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Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Good Books You Read This Year?
As we inch closer to the end of the year, we will be running a couple of year-ender posts in the next few days. We're starting with books. What were some books you read this year that you would recommend to others? (It could be from any genre.) Second, what were some books from this year that you read that you would recommend to others? And third, what are you reading now, or planning to read soon?
This year I read
Don Quixote - by Miguel de Cervantes
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
It's not a new book but I just picked it out at random from my backlog to read on vacation. It's way easier to get into than some other NS books (looking at you, Baroque Cycle), and has really great emotional ups and downs throughout the first 2/3rds of the book with what I thought was a pretty interesting and satisfying conclusion.
Last Stand of the Tin-Can Sailors by James D Hornfischer
The Night Land (again!) by William Hope Hodgson
The Lord of the Rings (for the umpteenth time) by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Sackett Brand by Louis L'Amour
The First World War by A.J.P. Taylor
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
The Greatest Knight by Thomas Asbridge
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. It's a world history from the view point of central Asia, book-ended by the rise of Persia and the important role Iran now plays in world events. Especially fascinating is how Europe barely registers until the mid 20th century, and how British adventurism in Asia had major repercussions for the Americas. The Muslims, Mongols, and Han are the dominant players.
This year I read APK's hosts file.
I tend to read Wikipedia more than anything, often for hours at a time.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
... like:
NONFICTION
- Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science Is Rewriting Their Story (Revised and Updated Edition)
Dimitra Papagianni, Michael A. Morse (recommend)
- Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story
Lee Berger, John Hawks (recommend)
- The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe
Anil Ananthaswamy (recommend)
- Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics
Paul Halpern (recommend)
- The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality
Paul Halpern (highly recommend, 2017 publication)
- The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics
Leonard Susskind (recommend)
- Tales of the Quantum: Understanding Physics' Most Fundamental Theory
Art Hobson (recommend)
- Quantum Physics: What Everyone Needs to Know®
Michael G. Raymer (recommend)
- Just Visiting This Planet: Merlin Answers More Questions About Everything Under the Sun, Moon, and Stars
Neil De Grasse Tyson, Stephen J. Tyson (recommend)
- The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist
Neil Degrasse Tyson (recommend)
- Merlin's Tour of the Universe: A Skywatcher's Guide to Everything from Mars and Quasars to Comets, Planets, Blue Moons, and Werewolves
Neil De Grasse Tyson (recommend)
- Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Donald Goldsmith (recommend)
- Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, J. Richard Gott (recommend)
- Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
Neil deGrasse Tyson (recommend)
- The Muleskinner and the Stars: The Life and Times of Milton La Salle Humason, Astronomer (Springer Biographies)
Ronald L. Voller ( highly recommended. Humason was an "also mentioned," in a book about Hubble. What a guy! )
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Neil de Grasse Tyson (recommend)
- Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Carlo Rovelli (recommend)
FICTION
- 1984
George Orwell (recommend with reluctance. It's the most depressing goddam book I've ever read.)
- The Caves of Steel (The Robot Series Book 1)
Isaac Asimov (recommend)
- Dune
Frank Herbert (recommend)
- The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand (recommend)
- Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland
Dave Barry (don't recommend, boring description of Florida tourist locations)
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Also recommend Antifragile, also by Taleb - but I read that one last year.
Also read most "Memoirs of Service Afloat" by Admiral Raphael Semmes, but haven't finished it yet. Good stuff though.
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner
How Not To Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Khaneman
Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute
I've still got The Black Swan by Taleb on my shelf waiting for me. Each so far has profoundly changed the way I think, in distinct but related ways.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
An unfortunate feature of writing is having to edit, re-edit and re-edit. I'm on the last four books of the series I'm working on. Not a lot of time to read other stuff.
That counts as a book, right? I mean it is called some book... right?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Outstanding read. First in a series. It won the Prometheus Award for 2018."
OK, I'll believe you. I downloaded just now, because it's free on kindle unlimited, which I use because I read a book or 2 a day, being retired and there's nothing ever on TV.
A book written by one of the architecture creators. The AS/400 is totally alien compared to the computer architectures we've been using for decades. Definitely worth a read if you're into hardware.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I missed Terry Pratchett, and came across this collaboration with Stephen Baxter.
It was taking a new approach to Sci Fi, but I started with the Long Mars by mistake and I think it got even better
The Long Earth is the first novel in a collaborative science fiction series by British authors Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Dennis E Taylor, All These Worlds, For We Are Many, We Are Legion
EmmA Newman, After Atlas, Before Mars, PlanetFall
Ian Douglas, Alter Starscape, Darkness Falling
Jack McDevitt, Coming Home, MoonFall, The Hercules Texts, Eternity Road
John Scalzi, The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire, The Dispatcher
Briandon Sanderson, Calamity
Victoria Schwab, City of Ghosts
Vernor Virge, A Fire on the Deep
Bill O'Reilly, Killing the SS, The Day The World Went Nuclear, Killing Patton
Michael McCloskey, Trilisk Ruins, Trilisk AI, Trilik Hunt, Trilisk Superstructure
Jason Levine Miss Nucleus (Reading)
I reread Alan Dean Fosters The Spell Singer Series and The Damned
James S.A. Corey, Persepolis Rising
James Calvell, Shogun
This is just what I can determine with on my Ereader. There are probably a few that I missed and more short stories that I care to mention. I have subscriptions to Analog and Asimov's. I'm not really including the books that I've reread, except the Spellsinger and The Damned books, or audio books. So this is no where near a complete list.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
By Pierce Brown was a good read. One of the few books out there that actually kept me guessing on stuff.
There are definitely some interesting parallels between the Lensman and Star Wars universes.
This is probably not a coincidence. I was told, years ago, by Bill Ellern that Lucas had wanted to film the Lenseman series, but that Smith's older daughter wouldn't give permission.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
what you recommend then?
Not the gp, but I will take a stab at it.
People should absolutely read Karl Marx, but also read opposing views like Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell. If one just reads Marx, one will remain ignorant of why he was so wrong on economics.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
The book "Capitalism in America" by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge has been a pleasant surprise. Good overview of the railroad robber-baron era, enabling you to connect the dots to our present corporate data oligopolies. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
That indeed sucks. I have a friend with the type that turns letters into jumbles. He has found if he uses red letters on a yellow background he is able to read at nearly normal rates.
This has been life changing for him, and turned him into quite the bibliophile.
Good luck, and may you as well find a simpler workaround.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Change Agent by Daniel Suarez -- fictional story that highlights the elements of genetic editing. You'll see CRISPR edits referenced in modern times.
The Code Book by Simon Singh -- history of Cryptography
Click Here to Kill Everybody by Bruce Schneier
many others.
Seriously, you know this is Slashdot, right?
From Gutenberg.org or other free sites like free-ebooks.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Time Traders (1958)
Galactic Derelict (1959) - here at the moment
The Defiant Agents (1962)
Key Out of Time (1963)
Actually I read everything from her, till I switch to the next author, but likely intermix one or two their books that i have started but not finished.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Or is it you that was brainwashed?
Communism was a failed experiment, it falls apart after a few hundred people, and turns into more or a tyrannical system, where we see today, where the leaders exploit the working class even further under the guise of being for the public good.
While Capitalism has its problems and we should work on finding these problems and addressing them, vs just calling anyone who states such problems as a communist, it spans well to a larger community, of millions to billions of people. With its own forces more or less naturally keeping things in place.
Now that being said, while unbridled capitalism will work, it isn't optimal, because capitalism is inherently a brutal form of economic system, where paid of failure is the driving force to succeed. That is why appropriate controls and safety needs to be in place.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yes, but at whom?
I like classic, well-aged literature. This year I read Middlemarch by George Eliot, expecting it to be something my wife would like because of its similarity to Jane Austen. But I loved it so much and found it so theologically deep that it's probably one of my favorite books ever now--I even bought a hardcover to peruse for good quotes. My wife, however, hated it.
For a shorter, more casual read I also read Dracula, which I liked a lot more than I thought I would. The best part is at the beginning, though, and it starts to drag on after halfway. It is also not very deep.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.