Its sequel Change is also great: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393707069, though in my copy the opening 20 pages or so are printed at the end (as if the printing machine used a ring buffer). That is a pity because the Preface has one of the great openings of all time. I was paging through the entire book looking for it—I'd read it years ago and remembered it being at the beginning, which it is, except the beginning was at the end in this copy.
"Called “one of the best books ever about human communication,” and a perennial bestseller, Pragmatics of Human Communication has formed the foundation of much contemporary research into interpersonal communication, in addition to laying the groundwork for context-based approaches to psychotherapy."
With a summary like that, I think I absolutely have to add it to the list.
While I primarily read fiction, I've been reading through the first book in Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Lyndon_Johnson) and have been quite engaged given the interest I have in the topic (history as a whole isn't generally the genre I leap for, but Caro has a way to make it interesting).
I am currently ~400 pages into the Power Broker. I was motivated to pick it up again by a "read along" with Roman Mars from the 99% Invisible podcast. He's spacing out the book over the course of a year and interviewing fellow Caro fans and recapping major portions of the book. Never been a better time to tackle the beast! I am not sure I'll ever read a better biography in my life. At least, not until I read the Lyndon Johnson books.
The 99% Invisible podcast is doing a book club on The Power Broker that is absolutely delightful, even (and maybe especially?) if you haven't read the book.
https://99percentinvisible.org/club/
I have always been a non-fiction reader, never ever read fiction, but over XMas last year when shopping for fiction for family members who do like fiction, I was grabbed by some novels, mostly translations into English, published by a tiny house called AndOtherStories.
I started reading to see if I thought person X would like book Y, and after the holidays realized I was so moved with some of those snippets that I went back to them and then just kept reading on my own.
Have burned through 4 of AndOtherStories books so far, every one excellent, distinct, intense. Each has taught me something and been memorable.
They (AndOtherStories) very cleverly have a subscription service, which I have signed up for, so I will get new books as they are published (6-10 a year perhaps) but at the moment I am still burning through the back catalog.
Specific titles so far: The Luminous Novel, Inland, Mammoth, I Don't Expect Anyone To Believe Me. Am now reading Open Door.
It has been the source of such joy in this otherwise difficult and stressful year, something I just never expected.
I read The City & the City by China Miéville. If I were to recommend it, it would be because the author's English vocabulary is so much fuller than my own. I had to keep a dictionary handy to get through most of it and I appreciated the challenge.
Personally, I read digital copies now so that I don't have to stop to find the definition. On the Koreader application, it has a dictionary function which makes it really nice to read with.
> On the Koreader application, it has a dictionary function which makes it really nice to read with.
Do you use a Kobo with Koreader installed?
I've been using a Kindle Paperwhite for a few years and while I love the screen, I've gotten tired of being tied to Amazon and have started looking at alternatives.
Not botanical, but I use KOReader on a Kobo Clara HD (the same screen as the Paperwhite, if I recall correctly), and am happy with it except for the arrangement; covers don't show, and sort-by-title didn't work last time I tried. It's currently by author, which would make sense if I knew enough author names along with their books.
I'm sure there's a way to get these things working, I just haven't put the time in yet.
Barbara Kingsolver - Demon Copperhead. It took me a while before it clicked that the book's title was meant to rhyme with David Copperfield. It's really well written coming-of-age story of a life lived under modern-day poverty. It's well written with clever and subtle phrases and a really good pace. The book stays with you a while after you've finished it (which in my case was fast as I couldn't stop reading). Afterwards I got to reading more about opiods and their nasty origins.
I really like "The identity trap" it's one of the few socio-political books that helps to make sense of a lot of the current social media landscape, and political landscape.
I highly recommend people look into this book and the claims it makes before giving the authors any of your time or money. There are tons of resources about this available online. This episode [1] is easy to digest, but there are many others
The Wager, by David Grann; giving me greater context for understanding sea travel (in wooden ships, especially), and I learned that there were indigenous people living along the coast of southern Patagonia where the Wager wrecked. They must be very hardy and resourceful people indeed, given the cold and windy conditions of that region. The European sailors seemed primitive (using the term pejoratively here) in contrast; they all had scurvy and atrophy to various degrees, and had lost so many other sailors to illness and the elements, so reliant on the stores they brought, ignorant of how to survive off the sea and land (they found and were given by the locals enough to eat for there to be survivors who made it back to England, but it was an ordeal). I wondered at the past traumas and other events that lead to Euro-colonialism (this includes my ancestors) and the sense of entitlement that brings about actions like Spain and Portugal dividing the world in ~1600 (watching Shōgun on Hulu, which I also recommend). China also developed a sense of entitlement, but rather than go conquer Africa it sounds like they took their massive navy (dwarfing anything else at the time) on a sightseeing tour and returned home, satisfied with their own superiority.
I continue to be inspired to live more closely with the land and life around me, and Grann's description of the native people of Patagonia, with their healthy varied diet, vigor and cold tolerance, and kindness to clearly-suffering strangers, made a lasting impression.
The Computer Age is just a way of coping with humanity's widespread and hopefully temporary degradation and loss of culture and traditions that are sustainable over many, many generations. I see books the same way; temporary technology, a bank of knowledge and experience that, like bacteria in the appendix, can help us get back on track with oral traditions.
I read a lot of history, but many of the books are quite dry. A rare exception were the books by Dan Jones I recently read, on medieval England (The Plantagenets, The Wars Of Roses). I learned a bunch and sincerely enjoyed the process. His Powers and Thrones book is next up.
Incidentally, I found out that Shakespeare covered similar timelines (especially the wars of the roses) in his 8 history plays, which I've been going through. Never read any Shakespeare before, and liking it enough that I already made a top ten list of his works to get into next.
I actually just went though a bunch of Shakespeare. While it was quite entertaining and interesting, some parts can absolutely be regarded as "laborious".
No argument here, it definitely required some effort. I'm also listening to the plays in audiobook format, which presents its own unique challenges (e.g. deciphering which character is speaking).
I've been in a reading rut lately, so I'm re-reading an old favorite of mine: "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" by Henry Fielding. It's in the public domain, so available for free!
No doubt the writing style isn't for everyone, but besides being a generally enjoyable story, I like the author's wit. He quite literally tells exactly how he's going to tell the story, and his on-going commentary serves to keep the reader in increasingly tantalizing cliff-hangers as the story progresses.
The book goes through a potential (not far fetched) scenario in which a nuclear war takes place. It's absolutely fascinating the way the story is told, and goes into great detail about the US and other countries nuclear programs, the technology behind said programs, and the devastating effects of these weapons.
It was really interesting to learn so much about how much state of the art technology is used in these systems, and reading it will definitely make you think a lot about how close we are as a species to being able to completely destroy ourselves at any moment.
I recently tried reading Long Way to a Small Angry Planet since a few people on HN recommended it.
Its pretty terrible. The first few chapters involve the main character literally walking onto a ship, and then tons of exposition about how her alien teamates are all alien in their own individualistic ways that in no way contribute to an over arching story.
You learn nothing about the world, no intrigue, characters are superficially interesting, and to top it all off, the writing is teen fiction bad. (The book screams of Mary Sue.)
I've been burned by HN book recommendations before. If you enjoyed the level of giddy writing shown in The Martian, Gödel, Escher, Bach, then you will probably like the giddy writing of this book.
I haven't read Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, but I did enjoy The Martian and Gödel, Escher, Bach, so maybe I should read it. What kind of writing do you like?
There are plenty of well written books out there, where the author doesn't explicitly tell you how you should feel, but teases out details about the world and lets you come to your own conclusions by the actions of the characters.
Read the first few chapters. Tell me if I'm way off the mark.
I know exactly how judgemental I'm sounding, but I want others to know that HN book recommendations are really not that great.
Monbiot's _Regenesis_, which investigates ways in which it might be possible to make global food production both sustainable and affordable, seemed very well written to me.
Finally finished the last _Discworld_ book. The whole series is great, of course.
It was better than Raising Steam at least, in my opinion. Some characters in that are unrecognisable.
His biography _A Life With Footnotes_ by his assistant describe how the last books were made. Pratchett would still have moments of clarity when he would dictate whole scenes in an almost finished state, but he wasn't able to tie them together into a whole anymore. That was mostly done by an editor. And large parts of the book are only sketches of a plot that he would have kept editing and expanding over and over normally, but there wasn't time.
I still thought it worked as a fitting end for many characters.
Yes, Raising Steam wasn't good. Did the Discworld need steam? Felt shoehorned in and just not an interesting direction. What happened to the dwarf stone that rotated with near infinite torque? That could have been the power source of a Discworld industrial revolution, if it was going to happen. More fun to explore there.
> I still thought it worked as a fitting end for many characters.
Maybe. I guess I feel that the characters didn't need a fitting end. They were established and they just existed. There was no overarching story that needed wrapping up.
I have finally gotten around to Sartor Resartus, now very obvious why a lot of the greats talked highly about this book. Very well written (and works fine as a standalone without needing to have read Carlyle's other works).
I really enjoyed reading “Rivers of London” by Ben Aaranovitch, I read the second one which was not quite in the same page turner realm, but I plan to read more of the series.
The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy by Mark Schwartz. Shares an interesting view on bureaucracy, how it is all around us an used heavily in our line of work.
It is increasingly important that we not mistake mounds of data for thought. You may not buy off on a theistic basis for thinking about life, but Schumacher's concise argument is at least an interesting one.
V13 by Emmanuel Carrère. It's a non-fiction about the trial following the attacks on Bataclan in Paris on Friday, 13 Nov. 2015 (V13 is Friday 13). It can't fulfill all its promises, but it does provide an insight in the role of law and justice in a state following such outrageous deeds, in particular on the human side.
It's a mostly observation. It describes the trial, sometimes day by day, and it tries to see it from all sides: judges, prosecution, lawyers, victims, police, perpetrators, bystanders. You get some insight into the mechanism of a trial which cannot be allowed to fail, the evidence, how the trial affects people, and for some of the accused what their motives were, but most of the perpetrators were dead (they blew themselves up), and the important ones that remain keep their mouths sealed for most of the time. It is very well written, so much that it sometimes comes across as fiction.
The book doesn't judge. It tries to bridge, or rather narrow, the gap, a bit. It doesn't succeed, which is practically impossible, certainly within the given setting, but it's a praiseworthy attempt at dealing with a rather traumatic event in clean and compassionate way.
Masterfully written, a tidbit of how sexism played a role on making her a historical villain while all the men around her, even the beheaded king, passed on as much less dangerous people.
The Genesis of Technoscientific Revolutions by Narayanamurti and Tsao is worth reading for a better understanding of how research works and how to nurture it. It has a very clear explanation of how engineering and technology mirror science and how both work together.
I finally got round to reading The Passenger and the companion piece Stella Maris. Cormac McCarthy still had it even in his late 80's. Not quite as good as his earlier novels but still very sharp.
I've always wondered if he chose to experiment with those two books, knowing he might not have much longer to live, especially since he died just a few months after those books were published.
The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War:
> In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Gordon contends that the nation's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions. A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.
Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance:
> Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have long valued the day-to-day independence of their work, sharing a strong occupational identity rooted in a tradition of autonomy. Yet these workers increasingly find themselves under many watchful eyes. Data Driven examines how digital surveillance is upending life and work on the open road, and raises crucial questions about the role of data collection in broader systems of social control.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams:
> Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.
Its sequel Change is also great: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393707069, though in my copy the opening 20 pages or so are printed at the end (as if the printing machine used a ring buffer). That is a pity because the Preface has one of the great openings of all time. I was paging through the entire book looking for it—I'd read it years ago and remembered it being at the beginning, which it is, except the beginning was at the end in this copy.