My personal favourite part of the book: “After a few sessions Dr L’Estrange tells me I need anti-depressants. ‘You’re very slowed down and physically depressed,’ he says. He doesn’t know I am recovering from a night of smoking Buddha sticks laced with horse tranquilliser”.
I just loved that particular part of the book because it just really highlights the absurdity that so many mental health professionals, and general doctors, think they have the authority to assign these really rather powerfully debilitating labels based on all their years of learning and knowledge, yet have so little insight into the lives of their own patients when they assign these labels, as if to say they know you and your life better than you do.
And I study psychology, but there are still aspects of the discipline, particularly when it comes to diagnosing and treating mental health problems that I think are inherently flawed and problematic. Reading of other people’s experiences offers more insight than the DSM-5. That’s for sure!
Also read a lot of Arabian fantasy (?). Fantasy with djinn etc. Favourites were Master of Djinn and the City of Brass series.
I didn't realise how simple it can be to design a simple programming language. I'm having a lot of fun doing it.
I recently read this and was blown away by the way entropy was re-introduced to me.
Lots of unexpected twists to the story, a steady pace of reveals of interesting mysteries, and it seems the entire story was planned out from the start, with things set up at the very beginning that receive a payoff much later.
I also read and really appreciated the Witch Hat Atelier manga. It's kind of like a Harry Potter-style story but with a hard magic system like Brandon Sanderson (once you know it you can look at a picture of the spell and be able to guess what it's supposed to do... also there's a lot of modularity in the system so it feels a bit like programming with functions at times, building up more complex and creative spells from the synthesis of smaller ones).
A lot of the story in the manga seems to be setting up these interesting moral quandaries about how and how much should you help less fortunate people when you have the power/ability/knowledge to do so, but there are restrictions to what you should do and good reasons for those restrictions, and how can you work around those restrictions and still feel good about yourself and feel like you've done enough (even when you know you could be doing more)?
Also should those restrictions be in place in the first place, or are those restrictions ultimately doing more harm than good, and did those who put those restrictions in place do it with good or ill intentions?
It's still ongoing, and probably only about halfway through so far, but it was a really interesting read that I'll definitely go back to just so I can ponder its messages again and again. It also doesn't have an anime yet but it has to be getting one sometime soon, it's too good and the art in the manga is too pretty not to get one.
I'm also about halfway through 20th Century Boys manga and that's a really clever mystery about some sinister things happening in modern day juxtaposed with the protagonist's childhood, and what in his childhood might somehow be related to what's going on in the modern day.
I went in totally blind (just having heard it's really good) and have really enjoyed discovering the secrets of the mysteries (and there's still plenty more to be revealed). It's got a different character art style than most manga as well, and it's pretty refreshing (characters have defined lips, it's weird at first but refreshingly different).
After I was finished I decided to look up the author and found out he wrote "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "The Lost City of Z", both of which I really enjoyed! If you like books like Endurance, Unbroken, or A Land So Strange, you'll dig this one.
When worlds were conquered through brute force and wooden ships, it is crazy to imagine how pivotal vitamin C was.
o the follet valley mysteries by Ian Moore. (Fun crime procedural, with the protagonist being a rather ineffectual unemployed film studies lecturer in france , and a cast of domineering supporting actors)
o Uruly by David Mitchell (A "rollock" through early english monarchy, pointing out the luck, or lack of it, of all the kings and queens)
Among all ML books, it’s a really good overview of many concepts connected one to another and spelled out in easy to grasp way
Also „Designing Machine Learning Systems” by Chip Huyen looks really promising and very hands-on (lessons learned by very committed practitioner). It gives actionable tips and provides real life insights. I haven’t finished reading it yet though
It’s a light read, something to get your mind of coding.
By W.C. Heinz
The New York Sun
July 29, 1949
Very short, very good. Sorry to ruin your Christmas, wait until tomorrow to read it.
Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42268570
Ask HN: Best non-fiction book you read in 2024?
I did Not understand my work Environment anymore but this blogpost perfectly explained it
Very well written magic systems that are internally consistent with very powerful themes of mental health.
The book has so many great concepts and touches upon many of the fundamental questions of life itself. I fully recommend it if you’re into space sci fi.
Each year, I put together lists of the books and articles that I found most interesting. Here's my book list for 2024: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2024/
I'm still cranking out my list of articles.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33939767-quantum-physics...
(Though I kind of wish I'd read it during, not after, lock-down.)
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2024/october/wildlife-po...
"Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%."
https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
... We're deep into an apocalypse, and I really hope we start acting like it.
It was my first dip into any King books and I’m equal parsers impressed and exhausted with his writing style.
I always assumed he was a horror writer, but after chugging through the series this year I’m excited to dig into his other works(after a short break for sure)
It’s difficult to describe but I found so many parallels between this story and my life that it was eerie to read at times. On top of that, the descriptors he uses in his writing are fascinating. At times the story, especially early on, was confusing and even now, have more questions than answers.
I’d like to take a few years and then come back to the saga and give it another shot.
Until then, if anyone has recommendations on the next books (non-horror please) to dig into, please send them my way!
It pops into my mind every now and then, amazing read from start to end.
- Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish
I have started reading "Book of Life" by J.KrishnaMurti
- "Good Omens" - A silly, fun read. I smiled from start to finish. A good companion book to "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff". If you wished The Hitchhiker's Guide wasn't so non-sequitur, you might like this.
- "Gay Berlin" - A fascinating look into the history of homosexuality in the city where the term and the concept took root. It was strongly recommended by a friend and justifiably so.
- "There is no antimemetics division" - How do you fight a threat that erases its own existence from people's minds?
- "What the mouse knows" and many other of Simon Sarris' essays. https://map.simonsarris.com/p/what-the-mouse-knows
- "The Jungle" - A story of abject poverty, of people who just can't seem to get out of it because of the crushing pressures of capitalism. Think Grapes of Wrath, but grittier.
This was recommended by the delightful and talented Tibees YouTuber.
A few pages in and I was absolutely hooked and ready to start proving geometric conjectures…
A truly amazing communicator and educator.
Presumed Innocent (preceeded by the Apple TV show of same name). Murder mystery. Loved it.
Tie-in novels from videogame franchise:
- Deus Ex: Black Light
- Devil May Cry: before the nightmare
I've also started Marvel Comics in anticipation of Fantastic Four and the whole Secret Wars storyline it will build up.
Couldn't finish a single non-fiction this year, but enjoyable so far:
- Zero to One
- When I say no, I feel guilty
- Designing data-intensive applications
It's been a long time since I just read for pleasure, and I totally forgot what I was missing.
Just a wonderful book.
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by Max Solomon Bennett. If you're interested in intelligence and related topics, it's definitely worth a read.
And
Several play throughs of Caves of Qud.
Been on a weird sci fi kick this year.
Non-Fiction: The Will to Changs Bell Hooks
An alternate future where the Europeans are completely wiped out by the plague, and how society could have changed.
This cleverly written sci-fi novel might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a thought-provoking exploration of a life that repeats.
Very interesting outlook on the ethics of the near future. Gave me a great (new) perspective on many issues.
https://www.amazon.com/Right-Wrong-Technology-Transforms-Eth...
Well written, well researched and captivating. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62712920-pax
Heart warming, heart breaking, sad, funny. And a great story.
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I have seen many narratives on the fault at the core of current values and goals of human civilization, but never saw a laid out alternative. Whatever it might be, I like the book for attempting at presenting one.
- Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, I like this book for extremely original thoughts. This books was so thin (~200 pages), yet it was grand. I also wrote a review [0].
- The Happiness Trap by Russ Hariss, was very helpful to me in sorting through some things. Very practical book.
- Anathem by Neal Stephenson, one of the most original book, and probably the best one by Stephenson. Very original ideas, mind expanding.
- Permutation City by Greg Egan, this book raised the standard for possibly all SciFi book that I will read in the future. Extremely original and grand ideas.
- The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, another book that lays out alternatives to what is now considered mainstream.
- Sotyi Rupkatha by Parimal Bhattacharya (Bengali), a book without any ideological or emotional baggage explaining the plight and pain of a tribal community for Aluminium mining. The way colonialism lives in mining was eye-opening. Aluminium mining, separating, etc. are done in lesser fortunate countries where huge amounts of water is wasted and the environment polluted. The West still imports that refined raw material in cheap and produces final products with lesser environmental impact and peofits by selling the finished products to the same countries in large profits. It was refreshing to see that this book did not have a Communist undertone.
- Krishna Basudev by Bani Basu (Bengali), life of God Krishna in form of a novel in crisp prose, written maintaining authenticity of core books like Bhagavat Purana and Harivansha.
- I am currently listening to "The Hobbit" audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis. This is peak audiobook for me.
[0]: https://ritogh.substack.com/p/not-merely-a-story-of-a-man-fa...
The Vortex by carney and miklian Flying Blind by Peter Robison The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut