What's the best book you read in 2021?

“How to change your mind” by Michael Pollen.

I read a lot of books, and this is one that caused a change in my life. The succinct summary is that psychedelics are misunderstood and there is more and more research showing their potential, especially in the treatment of trauma.

I had a difficult childhood. It’s something I still struggle with personal interactions because of this, even after years of therapy. After reading Michael Pollen’s book I thought this might be something that could move the needle on my day-to-day quality of life.

I found a shaman and did an 8 hour blindfolded mushroom trip. Similar to what’s outlined in the book. Previously I’ve never done anything more than weed occasionally.

It had a profound impact on me. The way I describe it is like jumping off a diving board into a deep dark pool, and the pool is you. Then spending hours there.

I don’t know if I’d do it again but I learnt a lot about myself. I won’t proselytize here either, because the research is still early. There’s also risk because you put a lot of trust in someone who’s there with you while you’re high. But I do recommend at least reading the book.

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin.

It identified so many of the "edges" of society and how I think about and interact with the world, on a daily basis.

Without a doubt one of the best books I've ever read. Maybe even the best.

The only other book that came close this year was Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir.

I just finished a re-read of the "Commonweal" series by Graydon Saunders, which begins with The March North:

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=MoIOAwAAQBAJ

I've never been sure how to sum up these books. They're thoroughly strange fantasy books, oddly written and frequently chewy reads. They have an interest in politics and metaphysics; but they also have magical railguns, the sorcerous application of FOOF [1], and a five-ton battle-sheep named Eustace.

The first book is fairly straightforward: A quiet backwater of the Commonweal is under threat, and its only defense is an understrength territorial battalion, a handful of experimental artillery pieces, and three of the mightiest sorcerers of the age.

Then the second book (A Succession of Bad Days) isn't at all about the military, and is more like the weirdest going-to-sorcery-school book I've ever read. It also has an extended, detailed section on using sorcery in canal construction. If you ever wanted a book about the best ways to use magic in the service of civil engineering, this series is your jam.

These books really aren't for everyone, but I kind of love them, and they aren't widely known, so I'll always take an opportunity to shill them.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

I haven’t finished this yet (only at the start of chapter 6) but The Scientist and Engineer’s Guide to Digital Signal Processing [0] has been excellent so far. DSP is one of the subjects I’ve wanted to learn for years but could never get my head around, mostly (I think) due to bad instructors and very math-heavy explanations. This book is finally demystifying it for me, with explanations that go for intuition over mathematical purity.

The book is even freely available on the author’s site! I wish I’d found this years ago.

0: https://dspguide.com

I read Sapiens by Yuval Harari this year. It was long and fascinating, incredibly well researched, and easy enough for "light reading" that I had time for between writing research papers. A couple things that stuck with me were stories of giant land mammals that used to exist, many more than I realized, alongside humans. Wherever humans colonized, the large mammals were killed off soon after. This happened in Australia, China, and Europe, and long before the days of colonization. Another was the idea that humans have been cultivated by wheat, rather than the other way around, based on the observation that our relationship with wheat is more beneficial for the plant than for ourselves.

Unsong by Scott Alexander

A delightful, completed serial that tells an alternate story of the world since 1968, when Apollo 8 crashed into the crystal fabric of the sky and fundamentally broke the machinery of the universe. Now science no longer works, the old ways have power and sometimes people go to bed on Monday to wake up on Wednesday.

I loved the way the fiction intertwined with reality.

If you like science fiction, there were a few books published this year worth picking up:

- The Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir (of the Martian). Nice page turner and he's back to form with his third novel.

- Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. Enjoyable and fun; though arguably not his finest work. I might pick up his earlier work for re-reading over Christmas. Anathem probably, which I would recommend to anyone.

- Leviathan Falls (part 9 and the last one of the Expanse series). James S.A. Corey (the writer duo). The whole series was quite enjoyable and this is a fitting end to it.

I’m 15% into Cryptonomicon by Neal Staephenson, and it’s living up to the hype. I’ve only read a few of his books: Snowcrash, Anathem, and Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. He’s such a good thought experimentalist and decent novelist. Reading one of his books is almost like sitting in a really interesting philosophy class in college that just makes you think about familiar concepts differently or way more in depth.

That will be Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells, by Harold McGee. I doubt it will have the same impact as his masterwork On Food And Cooking, but, by jove, it blew my mind several times.

The book is a somewhat systematic tour of the smells of the world. Most of which are generated, one way or another, by organisms. It makes you realize that (because of this simple fact) the world is an even more special place than you already thought: most of the smells in this world probably exist nowhere else in the universe.

The book makes you see (smell) the similarities between things as disparate as a pine trees and lemons, melons and fish, ants and ginger, and it explains why they exist. You come out of the experience with a rich new vocabulary and a plethora of fascinating facts.

The book is a bit technical (lots of high school level organic chemistry) but it is a joy to read, because McGee is a very good writer who manages to be precise and lyrical at the same time. A book to savor slowly.

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. Changed my life and my perspective on doing business, building company and understanding luck. Such a classic. Also honourable mention: Super Pumped by Mike Isaac. Great read on the legendary Travis' journey.

Yasha Levine's "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" (2018). I ended up reading it side-by-side with Ed Snowden's "Permanent Record" (2019) which was useful as they have somewhat different takes on domestic and global mass surveillance.

The one take-away I'm still thinking about is how the Tor Onion Router system works, and if the primary purpose behind Tor was to allow spies in various locations around the planet to communicate with known headquarter locations without leaving any traces. That's what Levine implies, anyway, and Snowden sort of confirms that, as I read things.

Overall, some people believe putting advanced technology in the hands of individuals is a solution to authoritarian control, some people believe political reforms are the solution to authoritarian control. Interesting debate certainly.

Aristotle's Poetics. Yes, it was published before 2021.

A lot of writers try to set their own rules, but according to the best, you need limitations to be creative. Just like you would play sports with rules. That rulebook is Poetics.

It's the kind of book that's so information dense that you have to read it slowly. Summaries are often as long as the book itself.

There's some aging in there. Notably the concept of hamartia has changed from "mistake" to "sin" over a few hundred years. Good stories were all tragedy back then, where a noble person makes a mistake. And the audience is fearful because if this superior person can make mistakes, what about me?

Since Christianity, the philosophy has been that everyone makes mistakes, but repenting for it saves you from tragedy. And more popular now is a reversal. Some tries to slay a monster, but the monster is too perfect. But eventually the monster suffers from hamartia (missing the mark, making human sins) and the hero exploits that to win.

Besides drama, the book also covers actual poetry and music, both of which have their own limitations, but that part was all Greek to me.

The final section of The Baroque Cycle. Clever, detailed historical fiction epic about the 1600s and 1700s in Europe, The Middle East, and a bit of North Americas east coast. Interactions between fictional and real characters, without anything that can be proved didn't happen (like The Thee Musketeers). And, just a hint of magic. See Isaac Newton as a precocious Cambridge student probing the universe by maneuvering a darning needle through his eye; later, his occult obsessions.

Honorable mention to Children of Time and its sequel. Gripping sci-fi story about transforming, interactions between humans and computers, and other beings. Imaginative world about cultures very different from own own, and how they might evolve under different evolutionary conditions.

Also, honorable mention to Project Hail Mary.

Foundation- this book blew my mind. What I found fascinating about it is that it’s a science fiction book but at its core it’s about how to resolve Geopolitical issues using diplomacy. It feels like this should be a primer for anyone who wants to understand and improve modern geopolitics.

Life in London, or the day and night scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom in their rambles and sprees through the Metropolis by Pierce Egan.

I read this book for the second time this year, the two hundredth anniversary of its publication. It was a bestseller in the nineteenth century and led to many spinoffs, but nobody seems to read it anymore. A scan of an 1869 reprint is at [1]. The Wikipedia article is at [2].

I don’t know if this is a good book—the characters and plotting are thin, and the obsolete slang and topical humor make it difficult to read—but there seems to be a premodern masterpiece of postmodernism lurking in its self-referentiality and its dense, rambling prose. Even the footnotes have footnotes [3].

[1] https://archive.org/details/tomjerrylifeinlo00egan/page/n9/m...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_London_(novel)

[3] https://archive.org/details/tomjerrylifeinlo00egan/page/64/m...

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi.

It's chock full of ideas that any technologist would find fascinating. A post-singularity society in which those who "got there first" ascended to technological godhood, and the rest mostly fight for comparative scraps. Those scraps are phenomenally interesting though, and the many ways the book assumes and implies generations of growth in technology make for some truly out-there settings and cultures. If you liked the part of Anathem where you had no idea what was going on at first, but slowly learned the ways of the world as you read on... you'd love this book.

The new Graeber, Dawn of Everything

Completely tears apart recent trendy anthro books like Sapiens for ignoring both old and very new research and tries to set a new framework for understanding humanity’s potential

Here are all books I read (this year so far I read 50 books):

https://books.j11g.com/search.php?log=3

Three books from 2021 stick out:

- If This Is a Man by Primo Levi. I would urge everyone to read this. This history should be known to everyone.

- Defying Hitler (the story of a German 1914 - 1933) by Sebastian Haffner. Masterfully written autobiography that explains the rise of nazi Germany more than any other history book I ever read.

And one more for the HN crowd:

- The hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. Often tipped, but it really is an insightful book, and a fun read.

Hands down, the most fascinating book I read in 2021 (and I will have read for a long time!) is "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" by James Gleick: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400096235

Those who have a computer science background will almost definitely love the book. It connects many dots that are previously seemingly unrelated. My jaw dropped for literally every few pages of most chapters.

Fiction:

"The Lies of Locke Lamora"

I found this book because I just finished playing Dishonored 2 and I wanted to read a book with a dystopian steampunk alternative-Victorian vibe.

The events take place in a gritty, corrupt city of waterways and canals controlled by different factions. The factions represent either the legitimate nobility or the extensive underground criminal empire. A charismatic leader of a small young group of thieves and pickpockets comes up with an epic, layered con that will break sacred agreements and make him enemies with everyone - and pulls it off.

This years best book is the brothers karamazov. An excellent book with a deeply human and philosophical viewpoint. This is the last bool I read from dostojewski and after crime and punishment his best work.

Atm I read „against the day“ from pynchon. Also very excellent and compared to gravitys rainbow sooo easy to read. That could be a good start to the pynchon universe for beginners.

Whish you all a good time at the end of the yeat

Hands down The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't [0]. The subtitle might make you think this is a gotcha book about "wrong thinkers" but it's really a practical guide about how to improve your own thinking. Bought several copies for Christmas presents this year. I'd run across it a few times online and dismissed it (based on the title) as yet another Gladwell-style fluff piece, but Scott Alexander's review [1] sold me.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Scout-Mindset-People-Things-Clearly-e...

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-scout-...

Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin. Lincoln's cabinet was filled with representatives of the different wings of northern and border state politics, all of whom became key figures in the fight against the CSA. Very lovely book about Lincoln's genius as a master of men and of personalities, of being downright kind and truly listening to the people.

Designing data intensive applications by Martin Klepmann. The best engineering design book I’ve read in my 20 yrs of experience.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre (1923). Inspired by the life of stock trader Jesse Livermore in the late 1800s to early 1900s. The narrator starts trading in bucket shops (antique equivalent of Robinhood), makes and loses several fortunes through various (often less than honorable) financial escapades. Was inspired to read this by the GameStop situation and was not disappointed.

Blood Meridian (or The Evening Redness in the West) by Cormac McCarthy. Quickly became my favorite book after reading it a second time. I've never read a book with more effective language.

Since the last few years, I have made it a habit to write about the books[1] I read without trying to add my smart-a* comment but more as a way to come back later in life and read the articles. For this year, here are some of the books I liked (quite a few of them are re-reads);

- The Story of My Experiments with Truth, the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi (English Version)

- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

- Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

- Ego is the Enemy, Stillness Is the Key, and The Obstacle Is the Way; all 3 books by Ryan Holiday

- Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher[2]

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2021/books-of-2021/

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

Probably "The Goal".

After reading "the Phoenix project" a couple of years ago a good deal of it was predictable but that doesn't prevent it from being very interesting.

(To be completely honest I listened to it instead of reading it myself, but I still think it counts.)

Another interesting audiobook is "The Minuteman" maybe only available through Audible. It is a story of part of the fight against nazism in America.

Only annoying thing about it is the author at a couple of places tries to equate that fight with todays antifa, which leaves a rather sour taste there and then but is forgotten a minute or to later because the book is otherwise really interesting and I enjoy stories of nazis getting punched and otherwise punished and people getting away with it.

An old one, but I read "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevsky. I was expecting it to be dense and difficult to read, but I found it incredibly engaging - easily the best book that I have read, ever.

I try to broaden my horizons and get out of my tech bubble, so I like to learn how artists think. I don't think I could do any better than David Byrne "How Music Works" which is surprisingly and satisfyingly technical, along with musical, and Patti Smith's "Just Kids" about her time in New York City starting out with artist Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea Hotel. Amusingly, she meets Alan Ginsburg when he tries to pick her up thinking she is a young man.

In the same vein, not books but documentaries, I learned a lot from three Andy Warhol documentaries on YouTube: "The Life of Andy Warhol", "Andy Warhol - The Complete Picture", and "BBC Modern Masters 1of4 - ANDY WARHOL"

From those I learned about the art business, how much Warhol loved money (he left an estate or around 400 million dollars) and how much of this applies to today's world of art related NFT speculation.

Looking back at the books I read, I read a lot I'm pretty lukewarm on. But a few that stuck out:

* Chronicles of My Life by Donald Keene. If you ever read much Japanese literature in translation (at least before a particular era) you'll recognize the name, and Keene's life was fascinating. Breezy, fun read.

* The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I was skeptical, and had unfavorable views of this book based on impressions I'd formed by reading reviews, but once I read it and gave it a try... she was totally right about nearly everything she wrote and it literally was "life-changing." I got rid of a ton of detritus and ultimately going through the process of purging my things gave me the boldness to accept a job offer on the other side of the country and take off. The process also drastically changed my shopping habits -- I simply buy much less than I used to, not out of a conscious desire to be "minimalist," but out of recognition that I don't necessarily really want things all that much (though thinking about how much trouble it was to throw things away doesn't hurt).

* California: A History by Kevin Starr. About all you could ask for from a one-volume history... nice little primer to my new home state.

Children of Time and the sequel Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Best sci-fi I’ve read in a while.

Prisoners of Geography.

It's an insightful book into geopolitics, looking at the present through analysis of the past and the geography that influences it. In much the same way, it discusses the future and what might come next. If you're already engrossed in geopolitics literature you might not learn much, but if not - and you're interested - I recommend it. It gives a level of analysis that news reports don't go anywhere near, and it's given me a much wider perspective of the world and more nuanced view of current events. Its also well written.

I'm just finishing Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor and I have enjoyed it immensely.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486-breath

I have previously taken courses in the Wim Hof Method and marvelled at the dramatic increase in energy that it gave me, not to mention an increased ability to be warm when I want to be and to tolerate the cold, something which being a relatively stationary software developer has negatively affected over the years.

This book touches on Wim Hof but covers the approaches and results of many other practitioners as well as traditional methods, blending together science writing and reporting of results with engaging storytelling, making it a fun, light and quick read.

As someone who likes to experiment with this kind of thing I went ahead and tried things like lightly taping my mouth shut while sleeping and was amazed to feel the difference when I didn't do it. Meanwhile I've experimented with only breathing through my nose when exercising (including exhaling) and have observed that my heart rate has stayed lower and my thinking clearer when under pressure in a jiu-jitsu class.

In the same week that I started reading the book I had a grading, and the instructors repeated again and again the reminder to breathe in through the nose, advice echoed in the book. To them it is common sense that if you start panting (breathing hard in and out using your mouth) that you won't be able to perform well in that kind of high-pressure scenario.

If you are looking for a light read over the holidays and are interested in health/wellness then I can thoroughly recommend this book.

"My Struggle" series by Karl Ove Knausgård [1]. The whole series is 3600 pages in six books, and I read four of them this year. Why on earth am I reading ridiculously detailed reports on some Norwegian guy's personal life, I thought. His divorce, parenting struggles, creative aspirations as a writer, sexual aspirations as an adolescent, in-depth descriptions on how his dad became an alcoholic, etc. Why am I reading this?

And yet, I did. Whenever I had a free moment, a household issue I didn't want to solve, etc, I grabbed after this book to simply get lost.

I'm not sure if one can consider it a literary masterpiece, but it sure was impossible to put down. In one of the back-cover blurbs, a critic said something like that: this series makes it clear that a person's life is actually by no means a story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausg%C3%A5rd_no...

I have not had time to read a lot of books, one (475 page) book I read is "Androids" by Chet Haase. Haase was on the Android team and interviewed most of the programmers who wrote the initial Android versions. I program Android and find it fascinating. It gives you an idea of how such a successful project from somewhat recent times comes together. Android was originally going to be an operating system for cameras written in Javascript.

It covers a big team, and jumps from chapter to chapter on how the Java virtual machine was written, to how the SD card code was written, to how notifications were implemented. Thus it does not have the compelling narrative drive of something like Masters of Doom, which is another good book which follows a much smaller group from id software. But Androids is a very informative book on how something like Android is put together.

Also, some books of this type are for the lay person and are breezy and talk about personalities and not much about technical matters. A lay person could probably read this, but it does dive into technical decisions, which I appreciated. For example, I knew Android has a process called zygote which handles the initialization of each Android application, but this book explains why such a process exists, which illuminates things for me beyond me simply knowing that it does exist.

Also interesting is how the teams from Danger, Palmsource, and WebTV came in with various ideas of how a device should be built, which all culminated in Android.

If you are interested in great prose or a narrative drive, read another book. If you are interested in how the folks from Danger (and Palmsource, and WebTV) had great success at their second swing at bat, in creating a technology that has become ubiquitous worldwide in the past decade with three billion active Android devices - it is an interesting read.

"Code" from Charles Petzold as well. Gave me solid, primary intuition on how to understand what a computer is.

Where is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall.

The flying car is both literal and metaphorical. If you’ve ever wondered why technology has stagnated, this is the book for you. If you doubt technology has stagnated, this book will challenge that view. If you’ve ever wondered why literal flying cars have taken so long to appear, this book is for you.

I just finished this one so it might just be fresh in my memory, but I really enjoyed Kiril Yeskov's "The Last Ringbearer". It's a sequel/retelling of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" written from the Mordorian perspective and based on the premise that LOTR is "a history written by the victors".

It has a completely different feel than Tolkien's writing, and sort of stuffs something resembling Cold War politics into Middle Earth. It's obsurd, but somehow makes perfect sense.

I originally saw it recommended on hn, so thank you whoever you were!

A few books I enjoyed:

- The Case against Education by Bryan Caplan, discussing the merits of signalling theory (the point of education is to signal your intelligence and conscientiousness) as opposed to human capital theory (education genuinely makes you a better worker with more skills). Didn't find it totally convincing but it was a fun and interesting read.

- The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Harden, a wonderful book on how hereditary IQ is, and why that is a good case for redistribution, given that IQ is so predictive of wealth/income

- The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson, a biography of Jennifer Doudna, the woman who founded CRISPR and won the Nobel prize. Great read, thrilling.

- My Struggle book 1, by Karl Ove Knausgård. Haven't finished this yet, just started it a few days ago - about 300 pages in. Great, great novel, one of the best I've read in a while.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I had an itch for some good epic world-building after finishing the Game of Thrones books and giving up on the next ones being released. Was not disappointed.

Structurally, Hyperion is a play on Canterbury Tales, but it weaves in hefty amounts of sci-fi, fantasy, philosophy, history and theology. Lots of WTF moments, and a great balance of humor and truly dark shit.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - by billg

From my level of background knowledge, it was really well-written. He talks about how to think about emissions, and breaks down global emissions into its biggest categories (eg. transportation, electricity generation, etc). As well as promising methods for decreasing emissions in each of these classes. I think the style would really suit a HN audience.

Nonfiction: "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky. It was a fantastic deep-dive into the topic, and despite being extremely long was very readable.

Fiction: "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. I've read other Steinbeck before this one, but this stands out as a clear masterpiece. I especially enjoyed the way he blended the experiences of specific individuals with the experiences of a general population - the narration style was very enjoyable.

I read the foundation series by Asimov. Its title of the best sci-fi series of all times isn’t a hyperbole.

The sci-fi novel "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. Captivating, and a lot of fun.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

Written by an AI researcher, the book explores HP as if he was a very rational and intelligent agent, rather than someone who immediately accepts all aspects of magic.

It’s not just interesting, but includes real theories of rationality that made me consider how I immediately accept many things myself.

That would have to be One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What a profoundly human book. The kind of book that is very difficult to describe in any meaningful way, but which I unreservedly recommend to anybody.

I really really enjoyed "The Comanche Empire" https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300151176/comanche-empir...

It took a long time to get through (very dense, academic) but was a sprawling look at a powerful indigenous culture that I knew nothing about.

Plus, it was enlightening and a bit foreboding to learn how an empire could be at the very height of its power and then, through circumstance, climate, demographics, and imperial expansion be exhausted and destroyed in essentially a decade.

I haven't had a lot of time for reading this year, but one I got most of the way through that was the most beneficial to me was Delivered From Distraction. There was a "Hey, do you guys experience this?" post I saw on HN several months ago, and it echoed my experiences so much it almost felt as if I had written it. So many people suggested getting an ADHD evaluation and gave all sorts of resources (books, videos, etc) and Delivered From Distraction was one that came up again and again. It was a great book because I saw SO much of myself and my struggles over the years reflected in its pages, and thanks to the post, discussion, the book, and so many of the other resources, I was able to get an evaluation a couple of weeks ago and will have the results in the next couple of months.

Ah, found the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27593462

If you read any of that and think it feels really familiar, I can't suggest Delivered From Distraction enough.

- Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smill - May be a bit dense sometimes in raw data but overall provides an awesome overview of how humanity has used and continues to use energy, from a historical, economical and physical perspective.

- The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee - A very well written narrative of medicine's fight against cancer (though the author also goes into detail into other aspects of pre-modern medicine) that really executes on explaining how modern day cancer treatment came to be and what are the probable next steps towards a cure.

Humankind by Rutger Bregman. It shows an optimistic view of the world through history, he mentions with facts why we trust, why this was/is our most valuable asset to survive and why the biggest advantage of humanity is friendliness even today. He shows many stories about how we are good by nature. A must have book if you want to see the world from a positive angle.

The Overstory by Richard Powers. A few touching stories about trees and Americans. One of the best things I've read this decade, perhaps this lifetime.

That would be either 'Red Rising' by Pierce Brown, or 'All Systems Red' by Martha Wells. Though I have to add a cautionary remark: I found the books in Wells' "Murderbot Diaries" to be short enough and gripping enough that it is very hard not to trade a night of sleep for finishing them in one setting.

“The First Salute” by Barbara Tuchman, her last book. It’s a deep dive into the politics, personalities and execution of the American revolution. The author is adept at finding the crucial stupid choices that lead to strategic collapse, often driven by pettiness and blindly following orthodoxy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/03945533...

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

Lulu Miller, a host of the Invisibilia podcast, turns what at first is a simple story about an obsessive taxonomist, David Starr Jordan, into a deeply personal and poignant exploration of the chaos that rules are lives. This part-historical non-fiction, part memoir brilliantly sets itself up for a grand reveal at the end that will stick with you long after you finish. By far my favorite of the 62 books that I read and one of the best books that I have ever read.

The Book of Why by Judea Pearl was good, and informative, and left me wanting to find a good textbook on the subject with practice problems so I can apply the concepts in my real life causality problems. Unfortunately it seems the textbooks on causal inference aren't quite designed that way, and I may need to learn R before proceeding.

It's already a well regarded title, so perhaps you've read it already, but Never Split the Difference was a pretty good book on negotiation, focused on navigating the emotional barriers to a mutual agreement. I'd put off reading it because the title sounded trite: "focus on win-win situations!" but really the book is about defusing conflict, and persuading people to agree to things already in their best interest, not brainstorming outside-the-box solutions to things.

1941, picked up a copy when visiting Pearl Harbor in October. Made me realize nation states will take suicidal decisions knowingly, politics and institutions can lead to insane burden the populace will have to take over. Projecting to today, it makes me think a war with the east is not improbable.

The Little Book of Stoicism by Jonas Salzgeber.

I was searching for the meaning of happiness, what makes me happy and how to maintain it.

Before reading the book, my mind was wired that programming is my passion (as I've been doing it for 20+ years now). While reading and reflecting, I discovered that DIY is my passion! I love create things and programming was the tool that allowed me to enjoy that satisfaction.

"Born a crime" by Trevor Noah. It is about his experiences growing up as the 'product' of an illegal liason between a black woman and a white man in aparatheid South African. Warm, funny and shocking in equal measure.

Currently still reading, but will finish tomorrow: "Clear and Simple as the Truth" by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner.

This is the only book I know that discusses that there are several styles of writing and that exhibits one particular style that the authors call "classic style".

They also discuss differences from other styles ("practical style" as taught by Joseph Williams – my other favorite book about writing, that I like even more).

The book is split into three parts: an essay part that talks about the style, "The Museum" with examples of the style from other publications, and "The Studio" with practical tips and exercises.

The Library at Mount Char came from a Reddit recommendation for weird/bizarre fiction, and it did not disappoint. It's about kids who were abducted by a very powerful person, and that's all I'll say about it. If you like house of leaves or some of the strange chuck palahniuk stuff, you'll like this.

Ready Player Two. I kid, skip it unless you really liked Ready Player One.

Dune, to prepare for the movie, I love this book but I could see some of the flaws now that I'm older. The book's recognition that politics is an art and cam be studied, mastered and manipulated brought some of recent history into sharp relief.

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek

Great intro to particle physics even for an ordinary, non-science person. Blew my head by the very basics of reality is literally a simple formula. Like a codebase.

Abraham Heschel, "The Sabbath" (1951)

“Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty” to remain independent of the enslavement of the material world. “Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem—how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent.”

"Why greatness cannot be planned" by Kenneth Stanley

It's a bit depressing that academia works the way it does, but in a twisted way it gives me hope that I could make a significant contribution somewhere by just tinkering or following what feels interesting. Even if there are tens of thousands of people working in an area like AI, most of them are just making incremental improvements to what already exists, so there could be an opening for independent people to do something interesting still.

White Guilt, by Shelby Steele. Gave me the conceptual tools to actually understand the political dynamics of racism in the US, rather than mere activist propaganda (as offered by other, similarly titled books). Plus it’s really well-written, and enjoyable to read.

I've acquired a taste for book reviews. It's sort of meta, since they describe the book but also try very hard to provide context at the same time. Given that I've loved Andrew Gelman's very back-of-the-envelope style reviews, this new preference is probably no surprise.

In any case, I've read "Mantel Pieces" which is a collection of Hillary Mantel's reviews for the London Review of Books, and it's an insane display of powerful language. Mantel has a brutal clarity coupled with restrained playfulness that just blows me away.

Take this picture of what it must feel like to be a small child:

> “For some time now you have been able to take your eyes off your own feet without the general danger of falling over; that’s the stage of walking you are up to.”

or

> “I’m sticking by my joke. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s the only joke I’ve got.”

or on Robbespierre:

> “For most people, the era of selfless risk-taking is a phase. It irritates their elders while it lasts; though sometimes, in political movements, those elders find a way to exploit it. But then, if young persons survive their ideals, something happens which surprises them: they learn a trade, they develop ambitions, they fall in love, they get a stake in life. Or simply time passes, and middle age beckons, with its shoddy compromises. But for the Incorruptible, idealism was not a phase. He kept his vision carefully in his head through his twenties and carried it carefully to Versailles, where he arrived a few days before his 31st birthday.”

“Crime and Punishment” was by far the best book I’ve read this year. Not that I necessarily agree with all the ideas presented by the author, but I found it to be written so well that I couldn’t put it down. Really didn’t expect that for classical literature.

In my case I mostly listen to audiobooks and take notes. My top 3 favourites based on the amount of notes taken for this year:

Creativity Inc: Fun read about the conception of Pixar Studios and why having a different process amd focus than other studios have led them to create so many award winning films. Ties in to some other books on adapting the process in order to generate better/more creative outcomes that have influenced me.

Immune: With everything going on this year it felt appropriate. Explains to a layperson how your immune system functions and who the main players are. I had to take quite a bit of notes and read up/look at quite a few pictures/train using flashcards in order to make this info stick. I'd highly recommend anyone considering this book to get the physical book rather than the audiobook.

How to avoid a climate disaster: Bill Gates explains the key metrics a layperson should keep in mind when climate policy is discussed. I recommend creating a cheat sheet to remember it better. While it felt informative I dont really like the fact that Bill Gates is the author rather than some climate scientist. I tried to reduce my bias by reading some more climate change related books written by subject experts after this one.

Just read “LaserWriter II” and it was a surprisingly fun read. All about the characters in an old Apple repair shop in the ‘90s. The writing style is really unique, and the nostalgia was high. Discovered it while eavesdropping on someone recommending books in a bookstore.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56269270

"Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" was the most impactful book I read this year. It explores dying and illness and how we can treat the terminally ill and dying better and more compassionately.

The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku. It’s a cool look at lesser known side of Western civilization, namely estatic spiritual experiences.

Even if you don’t agree with the author’s conclusions, it’s very well researched and a fun read.

Dune - I loved it so much I’m avoiding watching the film in case it doesn’t live up to the book.

Never split the difference by Chris Voss - it’s a classic on negotiation. I’ve learned a lot of practical tips and tricks from it.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. The firs impression is it seems to be a sci-fi novel, but it is actually much more about humans than robots or future. Started slow but easy to get through. A great read.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (father of behavioral psychology) was incredibly impactful.

A few notable runner ups: - The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick Mckeown (as fitness enthusiast this was a giant gap in my knowledge

- Principles by Ray Dalio (this is incredible and I need to go through it again)

- Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green (best book on investing I've read in quite a while)

The Anubis Gates, extremely entertaining time travel story by Tim Powers. It's not very "sci" sci-fi, actually there's magic in the mix, but totally recommended anyway.

Late here. I read tons of fiction, some standounts:

Piranesi - Susanna Clark

This feels like a lightweight version of House of Leaves, which is probably a double complement. It's got gorgeous prose, and a completely ethereal, mysterious feel the whole way. Themes of memory, life and death, reality, mental illness, etc.

Notes From the Burning Age - Claire North

Solarpunk thriller set upon a backdrop of Overstory-like prose that praises and exalts natural beauty. Its a neat concept, though slow and very tense. Some content warnings.

Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno Garcia

A modern approach to gothic horror, where gaslighting is part of the horror, but the character knows that some of the gaslighting isn't gaslighting, it's mysterious things happening. Really tense also.

The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich

This year's Pulizer, historical fiction based on the Turtle Mountain Native American tribe's attempt to maintain their status as an independent nation in the 1950s, magical realism and a story of community and persistence.

Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse

Medium fantasy set in a really neat mixed Native Central/North American setting. The characters are fantastic, and this book was tense enough that I had to put it down because I was worried about two of the characters I really liked.

Middlegame - Seanan McGuire

This was really fantastic sort of situational horror. It very clearly horror, but mostly not gore-y. There's bits of implied stuff, but its mostly just like the horror of controlling the lives of a pair of magical soulmates in cruel ways, and also their journey of discovery of what they are and what they can do (which is also horrifying!). I also felt that this book had perhaps the best use of pre-chapter quotes that I've ever seen in a novel, and it invents a whole fake early 20th century childrens book as part of the worldbuilding. That book, "Over the Woodward Wall" has also been published, although I haven't read it.

I also read tons of Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin, and I can't recommend them enough (especially reading Butler and then Jemisin, as their writings are thematically similar, but approach similar topics from different directions). As well as tons of stuff by Anne Leckie, Becky Chambers, and Martha Wells, which are all great if you want space operas.

Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson presents a best case scenario for our future.

Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson is a masterpiece. I thought I had a pretty good relationship with death until I read this book. It starts out slow because that’s the thesis of the book: go slow and pay attention; be curious and feel emotions deeply without hurrying. He gently and convincingly shakes down concepts that seems beyond reproach like “hope”. Seriously he makes a killer argument against hope. Not that it’s all bad, but rather that it must earn it’s place at the table. Hope, he argues, is like a mortgage. You pay today with a goal of owning a piece of happiness in the future. (Eg Today’s bad because I’ve been told that I’m dying but I hope that I’ll get better with experimental therapy. 99% do not, so it’s better not to mortgage your future on a promise that’s unlikely.) I can’t do the book justice here, but I hope someone reads it because of this recommendation!

The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook by Davis, et al.

I was so stressed out to a point of collapsing, needing transfusions, and then being physically disabled for a month this year. Startup trouble, new baby complications, first child sleep regression, etc. all happening within weeks.

This book, with its practical, actionable suggestions, saved my sanity.

Fiction:

Attack Surface - Cory Doctorow

Non-Fiction:

Engineering General Intelligence Vol 2 - Ben Goertzel

Honorable Mention - Fiction

Daemon - Daniel Suarez

Freedom - Daniel Suarez

Billy Summers - Stephen King

Elsewhere - Dean Koontz

Honorable Mention - Non-Fiction:

We See It All - Jon Fasman

Integrating Rules and Connectionism for Robust Commonsense Reasoning - Ron Sun

Talking Nets: An Oral History of Neural Networks - James A. Anderson

The Soar Cognitive Architecture - John Laird

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West

https://www.nyrb.com/products/when-we-cease-to-understand-th...

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. It's a great read, and I learned a lot about the early years of the US. It's also the book that Lin-Manuel Miranda used as a reference for the musical, so I watched the musical for the first time after reading the book, and it blew me away.

Fiction: Berserk. Not a book, but a long-running manga that began in 1989 by then-22-year-old Kentaro Miura, and which was ongoing until his tragic death this year in May. It is a fantasy; some parts are grim, some immensely tragic, but at its core it is human and uplifting, and we see moments of incredible beauty and deep emotion. On top of this, the art is absolutely gorgeous and is in a class of its own. If you're interested in Berserk, I recommend reading the original manga, but the 1997 anime is excellent as well.

Nonfiction: To Pixar And Beyond. The former CFO of Pixar, Lawrence Levy, tells the story of Pixar's IPO and the making of Toy Story. Very interesting reading for anyone interesting in Steve Jobs, Pixar, or the business of movies and tech.

Been reading A Gentleman in Moscow for a while. Haven’t finished yet, but I find it thorougly enjoyable.

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer [0], because it brought the concept of reciprocity to the fore for me this year, and nudged me towards Finding the Mother Tree (Suzanne Simard), Eat Like a Fish (Bren Smith), and The Wayfinders (Wade Davis), all about ways of life that embrace diversity towards resilience in the face of the hyperobject of climate change. The life stories of the authors has been helpful in my personal development to be a better parent to my child, and a better spouse, so that we’re better-able to adapt to and shape change.

[0] https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=braidi...

I’ll go with Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr.

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. Inventive, well-written, and compelling.

Published in 2021 -- 'Perhaps the Stars' The last installment of the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer.

It's SF. But written in a conversation with Enlightenment era philosophy and plenty of bits of mythology. Lots of exploration of what could be and what should be, and the interplay of politics and war and ambition and murder.

(A note though, if the style and language of the first chapter put you off, then ... You're not going to like the rest of it)

I went into the last book with two questions:

  * Who is on Who's side?
  * Who _is_ Mycroft Canner?

There were definitely some answers there. Perhaps more answers than there were questions.

Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, Roger Scruton

So far I never understood what conservatism is, but Scruton changed it entirely, especially it felt fulfilling after reading Burke's Reflections on Recent France Revolution.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I spent a lot of the year in isolation, only seeing a few people and this book felt like an appropriate analogy. It was also very heartwarming when I really needed something to lift me up.

For me it was "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens. This may be a little cliche answer, but to me it was very surprising to discover a person who reached such high productivity in Academic Publishing with the help of a smart system.

I have started to implement the Zettelkasten system in my own life. Hope that will use that system to publish more work on my website.

I published my thoughts, learning and notes on this book -> https://rasulkireev.com/how-to-take-smart-notes/

Fantasy nerd.

Rhythm of War, book 4 in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. Love most stuff by this author.

And in response to Amazon making a Wheel of Time tv show, rereading that. Pleasant experience, very nice to get immersed in this huge universe.

Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology.

It's like a master class in historical political relations all in a single (large) book.

I found The First Law books to be fantastic: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/944073.The_Blade_Itself

(You can tell The Blade Itself is a first novel — but the following novels are A+.)

I had given up on fiction for a few years, but tried it out after coming across a thread on Reddit. The audiobooks in the series are incredibly good — in fact, I've recently just been reading anything that the narrator (Steven Pacey) has done in the past.

Non-Fiction: The Pyramid Principle - Logic in Writing and Thinking.

Although the writing techniques the author presents sound obvious in hindsight, having them all-in one place as an comprehensive framework you can follow helped me a lot for the writing and research in my work

Fiction: The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

A curated and annotated collection of locked-room mystery stories. All the stories are accompagnied by a small introduction into the author and the main character written by the curator. His enthousiasm shows in these small introductions, making the stories themselves even better.

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson

Essentially a book on how the best in the world structured their learning to master their skill, and how you can incorporate to what you want to master.

Throughout the overwhelming majority of the year, I wasn't in a position where I had a lot of "sit down with a good book and a good drink" reading time, but I've gotten some in during the winters at each end. I think best overall was one of the ones I read way early in the year, Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche. I had been saving The Pale King by David Foster Wallace for an "in case of emergency break glass" book because I couldn't bear to finish all his writing and I just had to break the glass recently. I've been enjoying that thoroughly and should finish before the year is up; it may win out.

I know this probably paints a bad picture of my reading habits because of the present public perception of those (previously publicly praiseworthy) authors, so I feel the urge to get in front of that and (1) insist I have eclectic tastes and this year had a small sample size, (2) insist those books (well, many parts of those books) really ARE excellent, and (3) provide one more suggestion even though this is already a wordy comment: why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby. Someone shared a link to the web version on HN earlier this year, maybe it was even in a deep, 1-upvoted comment, I don't recall - but that was what occupied the whole next part of my day, and I quite liked it (having already known Ruby from some ancient rusty Rails experience).

Politics is for Power by Eitan Hersh. He argues that the nationalization and "hobby"-ization has caused the political dysfunction we see today and argues that individuals should pursue politics exclusively to gain more power for what they believe in. One handy distinction he makes is the difference between politics as a noun: something you know about like current events (which is a waste of time) and politics as a verb: something you do in your community to gain more power.

The Book of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe.

Yes, its fiction and its even science fiction to some extent but what a ride! It's probably not for everyone but it has a cult following.

1. "Helgoland: The world of quantum theory" It's relatively light on physics but I loved the philosophical mixin.

2. "Seed of knowledge, stone of plenty". Mostly about the electromagnetic properties of ancient monuments and how electromagnetic fields can impact seed fertility. I can not believe how this is such an invisible book.

3. "Humankind. A hopeful history". I thoroughly enjoyed this fact based retelling of human history.

Not exactly a book but just read the "The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness" and it's full of great quotes and entries by Naval who is an entrepreneur now turned philosopher. Gives sound logic on how to find wealth, contentment and purpose in todays busy world.

It's also free in ebook form. https://www.navalmanack.com

I took me a year to read "Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising", but it was fascinating. It guides the reader into exploring their minds through meditation. But you learn to explore beyond your mind. It's hard to put into words, because I'm barely wrapping my mind around it. I'd say it's mostly about questioning the reality that surrounds us (and inside us).

I didn't read as much as I normally do, mostly due to school, but I really enjoyed "The Midnight Library" and "Recursion" for fiction.

I am mostly done with Antifragile, and it's pulling me between political and philosophical sides. Don't know which side I'll land on, or how long I'll stay there.

As a side note, I've found "Deep Learning: A Visual Approach" to be very instructive.

‘The Magus’, by John Fowles. Masterful.

I have only read a few chapters but I highly recommend ‘The Beginning of Infinity’ by David Deutsch, it’s just so interesting!

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Talk-Evolutionary-Evolution/dp...

It goes a bit slow and with too much details about hypotheses that are eventually rejected but really interesting insights into language. Relevant to computer languages too probably.

My favorite non-fiction book of the year was Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste" but I tried to spend some time reading some high quality fiction this year and stumbled upon Kristin Hannah's "The Four Winds." This says a lot since I read some classics this year including "Anna Karenina", "All the Light We Cannot See", and "Where the Crawdads Sing." I enjoyed "The Four Winds" the most. So beautifully written and so much emotion. I managed to read 50 books this year which was huge because I have never considered myself a "reader" but I received several books for Christmas because my family considers the "reader" of the family. For my fellow ADHD friends skip the Kindle and get the actual book. Then use your finger to read. Life-changing. Happy New Year!

I re-read my favorite book, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, but this time, I read it aloud to my kids (albeit with occasional censoring of some parts).

I'm prone to bursting into laughter with that book, and my kids quickly found it very funny as well. They could almost immediately divine the next contradiction in the narrative.

I only read two books this year but they were amazing!

The first one is Dune : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44767458-dune. It needs no introduction to HN, I think. Best Sci-fi book I have read so far.

The second one is American Kingpin : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31920777-american-kingpi... . It is about Silk Road (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)), the online darkweb market place. It's very well written.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/205587.The_Seasons_of...

Found it in my late parents’ library while clearing it out.

Haven’t quite finished it yet but my therapist is eager for me to follow through and discuss it.

Essentially it’s about realizing (I guess it’s less controversial today than it was when the book was published, although I did meet people that led me to believe they didn’t quite agree) that men - and women, there’s a sequel book dedicated fo women too - don’t plateau and stay the same once they exit post-adolescence.

There are legitimate passages later in life, that don’t necessarily mean crises or failures to resign to one’s fate, that need to be lived through rather than dismissed.

Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a scifi novel so much.

All three foundation books. I read them before watching the series and they were incredibly good. Although you can watch the series first if you want, the TV series and the books cross over about as much as the Harry Potter books and LOTR do, there’s wizards and baddies, that’s about it

The Social Construction of Reality[1]. This book helped me in my personal life coming to terms with my identity. But it also helped me understand the art of discourse much more deeply. It gives the tools to easily and quickly identify implicit assumptions in arguments and drill down into why and how they are made. It also makes it very clear that people in general construct very poor arguments. You may already believe this, but just how poor they are is almost unbelievable.

1. Berger, Luckmannn1966 ISBN 978-0-385-05898-8 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-38...

The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel. Whether you agree with him or not, it gives you a lot to think about in terms of how to organise society in a way that helps people flourish. Also contains some deep insights into some of society's current problems.

With the year I’ve had the books I think I’ve most enjoyed are the old Gotrek & Felix novels set in the Warhammer universe. I love short stories and they’re written in a very serialised style. They’re wry and charming and don’t go full grimdark. Great escapism.

I didn't do it on purpose, but I read "You look like a thing and I love you"[0] followed by "I, Robot"[1] and that combination was really fun.

The ideas Isaac Asimov put forward in I, Robot (written in the 1940/50s!) juxtaposed with a factual description of the current use of AI and the unusual side effects was really cool.

0: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44286534-you-look-like-a...

1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41804.I_Robot

Veronica decides to die.

Amazing book about what it means to be crazy. How to live an authentic life. Written in a funny and easy to read way. And it has the most important quality of any book IL really like. It's short and to the point haha

I didn't read much this year, but Norm Macdonald's death was a bit much for me, so I picked up a copy of his book 'Based On A True Story.' It's not for everyone but if you were a fan, a great read.

This year I revisited "A Cultural History of Physics" quite a tremendous book. It goes to the entire history of physics while parallelly highlighting cultural events with emphasis on how one influenced the other.

I solely read non-fiction and try to break out of the coding/business book bubble :D

A few of my favorites this year:

- Immune: A book about how our Immune system works..amazing to learn about it

- Calling Bullshit: A book about how to lie with data. (has quite some overlap with thinking fast, thinking slow)

- Quiet: Figured out due to this book that introvert/extrovert is no black/white scale and that I indeed have introvert tendencies in me

---

Shameless self plug: Most of the books I read are covered in my (german) book podcast: https://www.swpodcast.de/

The Fault in Our Stars

Okay, I know it's young adult, but it really effected me. I don't know that I've ever read a more honest discussion of death. I don't read much fiction though. Maybe I should read more.

Fiction:

  - the blacktongue thief ; if you love rothfuss, then you’ll love this. 
  - between two fires ; same author. Really great book about the Black Death but also demons. 
  - hench ; a normie uses Zersetzung against the alter egos of superheroes. It’s great
  - five decembers ; great read, and a clever take on the traditional noir genre

Non fiction:

  - against the grain
  - pre industrial societies
  - the other face of battle

I’m still chewing through “war from the ground up” and it’s very good, but for me at least, conceptually dense.

Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg.

Its an older book i read kind of randomly but really liked. It is a novel about a telepath who is slowly losing his ability, delving deeply into the character.

nonfiction: Beauty in Photography by Robert Adams. I re-read it for the third or fourth time this year. It's probably the most important book to me.

Some excerpts:

- "Making photographs has to be, then, a personal matter; when it is not, the results are not persuasive. Only the artist's presence in the work can convince us that its affirmation resulted from and has been tested by human experience."

- The best criticism comes from "the deepest commitment to sharing the picture with others. Anything less than that means defeat, calling attention not to the picture but to the critic."

- "When we are young, we want art that is filled with the bitter facts, because we believe that evil can be overcome if we face it; when we grow older and begin to doubt this optimistic belief, we want art that does not simply reinforce the pain of our disillusionment. In pictures like those by Hine the requirements of young and old are both met; the photographs urge reform, but seem to suggest that the need for it is not the most important thing to be said of life."

- "Contrary to popular expectations, many of the best nature pictures – often the truest and finally most reassuring – do contain people and their works."

fiction: Slaughterhouse-Five. I love repetition, and Vonnegut uses to great effect. I read most of it in an evening.

Liftoff by Eric Berger. SpaceX early days from more of the perspective of the employees. Really entertaining, well written and learned a lot about rocketry. Highly recommend

"A CONSTITUTION FOR LIVINGS - Buddhist principles for a fruitful and harmonious life"

download free pdf here

There is also the English version

https://www.watnyanaves.net/th/book_detail/211

The divided into 4 well structured sections that co-related to people life

Section One: People and Society Section Two: People and Life Section Three: People and People Section Four: People and the Way

The medieval origins of the legal profession: canonists, civilians, and courts by Brundage

The origins of reasonable doubt: theological roots of the criminal trial by Whitman

Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons. Fantastic blend of sci-fi and (alternate) ancient history. Give it a try if you like grand world-building and a really fun imagination.

I haven't seen these mentioned, so: - The WEIRDest people in the world: on why societies evolved differently, and why the renaissance happened where it did. A completely new (for me) framework of thought - The Anomaly: ideal for people on Hacker News!

My complete list of what I read this year is here: http://shrirang.karandikar.org/reading-in-2021/

I have a great answer to this, I think.

The best book is the one you haven't read yet (yes, there's still a few days left in 2021). Meaning: read more. Reading more is most likely going to have a very positive impact on your life. Play less videogames, read one more book. Watch less TV series on Netflix, read one more book. Etc.

By the way, I'm writing this as advice for you, but it's really advice for me (I don't play videogames, but I watch some Netflix).

I love a good book thread and my 2022 reading list now has a lot new additions. Thank you all for the recommendations.

The best book I read this year was The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I think I got the recommendation from last year's HN list and picked it up completely blind and enjoyed it immensely. Zafon's prose is a pleasure to read and while the story starts out simple it just keeps building and building in a really satisfying way.

"All Of The Marvels" by Douglas Wolk – he read (or re-read) all 27,000+ comics in the main Marvel superhero storylines, and limns their distinct themes and narratives in a very lively style. And with a lot of footnotes!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549063/all-of-the-m...

My favourite this year was “The Ice Age: A Very Short Introduction”

It’s an incredibly fascinating book that runs through all the history, science and politics coming out of the most recent ice age. Highly recommend!

https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/...

438 days. A memoir of a Mexican fisherman that spent over a year drifting across the Pacific Ocean. I’m a sucker for a good survival story and finished it in a day.

"Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing" by Chris Bail. I have always had a difficult relation with social media. I hated them from the beginning and my discomfort has only grown over the years. This book was an eye opener to me and clearly explains why social media leads to polarizing and it's not what you expect. To me this was one of the most thought provoking books I read this year.

Definitely Ubik by Phillip K. Dick

Still reading it actually, but definitely "The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the transition to the information age" by James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg (actually the father of current UK politician Jacob Rees-Mogg)

Its main thesis is that the main driver of megapolitical change are shifts in the risk/reward payoffs of violence. Was written in '97 but still talks about cryptocurrency and things like that. Interesting book.

The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat by Stephan Guyenet

Gives a good base to understand how we are tricked into consuming much more food that we need

Probably Reaper, by Will Wight. It’s not an insightful nonfiction book or a piece of high literature, but the whole Cradle series is very, very fun.

A tie between two well known books: "The making of the atomic bomb" and "Manufacturing consent". Both great in very different ways.

Fiction: "The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead (now a well-reviewed series on Amazon) A fantastic book that lingered with me for weeks after reading it.

Non-fiction: "This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends" by Nicole Perlroth If you want to be shaken to your core by the past, present, and future of cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare, this is the book that will drop your jaw more than once.

I'm almost finished with "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century" by Walter Scheidel. It's a fascinating take on the global history of income inequality from the Stone Age to today; and the impact of major "leveling" events.

On the fiction side, I'm enjoying the "Merlin: The Lost Years" series by T.A. Barron.

Perhaps The Stars by Ada Palmer, the fourth and final book from The Terra Ignota series. It was such a beautiful and weird conclusion to the series!

Viktor Frankl man's search for meaning - great perspective I needed while going through an emotionally difficult breakup. Basically it's a story about a psychologist during the holocaust and his experience in concentration camps. How it changed people and the experiences he lived through.

The big question in the book he's trying to answer is why do some people give up while others Excell in life.

"The Bitcoin Standard" was pretty good.

It is a long history of all the effects of monetary policy. And how Bitcoin could change the world in this regard.

The Enlightenment - The Pursuit of Happiness by Ritchie Robertson (2020). Long but worth indulging in if you enjoy intellectual history.

Being You - A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth (2021). A clear and readable account of approaches to dissolving the hard problem of consciousness.

Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper (1945). Plato, totalitarianism, and why democracy is good.

These are available as audiobooks.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Best scifi I've read in awhile; a really nice one in the first-person-nonhuman genre.

Rationality by Steven Pinker. As always, the polymath covers a lot of ground and illustrates the connections beautifully.

Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams.

I found this book via Hacker News, and I'm glad I did. So many things to do in 2022 :).

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22793146

Fantasy/adult romance: _His Secret Illuminations_ and _His Sacred Incantations_ by Scarlett Gale. Charming characters, original take on magic, dragons and evil sorcerers; but also sex. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BD5FKDT

The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs, by Tim Freke (Original scriptures by Hermes Trismegistus)

I've been through a lot in the past 40 years. It makes you see life through a different perspective. If you like reading about the deeper meaning of life, this may be something for you. This book is worth its weight in gold.

Immune by Phillipp Dettmer. It explains the second most complex system in the universe in enough detail to understand it.

"But how Do it Know?" by J. Clark Scott Incredibly simple and elegant explanation of how computers work.

Posted on a previous thread Flow mihaly csikszentmihalyi Psycho cybernetics by Dr. Maltz. Helped me grapple with my midlife crisis and gave me true purpose- to achieve my goals on my own terms. No something set by the society’s concept of achievement. Highly recommend reading it and not audible listening

Speaker for the dead (second book in Enders game series). After many years first book I read in one sitting.

"Injustice for All: How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice System"

Images of Organization by Garth Morgan.

I went in expecting a somewhat fluffy business book, but it is nothing of the sort. Every page is full of interesting anecdotes, analogies, and insights around not just corporate life, but life in general.

It was way more thorough and academic than I expected, very highly recommend it.

Being a new parent, I've read a lot of parenting books this year. One of my favorites was No Drama Discipline.

Having grown up in an authoritarian, Asian, tiger-parenting style, this book opened my eyes on a more gentler, warmer way to handle kids. I hope I can practice the methods in the book.

Dan Davies "Lying For Money".

- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

- Never Out of Season by Robb Dunn

- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

- Alchemy by Rory Sutherland

- Test-Driven Development in Swift by Gio Lodi

Started reading r/fantasy’s top self published fantasy list. Loved the Cradle series by Will Wight.

It's an oldie, but The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox kept me from succumbing to stress during a particularly stressful period at work.

It's a great business book in the form of an ok novel, and everyone who cares about management or has consistent stress at work should read it.

Lexicon by Max Barry. Excellent sci-fi novel. In fact I heard of the book from an HN comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28199207), checked it out, and loved it.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1946).

A close runner up might be Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis (1989).

In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters by Merrill R. Chapman. I came across this book upon one of the discussions here on HN and it provided me with historical insights about driving forces in our industry, which seem to be timeless.

"Blacklisted by History" (2009). Deep research using primary sources -- government records, declassified documents, transcripts of hearings, contemporaneous reporting -- to refute the myth that Joseph McCarthy was guilty of, well, "McCarythism."

Stronghold: One Man's Quest to Save the World's Wild Salmon

https://www.amazon.com/Stronghold-Mans-Quest-Worlds-Salmon/d...

fiction: project hail mary -- just an all around amazing book.

non-fiction: an elegant puzzle: systems of engineering management -- i'm debating whether to change into management and this one really helped me understand a bit more what goes into engineering management.

If I have to pick only one: "How Asia Works" by Joe Studwell.

Is a bit old, but was super interesting.

I haven't read much this year, but I would recommend the book I'm currently reading (or should I say working on): Latin for Beginners by Benjamin L. D'Ooge.

It's decent albeit old-fashioned. I think it would be better to use this accompanied by LLPSI.

The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq - the writing is really beautiful. Like every sentence is poetic and the descriptions often these very original metaphors.

I read him for the first time immediately before the pandemic with A Balcony In the Forest, which is also great.

Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins - Konrad Lorenz

A book from 1973 but still actual and incredibly true.

‘The Peacemaker’s Code’ is a fantastic sci-fi book. It is reminiscent of a business novel like ‘The Goal’, being written by a Harvard negotiation expert.

I can best describe it as a cross between ‘Arrival’, ‘The Three-Body Problem’, and ‘The Goal’

In extremis: The life and death of the war correspondent Marie Colvin, by Lindsey Hilsum

This year i didn't read as much as i wanted but between the two books i really liked* i choose to post the above.

* The other one is Digital minimalism by Cal newport.

The Nemesis Effect by Michael Shotter . Great writing and fun adventure. Check out the YouTube review! https://youtu.be/qaIQgavJhBk

A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell.

A good book regardless of what you think of Sowell’s politics.

"The Goal: A process of ongoing improvement" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

An amazing introduction to the theory of constraints and the value in doing things in small, incremental improvements

"A universe from nothing" was also amazing!

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Very thoughtful and short read.

Two mostly anthropology books

#1 Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America (1943) by John Roy Carlson

Long out of print but relatively easy to find, this book is an incredible history of a populist split off of something called "the old right" (pre-JBS/Hayek/Russell Kirk) and hauntingly describes the modern populist right in a way that you check the copyright date and wonder if he's a time traveler.

I stopped about every page and went over to Wikipedia, Proquest, archive.org or LOC to find out more about the fascinating things the author was talking about. It took me months to work through and I probably read 10 or so books along with it (mostly books by the 1930s equivalent of qanon).

Seeing the through lines to the modern era is really stunning.

If someone is interested in the history of non-highbrow populist right, it's highly recommended.

#2 Weinberg's "The psychology of computer programming" (1971) Also mostly out of print but easy to find. This guy is also a time traveler in his insights

"The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow, a radical take on human deep history. Extremely thought-provoking so far, though I'm not finished yet (it's massive)

Dishonesty is the Second Best Policy by David Mitchell.

I've long been a fan of David Mitchell, and his writing in this book and also Thinking About it Only Makes it Worse is utterly hysterical.

I've re-read Spillover by David Quammen and would heartily recommend it to anybody interested in where these pandemics come from and why they are happening now.

On a lighter note: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman.

Walter Isaacson's The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race. Reading about how the Crispr and mRNA vaccine development happened was gripping.

Wanting: The power of mimetic desire in everyday life by Luke Burgis

"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. It's a masterpiece.

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II. Non-fiction. Harrowing. Was inspired to read it after seeing Beanpole.

Also really enjoyed Klara and the Sun.

Exhalation and Stories of your life and others by Ted Chaing. These collections of short scifi stories are stunning, and particularly the stories Exhalation and Story of your Life. They combine detailed technical descriptions of the science fiction aspects with raw emotional beauty. The movie Arrival is based on Story of your life.

La Peau de Chagrin (The Wild Ass's Skin) - Balzac. Beautifully written novel about desire and health, with verbose descriptions that I personally loved. Some nice quotes here [0]

Ubik by Philip K. Dick - Pretty mindbending and interesting twist on the whole "(distorted) perception of reality (what even is reality?)" theme. (9/10) [scifi]

[0]: https://knowledge.uzpg.me/dataobj/2771/#quotes

Haven't read a single book in years. I wish I had the time to just lean back and enjoy. If I'd to choose now, I'd be going for The Expanse by James S. A. Corey.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. Extremely well written history of Sackler family detailing their involvement in the opioid epidemic and inner workings of FDA.

Bad blood by John Carreyrou.

I'm not sure if best but certainly the most enjoyable and entertaining: For the love of physics. I absolutely envy people who have been in Walter Lewin's classes.

Ordinary Men. A great book about a bunch of ordinary men (50 year old police reservists, from Hamburg, of different socioeconomic classes and political leanings) and the atrocities they committed during WW2 in Poland ( mostly against Jews), why, and how they coped with it. There are some fascinating pieces of information there ( post-war interviews with the men form a big part of the narrative establishing what happened), and it really reinforced some of my already established opinions on "bad people", the Nazis, etc. There was nothing unique about them and such terrible things can happen again, which is why it's so important to teach and remember history - if you don't know how the Nazis convinced millions to do unspeakable things, you can more easily fall in the same trap.

The Odyssey, translation by EV Rieu. Made an effort to read a bunch of the Classics at the start of the year and the Illiad and Odyssey were very enjoyable.

The Coddling of the American Mind was a good read for me.

- Existential Rationalism: Handling Hume's Fork (second edition) - Living with the Himalayan Masters - The Outsider - Hirohito: Behind the Myth

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch.

Turned me into an optimist.

"The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" by Ben Macintyre is an amazing story, very well written.

"Breaking Ground" by Philip and Freya Mulvey.

A soil scientist's take on climate change which ties together some pretty compelling points.

one of the few existing books helping understand the world we live in and somewhat explains what we've been going through in the last 2 years. Understand the Empire: Towards Global Governance or the Uprising of Nations? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B7QZG4C

During the pandemic, I got heavily into the "Revolutions" podcast, and I wondered about these "liberal nobles" who were always cropping up trying to push for civil rights. So I wanted to read something about the history of liberalism. The typical story is "John Locke, Adam Smith, America's founding fathers (rah rah), John Stuart Mill, etc."

But Helena Rosenblatt's "The Lost History of Liberalism" makes a really strong argument that this anglo-centric definition of liberalism is counter-historical, and liberalism as a named, coherent political ideology developed in France after the French Revolution.

Anyone read a book that helps with headaches? I get lot of them and I meditate too. I sleep well, and eat well too.

Very much enjoying the classic "Utopia" by Thomas More, as well as "Faraday" by James Hamilton

Radical Focus by Christina Woldke

Great book on a different method of managing goals and time, both in and out of a company setting.

Not read whole yet but I really enjoyed "The metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" recommended by geohotz

Click here to kill everybody.

Number theory step by step.

Anyone tried The Real Anthony Fauci? Looks it's a bestseller of this year everywhere.

House of Suns - sci-fi novel by Allastair Raymolds.

Beyond the Aquila Rift, short stories, also by him.

The world building is incredible.

The Expanse Series.

Impro! By Keith Johnstone

I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? back in June, and watched Blade Runner a month later. I loved them!

Almost done with it, but my favorite thus far: Allen Mandelbaum's translation of Virgil's Aeneid.

"The Hospital" by Brian Alexander

This book changed my thinking on so many different topics - the US healthcare economy, the rise of Trumpism, and the erosion of the industrial Mid-West. This book really opened by eyes to those communities that have never recovered from the Great Recession and explains so much of what we have seen politically since 2016, including the current left-right Covid split. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to get even more angry at the current state of our healthcare system.

- Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

The same book i read last year. “The Beginning of Infinity” By David Deutsch, changed everything.

Crucial Conversations. It was actually recommended to me in an HN thread. Literally life changing

I’ve finally got around reading the 3 body problem trilogy. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Perhaps the War" by Ada Palmer. Incredibly good SG, what a mind she has!

Psychology of Money from Morgan Housel was a game-changer. Highly recommend.

"How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie

Fiction: This is how you lose the time war

Nonfiction: Don't think of an elephant

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

By far the best sci-fi book I have read in a long time

Shon Faye's 'The Transgender Issue'. Revolutionary.

Two years old, but This is How You Lose the Time War is fantastic.

The Poppy War trilogy is excellent albeit depressing.

Tuesdays with Morrie, thanks to a suggestion here on HN.

"The charterhouse of parma" by stendhal

Reread The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek.

"Book of the Long Sun" by Gene Wolfe.

Drunkards Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

History of probability theory

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism by Joel Kotkin

Persieds and Other Stories by Robert Charles Wilson

scifi

Gravity’s Rainbow. Too much to explain.

The Great Gospel of John - Jakob Lorber

The Coral Island, by R M Ballantyne

It was written a long time ago, and I read an abridged version as a kid. I got a copy to give away as a present, but got the unabridged version, which is not suitable for children. I decided to read it myself, and I am halfway through it.

It is going to be the best book I've read this year, because it is pure escapism in many ways, and this year has been strangely sucky despite the arrival of vaccines and a supposed return to normalcy.

Honorable mentions: - Night in the Solomons, Louis Lamour

- Bad Blood, John Carreyrou

Maybe not best, but stands out:

Blindsight - Peter Watts

Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers. Describes the construction of the world's first electronic digital computer, used to break the Nazi's strategic-communications cipher (much more important and difficult than Enigma.)

[0] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/colossus-97801995781...

"Who's the real Dr Fauci"

Eye opening.

PERMANENT RECORD by Ed Snowden

The apology of Socrates by Plato

Democracy: The god that failed

"Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore. It's honestly hard to tell if the narratives outlined in the book are real; it reads like fiction or a novel. It's backed by a mountain of sources, but I suppose that feeling of doubt is fitting for a subject like Stalin.

The Sixth Extinction

Blood Meridian

democracy: the god that failed

Zero to Ond

Surrounded by psychopaths

How to Build a Car by Adrian Newey:

The worlds foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britains greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir. How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrians unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which hes been involved. A true engineering genius, even in adolescence Adrians thoughts naturally emerged in shape and form - he began sketching his own car designs at the age of 12 and took a welding course in his school summer holidays. From his early career in IndyCar racing and on to his unparalleled success in Formula One, we learn in comprehensive, engaging and highly entertaining detail how a car actually works. Adrian has designed for the likes of Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Mika Hakkinen, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, always with a shark-like purity of purpose: to make the car go faster. And while his career has been marked by unbelievable triumphs, there have also been deep tragedies; most notably Ayrton Sennas death during his time at Williams in 1994. Beautifully illustrated with never-before-seen drawings, How to Build a Car encapsulates, through Adrians remarkable life story, precisely what makes Formula One so thrilling - its potential for the total synchronicity of man and machine, the perfect combination of style, efficiency and speed.

Fiction: The City of Brass - epic fantasy based on the medieval Islamic world (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32718027-the-city-of-bra...)

Nonfiction: Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (and the Next) - self-explanatory title (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54654726-mutual-aid)

Crying in H-Mart: memoir by Michelle Zauner (leader of the band Japanese Breakfast) about her mother and how food wove through their relationship (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54814676-crying-in-h-mar...)

I guess you mean in 2021. Same question was asked 3 days ago: (14 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29634694

Project Hail Mary and The Murderbot diaries.

Both are irreverent, fun sci fi adventures.

Atlas Shrugged: the danger of communism/socialism and how close we are to a collapse. It’s easy to see the excess of the right and capitalisms, not so easy to spot when it’s going too far left.

a hunter-gatherer’s guide to the 21st century: How the hyper-novel environment that we build for ourselves is not serving our physical and mental health. Very interesting to see how the downside to our technological progress. With the technology always accelerating, the side effects too are greater and greater.