
Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2019? - volument
Any books you cannot wait to read next year? Or is there something you really wish to learn? Curious about <i>all</i> kinds of great book suggestions for 2019. Thanks for sharing!
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asdkhadsj
Programming Rust. I've used it in the past and never quite felt great about a
few aspects of it (lifetimes, for example). Now however a work situation is
arising where Rust might be preferred, so deep into the pool I go.

It'll make me a better programming regardless, so it's good for me. I look
forward to improvement :)

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vinayms
Not quite book, but I would like to read all laws and regulations related to
business, finance and taxation such as the Companies Act etc as applicable to
India. I will be transitioning to becoming a businessman in 2019 and its
pertinent that I make myself at home with these topics so that I am not
swindled by lawyers and auditors, or even the government for that matter.

~~~
a-saleh
From what I heard, best thing is to have a good lawyer and a good accountant
recommended by somebody in business you can trust.

Not saying you should either learn on your own or have somebody recommended to
deal with this for you, I thing you should one _and_ the other.

I do wish you luck, I am still gathering courage to venture into business on
my own :)

~~~
vinayms
Thanks for the wishes, and I hope you do it soon as well :)

I am one of those people who don't trust people easily. And given the
increasing amount of white collared crimes being exposed, I am completely
disillusioned with these professionals. Of course, I will have to avail the
services of these people but I want to make myself bulletproof against their
well established work ethics. Not only do I not want to get swindled, I also
don't want to be led astray. I want to conduct business honorably.

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laurentl
I’ve bought _the Critical Chain_ by E. Goldratt two weeks ago and I’ve been
enjoying the anticipation of reading it. _The Goal_ was a real eye opener and
I hope that the Critical Chain will bring me new insights on project
management specifically (the Goal is a great introduction to lean methods but
it is heavily geared towards manufacturing processes).

~~~
Jtsummers
I really liked _The Goal_ (though the family side story was a bit strained at
times, the experience with his kid and scouts in a "model" environment was
useful though).

While it is geared towards manufacturing, I think pairing its concepts along
with Mary Poppendieck's writings on Lean in software development is very
helpful. A lot of her writing (especially the more introductory books) put in
the effort to translate Lean Manufacturing ot Lean Software.

For instance, we don't have "inventory" in the physical sense. There's very
little cost in the retaining of un-shipped code. But there is cost in that we
don't get value from it. And our understanding of it goes stale over time (for
the individual who wrote it and the organization who "owns" it, especially if
the creator leaves or moves to other projects).

Pairing her work with writings from traditional Lean and Theory of Constraint
sources (focused in manufacturing) is an excellent way to take those theories
and apply them to our field.

~~~
laurentl
Thanks for the pointer to Mary Poppendieck, I hadn’t heard of her. Which book
of hers would you suggest I pick up first ?

~~~
Jtsummers
I think the first one I read was _Lean Software Development_ then I went
through _Leading Lean Software Development_ and _Implementing Lean Software
Development_.

It's been a while, but as I recall the latter two can be treated something
like workbooks. How to go from "traditional" project management towards
lean/agile. The former introduces many Lean concepts but within the software
development world. So that's where I got the idea (maybe I'd seen it before I
read that book?) about treating developed, but not integrated, code as
"inventory". It has a cost because we have to eventually integrate it but
it'll become "stale" over time as its interfaces or other features become
further from the main branch.

If you have a Safari Books Online account they're probably in there. I found
them to be fairly easy reads, perhaps spending 2-3 weeks on each. Applying it
at work, of course, has taken a lot longer.

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csnewb
Sci-fi

\- Ready Player One

\- Pattern Recognition

\- Burning Chrome

\- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

\- Hyperion

\- A Fire Upon The Deep

Technical (backend development + security)

\- HTTP: The Definitive Guide

\- RESTful Web Services

\- Designing Data Intensive Applications

\- Web Scalability for Startup Engineers

\- The Art of Software Security Assessment

\- The Web Application Hacker's Handbook

\- A Philosophy of Software Design

\- Clean Architecture

\- The Go Programming Language

\- Refactoring (new 2nd edition)

\- Algorithm Design Manual

\- Cracking The Coding Interview

I'll definitely be able to get through all the sci-fi novels, but not the
technical stuff. At minimum I need to go through the technical interview prep
books, refactoring, and designing scalable applications.

~~~
nataz
Yay! Read Hyperion. Its a great book. I've literally read a couple hundred
sci-fi novels and it's one of my favorites.

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Jtsummers
Several books by Jerry Weinberg (started last year) on systems and _Thinking
in Systems: A Primer_ by Donella Meadows.

Alongside those, my current job has me programming less, so I'm enjoying it as
a hobby again. I've decided to pick up Common Lisp again so I'm going through
various texts on it as exercises to relearn the language and its extent.

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snazz
I've had a wonderful experience with all of the No Starch Press[0] books I've
bought over the last few years. I recently got Absolute OpenBSD and Serious
Cryptography. How Linux Works is also really good if you would like to brush
up on your knowledge of the architecture of the average Linux system.

I'm not affiliated with them, I just haven't gotten a bad (or even mediocre)
book from them.

[0]: [https://nostarch.com/](https://nostarch.com/)

~~~
tudelo
Any thoughts on their humble bundle?

~~~
snazz
They've got a couple of different options (Linux and hacking are the ones I
found with a quick DDG search). I have yet to read any of the books in the
hacking bundle or most of the Linux ones but I would expect that they would be
good considering my previous experiences.

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igotsideas
* The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing

* The Algorithm Design Manual

* Cracking the code interview

* Some Elixir books

------
Crazyontap
Not sure if this fits the criteria but I plan to read the Unbearable lightness
of being this coming year.

So many people have recommended it that I cannot not ignore it any longer.

------
sotojuan
Tech:

* Programming Phoenix, latest edition. I plan on launching a side project with Phoenix in 2019.

* The Rust Programming Language. I want to build simple CLIs in Rust as my gateway into the language - will use what I lean here to do it.

Non tech:

I have about 25 unread history, art history, and culture books in my
bookshelf. My plan is to exercises self-restraint and not buy more books until
I finish these!

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texteller
95 Best Books for Smart Minds to Read & Re-read for a Refreshing Start in
2019:

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

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qualsiasi
I'd love to begin the year with a book on Rust and another one on being a team
manager/lead because I got promoted as a lead (a team of 8) but I totally feel
I'm unprepared.

~~~
johnstorey
Congratulations on your promotion! Let me recommend the classics: _The Phoenix
Project_ and _High Output Management_ by Andy Grove. The latter is from 1983,
but the principles are in use in my company today, and it is the start of
OKRs, used by Google and others to this day.

~~~
qualsiasi
Thanks for the suggestions, these books have just been added to my shopping
cart. I'm afraid to not have enough experience (5 years) and so I'm trying my
best to overcome any lack of experience with study.

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david2016
Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun (Ibn Khaldun's Prolegomena)

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VladimirGolovin
Mindset by Carol Dweck. I feel that I'm stuck in a fixed mindset in some
areas, so I want to explore ways of dealing with that.

~~~
tucaz
Terrible book. The concept is explained in two or three pages and repeated
during the whole book without introducing anything new.

Watch a free YouTube review and go spend the money and time on something else.

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MattLeBlanc001
1\. Bad Blood, John Careyou

2\. Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

3\. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

4\. Zero to one Peter Thiel

5\. The republic – Plato

6\. The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz

7\. The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand
Out From The Crowd Kindle Edition

8\. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

9\. Never split the difference

10\. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to
Create Radically Successful Businesses Hardcover

11\. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that
Win

12\. Economy course: [https://www.core-econ.org/](https://www.core-econ.org/)

~~~
daxat_staglatz
I actually was part of the CORE team. It's nice to see people actually reading
it!

In my (biased) opinion, it is a very good introduction to the _economy_,
though it is perhaps too light on _economics_ [0]. That is to say, it is much,
much better than other introduction-to-economics textbook at presenting the
relevant facts about the economy but is a bit light on analytical tools. If
one wants to go beyond this textbook, they would have to learn them. If I were
to offer a comparison, CORE econ is to traditional econ textbook what a
natural history of the universe book might be to a physics textbook: many more
topics covered including those that would not be addressed in an intro
textbook but less studying of models.

Hopefully, if it catches on, we will hear fewer people arguing "Well, it is
just basic economics that X" where X is something that it true in the toy
model of econ 101 that is useful for learning but not really in real life.

I would suggest completing this book with some econometrics - since it is
those tools that allow us to (try to) see which theories may be right and
which may be wrong. The books by Pischke & Angrist are good: "Mastering
Metrics", and at a higher level, "Mostly Harmless Econometrics".

The Journal of Economic Perspectives [1] is a great resource to learn more
about a topic in economics. As it says: > The Journal of Economic Perspectives
(JEP) fills the gap between the general interest press and academic economics
journals.

The HN crowd would also most likely like the Quantitive Economics lectures [2]
from Sargent & Stachurski.

[0] It is also a low density textbook, which seems to be common in American
textbook

[1] [https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/jep](https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/jep)

[2] [https://lectures.quantecon.org/](https://lectures.quantecon.org/)

~~~
MattLeBlanc001
Thanks for this. I'll have a look at the books you mentioned.

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qorrect
The Prime Number Conspiracy, Heretics of Dune, and Im looking for an
investment book to read.

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rerx
Here’s a few:

\- chapters 4 and 5 of SICP

\- Fowler: Refactoring, 2nd Edition

\- Gehl: Cities for People

\- Cohen: The Book of Numbers

\- Drnaso: Sabrina

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yewenjie
Finally reading Goedel Escher Bach.

