One of my favorite things is getting book recommendations. Books are rad, and being exposed to new book recommendations is also rad.
Do you want to recommend a book? Submit a PR adding it to the list!
Inspired by responses to this tweet.
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
- Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
- Antifragile
- Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
- A Rumor of War - Phil Caputo
- Bird Box (if you're looking for a uniquely creepy read)
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (based on the fact that you liked Snow Crash)
- Daemon by Daniel Suarez
- Deep Work
- Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You - William Burnett, Dave Evans
- Eat That Frog
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
- Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond
- First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
- Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
- Food Fights and Culture Wars
- Good To Great
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
- Homo Deus
- House of Leaves (get a hardcopy, the book itself is part of the story)
- Leadership & Self-Deception
- Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks
- Masters of Doom
- Mistborn
- Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Michael Lewis
- Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering
- Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks
- Ready Player One
- Reamde by Neal Stephenson
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
- Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages by Bruce A. Tate
- Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan
- SVG Animations
- Steelheart - I could not stand this book. Some cool ideas but the dialog and characters were awful wooden cliches. I stopped halfway through and read the summary on Wikipedia.
- Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
- Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
- The Better Angels of Our Nature
- The Complete Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
- The Design of Everyday Things
- The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
- The Go-Giver
- The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches us About Being Alive
- The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley
- The Red Rising Trilogy
- The Stranger in the Woods
- The Sympathizer
- The Twits by Roald Dahl
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- The War of Art
- The Way of Kings
- We Are Legion (Bob)
Recommending books is fun, so I'll throw in a few too. In no particular order:
A very readable and in-depth look at everything that goes in to data storage and manipulation. If you've ever wondered what a database does when it runs a query, or how different dbs make different tradeoffs in their storage format on disk, or how different replication schemes work, or why you'd ever want to use a streaming system, or what they are good for, or anything touching data systems, this is great.
Two books, but they are in the same series and I like them for similar reasons. Most sci-fi aliens are basically "smart humans with a slightly different culture." This is sci-fi based on the premise of truly alien aliens. What would intelligence look like without consciousness? It is dark and brooding and full of twists and also there are space-vampires. These might be my favorite sci-fi books.
Somehow the author writes about algorithms and data structures and it is . . . entertaining? I found this struck the perfect balance between readability and rigor for me. Full of stories of applications of algorithms to real-world problems, which helps put them in context.
Interviews with software developers you've heard of or should have heard of. Donald Knuth, Fran Allen, Guy Steele and more. I'm fascinated by the history of software. The author is a gifted interviewer that pulls interesting stories and personal details out of these amazing people. One of my favorite parts is how differently they all approach software. Unit tests vs sitting and thinking really hard, print debugging vs tool-assisted, love of C vs hatred of C and lots more.
Lots of modern life reminds me of this book. A man is arrested but police won't tell him why. He spends the rest of the book navigating a faceless bureaucracy in an attempt to figure out what he is even charged with and when his trial will be. It does not go well. Not a happy book, but I think about it a lot.
This also might be my favorite sci-fi book. I read it as a teenager so I might be blind to its flaws. Ridiculous over-the-top cyberpunk thriller with all of the knobs cranked up to 11. The protagonist of the story is named Hiro Protagonist. One antagonist is named Raven and has a giant POOR IMPULSE CONTROL tattoo on his forehead. Ah I can't describe it without making it worse. If you enjoy sci-fi, read this.
Supposedly a historical account of the history of the development of the atomic bomb, but really a deep look at the human side of science. Helps you get to know the people and their flaws and squabbles and competition and cooperation behind the single-paragraph summaries you read about in Chem 101 textbooks. It also accidentally refreshes me on basic physics and chemistry by describing their work enough to put it in historyical context, but it is by no means a chemistry book.
Historical look at domestic life from the frontier of North America to the 1980s with a focus on how "women's work" has changed over the years. The thesis is that domestic work used to be split evenly between men and women, but the traditionally male labor was automated, freeing men to go work in jobs, while traditionally female work has changed but not been eliminated. Fascinating.
Fun little sci-fi book with a great cast of aliens. A Hobbit-like, but with an interesting perspective.
Written in the 80s about the affect of entertainment on discourse, thought and culture. Popularized the phrase "the medium is the message." Focused on TV, but outrageously prescient and applicable to the internet age. A short read.