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!
mindcrime 18 minutes ago [-]
Fiction:
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!
SplitVengeance 52 seconds ago [-]
Just started Dark Tower Series Book 4: Wizard and Glass. I crushed the first 3 books, then took a break to read dungeon crawler carl.
jppope 33 minutes ago [-]
"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.
ky-hy 8 minutes ago [-]
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.
pjmorris 29 minutes ago [-]
'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."
lucb1e 11 minutes ago [-]
> 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
pmg101 12 minutes ago [-]
Middlemarch, finally!
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.
imperialdrive 7 minutes ago [-]
Something about it though, feels good to meet folks that have read it.
nomagicbullet 34 minutes ago [-]
I'm jumping across several short story collections:
- "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.
jppope 33 minutes ago [-]
"Exhalation" was very good. Not every story was great, but as a whole is was lovely
exposition 37 minutes ago [-]
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.
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.
pjmorris 35 minutes ago [-]
Last year I read 'Amusing Ourselves' and 'Technopoly'. A very interesting thinker.
mattmar96 7 minutes ago [-]
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.
gb2d_hn 9 minutes ago [-]
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.
nonethewiser 48 minutes ago [-]
The Wheel of Time.
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.
sanswork 32 minutes ago [-]
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.
delichon 28 minutes ago [-]
If you don't like to be sad, at least wait to forget most of it before watching the Prime Video series.
aditya_rs 2 minutes ago [-]
The series is also cancelled, so no point wasting time watching it either.
jdfellow 23 minutes ago [-]
On Audible, revisiting a childhood favorite: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
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
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 currently reading her Terra Ignota series and it's great, so I was already planning to tackle this one next.
Rendello 2 hours ago [-]
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.
latortuga 34 minutes ago [-]
I stick mostly to fiction these days. Best books I've read this year:
- 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)
1-more 8 minutes ago [-]
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"
ChrisMarshallNY 18 minutes ago [-]
Glen Cook's Garrett P.I. series[0]. It's a perennial fave (I've read it many times, in the past).
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.
Half way through Dungeon Crawler Carl book 8, really got hooked on the whole universe haha.
pyjarrett 3 minutes ago [-]
Discourses by Epictetus
mon_ 29 minutes ago [-]
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!
forger2001 15 minutes ago [-]
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).
electroweak 4 hours ago [-]
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.
akkartik 4 hours ago [-]
Tell me more about the abridgements. Which one now, which one next?
electroweak 4 hours ago [-]
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.
trinsic2 41 minutes ago [-]
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 have grown playing MMORPG's and this one brings the nostalgia vibes without investing the time into grinding for gear.
vwake 35 minutes ago [-]
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.
mysterydip 46 minutes ago [-]
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.
focusedone 15 minutes ago [-]
"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. My first time though this one and it's...well...a trip.
bix6 16 minutes ago [-]
Carl was hilarious, can’t wait for the final books
Nettle and Bone I really enjoyed
Some desperate glory also enjoyed
East of Eden very meaty if you want an epic
delichon 30 minutes ago [-]
You've Been Pooping All Wrong by Trisha Pasricha MD. Get a bidet, eat more fiber and kiwis.
santiagobasulto 11 minutes ago [-]
Do we really need a whole book for this?
jihadjihad 28 minutes ago [-]
And don't peel your kiwi, either.
jcubic 3 hours ago [-]
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.
largePanda9 2 minutes ago [-]
Reading this now as well! Also was on the bookshelf for over a year, glad I finally cracked it open
p4ul 35 minutes ago [-]
This is an excellent book! We give a copy to everyone that joins our team.
13 minutes ago [-]
quuxplusone 4 hours ago [-]
You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting (1989), about baseball in Japan in the 1980s.
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.
josters 10 minutes ago [-]
A copy of Resurrection by Tolstoy I found on the street. Really enjoying the way he is able to portray characters in such profound ways.
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.
WillAdams 32 minutes ago [-]
Re-reading C.J. Cherryh's Chanur books and various other Alliance-Union novels from her Humble Bundle.
I'd be re-reading Tolkien's _Old English Exodus_, but proofreading the typos got to be too much.
aaronbrethorst 44 minutes ago [-]
I’ve been reading about bureaucracy, power, and civic engagement:
The Power Broker by Robert Caro.
Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka.
The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey.
arialdomartini 29 minutes ago [-]
The first volume of Software Foundations, and the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust.
Both very very slowly.
I guess it will take me years to have reason of both.
gyre007 38 minutes ago [-]
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.
arch_deluxe 23 minutes ago [-]
A bleak and appalling nuclear triptych:
- Hiroshima
- The Doomsday Machine
- Command and Control
Highly recommended if you’re feeling too happy and full of faith in humanity.
Arubis 19 minutes ago [-]
I could almost see these being darkly encouraging. Yes, everything is awful, but everything was _already_ awful, and most of us are still mostly okay?
jeffnv 40 minutes ago [-]
"Lost Worlds" - by Patrick Wyman, fascinating prehistory about meso and neolithic 'civilizations', their lives, their rises and downfalls. Really amazing stuff
ssttoo 25 minutes ago [-]
Binging on Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickeled and Dimed, Dancing in the Streets, Natural Causes
john_strinlai 37 minutes ago [-]
the fionavar tapestry by guy gavriel kay.
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)
dmillar 43 minutes ago [-]
London Falling, fascinating story about a piece of London's underbelly. Same guy that wrote Say Nothing, which is also great.
NishanStepak 4 hours ago [-]
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.
DamnInteresting 3 hours ago [-]
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.
Next to Read: Hollywood, Ending by John Green.
latortuga 38 minutes ago [-]
Just got Exit Party from my public library, looking forward to it!
ekjhgkejhgk 11 minutes ago [-]
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"
lp92 5 hours ago [-]
Currently reading "Beyond Tube-and-Wing: The X-48 Blended Wing-Body and NASA's Quest to Reshape Future Transport Aircraft".
Its a pretty good history of the X-48 program.
Edit: also reading the "The Anduril Thesis" in parallel.
ferguess_k 5 hours ago [-]
This is my 13th round to recommend "The Soul of a new Machine" as well as "Showstoppers".
jppope 28 minutes ago [-]
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)
sanswork 43 minutes ago [-]
Non-Fiction(on breaks): Indistractable
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.
tobadzistsini 3 hours ago [-]
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, the manga adaptations of The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Shadow out of Time, Progress and Poverty.
misiti3780 13 minutes ago [-]
President Lincoln by William Lee Miller about the magnanimity of Lincoln
God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre by Richard Grant about hiking through cartel-run Mexico alone
PyWoody 4 hours ago [-]
I couldn't remember which Shakespeare plays I had or hadn't read, so I've spent the summer going through them alphabetically. It's been a blast!
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.
lbrito 17 minutes ago [-]
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff. Can't recommend it enough
gAI 35 minutes ago [-]
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Always.
abstash 5 hours ago [-]
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)
mertbio 33 minutes ago [-]
Right now I’m reading Biological War. Before this one I finished reading:
- The Left Hand of Darkness
- The Nerd Reich
- What Happened to Liberal Democracy?
akkartik 5 hours ago [-]
Lots of scifi and fantasy.
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.
aeve890 5 hours ago [-]
>The Carryx series
Weird. There's a species called Carryx too in a series from James S.A. Corey called "The Captive's War".
akkartik 5 hours ago [-]
That's the one I mean! Can never remember the names of the books/series, hence the gesture.
andsoitis 7 hours ago [-]
Why Greatness cannot be Planned.
The authors argue that rigid, goal-oriented planning and metric-driven objectives actively prevent true innovation and groundbreaking achievement.
softwaredoug 6 hours ago [-]
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
shhsshs 27 minutes ago [-]
> It’s not the kind of book that’ll make me cry
I thought so too, until I read the 2nd Mistborn trilogy!
hosel 5 hours ago [-]
Wait until you hear a detailed explanation of the magic system for the 5th time. Still a good series.
leros 5 hours ago [-]
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.
softwaredoug 5 hours ago [-]
Well I often forget the rules, so its useful :)
theflyinghorse 5 hours ago [-]
Finally got to Dostoevsky's Brother Karamazov. This will take a while.
hwc 3 minutes ago [-]
For me, I took a copy of it with me on a solo backpacking trip. It was the only entertainment I had for a week.
jppope 27 minutes ago [-]
This is my K2. Grapes of Wrath is my Everest. I've started it ~7 times and never made it past 120 pages. Good Luck!
Highly recommend the game for anyone who liked Dark or Primer (or any other fiction that features stable time loops).
no-dr-onboard 5 hours ago [-]
The Intellectual Life by AG Sertillanges. Note that it does presuppose a Christian worldview, so ymmv depending on your belief.
rearview 5 hours ago [-]
Just recently started watching Reacher S1 and it was absolutely amazing so started reading the book and wow - like its absolutely amazing
buckhx 5 hours ago [-]
Infinite Jest. Enjoying it so far, but the length keeps on killing me. I'm like 5% of the way in after a couple of weeks...
desbo 4 hours ago [-]
Took me a year. Loved it! Planning to go back when I have the energy.
The Pale King was also really good and a little easier going.
kevinor 33 minutes ago [-]
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.
ekjhgkejhgk 9 minutes ago [-]
I recently read this and followed it up with "Only the paranoid survive", a story of Intel by Andy Grove.
bowsamic 37 minutes ago [-]
Antigone by Sophocles
leandot 5 hours ago [-]
The Immortal Great Souls from Phil Tucker. Very enjoyable fantasy with unique world and characters.
leandot 5 hours ago [-]
The Immortal Great Souls by Phil Tucker. Very enjoyable fantasy with great world and characters.
FumblingBear 34 minutes ago [-]
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!
AbbeFaria 5 hours ago [-]
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
aerodexis 32 minutes ago [-]
Don't bother with this.
I'm reading Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes by Harms and it goes off on how weak Dawkins is.
drivers99 5 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
chistev 4 hours ago [-]
Oh, I plan to re-read this in the near future!
"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 -
Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China's New Social Order
Not sure if this one qualifies as more meaty :)
PaulHoule 7 hours ago [-]
In my bag right now I have: The Fox and the Jewel by Karen A. Smeyers and The Spiral Dance by Starhawk.
Tomte 7 hours ago [-]
Back issues of The London Review of Books.
tocs3 6 hours ago [-]
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.
zero_shift 5 hours ago [-]
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
tocs3 4 hours ago [-]
Do you have any recommendations for translations? I have been reading from some I just have laying around.
I have been wanting to read Donald Knuth's "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated".
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.
judicious 5 hours ago [-]
Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century by W. David Marx. A fascinating and approachable read.
chistev 4 hours ago [-]
Thanks for this question!
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
Rendered at 20:58:48 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
> "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."
- 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'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.
- "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.
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 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.
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
I keep track of all my favorite books here: https://recleague.com/james/collections/books
(Full disclosure: I'm a cofounder of Rec League)
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
- 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)
- 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'm reading Deadly Quicksilver Lies, right now.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/series/49491-garrett-files
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.
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!
Sadly found I could have been reading a better abridgement, which I'll get for the 2nd reading now.
[0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emergency-with-geo...
I have grown playing MMORPG's and this one brings the nostalgia vibes without investing the time into grinding for gear.
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.
Nettle and Bone I really enjoyed
Some desperate glory also enjoyed
East of Eden very meaty if you want an epic
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.
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.
I'd be re-reading Tolkien's _Old English Exodus_, but proofreading the typos got to be too much.
The Power Broker by Robert Caro.
Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka.
The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey.
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.
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.
God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre by Richard Grant about hiking through cartel-run Mexico alone
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.
- The Left Hand of Darkness
- The Nerd Reich
- What Happened to Liberal Democracy?
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!
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