Hacker News Books

40,000 HackerNews book recommendations identified using NLP and deep learning

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andrenthonFeb 17, 2019

The Savage Detectives and 2666 remain among my favorite fiction books.

I’m sorry that I’ve only heard of Bolaño after his death, and it’s sad that here in Brazil such a great South American author was only published after being hyped in the US.

ojosilvaonSep 19, 2015

I found it more Bolaño than anything. 2666 is an awesome book that parallels academic research and a journey of the self, in many way similar to the OP's account.

kongqiuonJan 10, 2011

2666 by Roberto Bolano - makes you think or reconsider something on every single page

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald - a fascinating way of looking at the world

christensen_emconOct 3, 2012

It seemed like a pretty obvious reference to 2666 to me. The first part of the book has a number of dream sequences where its characters will just list off philosophers and put them into groups and connect them with lines. Definitely took me a few days to get through that book.

jacobedawsononMay 12, 2020

I've just started it - I'm about 10% of the way in and I'm really engaged - enjoying it but with a kind of mental equivalent of full-body exhaustion way after a big day at the beach - it's fun but also hard and sometimes just plain difficult. I think DFW was swimming in so many ideas & feelings that Infinite Jest was a way of letting it all come out in a Kerouacian-stream without much thought for concision.

If it helps anyone decide whether to give it a go, two recent books I read and loved were 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and Underworld by Don DeLillo, and Infinite Jest is satisfying me in the hard-earned way they both did.

ssmmwwonJan 17, 2018

Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and the Haskell Book.

gr366onFeb 11, 2010

"A spokesman for the Portland Trail Blazers says the handful of players on the team who cozy up with novels didn't feel comfortable revealing themselves."

I'm imagining getting together some teenagers to do public service announcements aimed at NBA stars, to let them know that they needn't be ashamed of who they are.

It's interesting to see the divide between foreign born players and American players, in terms of how they spend their free time. Also nice to see that Pau Gasol is in fact reading 2666, which Phil Jackson hand-picked for him (in the original Spanish, I imagine?)

vo2maxeronNov 6, 2019

During the past six months I have been challenged intellectually and aesthetically by these works:

Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol 1-3, by Werner Jaeger

Diary by Witold Gombrowicz

Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Sedgewick

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk

Tomie: No Use Escaping by Junji Ito

L’homme aux cercles by Fred Vargas

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.

The Weird by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

The Federalist Papers, ed. by Kesler

The Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. by Ketcham

Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, new translation by John Woods

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman

Loren Eiseley in the Library of America Edition

Tu rostro mañana by Javier Marías

The Complete Essays by Michel De Montaigne, translation by Screech

Earning The Rockies by Kaplan

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert

Nature Stories by Jules Renard

Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas

Olinger Stories by John Updike

Greek Science in Antiquity by Marshall Clagett

At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell

100 Diagrams That Changed The World by Scott Christianson

Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson

Alec "The Years Have Pants" by Eddie Campbell

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

mykowebhnonFeb 18, 2019

Interesting. Thanks for those suggestions and recommendations.

I like your comment about the strange sense of urgency. I remember feeling that reading the part in 2666 that took place in Mexico near the US border. It felt like the apocalypse was coming, but no one really knew it, but they could sense something.

BTW, you mentioned that you're from Brazil. I have a Clarice Lispector work on my immediate reading list, Agua Viva. Looking forward to it. I've never read any of her works.

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