect every bit of his 80s nostalgia
in one place.

Instead I would suggest Speaker For The Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game and a
remarkable novel.

~~~
jackklika
I had a lot of fun reading the book and thought it was influential to my view
of the future and VR. It's an easy read (I finished it on a long train ride)
but certain parts stuck in my brain ever since. Much different and more mature
than the movie.

~~~
aerovistae
Which parts?

------
dgellow
I want to finish to read Snowden’s autobiography: “Permanent Record”.

I started during a long train trip recently and found that I really enjoyed
the tone of the first few chapters.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_(autobiogra...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_\(autobiography\))

~~~
rocketpastsix
I listened to him read it on Audible. It's really interesting. Though it
started off a little slow but picks up as it keeps going. I thoroughly enjoyed
it.

~~~
arethuza
It's definitely a book that I thought benefited from being read by the author
- strongly recommended!

------
sbolt
I'm hoping to tackle this list in 2020, I've been wanting to read Caro's LBJ
series for a while now.

=====

Robert Caro - Lyndon B. Johnson series & The Power Broker

S.C Gwynne - Empire of the Summer Moon

Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Black Swan & Antifragile

Graham Hancock - America Before

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel

Safi Bahcall - Loonshots

~~~
Ozumandias
The entire LBJ series and The Power Broker? Ambitious! Caro has a fantastic
voice in his writing but by golly he sure does know how to fill a thousand
pages!

~~~
sbolt
Yes, it's an ambitious list, Caro is my priority for 2020 so I don't mind
spending a large portion of the year on his books. Are there any other books
you'd recommend?

------
haah
My 2019 reading list

~~~
ellinoora
Hahaha. I know the feeling.

------
melenaboija
"Between the world and me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"A people's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn

~~~
cryoshon
be sure to take the people's history with a grain of salt...

there's factual information in there, but a lot of it is a bit exaggerated and
from a very... shall we say, not-rigorous perspective, even if you largely
believe in the thrust of what's being said and the facts aren't really up for
dispute.

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _there 's factual information in there, but a lot of it is a bit exaggerated
> and from a very... shall we say, not-rigorous perspective,_

I agree. Perhaps when the book came out in the 80s, and there was far less
access to "information", this book was probably great from a "history isn't
always as it seems" perspective. Today we are far more conscious of the "elite
narrative" of history. Now I think you'd be better served by perusing the
table of contents and finding various sources on the subject matter that
interests you.

It's well written, and Zinn is great. Just feels a bit dated.

------
outime
My bare minimum is learn more about Alan Watts and his books. I saw him
mentioned here many times but it wasn’t until I started reading one of the
books that I got hooked by his way of explaining fundamental life stuff.

------
kaypro
The Body - Bill Bryson

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Rovelli, Carlo

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and
Enlightenment - Robert Wright

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari

~~~
branweb
The only one on this list I disliked was the Wright book, mainly because it's
not a scientific justification of Buddhism. It's really about how evolutionary
psychology explains stuff like road-rage and dieting struggles and how insight
meditation (Wright's brand of secularized Buddhism) helps us manage those
emotions. Which is fine. Only he's not an evolutionary psychologist and almost
all the evidence he puts forward for the effects of meditation is anecdotal.
For me a pretty disappointing book.

~~~
kaypro
Really appreciate that feedback.. thank you!

~~~
branweb
Thanks for posting it! Definitely going to add a couple of those to my list.

------
lghh
Leisure Stuff:

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga Of Oklahoma City, It's Chaotic Founding... by
Sam Anderson

Midnight In Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (tried it this year and stopped, want to
give it another go)

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just finished Exhalation and I
think it's great)

An Ursula K. Le Guin novel, have not picked one out yet

A book related to basketball (possibly Dream Team, but IDK yet)

Less Leisure Stuff:

Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real
Reform by John Pfaff

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

The End Of Policing by Alex S Vitale

Either Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power by Chomsky

The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold

Work:

Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws
by Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto

Finish Writing An Interpreter In Go by Thorsten Ball

If I can get through all of these, I will be very pleased. Throw in a book or
two at recommendation from friends and I think I'm full for the year.

~~~
chucky_z
For Ursula, I would strongly suggest Left Hand of Darkness. Try to read it
without looking into it too much.

~~~
madhadron
Or go dip into her novellas. There's a collected edition out now ('The Found
and the Lost'). I think my favorite stuff of hers is in there. Or, if you just
want fun, 'Changing Planes' is a delightful romp inspired by the misery of
sitting in airports.

~~~
lghh
Since they are shorter, I may add that and sprinkle them. Good suggestion!

------
haileris
I feel like I'm way behind on fundamentals so mostly textbooks. I'm focused on
CS, maths, and finance mainly, not sure I'll achieve this in a year, kind of
my perpetual read this within 10 years list. I'm also interested in literature
but prefer reading to enrich my knowledge and skills as opposed to reading for
leisure :

Maths:

 _James Stewart 's Precalculus

Spivak's Calculus

How to Solve It

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

I Am a Strange Loop

Introduction to Linear Algebra

Euclid's Elements

The Principia: The Authoritative Translation and Guide: Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy_

CS:

 _The Algorithm Design Manual

Finish SICP

Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Persepctive

C Programming: A Modern Approach, 2nd Edition

Operating Systems: 3 Easy pieces

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First
Principles

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

Lions' Commentary on Unix

TCP/IP Illustrated_

Finance/Econ/Business:

 _Liar 's Poker

Investor Z (Manga)

Trading & Exchanges

Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options

Python for Finance: Mastering Data-Driven Finance

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it

Alpha Masters

Fooling Some of the People All of Time

Dark Pools

When Genius Failed

Advances in Financial Machine Learning

Algorithmic Trading_

Other:

 _Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free productivity

Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Chaos: Making a New Science

Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World

Data and Reality: A Timeless Perspective on Perceiving and Managing
Information in Our Imprecise World_

~~~
iamjk
> Computer Systems: A Programmer's Persepctive

Can vouch for this one. Provides a great overview of systems through the lens
of algorithms they are built on.

~~~
hackermailman
There's lectures online for it too:
[https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...](https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%22b96d90ae-9871-4fae-91e2-b1627b43e25e%22&maxResults=50)

------
mattdanger
Next up on my list is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I was given it as a gift from a friend and have seen it recommend here on HN

~~~
Syntoniclese
When I read this book the first time, I was slightly intrigued and somewhat
disappointed. Years later, when I was on a spiritual journey, a reread
revealed profound depth and led me toward a complete shift in perspective on
life.

After months of philosophy, I again questioned the value of the ideas the book
hints at. It's one of those books that can be a guide - if you need one, are
ready for one, and haven't yet encountered the deeper themes.

------
nestorherre
AH! So many books to read.. I always get excited when I see these type of
threads (because I can get new worthy books to add to my list), but on the
other hand I get depressed that it is pretty damn hard to catch up with
everything that I want to read.

My list would be too long to post, but these are the ones next in line: \-
Meditations \- Digital Minimalism \- I Ching \- Art of War \- Tao Te King \-
Steppenwolf \- Think and grow rich

In general want to focus on books of: business, leadership, self development,
productivity and spiritualism (mostly buddhism).

------
Scarblac
3 or 4 Discworld books, as in every year. Starting with Soul Music this time,
in publication order.

Designing Data Intensive Applications.

Some books on leadership from the recent HN discussion, not decided which yet.

Death's End (book 3 of The Three Body Problem). The first two were really
good.

The Algorithm Design Manual. Domain Driven Design.

Some chess books. Some general science and history. The yearly random self
help book.

If I manage all that plus whatever I'll decide I want in the actual year, it
will be a good year for reading, but maybe I need to have some more focus.
We'll see.

------
shekhardesigner
These are on my list:

Five Dysfuncitons of a Team:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21343.The_Five_Dysfuncti...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21343.The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team)

The Advantage: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12975375-the-
advantage](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12975375-the-advantage)

------
wishinghand
I don’t have a list handy but I do intend to read a lot. Every year I make the
same New Year’s Resolution: read one book a week. The closest I came to 52 was
in 2011 when I read 36. I do this because I calculated that if I met my goal
from the age of 16 to 90, I’d only read 3,900 books. I grew up an avid reader
and the decline in my intake bums me out. So here’s to 52 in 2020!

------
bilekas
Everyone else with nice collections of books.

Mine :

Harry Potter

~~~
matsemann
Well, I still read them almost every christmas. At least a few of them.

I'd also recommend Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn series is very good, and
Stormligh Archive is good so far. I really like his world-building, and I
think the way he uses magic is something most HNers would approve of. It's
often well defined, and the characters try to exploit it the same way a reader
would.

~~~
renjimen
I’ll add The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss to this, having
recently gotten into Brandon Sanderson. Probably my favourite fantasy series.
Lots of similarities to the Mistborn Series.

~~~
samtechie
Kingkiller Chronicles is hands down my best fantasy series but its unfinished
and the last book has taken over 8 years now with the author constantly
pushing the release date. There are rumours that it will be released in 2020
but they have been saying this for years.

------
andreilys
Well here are the books I’m currently reading (physical, kindle, and audible).
I bounce around a lot. Sometimes it takes me a week to finish a book, other
times I take a few months. Sometimes I never finish. But these are the ones I
have some progress on so far:

1\. Faust by goethe

2\. I am That

3\. Book of why

4\. The gift by hafiz

5\. Simulacra and simulation

6\. Candide by Voltaire

7\. Meeting the shadow: the hidden power of the dark side of human nature

8\. Nonviolent communication

9\. After the ecstasy, the laundry

10\. Watchmen

11\. Noble heart by Pena chodron

12\. Developer hegemony

13\. Brothers karamazov

~~~
deesep
I am That by Sri Nisargadatta is a great book.

~~~
andreilys
I read the intro and really liked it. Unfortunately it's been a month since I
picked it up, got distracted by a few other books haha.

------
shantly
Hopefully I'll knock at least a couple off my "most shameful not to have read"
list:

\- Paradise Lost

\- The Divine Comedy

\- The Aeneid

\- Moby Dick

\- Middlemarch

\- Othello & at least the lesser Henriad

\- Any of several Russian novels, of which I've read none (War and Peace,
Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment probably being the biggest)

\- Kafka's The Trial

\- The Canterbury Tales (I've read Sir Gawain & The Green Knight but not this,
WTF is wrong with me?)

\- Don Quixote

------
mindcrime
A lot of what I read in 2020 will involve just finishing titles I started in
2019 (or before). So my "To read in 2020" list already has a lot of stuff on
it.

But to name ones that I very specifically want to read/finish sooner than
later... hmm... there are a number of books that fall more into the realms of
history / anthropology / etc., that I have been meaning to read. Books like
_Guns, Germs, and Steel_ , and _Sapiens_ \- things of that nature. One of
those that I'm already on, but probably won't finish before Jan 1, is _Human
Universals_ by Donald Brown.

I also want to get through some books on writing/reading mathematical proofs.
_Mathematical Reasoning: Writing and Proof_ by Ted Sundstrom, or _The Book of
Proof_ by Richard Hammack.

Another one I hope to get through is _Designing Data-Intensive Applications_.

------
GcVmvNhBsU
The Body: A Guide for Occupants The Topeka School: A Novel The Yellow House
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Life Undercover: Coming
of Age in the CIA AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World
Order The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
Mastery Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance Places and Names: On War,
Revolution, and Returning Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That
Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality Sea Stories: My Life in
Special Operations Alone at Dawn: Medal of Honor Recipient John Chapman and
the Untold Story of the World's Deadliest Special Operations Force Call Sign
Chaos: Learning to Lead Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the
People We Don't Know

------
vo2maxer
Some of the books in my 2020 to be read basket:

Cultural Amnesia by Clive James

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Silver, Sword & Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story by Maria
Arana

The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy

Alice And Bob Meet The Wall Of Fire edited by Thomas Lin

Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald

Big Bang by David Bowman

White Noise by Don DeLillo

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann

A House for Mr. Biwas by V. S. Naipaul

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

On The Abolition Of All Political Parties by Simone Weil

Collected Stories by Bruno Schulz

On Being The Right Size by J. B. S. Haldane

Bela Tarr, The Time After by Jacques Ranciere

La Vida Breve by Juan Carlos Onetti

The Clown by Heinrich Boll

Memoirs From Beyond The Grave by Francois-Rene De Chateubriand

Blood Dark by Louis Guilloux

The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling

Cuentos Completos by Juan Carlos Onetti

Balcony In The Forest by Julien Gracq

Historia De España Contada Para Escépticos by Juan Eslava Galán

Diez Lecciones Sobre Los Clásicos by Piero Boitani

Waiting For The Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

97,196 Words by Emmanuel Carrere

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

El Zafarrancho Aquel De Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda

------
ismail
Here is my list, which excludes fiction. Mostly philosophy. I prefer to read
fewer books but more deeply.

Currently reading:

Republic - Plato

Being and time - Heidegger

On the list to begin reading:

Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle

Recursivity and contingency - Yuk Hui

Wholeness and the implicate order or thought as a system - David Bohm

Finite and infinite games - James P Carse

Book lists:

[https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31590496?shelf=to-
read](https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31590496?shelf=to-read)

[https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31590496?shelf=current...](https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31590496?shelf=currently-
reading)

[https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31590496?shelf=read](https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31590496?shelf=read)

------
agentultra
Going to finish _Crime and Punishment_ , _Year of the Monkey_ (Patti Smith),
_The Children of Húrin_ (along with many cross references and letters)
(Tolkien), re-reading _A Game of Thrones_ for fun... as for 2020 I might read
_Slaughterhouse 5_ again and work through George Sand.

Technical things I am working through are the:

\- [https://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-
initiative/a...](https://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-
initiative/abstract-algebra) along with the Artin text, writing proofs out by
hand and in Lean.

\- _Seven Sketches in Compositionality_ :
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05316](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05316)

------
keiferski
I'm planning on going through the entire Harvard Classics. At 51 volumes, it
works out pretty nicely to read one volume per week.

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

~~~
madhadron
I'm going to suggest some alternate translations for some of these where it
really matters.

Virgil's Aeneid, the best I know if is CS Lewis's partial translation. I'm
unaware of a complete translation that has any of the magic of the original.

Dante's Divine Comedy, read the Clive James translation. This is the first one
that captures some of the luminous quality of the Tuscan.

Beowulf, get Seamus Heaney's translation.

I don't read Spanish and cannot offer any insights on Cervantes, but maybe
someone else can chime in. Likewise, do some research on translations of the
Buddhist writings in volume 45.

One volume a week of this material is steep. A lot of this has its own pace
and forcing your way through it faster loses the reason to bother. Milton's
Paradise Lost, for example, is an awesome poem, but it implies a cadence, and
it's a much slower cadence than modern readers are used to for nontechnical
prose.

~~~
keiferski
Thanks for the suggestions. I actually have read _Paradise Lost_ before, but
yeah, point taken. I manage my time well so I don't anticipate having to rush
through it, but we shall see.

------
klohto
I’d like to finally read something by Jason Fung.

I have been trying fasting on and off for about 6 months and I can see
results, but I have not bothered to check the theory behind it at all.

If anybody would like to recommend some books on nutrition, body aging and
general health regarding food, bring it!

~~~
jlavine
Jason Fung explains his theory of type 2 diabetes / metabolic disorder, and
how it is addressed by fasting, in detail in episode #59 of Peter Attia's "The
Drive" podcast [1].

The review of Fung's "The Obesity Code" on Red Pen Reviews [2] details some
serious flaws in the scientific claims in the book related to calories,
insulin, and fasting, and their relation to obesity and fat loss.

Relating to nutrition/health/longevity, they aren't books, but I've found the
podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, and even tweets by Rhonda Patrick
(FoundMyFitness), Peter Attia (The Drive), Stephan Guyenet, and Chris
Masterjohn quite enlightening.

[1] [https://peterattiamd.com/jasonfung/](https://peterattiamd.com/jasonfung/)
[2] [https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/the-obesity-code-
unloc...](https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/the-obesity-code-unlocking-
the-secrets-of-weight-loss/)

------
trenning
I don't have a list because I usually look around on here for my next book to
read. I see a lot of similar titles after reading through this thread. Some
I've read, some I've started and got bored with and a lot I've never heard of.

I just finished reading Siddartha, which is a really short book, but I'd like
to read more that are similar to this, any suggestions?

I see Designing Data-Intensive Applications quite a bit in this thread, might
have a go at that one too.

Currently I'm reading
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Standard_Oi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Standard_Oil_Company)
which is fascinating!

~~~
ralphosphorous
I'm a huge fan of Hermann Hesse. Beneath the Wheel is probably my favorite
novel of his, although Steppenwolf & Demian are also fantastic. The Fairytales
of Hermann Hesse re-read every couple years. I've also bought it probably 5
times now, each time lending (giving?) it out to a friend. His fairytales hit
the same themes as his novels and often do so with a bit stronger punch and a
fun sense of magic.

------
zeronone
\- Design Data Intensive Applications
([https://dataintensive.net](https://dataintensive.net))

\- Database Internals ([https://www.databass.dev/](https://www.databass.dev/))

------
tonyedgecombe
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann, it covers two different approaches
to the environmental problems we face. Whether we can use technology to
extract ourselves from these problems or restraint and a simpler life.

After that I'll probably read Walden again.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
First two thirds are engaging, though he over simplifies rather too much to
fit everything neatly into the either-or, but I learnt of much I did not know.
Despite his efforts over preceding pages to remain neutral, the later parts
become infuriating. He can't help guiding you to Borlaugianism (wizard's tech
as adversary to nature) as the preferred correct solution. I felt rather let
down in the end and wonder about how balanced the preceding actually was.

------
axegon
I usually don't plan in advance but I'll finish The Dark Tower series(3 to
go).

~~~
sshine
The Gunslinger (part of The Dark Tower series) was excellent.

Demons and Wizards, the metal band, made a song called The Gunslinger, through
which I learned of this book.

------
matteuan
I plan to read:

\- "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber

\- "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief" by Lawrence
Wright

\- "The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves" by Matt Ridley

\- "Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life" by William Finnegan

~~~
finleymedia
Going Clear is great. I've read several of Wright's books and really enjoy the
depth of the research he does.

------
mark_l_watson
Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach is an amazing book, that I just
started, and I will be working through into the new year.

It is a well written textbook with clear learning paths for readers with
different backgrounds and learning objectives.

------
Pandabob
My plan is to read about the french revolution and as such I was thinking
about reading the books recommended by Five Books[1]:

1\. Ancien Regime and the Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville

2\. Interpreting the French Revolution by François Furet

3\. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama

4\. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution by R. R.
Palmer

5\. New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s by
Woloch Isser

Just ordered the first one!

[1]: [https://fivebooks.com/best-books/french-revolution-lynn-
hunt...](https://fivebooks.com/best-books/french-revolution-lynn-hunt/)

~~~
chance_state
That's a great list. What made you interested in the subject?

~~~
Pandabob
A couple of years ago a friend mentioned a now infamous quote by the Chinese
prime minister Zhou Enlai, who, when asked by Henry Kissinger what he thought
about the French Revolution, said that it's "too early to tell"[1]. Apparently
he was referring to the revolutions of 1968, but the quote has taken a life of
its own to kind of describe the magnitude of the actual french revolution.

Anyway, it's been 15 years since I first really learned about the revolution
in high school and after hearing the quote I've been skimming the wikipedia
page every now and then and it just seems like one of the most fascinating
events in the history of the western world.

In the span of 30 years:

    
    
      - The french kill their king
    
      - They're the first monarchy to convert into a republic
    
      - Most of the early leaders of the revolution die, apparently because they're so brutal
    
      - The whole thing ends with Napoleon becoming emperor and conquering half of Europe.
    

Also at the same time the industrial revolution is going on. I think that for
someone who's living in 2020 it's hard to put into context the magnitude of
the changes for the people at the time. Absolutely fascinating stuff.

[1]:
[https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/978019182...](https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-
ed4-00018657)

------
nottorp
Why in 2020? There are 2 weeks left of 2019... time enough for a couple
books...

~~~
zeroonetwothree
Exactly. I still plan to finish 6 more this year which is apparently more than
some plan for all of 2020...

~~~
goobynight
most*

25% of people are going to hit 0 again. 1-2 is huge for most people

------
texteller
* The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos by Christian Davenport

* The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte

* Machine Platform Crowd: Harnessing the Digital Revolution Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

* Kiss The Ground Josh Tickell

* The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by MichioKaku

* * * My other 95 Books I am going to continue re-read in 2020:

[http://casualwalker.com/95-best-books-to-read-
in-2019](http://casualwalker.com/95-best-books-to-read-in-2019)

------
peacemaker
I'm moving back into a team leadership role after working for myself a while
so probably The Managers Path and Managing Humans. Would love to hear other
suggestions for software development managers too!

~~~
otobrglez
The Managers Path is brilliant. I highly recommend it.

One of the best books I read in 2019. :)

------
Brajeshwar
I've read over 38 books till now, so, it will be about 40 by the year-end. I
have a long list of Book Wishlist on Amazon. I try to buy (both physical and
Kindle) about 5 books ahead. Twitter has become a very good source of my Books
to Read.

I also tend to and try to re-read quite a few books from before. I never have
any specific books lined up for a year but I'm sure, I won't be able to finish
my current wishlist.

The comment thread on this post is going to be another good source for my book
wishlist.

I wish to be rich enough to have all the time to read so many books. :-)

------
knzhou
I try to only read books that are at least a few years old, so these aren’t
timely recommendations.

On the list for next year:

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

Essays of Montaign

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Higher Speculations: Grand Theories and Failed Revolutions in Physics and
Cosmology

The Enigma of Reason

Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind

Impro

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Invisible Cities

Collapse of Complex Societies

\--

Favorites from this year:

Death's End

One Man's Meat

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

Cosmicomics

Why Quark Rhymes with Pork

The Unfolding of Language

A Sand County Almanac

------
Simmo
I would like to start with:

 _High Output Management Grove_ , Andrew S.

 _7 Habits Of Highly Effective People Covey_ , Stephen R

 _Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship_ ,(Robert C. Martin)

 _Clean Architecture: A Craftsman 's Guide to Software Structure and Design_
(Robert C. Martin Series)

 _Building Evolutionary Architectures: Support Constant Change_ by Neal Ford,
Rebecca Parsons, Patrick Kua

If you have read any of them and you would like to share your thoughts, I will
be truly happy to listen!:)

Happy reading

------
drclau
Ken MacLeod. I read most of his hard SF, and I am just about to finish re-
reading Fractions: The First Half of the Fall Revolution (The Star Fraction +
The Stone Canal). It’s a great series, often underrated because it’s more
political and technical. The Stone Canal is probably the best of the series.

I plan to re-read Descent and The Restoration Game, at the least.

Haven’t made yet a list of new stuff to read, I’ll pick stuff is it comes.

------
photon_lines
\- Princeton Companion to Mathematics

\- The Art and Craft of Problem Solving

\- Div, Grad, Curl and all that

\- Visual Complex Analysis

\- Ordinary Differential Equations

\- Mathematics and Its History

\- Geometry and the Imagination

\- Introduction to Electrodynamics

\- Penrose's Road to Reality

------
DanielleMolloy
I will try getting through Goodfellows ‚Deep Learning‘ book, the maths for ML
book: [https://mml-book.github.io/](https://mml-book.github.io/) and the
classic ‚The Fractal Geometry of Nature‘.

I’m also listening to various audiobooks, but these are much easier to get
through in bulk than books I’ve actually got to sit down and read for like the
above.

------
plahteenlahti
Currently, my list of to-reads looks like this:

Non-fiction:

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon
Valley Are Changing the World

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men Hacking Darwin: Genetic
Engineering and the Future of Humanity

Bad Science

I'm Afraid Debbie From Marketing Has Left for the Day: How to Use Behavioural
Design to Create Change in the Real World

Fiction:

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Catch-22

The Wanderers

I could definitely use some more fiction. Any suggestions?

~~~
dmos62
> This Is How You Lose the Time War Catch-22 The Wanderers

At first I thought "wow that's a crazy book title", but then I realised that
this is just markdown shenanigans.

------
apress
Before the next wave of Internet-from-space companies fly by, I'm going to
delve in to the last great bubble. John Bloom's "Eccentric Orbits," mainly
about the life and death and rebirth of Iridium–but also covering all of that
company's even less successful peers–came out in 2016, but somehow I missed it
until now. Lots of awards.

------
beaconstudios
For me:

\- On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche

\- Simulcra and Simulations, Jean Baudrillard

\- The Ruling Class, Gaetano Mosca

\- Finish off the Enchiridion and Shobogenzo

For work:

\- Envisioning Information, Edward Tufte

\- Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

~~~
0kl
When I studied Nietzsche it was more or less “Read Zarathustra, then read all
the ‘Viking Portable Nietzsche’ then read all of the ‘Basic Writings of
Nietzche’” all translates by Hollingdale or, preferably, Kauffman.

Among the jewels you’ll find in such a reading are things like the seed of
Nietzsche’s thought being placed, imo, in The Birth of Tragedy, with the line:

> It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are
> eternally justified

Other Nietzsche related recommendations: Pre-Nietzsche: Plato, Schopenhauer
Post-Nietzsche: Camus - maybe?

~~~
beaconstudios
I'm on the back end of Zarathustra at the moment, hence moving onto something
a bit stronger. I tend to flick between different books by any given author in
order to assimilate their ideas, so I might add Birth of Tragedy at the same
time - thank for the recommendation. I'd like to get through all of
Nietzsche's key writing in the next couple of years.

I've thought about reading Schopenhauer as I understand he's a great
complement to Nietzsche's work - I'll see where I get to with Nietzsche first.
Camus is somewhat related as an absurdist compared to Nietzsche/Schopenhauer's
existentialism, but a bit more optimistic about the possibility of meaning.

I'm tempted to dig into Plato as the problem of universals is a philosophical
topic that I value greatly, and his theory of forms is basically its origin
story.

~~~
0kl
I heavily recommend the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Republic, and Phaedrus (in
particular) - it’s said all of philosophy is a footnote on Plato until
Nietzsche. I think only a summary of Schopenhauer (like a penguin selection or
something) is all that’s needed - he moves past Schopenhauer pretty quickly.

I enjoyed Camus due to it being an attempt to move beyond Nietzsche and offer
something more digestible, but I never moved past the Nietzsche/Plato combo
for my personal philosophies (with a heavy dash of stoicism)

Re forms: I find that Plato’s forms are one of the most used mental models I
engage with - especially working with software.

~~~
beaconstudios
Thanks for the suggestion - I'll add Plato's works to my list. I tried to get
into Republic when I was a bit younger but couldn't digest it at the time, but
I wasn't very familiar with philosophy (or reading dry books in general) at
the time so it would be worth another go round.

I'm roughly familiar with Camus' ideas as presented in the Myth of Sisyphus,
and I like the idea that one can make the fight against suffering the source
of meaning - it resonates with my understanding of the role of dukkha in the
four noble truths in Buddhism. I personally use a mix of Zen Buddhism and
stoicism, which seems very similar to you.

The main mental models I use day-to-day are those derived from systems theory,
and I believe that patterns of emergence and recursion described by systems
theory are the underlying mechanism that brings about abstract properties. I
believe I have a copy of "The Human Use of Human Beings" by Norbert Wiener on
the way for Christmas, which is meant to be a great book on the topic of
cybernetics which is essentially a sub-category of systems theory.

~~~
0kl
That does sound very similar. I know that in my interpretation Camus is one of
the possible outcomes of Nietzsche's thoughts, and that his thoughts afford
for many... I think that is something that resonated with me - that _my_
philosophy does not need to be yours, but that we can still find some common
ground to survive with one another.

Do you have good recommendations for Zen Buddhism and systems theories?

I have touched on both, but never got deep enough to know what are the main
works I should be working off of.

~~~
beaconstudios
> in my interpretation Camus is one of the possible outcomes of Nietzsche's
> thoughts, and that his thoughts afford for many

Yeah that makes total sense. How do you respond to a meaningless universe? By
imagining up our own meaning and putting value in that.

> I think that is something that resonated with me - that _my_ philosophy does
> not need to be yours, but that we can still find some common ground to
> survive with one another.

Yeah I totally agree, and I think we could benefit from more people who viewed
our existence in that way.

> Do you have good recommendations for Zen Buddhism and systems theories?

Unfortunately I'm not generally that bookish - a lot of the knowledge I have
on these subjects, I've picked up from thinking and practicing the ideas
within, odd sources on the internet and in conversations rather than reading
books. However, I can recommend Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen" and Donella
Meadows' "Thinking in Systems", which I have read and both of which are
fantastic.

Unfortunately sometimes systems theorists get caught up in the fine grained
details such as "stock and flow" and "causal loop" diagrams and specific types
of loop structure, which happens in Donella Meadows' book - the wiki page for
complex systems
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system))
is a good entry point for the high level concerns in systems theory.

[edit] I'm also told that Godel Escher Bach is an interesting book for
approaching systems concepts like self-reference and emergence in a more
esoteric, example-driven way.

------
yboris
Looking forward to the upcoming book by Toby Ord:

 _Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity_

[https://www.amazon.com/Precipice-Existential-Risk-Future-
Hum...](https://www.amazon.com/Precipice-Existential-Risk-Future-
Humanity/dp/0316484911/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=toby+ord&qid=1576508942&sr=8-1)

------
pi-rat
Elements of Clojure - Zachary Tellman

Domain Modeling Made Functional - Scott Wlaschin

\---

Stormlight Book 4 - Brandon Sanderson

The Doors of Stone - Patrick Rothfuss (fingers crossed?)

Culture series - Iain Banks

~~~
Vieira
I was also considering buying "Domain Modeling Made Functional" but I read
that it uses F#. Are you working with F# or do you think it will be easy
translatable to any functional language?

~~~
pi-rat
We only have a tiny bit of F#, I’m gambling on it being:

\- A decent refresher on DDD.

\- Applicable to other functional languages, both strongly typed and dynamic.

------
zer0faith
Wheel Of Time is quite honestly the best adventure and most gratifying book
series I have ever had the pleasure to read.

------
Rerarom
I'd like to read the Realm of the Elderlings series and the Skolian Saga,
which I've neglected so far. Also, I think I'll start a thorough reading of
all Spider-Man comics.

Regarding non-fiction, I think I will read some books about algebraic geometry
and Lie groups. Haven't yet made a plan.

------
docdeek
It’s fiction and mass-market but I enjoy reading the new John Grisham novel
every October or about then. He’s consistent in quality, the books
consistently interesting, and it’s about the only hardback novel I’ll shell
out for instead of waiting for the paperback or Kindle version now.

------
Slimbo
The Unicorn Project. I got a lot out of the phoenix project and very much
looking forward to the sequel.

------
john-radio
"And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie

"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin

"This Is How You Lose The Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar

"Priestdaddy" by Patricia Lockwood

"Black Leopard, Red Wolf" by Marlon James

"Consider Phlebas," and maybe the rest of The Culture series of novels, by
Iain Banks

~~~
Loughla
>"Consider Phlebas," and maybe the rest of The Culture series of novels, by
Iain Banks

Oh man, this will start a shitstorm, because it's so subjective, but Consider
Phlebas isn't the best intro to the culture series. I would start with Either
Player of Games or Use of Weapons.

Now let's hear from everyone who disagrees with me.

~~~
rdrey
Yeah, Player of Games is the most detailed portrayal of the "the Culture" and
everyday life in the Culture Series. Also interesting use of soft power to
destroy another civilization.

------
philshem
I'm not much for planning my reading, but still unread in 2019 is Tara
Westover's _Educated_

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35133922-educated](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35133922-educated)

------
Fazel94
"Thinking Fast, and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, I am in Chapter 12.

"System Design Primer" [https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-
primer](https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer)

------
lumannnn
\- Nassim Taleb's Incerto Box Set:

    
    
        - Antifragile (already started)
        - The Black Swan
        - Skin In The Game
        - (there are 2 more books which I've already read)
    

\- The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

\- Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

\- Reread: E-Myth, Michael E. Gerber

~~~
rramadass
Ah, a fellow NNT fan!

I am curious; what is your opinion of his works and the man himself? I had
read (a long time ago) "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan" and the
thing i remember most is his definitions of Extremistan/Mediocristan (from the
latter book) and our inability to understand "random chance" leading to a
tendency to see patterns and devise explanations where there are none (eg.
Causation vs. Correlation vs. Randomness) I find his writings thought-
provoking but difficult to understand (eg. Differences between Randomness,
Uncertainty, Probability and Risk) and sometimes quite nihilistic.

------
the_watcher
A few PG Twitter recs:

* My Family and Other Animals (started, already really enjoying it)

* Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (started, enjoying it but moving slowly through it. It's very good, and the author is palpably excited about the subject, I just wouldn't call it a page turner)

------
janvdberg
I own more books than I can read:
[https://books.j11g.com/](https://books.j11g.com/)

I'm currently plowing through David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest (which is
enjoyable but taxing!) should be finished in 2020!

------
0xmohit
Plan to read again:

\- How Democracies Die
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die)

\- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Third...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Third_Reich)

~~~
iamjk
Shirer has a shorter book called The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler that was
concise and clear. I look forward to reading this longer iteration on the same
topic too.

------
rakamotog
Books I bought in 2019

1) Creativity Inc

2) Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

3) Start With Why

4) Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love

5) The Hard Thing about Hard Thing: Building a Business When There are No Easy
Answers

I only managed to finish ~50% of my planned reading in 2019

------
BooneJS
This is going to be an expensive thread for me. Thank you for posting the Ask
HN!

------
spodek
I plan to write my next book, this time on leadership and the environment.

I see a lack of leadership -- like a Mandela of the environment. I don't call
telling people what to do or spreading facts, figures, doom, and gloom
leadership. Nor do I see anyone of renown trying to live by values that would
lead us to sustainability and sharing how they create joy, community, and
connection. Even Greta promotes panic.

I believe we crave leadership so we can act on our values and overcome the
jaded cynicism, shame, guilt, and pointing fingers. We want to take
responsibility, to pick up other people's trash, to fly less when we see the
compassion and empathy in it, when we can feel the meaning and purpose those
who went to jail for other people's freedom did in the US civil rights
struggle half a century ago or fighting Hitler a generation before.

My podcast _Leadership and the Environment_
[http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast](http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast), and my
experience acting, have taught me a lot.

------
Delfino
I read about 25 books this year, here are the top 10 I look forward to reading
in 2020, many of them informed by my favorites of 2019:

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari - I read Sapiens this year and really enjoyed
it. I just started this today one so I may finish that before the end of the
year.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - I like books that make me think
and from what I've heard, this will definitely do the trick. I read
Factfulness this year and this was a suggested follow-up.

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker - I've gotten really into natural
languages since I've lived outside my country of origin for the last 2 and a
half years and I've heard good things about this book being an entry point
into linguistics.

Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski - With the new Witcher show coming out
on Netflix I finally went back and beat The Witcher 3 then read the first
book, The Last Wish. It was enjoyable enough that I want to keep going with
the series.

Educated by Tara Westover - Was convinced by Bill Gate's blog this is
worthwhile. I'm a teacher so it wasn't hard to convince me.

Robot Builder's Bonanza by Gordon McComb - I've been asked to teach a robotics
course next year and this one seems to be The Book everyone recommends to dive
into robotics.

Divided by Partition: United by Resilience by Mallika Ahluwalia - I recently
visited the Partition Museum in Amritsar, Punjab, India and purchased this
book there to learn about more stories about people impacted by this event.

The Elements of Computing Systems by Noam Nisan and Shimon Shocken - I just
read Code by Petzold and it was one of my favorite books. Even though I
studied Computer Science in University and most of the concepts weren't new to
me, it was such a fun experience mentally "building" a computer from
relays/transistors to logic gates and up to assemblers, compilers, and
interpreters. I want to keep going with this and jump into the Nand2Tetris
online course.

The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold - Again, I loved Petzold's Code so I
looked up other books he wrote and this one looks great. I've never actually
read Turing's work so I'm excited to have some background and explanation to
help me not just read the words but grasp their significance.

ZACH-LIKE by Zachtronics - I played through several Zachtronics games this
year (TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O and Opus Magnum) so I can't wait to dive into some
of the thinking behind creating these and similar games.

~~~
sriacha
As a contrast to 'The Language Instinct' I would highly recommend 'Don't Sleep
There are Snakes' by linguist Daniel Everett, which follows his time living
with a remote tribe in the Amazon and learning their language.

A very nice introduction of the idea of recursion in linguistics, and a
rebuttal of the old dogma that there is in fact such a thing as a language
instinct.

~~~
Delfino
Thanks for the recommendation. Definitely enjoy hearing multiple perspectives
when learning about a new (to me) field.

------
jriot
I've curated my 2020 list over the last few months, eventually splitting it in
two; 2021 has been started, but below is my 2020 list.

Brave New World

Catcher in the Rye (3rd read)

Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

War and Peace

Catch-22

Stranger in a Strange Lan

The Hobbit (3rd read)

The Illiad

The Odessey

Walden

Leisure, The Basis of Culture

The Seven Storey Mountain

Confessions

The City of God

Ways of Life St Augustine

Catechism of the Catholic Church

These Truths

Battle Cry of Freedom

The Complete Guide to Fly Fishing

The Lure and Lore of Trout Fishing

The Duck Huntingest Gentlemen

~~~
nemo1618
Once you've finished Walden, don't miss the thrilling sequel, Walden II!

------
LoveMortuus
Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People Reason: To learn how to be a
human.

Or something like this, because apparently there's a thing called emotional
intelligence, the Doctor says that I have a severe lack of it...

------
aerovistae
I just started Ulysses for the second time, see if I get further this time.

~~~
habnds
I did eventually get through it. I found that thinking of the chapters as
individual books (which in a lot of ways they are) was helpful to enjoy the
reading and to get through it.

Read one, take a break digest it. It's enjoyable. There are good accompanying
books to read alongside it.

------
arethuza
Tim Shipman will be writing his 3rd book about Brexit - the other two being
great pieces of journalism so I'm really looking forward to the next, and
presumably final, instalment.

------
woldemariam
-The Triumph of Injustice

-Politics of Institutional Reform: Katrina, Education, and the Second Face of Power

-The Economists' Hour

-Insurance of Dummies

-Architect of Prosperity: Sir John Cowperthwaite and the Making of Hong Kong

------
divkakwani
Some of the books I plan to read are:

* The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

* Complications by Atul Gawande

* The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century by Fernand Braudel

------
x2f10
I have made it a goal to read all of Cal Newport's books. This is a step in
curbing my internet addiction and taking back as much attention span as I can.

------
ewhizrd
Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb The
Bitcoin Standard - Saifedean Ammous Freedom from the known - Jiddu
Krishnamurti

------
nandreev
The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas (A. Grigas)

We (Y. Zamyatin)

The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper (C.
Petzold)

Endurance (A. Lansing)

Economics: The User's Guide (H. Chang)

Oblomov (I. Goncharov)

~~~
dgellow
I love “We”, one of my favorite work of science fiction! Crazy to think that
has been written in 1921.

~~~
nandreev
I've heard it's a must-read for sci-fi lovers so I'm excited for that one!

------
qpiox
Asimov - whole Robots, Empire and Foundation series once again, now that I am
older, and robots and psychohistory are slowly becoming a reality.

------
6700417
Say What You Mean by Oren Jay Sofer

After that I intend to primarily focus on additional books about
communication: written and verbal including listening skills

------
baristaGeek
-The Rational Optimist -Hacking Sales -The Singapore Story -Thinking fast and slow -The Mating Mind -Blitzscaling

------
sentientforest
On my list to read in 2020:

    
    
        The Visual Display of Quantitative Information 
        The Rust Programming Language 
        Progressive Web Apps 
        Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability 
        Farming the Woods 
        Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms 
        Affinity Designer Workbook 
        The Age of Surveillance Capitalism 
        Walden 
        A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration 
        Ernest Hemingway On Writing 
        The Two Hands of God (Alan Watts) 
        The Anarchist's Design Book and/or With the Grain: A Craftsman's Guide to Wood 
        Dune 
        Some other fiction reading I'll decide on after I finish Dune
    
    

Books/Authors I've read that I would recommend:

    
    
        Tao of Physics, Web of Life, Systems View of Life, etc. (Fritjof Capra) 
            ^Capra's work has heavily influenced my worldview and ability to think in systems
    
        Designing Data Intensive Applications (just finishing this week)
        Permaculture One & Two, Gaia's Garden, Edible Forest Gardens I&II
        Black Swan, Antifragile, etc. (Nassim Taleb) 
        Cloud Hidden: Whereabouts Unknown (Alan Watts, written late in life) 
        Ishmael, Story of B, etc. (Daniel Quinn) 
        You are Not a Gadget, Who Owns the Future, etc. (Jaron Lanier) 
        Goethe's Italian Journey   
        Vonnegut, Hemingway, Steinbeck 
        The Wheel of Time

------
chirau
Principles - Ray Dalio Jay Z: Made in America - Michael Eric Dysson The Design
of Web APIs - Arnaud Lauret

------
haxordie
I'll just keep on following the guide on Western philosophy. Currently
finishing the Greeks.

------
adhista
The book I plan to read is Chanting Hare Krishna by AC Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada

------
wooolfgang
Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

------
L_Rahman
Seeing Like a State Robert Caro's Lyndon B. Johnson biographies The Overstory

------
jjuel
Billion Dollar Whale - Tom Wright and Bradley Hope

Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way - Will Kurt

------
chris5745
Not educational, but I enjoy comic books. House of X and Powers of X.

------
jtwigg
All of the books I planned to read in 2018, 2019 + more...

------
clavalle
The Doors of Stone by Patrick Rothfuss. Fingers crossed.

------
ptah
Permaculture: A Designers' Manual by Bill Mollison

------
voisin
Check out Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Worth a read.

------
r_singh
Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

------
matt_the_bass
Suggestion: Any fiction my Haruki Murakami.

------
ludwigvan
The Intelligent Investor – Benjamin Graham

------
qntmfred
The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang

------
mcv
Utopia for Realists, by Rutger Bregman

------
Digg_mov
No i don't have books sorry :(

------
dcchambers
The Winds of Winter

...I hope!

~~~
sriacha
We can dream.

------
misiti3780
Writing a Go Interpreter

Writing a Go Compiler

No One Cares about Crazy People

I Heard You Paint Houses

UNIX: A History and a Memoir

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

How Asia Works

The Dream Machine

Black Earth

The Fabric of Reality

Behave (tried twice, maybe third times a charm?)

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Genius: The Life and Science Richard Feynman

Super Thinking

Man's Search for Meaning

The Cooking Gene

The Vital Question: Why is Life The Way it Is (re-read)

The Case Against Sugar

The 15 Decisive Battles of the World

The History of the Peloponnesian War

The Beginning of Infinity

The Book of Why

------
kvajsvem2
jaron lanier - who owns the future?

------
dvko
My to-read shelve on Goodreads has 620 books on it, but top of my list are:

\- Feed by M.T. Anderson

\- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

\- Equality by Edward Bellamy

------
JonathanMerklin
Great thread. 2019 was the first time in about 7-8 years I made reading for
pleasure a tertiary priority
((school+career)work/sleep/exercise+socializing+(NEW!)reading) and I got
through about 20 books of varying length and difficulty, so here are the next
20 in my queue:

\- Infinite Jest (already started, will likely finish in early Jan. I love it
so far.)

\- Quantum Computing Since Democritus (started in November as my nonfiction
read, but took a break; I think I want to finish IJ first. Scott is an
excellent writer and I was really enjoying this)

\- Building Microservices

\- The Code Book

\- How Cars Work (I want to turn the projection of a car in my brain from a
black box to a gray box this year, and I don't mean by purchasing a
Cybertruck)

\- To Kill a Mockingbird

\- The Personal MBA (for years I laughed off caring about the business of
business and lived in my fantasy land of being satisfied with just the
technical details and being focused on only implementing great
software/learning how to do so. With a few years in the workforce under my
belt, I realize that such an outlook was of great detriment to me. I'm open to
other suggestions on similar "catch me up to speed on general business
education" material)

\- Designing Data-Intensive Applications

\- Island (I have a copy of this but not Brave New World. Multiple friends of
mine demand I try Huxley, so here we are.)

\- The Annotated Turing

\- How to Invent Everything

\- Soonish (SMBC is a daily read for me and I'm excited to get to this.)

\- How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems (ditto XKCD
modulo release schedule)

\- Basic Economics

\- Thus Spoke Zarathustra

\- Seveneves

\- The Prince

\- Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely
Love Affair with Basketball

\- Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other
Moodsong

\- Fahrenheit 451

Additionally, to tickle the part of my brain that fancies mathematics (one of
my my majors in undergrad), I try to work through a chapter or two of Evan
Chen's "An Infinitely Long Napkin" on a quarterly basis. If you don't mind a
conversational tone to your math textbooks, I've found this to be an excellent
resource for scraping the surface of a wide variety of topics and fields
(including, well, topics like fields). I think I'll continue this habit.

------
sartethought
Capital Volume I By Karl Marx

