What is the best book you read in 2020?

Two books that describe what it's like to be somewhere else, living a different kind of life. I love these books that really transport you there, like having a really good friend explain things to you casually.

First of these is "Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road". What it's like to grow up while having family in a labor camp. What it's like to have your entire business or house confiscated. How hard it is to be a student. Also just plenty of interesting little tidbits on day-to-day life.

Second one is "The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery". It's about a foreigner who leaves his life behind and joins a zen monastery in Japan. It covers in detail the day-to-day experience of it, such as collapsing on temple grounds from lack of sleep during particularly demanding meditation sessions. But monks are human too, and on some occasions sneak over the temple walls for some fun outside.

Both of these transfer to you the "feel" of these places.

1) Non-fiction: Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/

Entire e-book available free online. The recursion part is especially fun. If you haven't tried Lisp, this is a great book to start with, and it will open your mind to new approaches to computing without the tough academic grinding of SICP.

2) Fiction: The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie.

It's dark fantasy. Emphasis on dark. Feels like real life, except less victimology. I find the darkness a palate cleanser, excellent for when I have to deal with the realities of people and their burning desire to avoid responsibility for their own actions.

You can read some short bits by Joe free at the publishers site

https://www.tor.com/2016/01/12/twos-company-joe-abercrombie/

I mostly read fiction books (particularly fantasy and sci-fi). Best for me this year was Wintersteel by Will Wight [0]. This is a progression fantasy book (think anime like Naruto, Hunter x Hunter, etc but without fillers, harem, etc). Power-ups, training and fights are the major draw of such books, and Will manages to deliver them nicely along with interesting characters, awesome humor, twists, etc.

See my blog post [1] for other books I enjoyed this year.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52135463-wintersteel

[1] https://learnbyexample.github.io/2020-favorite-fiction/

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss

I read it after seeing it recommended here on HN. It paid off :)

I'm about halfway through both of these, but I think they're both great.

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson (Book 4 in the Stormlight Archives series)

Love him, or hate him, BS is prolific. He somehow maintains a superhuman level of efficiency in writing. This is the 4th of a planned 10 book epic fantasy series. I can't possibly summarize the 3.5 books I've read in the series so far, since each is approximately 1200 pages. Really they're about 3-4 of an average sized trade paperback each. That's not to say they are too long either, with the exception of the first book (a common/unavoidable problem the with epic fantasy genre, there's just a lot you need to say to get people fully invested), they pick up from the first word on interesting storylines and just keep churning.

and

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert (Book 3 of the Dune series)

Dune is one of my favorite books of all time. SOmehow, I've never read the rest of them. I re-read Dune this year, and decided to continue the story. I really wasn't a huge fan of Dune Messiah. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but let's just say it's probably because flaws of the main character are too humanly frustrating to watch unfold. Children of Dune is, so far, as good or better than Dune in my opinion.

Regrettably, I only read a total of three books in all of 2020, but for me it was the Autobiography of Malcolm X. I didn't know much about his life beyond basic knowledge of his work during the civil rights movement and the fact that he had been a reformed criminal. Reading about his circumstances in detail and the whirlwind of a life he lived definitely gave me a better appreciation of him and his evolution. Malcolm's story was that of changes, as he put it (with much better phrasing) to his collaborator Alex Haley, and he being a late bloomer (in some aspects) like myself gives me some hope about my life.

I can narrow it down to a top 4, if that's permissible.

* The Man Who Was Thursday, by GK Chesterton

* The Oresteia, by Aeschylus

* Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand

* The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan

I did like Range (and am biased because I'm a generalist myself so I "wanted" to like it) but found it a bit belabored after the first few chapters, like most non-fiction books.

My pick would be Intrapreneurs by Gib Bullock, a first person perspective of building a new venture in a large business while challenging whether large businesses are good for the world, and ending up in a mental ward from the stressful introspection https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39730555-the-intrapreneu...

Thoroughly enjoyed "Greenlights" by Matthew Mccounaghey. It's a brilliant read (and listen - he's a great narrator). Lots of interesting little stories that made me think about my own life!

Hard to say.

Fiction: Anna Karenina. Recent fiction: The Index of Self-Destructive Acts by Christopher Beha.

Philosophy: From a Logical Point of View by W.V.O. Quine, a collection of concise essays. Or Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke. Or Being and Logos by John Sallis.

For some reason, I didn't get around to reading new (to me) history this year. This may be because I'm used to stopping by bookstores after work and taking pot luck there. That ended mid-March.

It‘s not a book, but Bret Deveraux‘ history blog is so comprehensive I‘ve probably read several books‘ worth of pages on it: https://acoup.blog/ Also, it pointed me to a number of the „real“ books I read this year.

Aside from that, the book that I enjoyed the most was probably Chernow‘s „Washington“.

Lifespan: Why we age and why we don't have to [0]

It made me realize we probably can stop aging and age related deceases, which changed my view on life.

0. https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...

Alchemy - Rory Sutherland. Written by an advertising executive, it's filled with little gems, especially about signaling.

Honorable mention to The Elements of Eloquence - Mark Forsyth, which is a delightfully light read about the patterns in English phrases, but I finished it 2 days before the start of 2020.

Non fiction: The Hundred-Year Marathon, by Michael Pillsbury. A very nice review of China's foreign and domestic policy, written by a retired, senior national security advisor to various (USA) Presidents from Nixon on. He was the China expert, who started young, and learned much over his forty(?) year career.

Fiction: Saturn Run, by John Sandford. Very exciting, great characters, science fiction with great science. I would call it a modern science fiction novel. Very Refreshing.

Science/history/cool: Sunburst and Luminary, by Don Eyles. An Apollo Memoir; very exciting, great explanations about programming and designing the navigation and landing computer of the lunar module, with a neat view into the characters and history of the time. Thanks to other HN posts for these suggestions. Happy New Year!

Barbarian Days probably, it was recommended on here as on from Obama's reading list. I love the sea and surf and it brought back memories of travelling.

From last year (but even more relevant this year), Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh. I must have read it over 20 times when I was going through hard times.

The murder of Roger Ackroyd

For what it is, it was great. Did not read a lot of books this year due to children and covid!

Tough one! I have to choose two:

"Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" - Samin Nosrat

"Walking: One step at a time" : Erling Kagge

China in Ten Words - really interesting book about China developing after the revolution. Written as a set of anecdotes, I found many parallels to our cultural issues today in the US.

Mom Test - Best business book.

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel was published just a few months ago.

20 short stories about money, how to think about saving vs investing, risk and leverage, time in the market vs absolute returns.

Ruth Ware - One by One.

Not only is it a fantastic locked room mystery thriller, but a hilarious satire of entitled tech bros and startup culture. :-)

https://lwgmnz.me/2020/12/19/books-ive-read-this-2020/

Just want to share the books I've read this 2020. My favorite is the Netflix book.

Video / Art - The First Fifty Years, by MoMA curator Barbara London.

“Today when I walk along the urban sidewalk, I see pedestrians who are no longer confined to their physical bodies. They circulate among virtual communities, slipping in and out of their online lives using the latest software on their portable devices”

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You. I'm a data scientist and this is a brilliant overview of the promise and peril of real world AI. Doesn't hurt that it's hilarious too.

A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart. If you are someone that has kids and their education is important to you, this book gives you some insight in to what math really is and why it is not taught in schools.

Fiction:

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. Very moving.

Piranesi by Susanna Clark. Like her earlier books, it had a strong story + original style + was very inventive.

Non-fiction:

The Great Leveller - Walter Scheidel

Sid Meier's biography snuck in after Christmas + I really enjoyed that one.

"The denial of death" by Ernest Becker; brings life into a perspective.

The best book I read was the novel “Samlade verk” by Swedish author Lydia Sandgren. I’m quite sure it will be translated to German, English etc. If it does, I can warmly recommend it. It’s a great book.

For me was Stephen Buhner's Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. It changed my perception and gave explanations of things I only knew intuitively. Highly recommended.

The Splendid and the Vile. My favorite non fiction book of 2020.

Erin Morgenstern's "the Night Circus" and "the Starless Sea", and Jim Butcher's latest two Dresden Files books (Peace Talks and Battleground).

Some of my favorites from this year:

- The Brothers Karamazov

- The Catcher in the Rye

- Ender's Game

- Dune

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

Fiction: The Leopard - Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

Non-fiction: My Life in Christ - St John of Kronstadt

Non Fiction: The War on Normal People - Andrew Yang

Fiction: Name of the wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The Elephant In The Brain and A Philosophy of Software Design!

Paul Kalanithi - When Breath becomes Air.

David Deutsch: The Fabric of Reality

Can't Hurt Me -- David Goggins

The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

'The Burnout Society' from 2015. Kinda post-Marxian thing from a Korean-German philosopher named Byung-Chul Han. Takes dead-aim at the culture of positivity and individual achievement. Fantastic.

12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson