Hacker News Books

I have no idea if your company is interesting, but the questions are.

-What important truth do very few people agree with you on?

That the first duty of a society is to ensure that everyone is housed, healthy, fed and educated.

-What is a great company that no one has started yet?

I'm not much of a consumer. The only things that come to mind are more like non-profits and foundations dedicated to things like cheap and widely available pharmaceuticals, and other social improvement.

-What are some of your favorite websites?

HN, NYT, fuckinghomepage.com, python.org, stackoverflow, google news, google images, google translate.

-What are some of your favorite books?

Effective Computation in Physics, Python for Data Analysis, The Ringworld Series, Gone With the Wind, Adventures of Frog and Toad, Unix Power Tools, Catch 22, Working by Studs Terkel, A Canticle for Liebowitz, Travels With Charlie, Cannery Row, East of Eden, The Beautiful and the Damned, Time Enough for Love.

-What would you do if you knew that you only had 24 hours left on Earth?

Go outside.

-What do you really believe in?

I marvel at the unfathomable size and age of the universe, and the effectively zero chance that I could ever exist. I believe that when I look out at the universe, in at myself, and around at my world and fellow beings, that it's an instance of the universe observing and knowing itself. I also believe that we humans are wasting our world and our civilization, that this could be a true paradise of love, respect and potential, and I'm skeptically optimistic that that could come to pass.

I remember that feeling well, although I’d some prior experience with surprisingly short/not long enough books (Gone with the Wind is sometimes described as “the shortest long book ever” for similar reasons).

Les Misérables is probably my second favorite but that took me so many times longer to make my way through, probably because of Victor Hugo’s unfortunate tendency to go so off track, interjecting with two hundred page history lessons describing his favorite scenes from Waterloo.

Update: added a few lines about the books than just a name listing

From the ones I read in 2017, I would highly recommend (non-IT):

1. The hidden life of trees- Peter Wohlleben Why forest trees are different than the ones you plant, how the communicate, how they care for their friends when they are not well, how mother trees protect their young ones by not letting them grow too fast, the fungi network, etc. The book is very easy to read- there is no scientific terminology overload. Things are told very simply. Not restricted to students of the subject. Learned something interesting every couple of pages.
Another aspect is that the love shows. It is very clear that the author is in love with the subject. The author manages a wild forest in Germany and talks mainly about trees in terms of beeches, firs, oaks, etc. The author is politely insistent that we should protect the natural wild forests and let them be.

2. Why the allies won- Richard Overy Probably the best book I read on WW2. So many more factors went into winning the war than actual fight. Probably appealed to my analytical mind.

3. India After Gandhi- Ramachandra Guha As the author says history ends for many Indians with freedom. Very good chronicles. Started appreciating Nehru more.

4. Re-read Gone With The Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Godfather and a few P.G Wodehouse- all of which I like.

Currently, halfway through Stephen Fry's Mythos which seems good enough to recommend. I am pretty new to the Greek Mythology and he is a good story teller. Don't have much to compare it with, though.

Also, by choice, I read quite a few books in rural Marathi(an Indian regional language) and was surprised how good the story telling was. Also noticed that I had gone quite far from my mother tongue but was happy to see how easy it was to go back.

Please answer my similar question https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15960188

It quotes a Guardian piece saying:

> Mark Le Fanu warned that even non-commercially distributed titles must be licensed by the copyright owner, in this case the Tolkien estate .. "If the book's available in English without a licence from the copyright owner, that's copyright infringement,"

This is (as I understand it) more of a UK thing. The US has a different view. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction

As a specific US example, see "The Wind Done Gone", "a bestselling historical novel that tells an alternative account of the story in the American novel Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell. While the story of Gone with the Wind focuses on the life of the daughter of a wealthy slave owner, Scarlett O'Hara, The Wind Done Gone tells the story of the life of one of her slaves, Cynara, during the same time period and events." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Done_Gone

Note that while the lawsuit was settled (not decided by a judge), "The Eleventh Circuit, applying Campbell, found that The Wind Done Gone was fair use and vacated the district court's injunction against its publication" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Parody

I'd suggest "Gone with the Wind", an ultimate classic. It is tagged as epic romance but I personally feel that it is more than just romance. It has changed a few perspectives of mine and I couldn't get off the story for nearly 3 months. I really enjoyed the book.

If you've enjoyed "Atlas Shrugged, which I'm planning to read, try reading "The Fountain Head" by the same author.

21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell