I've got a history of picking up the 2 top books of the airports best sellers. Have been my strategy for a while, right now it's FLESH. Feels like I'm being part of the mainstream, reading something everyone else reading.
Oh I've got some recs for you if you want meaty! I've been reading classics this year. It started with East of Eden; if you've got a philosophical leaning and appreciate your characters deeply fleshed out, you owe it to yourself to read this book.
The next one was Lonesome Dove, this was my first time reading a western and I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did. The book is also absolutely hilarious and has one of my favorite characters in a book(shoutout to Gus).
I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cresto and, boy, it's turning out to be quite the epic tale of revenge(no spoilers please!).
Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet by Lindsay Owens became available today, and I have purchased ebook and will begin reading today.
I'm on Book Two of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Non-Fiction:
More than I can count, as far as "I've read at least some, put a bookmark in it, and intend to finish it eventually." But in terms of the books I'm really actively engaging with right now, the top one is:
Neuroscience: Exploring The Brain[1] by Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, and Michael A. Paradiso
And sort of in parallel with that, is
Analog Computing: Development, Programming, Applications, and Future Directions[2] by Bernd Ulmann
I'm reading Matt's latest movie from Dungeon Crawler Carl series. A great fun way to unwind after programming all day! Will check the two other books you mentioned, thanks!
"Collapse" - A friend gave me the book in a bag he was going to donate. its been great. Theres obviously a huge undertone of preachy "humans struggle with sustainable resource utilization" but the views into failed societies are just fascinating. Really enjoying it, though I've slowed down and might not finish.
"7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy" - Recommended by @pc in an interview. I'm ~50 pages in and not really blown away. Its a nice accumulation of Alpha creating strategy... but I think its really missing some nuance. I do LOVE that they take an economist approach and actually provide the math/algorithms behind the concepts. Theres some good stuff in here but so far it feels like 30 pages stretched out to make a book.
"Monetizing Innovation" - dropped this book, do not recommend. I was expecting a really nice accumulation of how pricing should work with companies who are innovating... and it came no where near that hopeful concept. The case studies were weak, the hypothesis were weak, the writing was weak.
About halfway through- it’s really good so far. He makes a compelling case for how our culture has changed in many ways, often for the worse, with the introduction of television.
Just finished a David Foster Wallace kick. I listened to the new 30th anniversary audiobook of Infinite Jest (twice) and then The Pale King (twice). Then I listened to "Of course you end up becoming yourself" which is a long-form interview with Wallace by David Lipsky, traveling with him on the Infinite Jest book tour.
I had to listen to the books twice because there are a lot of details that you won't get the first time through unless you're extremely intentional and detail oriented, but I found it was worth it to listen again. I'll probably listen to Infinite Jest again sometime soon, even though it's 64 hours long. IJ is actually really great sci-fi with some important questions for our time.
I recently finished "Warbreaker" by Brandon Sanderson, now plan to go back to reading "Designing data-intensive applications" since it's been a long time (for me) since I read anything educational. Warbreaker was amazing, I still think about it, a week after finishing, about the characters and how much fun I had while reading it. It's one of those books that you smile when you read it because of how pleasant it is and how enjoyable the characters are.
I started the cosmere this year and have officially consumed every available book in the cosmere, really enjoyable brain junk food! He has written so much and I love the different systems and characters development. Highly recommend his works! I daydream in the various parts of cosmere weekly and am excited for more books to come out.
Working my way through Elle Cordova's sci-fi book club[1]. Currently on Hyperion, but have read "The Man In The High Castle," "Sea of Tranquility," "Exhalation," "Neuromancer," "The Power," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," "Parable of the Sower," and "I, Robot."
I'm 50% of the way through and it's good but I don't entirely see the hype. Brontë is more atmospheric, Austen funnier and more incisive, Dickens more immersive. But I've still got a way to go.
'Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States', Alex Wellerstein.
> "Over the course of this book, we have looked at some eighty years of this history. We have seen how the idea of nuclear secrecy was initially born out of a very specific fear—that the world’s worst nation could achieve nation-destroying power—that, over the course of many transformations, morphed into something more generalized. More than totalitarian regimes were the target of this secrecy: allied nations, private industry, democratic institutions, and “the public” more broadly became understood as targets as well, for reasons both justifiable and not. The secrecy problem moved wherever the problem of the bomb went, which was far indeed. The desirability of control over nuclear knowledge became totalizing because the threat of loss of control was tied to the almost unimaginable power of the bomb itself. These two forces—the desire for control, the fear of its loss—became locked in a vicious cycle, each driving the other."
Currently on the final book of James Clavell’s Asia Saga, it’s been a long road and I’m frankly kind of over it but 90% through the final book and I’m glad I read them. First read Shogun maybe ~10 years ago but read the other four back to back. Gai-Jin wasn’t very good but the others have been pretty solid overall. A bit long winded and sometimes I wish he’d’ve had a more aggressive editor, but happy with em enough to finish them all.
I'm reading singer song-writer Lily Allen's 2019 autobiography My Thoughts Exactly. I really liked her last album West End Girl (2025) and I wanted to know more about her and her creative process and inspirations. She tells about lots of different things having happened in her life, her relationship with her parents, how she grew up like. Really enjoyable read so far!
> I'm looking for something a little meaty to keep the brain working...
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes to mind. I had no idea how rampant purposeful discrimination was so recently for example, but the point of the book is the HeLa cells - and biology is also not my forté so loads of new information there as well. It was very interesting in expected and unexpected areas for me
- Daniel Suarez' Kill Decision has only gotten more relevant since its release in 2012. Not sure I'd call this meaty though, but his thrillers are always good (near-ish future tech) and the author iirc also said this particular one is meant as food for thought and not only entertainment
I don't tend to be great at finishing (or starting) books, and this is a big one. I've also never had any interest in Medieval or Renaissance history, for me it's been a black hole between the fall of Rome and the modern age.
But recently I saw some Youtube videos of Ada, and her enthusiasm is totally infectious [2]. She's fun and paints these vivid pictures of Florence and renaissance Europe that are incredible, absurd, and relatable, which makes sense since given she's also an accomplished sci-fi writer. She also reminds me of one of my favourite high school teachers. So I ordered the book right away.
The book is in the same tone as her videos, so it won't be for everyone, but I've really been enjoying it and now I'm fascinated by Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli, merchant republics, etc.
I'm considering checking it out despite not really being a science-fiction reader. Though I've been reading this terrifying slow-burn about superintelligent autonomous swarms breaking containment and stopping at nothing to complete the impossible tasks given by their feckless masters.
I was very happy to find this. I heard complaints that it's just a Tolkien clone and Jordan doesn't portray women well. But what I found was kind of a relic. It's an excellent fantasy series that probably couldn't be written again. Wish we had more like it.
I really enjoyed the books but there is a lot of issues around pacing. One of the books(7 maybe? it's been a while) was pretty much several hundred pages of them just walking. Had the same experience recently with book 3 of Otherland.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Recently passed the bit where Ammianus complained the rich had bought up much of the property in Rome and turned so many into renters and gave stats to show it. Amongst his many other complaints.
Sadly found I could have been reading a better abridgement, which I'll get for the 2nd reading now.
I'm reading Dero Saunders penguin classic which I picked up from a used book store. It's fine, but I'm at the point where the last 6 books of the original should kick in and Saunders treats it as an epilogue. I didn't even realize there were multiple abridgements when I started, and reviews of the others seem to include more about that and retain more of that special "Gibbonness" that's been so much delightful effort to parse. It's been a slow and halting first read I'm looking forward to a more uninterrupted story the second run through. I'll probably go for the Wormesly one and try to spot the differences. You only really start to know a great book after the second reading anyway.
It was a mix of fantasy & humor. It is a bit long but it is extremely funny & entertaining. It is the first fantasy book I have read other than the Harry Potter series (not sure if it is considered fantasy) but I loved it.
Finally started reading "A Philosophy of Software Design". It was on my shelf for ages. I have the 1st edition; luckily, you can grab new chapters from the 2nd edition from the author's website.
Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life And Others. Just finished the short story behind Arrival, the way it frames free is something the film doesn't capture. Other stories in the book have been brilliant too.
Boom Town by Sam Anderson. Its an intertwined history of Oklahoma City and its basketball team, the Thunder. I'm about halfway through, and I'm loving it so far.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.
It's an autobiographical history which recounts the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history.
I went into this knowing little to no Chinese history, and it has opened my eyes to this fascinating country. I hope to visit China for the first time in 2027. Before I go, I'm doing a deep dive into Chinese history. Open to recommendations on what to read next!
As a follow up you can read Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls, an autobiographical history in graphic novel format recounting the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history, across continents (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States).
I just finished "The Emergency". Heard about it on Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz [0]. Is a fictional story about what it might be like if a modern government empire collapses. Im interested in writers that are thinking about the future.
I just finished Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and it had so many “aha” moments for me. Definitely recommended if you have even a passing interest in reading or making graphic novels or comics.
Just started Homer's Iliad (Fagles translation) and Christopher Logue's War Music (2015).
Just finished re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1980). I think it holds up well. Last time I read it, I was much younger than Arthur Dent; now I'm much older. And now that we have computers with Genuine People Personalities, it's hard to remember what it was like in the Before Times.
Recently finished Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908). For better or worse (no spoilers here), it kept me guessing.
I am reading The dream of enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb.
My goal is to read the history of ideas from Renaissance period till 2000s. Started with The Florentines by Paul Strathern. Then read The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick. Now at the enlightenment era. It has been eye opening to read about the life and times of some of the great minds like Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Locke and more.
The Overstory is rad fiction. Just started listening to Ordinary Men which is about a Polish police battalion responsible for a great many murders during the Holocaust. The members of that battalion were, I guess, welcomed back into society afterwards? Idk, I just started. I'll tell you one thing, though: it's weird to absorb facts about the Shoah as digestible statistics fun facts (for lack of a better term) but those little snippets are very necessary to get my arms around the scale of things such as it. It's the same as happened when I listened to Late Victorian Holocausts. So now I have stats like
- Most Jewish victims of the Holocaust died by gunshot in the occupied USSR
- In March 1942, 80% of Holocaust victims were still alive and by February 1943 80% were dead.
- Per capita incomes were equal in the first and last years of the British Raj
- Indian grain exports increased in the 1880s and 90s and there were 3(?) different famines at that time
rattling around in my head in the same part that holds on to "Pakistan has never had a PM finish a 5 year term," "The Lions, Falcons, and Bills (non-exhaustive) have never won a Super Bowl," "There are no surviving contemperaneous attestations of Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca" and "the first drummer of the Beatles was called Pete Best and made an album called Best of the Beatles"
I finished Quantum Radio last week and Im quite far in Rainbows End. I think the former is ok, not great; the latter is a better book (with AR future vibes), but still lacking something that makes u never drop it before u finish it.
"Lost Worlds" - by Patrick Wyman, fascinating prehistory about meso and neolithic 'civilizations', their lives, their rises and downfalls. Really amazing stuff
I like his podcast a lot, brief vignettes into… whatever. Really fun production and not a deep dive into topics generally, but that’s a feature and not a bug in the context in which I listen to him
nearing the end. i've found it a bit complicated to follow in some spots (there are several 'main' protagonists and it switches between them without much warning or introduction) but overall it's scratched the fantasy itch.
(i suppose it's actually 3 books, but i have the omnibus version)
I am currently listening to VC An American History by Tom Nicholas, Audible 2019. I am reading Predictable Winners, A Handbook for Developing, Forecasting, and Launching New Products and Services, Stanford Business Books, 2025. I have cracked open, but not gotten very far in reading, The Rise And Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2026. The Jill Lepore book is very interesting.
Fiction I recently enjoyed: The Ana and Din series by Robert Jackson Bennett. Sherlock Holmes vibes, with Kaiju. Also The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.
Currently reading and enjoying: Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
I read 3/4 of "The Soul of a new Machine" and thought it was good, but I sort of fizzled out. What makes you recommend it so highly (trying to understand if I should go back)
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh.
A book which depicts tale of a family across the East and West Bengal amidst Partition of India. This book is very renowned and well written. Being a programmer, its better to read on different topics(which is rarity these days)
I'm about 100 pages into "Dune Messiah" (the 2 movies out are both for the first book, the 3rd movie is going to be this book), 50 pages into "Analysis I" by Terence Tao, 100 pages into "Thinking in bets"
I’m reading The Well of Ascension, the second book of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy
I like how he has the slow, almost clinical way of revealing interesting worlds and systems. It’s not the kind of book that’ll make me cry, but I really like world building with fun enough characters
I was just listening to a Sanderson interview. He's annoyed by it too. It's his publisher wanting the books to be easy to get into. He's dealing with it in Mistborn era 3 where's he's trying to figure out how to re-explain everything and it's annoying him because he just wants to show allomancers doing cool stuff.
Material world and chip wars. Both brilliant. Material world highlights our human ingenuity with an optimism for the future as it outlines our exploitation of the worlds resources over history up to the present time.
Chips wars, for me as a dev without a strong hardware background is a fascinating read into the history of Silicon Valley, from the 50s right up to nvidia and Taiwan semiconductor.
I also vouch for this series! Some of my favorite character work and worldbuilding in recent years, and I'm super excited to see where the series goes!
I recently ran across an edition of the Selfish Gene which adds two chapters from The Extended Phenotype that are supposed to fix/clarify some things. I haven't read any of the 3 books mentioned in this thread, but it makes me curious if there's any connection between the criticism and the updates.
I do not know if this is related to this comments but if you are reading The London Review of Books so that you do not have to read the whole book, maybe it is. I do not watch movies much anymore. Sometime though I want to know what a movie is all about. So, I just read the wikipedia plot review on it. It saves me the time by not having to sit through much tedium but I get a scenes of what it is about.
I have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.
I am an atheist but I have read a little bit of the bible, mostly early OT. I recommend reading a scholarly / literal translation, because there is a lot of nuance in the Hebrew
I just got done with a second read of 2666 by Bolaño.
There was an article on HN a month or two ago about how some books drive people to the kind of madness that would make them do a degree in literature. This is probably the one for me. Excited to read it again in 5 years and see it differently again.
I'm not reading anything at the moment since I'm taking a break and watching season one of Deadwood and also re-watching season one of Boston Legal.
But when I'm done, I plan to re-read "The Cold War A Very Short Introduction" by Robert J. McMahon. I read it about five years ago and it's time to read it again.
Having said that, I can't pass on this opportunity to share the books I've read (some are re-reads) thus far this year that I recommend. I'll just list them while saying that they all come highly recommended by me.
In the famous words of Frank Zappa - So many books, so little time.
1. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
2. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
3. Lying by Sam Harris
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
6. Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
7. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
8. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
9. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
10. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
11. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
13. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
14. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
15. Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan
16. Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins
The next one was Lonesome Dove, this was my first time reading a western and I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did. The book is also absolutely hilarious and has one of my favorite characters in a book(shoutout to Gus).
I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cresto and, boy, it's turning out to be quite the epic tale of revenge(no spoilers please!).
I'm on Book Two of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Non-Fiction:
More than I can count, as far as "I've read at least some, put a bookmark in it, and intend to finish it eventually." But in terms of the books I'm really actively engaging with right now, the top one is:
Neuroscience: Exploring The Brain[1] by Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, and Michael A. Paradiso
And sort of in parallel with that, is
Analog Computing: Development, Programming, Applications, and Future Directions[2] by Bernd Ulmann
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0781760038/
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Computing-Development-Programm...
"7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy" - Recommended by @pc in an interview. I'm ~50 pages in and not really blown away. Its a nice accumulation of Alpha creating strategy... but I think its really missing some nuance. I do LOVE that they take an economist approach and actually provide the math/algorithms behind the concepts. Theres some good stuff in here but so far it feels like 30 pages stretched out to make a book.
"Monetizing Innovation" - dropped this book, do not recommend. I was expecting a really nice accumulation of how pricing should work with companies who are innovating... and it came no where near that hopeful concept. The case studies were weak, the hypothesis were weak, the writing was weak.
About halfway through- it’s really good so far. He makes a compelling case for how our culture has changed in many ways, often for the worse, with the introduction of television.
I had to listen to the books twice because there are a lot of details that you won't get the first time through unless you're extremely intentional and detail oriented, but I found it was worth it to listen again. I'll probably listen to Infinite Jest again sometime soon, even though it's 64 hours long. IJ is actually really great sci-fi with some important questions for our time.
[1] https://bookshop.org/lists/elle-s-sci-fi-book-club
I'm 50% of the way through and it's good but I don't entirely see the hype. Brontë is more atmospheric, Austen funnier and more incisive, Dickens more immersive. But I've still got a way to go.
- Selected Stories - Anton Chekhov
- Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
- The Burnout Society - Byung-Chul Han
Currently I am reading an Austrian economics classic - Economics in one lesson by Henry Hazlitt
> "Over the course of this book, we have looked at some eighty years of this history. We have seen how the idea of nuclear secrecy was initially born out of a very specific fear—that the world’s worst nation could achieve nation-destroying power—that, over the course of many transformations, morphed into something more generalized. More than totalitarian regimes were the target of this secrecy: allied nations, private industry, democratic institutions, and “the public” more broadly became understood as targets as well, for reasons both justifiable and not. The secrecy problem moved wherever the problem of the bomb went, which was far indeed. The desirability of control over nuclear knowledge became totalizing because the threat of loss of control was tied to the almost unimaginable power of the bomb itself. These two forces—the desire for control, the fear of its loss—became locked in a vicious cycle, each driving the other."
On my Kindle I have two ham radio books I'm reading, one is about grounding antennas, the other a General test prep.
- Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur - Ham Radio General Class License Study Guide
- "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang - "Ficciones" by Borges - "I have no Mouth and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison.
I'm also slowly plowing through "The Big Book of Science Fiction" edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer.
I love short speculative fiction. And the above are among my favorites.
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes to mind. I had no idea how rampant purposeful discrimination was so recently for example, but the point of the book is the HeLa cells - and biology is also not my forté so loads of new information there as well. It was very interesting in expected and unexpected areas for me
- Daniel Suarez' Kill Decision has only gotten more relevant since its release in 2012. Not sure I'd call this meaty though, but his thrillers are always good (near-ish future tech) and the author iirc also said this particular one is meant as food for thought and not only entertainment
I don't tend to be great at finishing (or starting) books, and this is a big one. I've also never had any interest in Medieval or Renaissance history, for me it's been a black hole between the fall of Rome and the modern age.
But recently I saw some Youtube videos of Ada, and her enthusiasm is totally infectious [2]. She's fun and paints these vivid pictures of Florence and renaissance Europe that are incredible, absurd, and relatable, which makes sense since given she's also an accomplished sci-fi writer. She also reminds me of one of my favourite high school teachers. So I ordered the book right away.
The book is in the same tone as her videos, so it won't be for everyone, but I've really been enjoying it and now I'm fascinated by Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli, merchant republics, etc.
1. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo246135...
2. (My favourite example) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68p3jVQQdFk
I was very happy to find this. I heard complaints that it's just a Tolkien clone and Jordan doesn't portray women well. But what I found was kind of a relic. It's an excellent fantasy series that probably couldn't be written again. Wish we had more like it.
I keep track of all my favorite books here: https://recleague.com/james/collections/books
(Full disclosure: I'm a cofounder of Rec League)
- The Women by Kristin Hannah
- Jurassic Park by Micheal Crichton
- Platform Decay by Martha Wells
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
- Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the End of the World by Eric Jay Dolin
- All the Sinners Bleed by S A Cosby
- Project Hail Mary and Artemis by Andy Weir
- Cibola Burn and Nemesis Games by James S A Corey (the Expanse series)
Sadly found I could have been reading a better abridgement, which I'll get for the 2nd reading now.
It was a mix of fantasy & humor. It is a bit long but it is extremely funny & entertaining. It is the first fantasy book I have read other than the Harry Potter series (not sure if it is considered fantasy) but I loved it.
One of the best non-fiction books I read this year was Doppleganger: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/138505710.
I'm reading Deadly Quicksilver Lies, right now.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/series/49491-garrett-files
It's an autobiographical history which recounts the lives of the author, her mother, and her grandmother throughout an extremely transformational century in Chinese history.
I went into this knowing little to no Chinese history, and it has opened my eyes to this fascinating country. I hope to visit China for the first time in 2027. Before I go, I'm doing a deep dive into Chinese history. Open to recommendations on what to read next!
[0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emergency-with-geo...
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818/1831), https://frankendiff.com; and Tales of the Dead, by Mrs. Utterson (1813), https://archive.org/details/talesofdead00utte
Just started Homer's Iliad (Fagles translation) and Christopher Logue's War Music (2015).
Just finished re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1980). I think it holds up well. Last time I read it, I was much younger than Arthur Dent; now I'm much older. And now that we have computers with Genuine People Personalities, it's hard to remember what it was like in the Before Times.
Recently finished Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908). For better or worse (no spoilers here), it kept me guessing.
My goal is to read the history of ideas from Renaissance period till 2000s. Started with The Florentines by Paul Strathern. Then read The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick. Now at the enlightenment era. It has been eye opening to read about the life and times of some of the great minds like Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Locke and more.
I have grown playing MMORPG's and this one brings the nostalgia vibes without investing the time into grinding for gear.
- Most Jewish victims of the Holocaust died by gunshot in the occupied USSR
- In March 1942, 80% of Holocaust victims were still alive and by February 1943 80% were dead.
- Per capita incomes were equal in the first and last years of the British Raj
- Indian grain exports increased in the 1880s and 90s and there were 3(?) different famines at that time
rattling around in my head in the same part that holds on to "Pakistan has never had a PM finish a 5 year term," "The Lions, Falcons, and Bills (non-exhaustive) have never won a Super Bowl," "There are no surviving contemperaneous attestations of Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca" and "the first drummer of the Beatles was called Pete Best and made an album called Best of the Beatles"
> - In March 1942, 80% of Holocaust victims were still alive and by February 1943 80% were dead.
Makes sense. A couple of things happened: 1942 Wannsee Conference in January 1942 - which I assume took some time during 1942 to get into motion.
Germany started losing, they realized they did not have the logistics to feed additional millions of people in the occupied territories.
The Power Broker by Robert Caro.
Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka.
The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey.
Nettle and Bone I really enjoyed
Some desperate glory also enjoyed
East of Eden very meaty if you want an epic
I'd be re-reading Tolkien's _Old English Exodus_, but proofreading the typos got to be too much.
I guess it will take me years to have reason of both.
- Hiroshima
- The Doomsday Machine
- Command and Control
Highly recommended if you’re feeling too happy and full of faith in humanity.
Also still working through Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel.
What I finished recently and was really surprised by: Der Geisterbanner by Karl Friedrich Kahlert from 1792.
nearing the end. i've found it a bit complicated to follow in some spots (there are several 'main' protagonists and it switches between them without much warning or introduction) but overall it's scratched the fantasy itch.
(i suppose it's actually 3 books, but i have the omnibus version)
Currently reading and enjoying: Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
Next to Read: Hollywood, Ending by John Green.
Its a pretty good history of the X-48 program.
Edit: also reading the "The Anduril Thesis" in parallel.
Fiction(before bed): Quicksilver Neal Stephenson
Audio(during chores): Dungeon Crawler Carl(Up to book 6)
Next up:
Non-Fiction: Ten things I wish I knew about raising boys, Outdoor kids in an indoor world, Intentional(Chris Bailey)
Fiction: The rest of the Baroque Cycle, then moving onto The Laundry Files by Charles Stross, then the rest of Discworld
Audio: The rest of DCC then I'm going to switch to podcasts for a while nothing else planned after this right now.
I knew many everyday expressions and phrases come from his work but I had no idea it was so many.
I'm currently about halfway through at 3.2k pages.
Always.
God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre by Richard Grant about hiking through cartel-run Mexico alone
The Works of Vermin. Exceptionally well written. Not an ounce of flab anywhere.
The Carryx series, 2 books so far. Best villains ever.
Tainted Cup and sequel. Sherlock Holmes meets Godzilla.
Goblin Emperor
The Prophet (Gibran)
Los Alamos (Kanon)
Hyperion (reread)
Finally, a shout out to the best book I read in 2025: Terra Ignota. Yes, the whole series.
Weird. There's a species called Carryx too in a series from James S.A. Corey called "The Captive's War".
The authors argue that rigid, goal-oriented planning and metric-driven objectives actively prevent true innovation and groundbreaking achievement.
I like how he has the slow, almost clinical way of revealing interesting worlds and systems. It’s not the kind of book that’ll make me cry, but I really like world building with fun enough characters
I thought so too, until I read the 2nd Mistborn trilogy!
- The Left Hand of Darkness
- The Nerd Reich
- What Happened to Liberal Democracy?
Ask HN: What Are You Reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283087 - Sept 2025 (42 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39248780 - Feb 2024 (92 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading these days? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237730 - Nov 2023 (281 comments)
Ask HN: What Are You Reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21457827 - Nov 2019 (49 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you currently reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160091 - Jan 2018 (43 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you currently reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859274 - July 2017 (80 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14608397 - June 2017 (36 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175465 - Sept 2015 (79 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636361 - June 2015 (37 comments)
Ask HN: What book are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8108932 - July 2014 (86 comments)
Ask HN: What Books Are You Reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7968124 - June 2014 (80 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4596721 - Oct 2012 (40 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading? What've you read lately? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3335496 - Dec 2011 (41 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3230965 - Nov 2011 (59 comments)
Ask HN: What books are you reading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615647 - June 2011 (53 comments)
Ask HN: What are you reading right now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865350 - Nov 2010 (298 comments)
What are you reading? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=797070 - Sept 2009 (214 comments)
Highly recommend the game for anyone who liked Dark or Primer (or any other fiction that features stable time loops).
Chips wars, for me as a dev without a strong hardware background is a fascinating read into the history of Silicon Valley, from the 50s right up to nvidia and Taiwan semiconductor.
I'm reading Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes by Harms and it goes off on how weak Dawkins is.
"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence"
In my original comment, I Iisted some other books by Dawkins if you're interested -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896133
Not sure if this one qualifies as more meaty :)
I have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.
I have been wanting to read Donald Knuth's "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated".
(https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html)
There was an article on HN a month or two ago about how some books drive people to the kind of madness that would make them do a degree in literature. This is probably the one for me. Excited to read it again in 5 years and see it differently again.
I'm not reading anything at the moment since I'm taking a break and watching season one of Deadwood and also re-watching season one of Boston Legal.
But when I'm done, I plan to re-read "The Cold War A Very Short Introduction" by Robert J. McMahon. I read it about five years ago and it's time to read it again.
Having said that, I can't pass on this opportunity to share the books I've read (some are re-reads) thus far this year that I recommend. I'll just list them while saying that they all come highly recommended by me.
In the famous words of Frank Zappa - So many books, so little time.
1. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
2. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
3. Lying by Sam Harris
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
6. Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
7. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
8. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
9. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
10. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
11. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
13. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
14. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
15. Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan
16. Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins