What were the best books you read this year?

[christudor]

I'm looking for inspiration for the Christmas holidays.

Mine were: – Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai (2000) – William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis (1991) – John Ma, Polis (2024) – John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice (1982)

(Apologies if someone has posted something similar recently. I did a quick search and couldn't find anything.)

[whacko_quacko]

The End of Race Politics by Coleman Hughes. Pretty good book. I used to be a bleeding heart liberal with pro social justice (read: pro affirmative action) sentiments, but he makes a compelling case against it. Also, it's very well written and fun to read

[hexis]

Helen DeWitt wrote another novel after The Last Samurai, Lightning Rods. It's a very different book, but definitely worth a try! Good luck!

[montgomery_r]

Some politics books I've read or re-read this year:

Fall Out - Tim Shipman, on of his astonishingly detailed quartet on Britain's exit from the EU;

Robert Blake's biography of Disraeli, magisterial yet readable;

Boris Johnson's memoir Unleashed, great fun if you like his tone;

Colonialism, a Moral Reckoning, Nigel Biggar, an antidote to the more ahistorical versions of the BLM narrative.

The Notebook - A history of thinking on paper, Roland Allen - a joyful romp through the notebook's history;

Elusive - How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of Mass, Frank Close - a nice account of the discovery of the Higgs Boson, with perhaps too much biography of Higgs, who after all as a lecturer at Edinburgh was not a thrill-seeker.

Carlo Rovelli's White Holes, implausible but beautifully written.

[gangstead]

Reentry by Eric Berger. It came out in October. It's a follow up to his book Liftoff from 2021. Great books for space nerds. Makes me really admire what Space X has accomplished while also eliminating any desire I had to work for them.

[computerdork → gangstead]

Liftoff was super interesting. The start of SpaceX and the Falcon 1 is an incredible story. Didn't know about "Reentry", will have to check it out!

[christudor → gangstead]

Liftoff is already on my list, actually! Thought I'd read that one first before deciding whether to get Reentry.

[A_D_E_P_T]

Michel Houellebecq, Annihilation. A clear-eyed and direct novel about the meaning and measure of individual human life in our modern age -- and yet it concedes nothing to modern literary or social fashions, but instead goes for universality and timelessness.

[sien]

A few of the books that stand out that I've read this year.

Troubled - Rob Henderson. About how Henderson was in state care and wound up at prestigious universities and his thoughts on the world.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176444107-troubled

Not the End of the World - Hannah Ritchie from 'Our World in Data' about the state of the planet.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/145624737-not-the-end-of...

Dictatorland - Paul Kenyon - About the dictators who have impoverished Africa.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36260719-dictatorland

Magic Pill - Johann Hari - About Semaglutide and how people got fat.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201319612-magic-pill

On the Edge - Nate Silver - About how seeing the world in terms of risk and expected value can work.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204236707-on-the-edge

Orbital - Samantha Harvey - Booker Prize winner about people on the ISS and the world.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123136728-orbital

Build, Baby, Build - Bryan Caplan on why YIMBYism is a good idea. This is a graphic novel. It's really fun.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181564537-build-baby-bui...

[mlsu]

I finally read Nabokov's Pale Fire. It is far and away the best book I have ever read. I think about it multiple times a week unprompted and I'm sad because I am certain that I will never find another book like it.

[number6 → mlsu]

I read maybe half. Didn't get it. Somewhere in the middle he starts to comment about all that happened? Is it part of the book?

[christudor → mlsu]

Read a few years ago and agree with this assessment. A genuine work of genius, and probably in my top five books of all time.

[k__]

My reads this year with my personal ratings:

Greg Egan, Diaspora (7/10)

Dan Simmons, Hyperion 1-4 (9/10)

James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes (6/10)

Scott Alexander, Unsong (7/10)

Qtmn, Ra (7/10)

Qtmn, Fine Structure (6/10)

Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary (6/10)

Wildbow, Worm (8/10)

[fredoliveira]

Read a lot this year — a lot more than most years. A few highlights:

The making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes was probably the best of the bunch. I read it because I see some parallels between the discovery of atomic power and the search for AGI, and wanted an insight on the ethics and decision making of the time. It didn't disappoint.

The dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow was a solid read and retelling of how civilization began and evolved.

The message by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I read in two sittings — it was that impactful. A reminder of how the oppressed becomes the oppressor again and again. "As it happens, you can See the world but never see the people in it"

Other highlights: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt; re-read Thinking in Systems by Daniella Meadows; re-read Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat Zinn; The light eaters by Zoe Schlanger; I don't want to talk about it, by Terrence Real.

[christudor → fredoliveira]

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is in my top three non-fiction books I have ever read.

Will I like The Dawn of Everything if I didn't like Harari's Sapiens? (I loved Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years)

[fredoliveira → christudor]

I'd say so. I didn't dislike Sapiens, but found The Dawn of Everything to be deeper in many ways.

[mindcrime]

Seeing this reminds me of something I'm not proud of. I've done effectively no reading this year. At least not by my normal standards.

I generally read between 30-50 books a year (mix of fiction and non-fiction). But this year I knew my focus was going to be more on research, reading papers, writing code, etc. so I set my reading goal lower than normal (I usually set it to like 75, knowing that that's a bit aspirational). This year? I set it to like, 30. And I won't come close to hitting that. Right now I'm at 7 books for the year. So I don't have a big sample set to choose from. :-(

That said...

Of what I did read, a couple were pretty good:

Non-fiction:

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks- Scott J. Shapiro

Readings in Agents - Huhns, Singh (eds)

Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason - Bordini, Hubner, & Wooldridge

Fiction:

In Too Deep (Jack Reacher, #29) - Lee Child

[gnat]

Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen. It's a short book, with second-by-second description of the unfolding of a research-based hypothetical nuclear war that starts with North Korea launching an ICBM towards the United States. Alarming (as only the facts about the parlous state of detection and defence can alarm) and edifying in one.

[christudor → gnat]

Read this earlier this year -– enjoyable!

[mongol → gnat]

Read that one too. Chilling.

[apignotti]

Benjamín Labatut - The Maniac, a novelized biography about the mathematician and computer science pioneer John von Neumann.

The story of his life was absolute fascinating for me, unfortunately the last part of the book attempts a connection with the development of Alpha Go / reinforcement learning that should have been avoided.

[predictand]

Daemon series by Daniel Suarez: I can’t believe I slept on this book for so long. It would have altered my worldview fundamentally if I had read it at a younger age.

Mind Hunter: Somehow even better than the show.

A Brief History of Intelligence: Packed with so much knowledge about the evolution, mechanics, and different forms of intelligence. One of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time.

[vunderba → predictand]

The Daemon series along with the Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman are two of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy series.

[massung]

My reads this read, which I enjoyed:

- Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar (an examination of the Dyatlov Expedition).

- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (fantasy).

- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

- Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden.

Hopefully the other responses here give me something good to read for Christmas break. :-)

[tmtvl]

53 days ago there was a thread about the best book we've ever read. As I have re-read the book this year I will link my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41758060

For a general recommendation for a book to buy for Christmas I'd say the Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner is quite wonderful, if you'll pardon the pun.

[igor47]

The Deluge -- a darker take on climate change than Ministry for the Future, but also felt pretty realistic.

This is how you lose the time war -- took me a long time to start this book, and then I couldn't put it down.

Non fiction, I really enjoyed Slouching Towards Utopia. I'm a sucker for narrative history like that, and I got a few useful concepts from the book. I also really liked The Prince of Peace, a biography of Keynes.

[I_complete_me]

Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada According to some, one of the great locked room mysteries. Recommended but I am guessing it's better in the original.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell Not as amazing as I thought it would be but memorable nonetheless.

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent Something nice about this book. Not for everyone. What is?

[mat41]

Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (1930)

Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (1937)

Rather difficult reads for me as a non-native english speaker, but it was worth it. It is hard to imagine a more epic science fiction scenario than "Star Maker".

[dontknowmuch]

Either David Copperfield by Charles Dickens or Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Both are very long novels that get better and better with every page.

[royka118]

Empire World An amazing read that really opened my eye to the legacy of empire

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empireworld-British-Imperialism-Sha...

[MarcelOlsz]

Best one was Something Happened by Joseph Heller (Catch 22 guy). Worst one was 1Q84 by Murakami (so far).

[computerdork → MarcelOlsz]

Catch 22 is one of the funniest (while still having depth) books ever! Have never looked into his other books, will have to check it out

[pm2222]

by Tariq Rashid

  https://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Own-Neural-Network-ebook/dp/B01EER4Z4G
  https://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-First-GAN-PyTorch-ebook/dp/B085Z96M9P

[satvikpendem]

Shogun, after having watched the show. I also read the other books in Clavell's series, I thought Tai Pan and Gai Jin were interesting but not as much as Shogun. Gai Jin in particular felt like it had lots of filler.

[rumblestrut]

“On Tyranny,” by Timothy Snyder

[needSomeCoffee]

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. Probably the best expose about the vileness of politicians and command ladder climbers within the service as they related to Vietnam.

[computerdork]

Grendel by Gardner (so playful and creative), Jane Eyre (a classic with wonderful language and intense story), Sapiens (extraordinarily interesting survey of human history)

[mongol]

I only read two books. Lost in Maths by Sabine Hossenfelder, and Nuclear War A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. Both were worthwhile. I want to read more.

[internet_points]

Hm, the one I enjoyed the most this year was Susanna Clarke's Piranesi – engrossing, awesome and beautiful.

[greedylizard]

I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom - Jason Pargin. It’s about what happens when individually radicalized people collide.

[Hikikomori]

Haven't read it yet as it comes out in a week but it will be Wind of truth, book 5 in stormlight archive series.

[spencerchubb]

Hunger Games Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

you don't have to have read the other Hunger Games because it is set about 60 years before the others

[sgt]

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Walter Isaacson)

Highly recommend it. Don't waste your time with Franklin's autobiography.

[istultus → sgt]

Also read it this year - very good.

[1-2-3-5-8]

On top of my list of best books this year is The Golden Road by William Dalrymple

[e3a8]

Signature in the cell - Stephen C. Meyer

The Divine Reality - Hamza Andreas Tzortzis

[anandpdoshi]

Firefighter Zen by Hersch Wilson

Nine lies about work by Marcus Buckingham

How to know a person by David Brooks

[mcv]

I finally read Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. Powerful ideas.

[parallax_error]

I found “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - Autobiography about Richard Feynman very interesting

[gtsnexp]

I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography

Paul Richard Halmos

[dlkf]

Concrete Island by JG Ballard

Libra by Don Delilo

Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith

[brudgers]

Creative Way of Being, Rick Rubin

[sandy_coyote]

I caught up with some science fiction this year.

The Murderbot diaries books by Martha Wells - 6/10. Mixed on these. They're fun to read. The setting is cool and the worldbuilding is shallow but effective (i.e., don't read it if you want game of thrones in space). Each novella takes an afternoon to read. I think "snarky violent droid" is overcooked these days and lost interest after book 5.

Light by M. John Harrison - 7/10 excellent prose; great multiple-storyline plot; the journey was better than the destination, but it kept me thinking

Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson - 7/10 Fun. If "near future Nigerian/British post-colonial frontier action with guns, robots, and psychic aliens" sounds cool to you, check it out. I liked his Rosewater Trilogy just as much.

Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - tough to rate these. brilliant ideas, VERY challenging plots. I wish I didn't get so confused by the end of each book.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - 6/10 - this and the Martian read like blog posts pasted together. The grand dilemma is spelled out on page one and never gets any deeper. Pro: the plot is in your face on every page and you will never be confused when reading; Con - there is zero internal character development. Read if you like stories driven by applied science, not comparative moral decision-making.

The City and the City by China Miéville - 9/10 - you will invariably see something like "Kafka meets [some affected crime novelist] to describe this book, and that ain't wrong. Kind of SF, kind of fantasy.

Railsea by China Miéville - 8/10 - great good vs evil YA SF about, well, imagine if trains were like boats. Good character writing, tight plot.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - 8/10 - loved this. More "realist" near-future fabulism than Gibson, but if you love cyberpunk, read this.

The Shipbreaker Triology by Paolo Bacigalupi - 6/10 - near-future YA science fiction with a lot of blood and guns. Pretty good stories.

Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers - 9/10 - reread. I had to go back. This gets a near perfect score because of its style, setting, and plot.

The Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) by William Gibson - 9/10 - I had read Neuromancer 3 times but never the next two. I was pleasantly surprised to find the second and third novel easier to read* but just as enjoyable as Neuromancer.

The Bridge trilogy by William Gibson - 8/10 so far. I am in the second book. Can't believe I slept on these for the last couple decades.

non-SF:

Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad - 9/10 - if you like punk/hardcore from the 80s, this is a great read.

* Every time I read Neuromancer, Gibson's literary footguns --holograms, false memories, hallucinations, and drug-addled unreality--make me feel crazy for not being able to follow the plot at times. I'm okay with believing that was the intended effect.

[blutech]

I can give you some information about UK most selling books. Follow the link below https://britishauthor.uk/the-book-people-uk-top-5

[Pedder]

Flatland 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott

[computerdork → Pedder]

when I first read it, felt like it was written in the modern era. Was surprised to find afterwards that it was written in the victorian period.

[aEJ04Izw5HYm]

'Built to fail' by Alan Payne painted such a richer picture than the binary "netflix came along" argument. The writing had alot of emotional investment since the author owned so many shops in the blockbuster franchise.

A little more dense: "Chip War" by Chris Miller... a macro economic/political picture of silicon valley growth that fills in so many holes in popular lore.

[everyone]

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

Very entertaining sci-fi. I tore through it a a couple of days.

[Hikikomori → everyone]

Expeditionary force series by Craig Alanson is good if you want more fun sci-fi.

[grujicd → everyone]

It's just a first one, there are more books in Bobiverse series.

[la_bruin → grujicd]

There are 5 Bobiverse books, all of which are marvelously read by Ray Porter on audiobook if you listen in the car on long, long drives like I do.

The 5th book is an "audiobook only" release until January 2025 (I think) called, "NOT TILL WE ARE LOST".

And the Bobiverse series has recently been optioned to Universal!

http://dennisetaylor.org/status-of-things/

[k__ → la_bruin]

The last one was a bit off.

[number6 → k__]

It just stops in the middle of the book... I hope the Missing parts follow quickly

[k__ → number6]

I mean, I get it, the story got bigger with every book and he hand to ground it again.

But somehow this "let's go on an adventure and do some beaver shenanigans" felt strange, lol.

[greedylizard → everyone]

Great series. I still think about Archimedes often.

[lowbloodsugar]

qntm, There is no antimemetics division.

Tamsin Muir, Gideon the Ninth

Iain M Banks, The Algebraist

D F Jones, Colossus

James S A Corey, The Mercy of Gods

[Pedder]

Flatland 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott.