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Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024
40 points by andher on Feb 4, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 92 comments
Always found some interesting reads like this. Looking to add to my tbr to hit my yearly goal.

I just finished the three body problem, found it fantastic. I'm most of the way through 'The will of the many', and I'm finding it amazing - one of the best fantasies I've read in a while.




"From the soil: Foundations of Chinese Society" by Fei Xiaotong.

It is a book (accessible to non-chinese) that helps one understand a population of >1.4 billion in less than 180 pages. Wouldn’t one call this a bargain?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/134293.From_the_Soil


I am not sure about the bargain part. It is a window in the roots of Chinese society and mainly its relation to rural communities and villages (from a sociology perspective). I would recommend it to anyone trying to understand a society based on its people and not its politicians. Also anyone from a rural small town in the US or any other country, I think will enjoy it.


Your comment reminded me of this book:

The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, which I read many years ago, as a teenager or young adult.

I was quite moved by it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Earth

Excerpt:

[ The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a 20th-century Chinese village in Anhwei. It is the first book in her House of Earth trilogy, continued in Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. ]

It is only today that I got to know, due to googling for the links, that she won both the Pulitzer prize and the Nobel prize for Literature, partly for that book.


Depends on whether it's a brutally honest, historically accurate assessment or simply imaginative propaganda.


As could be said for any recounting of history


Any key takeaways that apply to 2024?


I started listening to "The Unicorn Project" on audiobook. It is not as good as "The Phoenix Project" audiobook, but it does a decent job of describing problems from the software engineer's perspective. The problem is I need a version of these books from Sarah Molton/Steve Master's point of view (a novel about being a product manager or CEO?) to better understand what motivates that side of the org. I have been mired in "The Core Chronic Conflict" for years, paying down tech debt, and turns out changing an org to learn/understand/care about DevOps is Hard.


I read The Phoenix Project a while back and really liked it, have been intending to pick up the The Unicorn Project for some time now. Did you think just the audiobook wasn't better or in general it wasn't as good as The Phoenix Project?


> Did you think just the audiobook wasn't better or in general it wasn't as good as The Phoenix Project?

I listened to both audiobooks. Something about the paperbacks I couldn’t get in to. Now that I think about it, I don’t want to read a novel about work when I’m not at work. Also, audiobooks lend themselves really well to a commute.

At any rate, the narrator of The Phoenix Project is male and the narrator of the audiobook for The Unicorn Project is female. But that’s not why I liked The Phoenix Project more. The male narrator _really_ got into the voices of the different characters, which I appreciated.


I agree on your review of both books. Phoenix project was excellent. After years of banging my head trying to change a large org, I'm not sure you can do it head on. I found either you need incentives to change, then the org changes. e.g. Rather than encourage goal X, pay or promote teams that do X and it will happen (subject to some level of faking). Or more usually use the current org structure to affect change. i.e. play their game, then use the parts you can to make change. Trying to change an org head on never worked for me and just caused myself and otehrs great unhappiness :).


Found this on a friend's bookshelves: Warfare in Antiquity - History of the Art of War, Volume I [1], a 1970 English translation of a book written by a very knowledgeable German guy in the early 1900s, and I must say it is very intellectually challenging, helps you see battle/wars in a new light.

[1] https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803...


I’ve been working through the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, reading Stillness is the Key and Siddhartha.

The SICP might take me a year.


The first three chapters will take you a year. The next two will take you longer.

I always find it odd that no one talks about the lisp book where you write a hardware simulation of a computer to run the compiler you also wrote on.


Which Lisp book is that?


Is that htdp.org?


No that's sicp chapter 4 and 5.

Again I have no idea why no one talks about those. They are the most mind bending parts of the book.


I’ve been looking forward to getting to that part.


I started SICP last year but haven't gotten anywhere close to completing, mostly because of competing priorities.

Siddhartha is great book, I read it years back and it sparked my interest in other works of Herman Hesse.


Just finished reading, for the first time, the short story "Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Melville.

I have also been reading the essays in David Foster Wallace in Context[1], published in November of 2022.

And I'm looking forward to reading here soon the seemingly first ever English translation of Philipp Mainländer's The Philosophy of Redemption[2], just published several weeks ago.

1: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/david-foster-wallace-in...

2: https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Redemption-Philipp-Mainl%C...


I found Bartleby to be a fantastic short read that stuck with me. Did you like it?


Oh, yes, exceedingly so. I found it to be extraordinary[1]. It has been on the back of my mind to-read since late summer of 2019, where the recommendation came from a soft-spoken lecturer.

1: For example, ranging from "...Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk..." to "...at leisure intervals I looked a little into 'Edwards on the Will,' and 'Priestly on Necessity'..."


Guilty pleasure: I just finished the final book in the horus heresy series (warhammer 40k), and impulsively restarted the series from book 1 again. Its making me sad because I know what all these characters are going to go through again over next 64 books.

But I highly recommend the book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/101438


Nice to see another 40K reader. Recently I realised there are new Inquisitor books so I binged Penitent. Felt like reuniting with old friends.

On to The Magos now, I usually get my Black Library fix from bundles, but I might make an exception for this one.


oooh, "new Inquisitor books" ? Will have to go have a look.


For whatever reason I've suddenly gotten deep into murder mystery books. In the last 3 weeks I've read a bunch of Agatha Christie classics:

- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - And then there were none - Evil under the sun

All brilliant in their own right but the first is a masterpiece. Don't google any of these because spoilers come up, but I've had a lot more fun and been a lot more active reading than I have in years.

Last year I read two books, this year I've read 3 books in January and have thoroughly enjoyed it way more than my usual nights of watching Netflix.


Similar here! My grandparents had quite a few AC books as well as a subscription to Agatha Christie's Mysteries (IIRC the name).

I started reading her works to my daughter because she loves mysteries.

Quite a few stories are available for free at Guttenberg and, of course, Libby.


I just finished "Song of Solomon". Toni Morrison needs no introduction, and the book is simply an irresistible whirlwind of emotions and lessons.

Currently reading "The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews." Shakespeare and Co. is a bookstore in Paris with a long history of inviting authors to reside at and give talks there. A nice and fun pot-pourri of down-to-earth wisdom, it does not exude the typical literary snobbery from this kind of book. I like it so far.


Song of Solomon is a favorite and I love seeing it mentioned here


I’m listening to “the creative act - Rick Rubin”, the audiobook is narrated by him and he has such a soothing voice , highly recommended


I just finished Cory Doctorow's The Lost Cause and wrote a short review [1]. I'm not a huge fiction person so maybe my standards are not so high but I found it quite inspiring and relevant to my current life. Grappling with feelings about climate change and housing shortages and how to use my skills to improve the world but also setting limits and enjoying life. Well... At least those are the things I felt in the book but maybe not really the main topic.

Currently reading Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow which I like but I only started reading because I found a copy in a free pile.

I'd like to read some nonfiction next and I think it'll be A City is Not a Tree by Christopher W. Alexander. I think it was recommended on HN recently but I'm also doing and Urban Studies master program so the urban things have been on my mind lately.

[1] https://blog.rayberger.org/book-review-the-lost-cause


The solution to climate change and housing affordability are one and the same: dense human scale development patterns. In NA it requires a massive mental shift and zoning changes (or the oil to run out, which would force the issue).

A book you might like: “The Geography Of Nowhere”

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/125313


I agree with you but the how is pretty hard to imagine. Especially with how housing speculation is so deeply tied to people's retirements and life plans.

I'll give that book a gander. Based on the reviews I think I'll like it given my context of growing in Florida and now living in Amsterdam and wondering how things can be so different.


Yeah, living in the Netherlands for a few months (Haarlem) and traveling some there really shifted my perspective. The Dutch have demonstrated that you can have your cake and earth it too. They actually transformed some car first cities to human scale - forget the name.


"Krigare: Ett personligt reportage om de svenska soldaterna i Afghanistan" (eng "Warriors") [1] by Johanne Hildebrandt[2].

A book about the FS19 deployment of Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan in 2010, written by an experienced war reporter. Some chapters reminded me about Generation Kill, with regards to lack of proper equipment (wrong colour, missing etc...) or purpose of deployment (too much bodyguarding of politicians visiting etc).

1. ISBN: 9789143510737, ISBN-10: 9143510736 https://books.google.se/books/about/Krigare.html?id=LpJjAgAA...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanne_Hildebrandt


Algorithms to live by. It has very good insights and I think I'll be revisiting it when making big life decisions


"Designing your life" is also great.


This past week I started Ursula Le Guin's "Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume--Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions"

These are her earliest, published novels. The introduction is a bit odd as the author hasn't read much le Guin including her most popular, award winning books other than The Wizard of Earthsea.

I'm not much of a critical reader, but these definitely do not have the philosophical depth (or I don't have the philosophical depth to pic up on it) of The Dispossessed and friends, but they are interesting and well written.

https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Exile-Illusion-Rocannons-Illus...


- Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare

Excellent history of firearms and war tactics from around 1300 to the present day

- One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

How can 400k people collaborate to achieve something so big? Fascinating read.


I'm in the middle of reading "Technostress: The Human Cost of the Computer Revolution", by psychologist Craig Brod.

I'm in my late 40s and the book reads to me as a nice time capsule of how computing has reshaped our society, and sets good context for considering the effects of AI, the pandemic and our more connected and increasingly-remote world overall, and looking to the future.

I see a lot of early criticisms of his research in book reviews, but I have a tough time dismissing the observations in the book, based on what I've seen


I'm reading What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders.

It says it's not a self-help book, but in practice it's the first book ever that helped me with my lifelong anxiety.


Subscribed to Literary review print magazine for 2 reasons. Firstly, it’s like TIL but in print version. Secondly, it’s a relief to read something interesting unrelated to IT on a range of subjects. Every now and again I find a book recommendation that I buy. I found this magazine by accident in the airport bookstore when flying out of UK, so if you are at the airport in uk give it a go (it’s almost impossible to find a print version in bookstores).


So far in 2024 I’ve finished a dissertation(?) of Schopenhauer work which is in italian and doesn’t exist in English, the name can be translated like “The art of not giving a fuck about other’s judgement”, then animal farm and another italian book “Leonardo Sciascia - Una storia semplice”, then in the same area of “recreational” reading I’ve started “Thinking fast and slow”, and in terms of books needed professionally I’m reading “Math for programmers”


I'm currently reading Nation by Terry Pratchett. I have previously read all of the Discworld novels and thoroughly enjoyed them. Then last year I read the Terry Pratchett biography (also worth a read, IMO!), where it is mentioned that Terry himself thought Nation was probably his best book. Had to give it a read after that! So far it's pretty good, but I do miss the characters from the Discworld universe to be honest.


I haven't read Nation but I till now Guards! Guards! Guards! has been my favorite. Its been a while since I read Discworld, will have to pick up nation


'The Systems Bible, 3rd Edition, by John Gall as a light introduction to Systems Theory as well as 'How Linux Works: What Every Superuser Should Know, 3rd Edition' to brush up on my Linux. "Computer Organization and Design, 5th Edition" after those two.

On the fiction front, I just finished "Queen City Jazz", by Kathleen Ann Goonan, and I've got "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez queued up as well.


No starch books have a terrible track record... every superuser should know, is that book an exception?


I mean, so far, its helped make things a bit easier for me to understand. I've also read "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" by Al Sweigart, which as someone with a non-CS background, I found very helpful, even when going back as a reference.


Maybe you chose the proper books. I had a terrible experience with them.


That's entirely plausible. The next No Starch published book I read may also be terrible. But, I try to recommend what I can (that I've read) and allow readers (present and future) to make their own judgements.

Best case scenario, you've found a new resource. Worse case scenario, you learn what works for you.


Hitting some classics I missed.. Moby Dick and the narrative of Arthur Gordon pym. Also in nonfiction thanks to recent HN.. only the paranoid survive


I was planning to dive in to Ben Breen's "Tripping on Utopia..." [0] but my Amazon preorder changed estimated delivery time on Feb 2, from "Feb 1-2" to "April-August". Haven't picked a replacement yet.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39090266


I am halfway into The Crossing By Cormac Mcarthy and it is a fantastic read till now. The section between the priest and the heretic has me going again and again and thinking a lot about it. I am looking forward to the rest of the book. After this the next in queue is The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky and I am pretty excited for that as well.


"The Algorithm Design Manual" by Skiena to prep for algo interviews, in case hiring picks up again.

"The Two Towers" by Tolkien, I last read them in high school and wanted to revisit Middle-earth.

"Python Distilled" by Beazley - I'm using it to iron out some of my knowledge gaps with the language. It's well-written and informative!


The Art of Wargaming: A Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists (primarily because the author has recently passed away, https://www.fairfaxmemorialfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Dr-Pet...)


Nice choice op, that's what got me into a spate of Chinese sci-fi. It's so different from Western sci-fi, in its focus on concepts rather than being character driven. I think that's why the book was a bit divisive when it came to the west, the lack of any distinct protagonists would have been off-putting for many people.


I usually make a list by the year-end of what I want to read the following year. It tends to shift as the year progresses. Here is my list of tentative books for 2024 (which is subject to change).

https://brajeshwar.com/2024/books/


Just started "Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence" after the whole controversy about the book (see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39099914) - enjoyable read so far, but can still go both ways.


I love that book, one of my favorite reads of last year.

(Read it before the controversy.)


The Remembrance of Earth's Past has been on my list for some time now. Will you be finishing that trilogy?

Actively reading:

- Mistborn : Final Empire (~90% finished ding)

- 3rd novella in The Murderbot Diaries

- Dive into Design Patterns

- Fullstack D3 and Data Viz

Passively reading:

- The Design of everyday things (I don't think I will ever finish this book)

- Bhagavad-Gita as it is

- LOTR (mostly a re-read)


Yup, I intend to finish it. I've heard The Dark Forest may be the best in the series, so looking forward to the next one.

How are the Murderbot books? I've been intending to pick them up


Thats exciting! I might read the Remembrance this year.

Murderbot is exciting! There is very little world building, you are thrown into the world and you slowly figure things out. Each novella is a new adventure, but as a whole(the series) its a lot more; an android seeing and understanding humans in a very different way.

It also explores how a world of robots would have various bots with each having a different personality(they develop) based on their lifelong assigned task.

The Muderbot itself is sulky, tired of incompetent humans and its dry behavior adds humor to the narration. Plus it addicted to watching soap operas so it has a very unique understanding of human creativity and reality.


The End of the World Is Just the Beginning.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_t...


This book is absolute garbage. Zeihan is a geopolitical lightweight and a very uninformed one at that. It’s hard to tell if he was intentionally dishonest in that book or really that uninformed. He is so factually wrong on some points that’s it shocking, like things that are objectively and quantifiable facts.

For much better Geopolitical books, check these out:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52962238-principles-for-...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56696339-the-power-of-ge...

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16144575


The Compleat Meadmaker (sic), lol.

[1] https://store.schrammsmead.com/the-compleat-meadmaker-p78.as...


A few days back I finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross. It's really interested, the premise basically explores what a potential posthuman technologically advanced future could look like.


I am writing a book on data structures, and for my next chapter, I am currently reading about bitmap encoding and its compression schemes, such as Oracle's BBC, WAH, EWAH, and Roaring bitmaps.


I'm reading the collected stories of Philip K Dick, if you feel like reviewing the classics.

Finished the latest from Jim Butcher's "new" series, The Olympian Affair, before that.


The Linux Programming Interface

https://man7.org/tlpi/

Just polishing up my fundamentals


- The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter

- The Art of Thinking Clearly


I am reading "Use of weapons" (Iain Banks). And after quite a few other Culture series novels it feels empty and repetitive.


Steven Levy’s Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age. So far I like it.


Impossible Creatures, Katherine Rundell. I am 52 and haven't had as much fun since reading The Hobbit, 40 years ago.


Ive just finished The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. I cannot praise it highly enough.


Overreach - How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise Susan L. Shirk 2022, Oxford University Press


The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss - Michael Langford

The Science of Self-Realization - A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Ashtavakra Gita - https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakr...


On a bit of a Graham Green kick lately. This happens every few decades.


All fiction so far (and with similar themes)

- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

- Pachinko

- Homegoing (just started)


The Anatomy of Peace: How to Resolve the Heart of Conflict


Overreach - How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise

Susan L. Shirk

2022, Oxford University Press


"close to the machine" by Ellen Ulman.

So far i am very pleased!


Just Finished Greg Egan's Orthogonal Trilogy (it was very interesting if you like hard science fiction but want to spice it up with a universe that operates under different fundamental laws)

Am about half way through "The constitution of Liberty" by Friedrich A. Hayek (it's got a lot of correct in it but is way too preachy/needed a better editor to cut down on some of the repetition. It's nowhere near as bad as something like Ayn Rand's Atlas shrugged in this regard though).

Started Vernor Vinge's "rainbow's end", so far it's decent but I am also very early in so that isn't really a qualified opinion until I get through another 50 or 60 pages at least.


I love Egan, and have planned to read more of his books. Haven't read this trilogy yet but definitely going on my list.


I haven't run into any others quite like him where the physics is hard enough that i dont get some of it, yet the stoeytell(ng is also decent enoigh i can connect with the charcters


Well not every author has helped develop actual mathematical proofs. :)


They shoyld really get on that eh


Euclids Elements, Thomas Heath translation


Edward Glaeser: Triumph of the City


"The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder"


Asimivo's sci-fi


Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. It even talks about what is the best way for a worker - capitalist relationship, among everything else.


Let Over Lambda

On Lisp


Right now, One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel García. I have been taking a break from scifi and nonfiction to enjoy some classics. The latest book I've read just before this one were

1. The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. They present a compelling argument for their framework to understand political structure and action based on the size of the coalition. The book is actually a condensed, much more readable version of the academic research of both authors. It was both a depressing and exhilarating read (as implied by the title, the whole book has a very sarcastic tone). It was also very interesting many of their arguments also apply in corporate environments just as they do in "normal politics"; the corporate power structure is not that far removed from the royal palaces of the kingdom or more generally from a dictatorship. Recommended read.

2. Social Acceleration by Hartmut Rosa. This one was a though read, but absolutely illuminating. It presents an extremely clear analytic analysis on why we increasingly feel like like "we don't have enough time".

It starts by arguing how the preception of time in the preindustrial age was slower than the industrialized one (in short, mostly because in the preindustrialized society major sociotechnological change took longer than thee generations to occurr, making your life look not that different than from those of your parents and grandparents), and then it discusses the age of industrialization (standardization of national time, introduction of schedules for factory working hours) which by necessity introduced "temporal structures" to coordinate these new massive social structures. Also, the rate of technological progress became such that your life was no longer like your parents and grandparent's one, i.e. there were major inter-generational sociotechnological changes; Further, compounded on top of that was the secularization of western society and the romantic belief that enjoying more wordly experiences (as opposed to the afterlife) implied living a fuller or "more complete" life, introducing the need to experience more and faster to the masses (cf. mass tourism etc.).

Finally it reaches the (post)modern age where the author argues that the introduction of instant worldwide communication (& internet) began eroding the temporal structure of the 20th century since they are no longer needed, as the technology now allows for (nearly) instantaneous coordination (eg. home working, international firms, etc). Moreover, technological progress is also accelerated as the internet allows for faster global exchange of ideas between more people.

However, even though we are freed from the "temporal structures" of the 20th century we are not going back to the preindustrial slower perception of time. On the contrary, because we still have these structures and can now bring about major changes even faster there is intra-generational sociotechnological change, i.e. society can change by a lot more than before within your own lifetime. So even though we have supposedly "more time" thanks to the efficiency introduced by technological advancements, we actually end up feeling like we have less because of how fast change occurrs. And this is does not refer only to greater social change, but also to the life of the individual that is increasingly filled with last minute rescheduling and planning changes that reach them outside of working hours.

Parallel to all of this, the internet also allows to experience more, faster than any other technology before. This latches on the romatic idea of the previous century and naturally leads to the current "attention span crisis" induced by the exploitation of this myth by tech companies. All of this, of course, is not good for your psyche as people need to have some constants in their lives, and the author concludes with a warning on the effects of indefinitely sustained social acceleration.

So that was the gist of it, more or less. The book has a lot more (eg. connections to the capitalist economic model, the problem(s) all of this causes to the construction your own identity) but as I said it is rather though to read because of its academic style of writing. Not recommended unless you're motivated, but I wanted to share the author's ideas, since reading this book really helped me to find more time in my life by seeing _why_ I felt like I had none.




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