Hacker News Books

I'm reading (well, listening on Audible) "Born a crime" by Trevor Noah (he does the narration). Fantastic story of growing up as a mixed-race child in apartheid and very entertaining narration.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Highest possible recommendation. Everyone I've urged to read it has loved it.

Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Bonanza King: John McKay by Gregory Crouch
Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
My Life as a Goddess by Guy Branum
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The last two are especially good as audiobook autobiographies read by the author.

Factfullness - Hans Rosling [Highly Recommended! My favorite book this year]

How to Change Your Mind - Michal Pollan [Thumbs up]

Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker [Two Thumbs Up]

Creative Selection - Ken Kociend [Neutral. Blog post in book form. ]

Achtung Baby - Sara Zaske [Thumbs Up]

The Reason I Jump - Naoki Higashida [Been in my queue for years. Two thumbs up]

Small Fry - Lisa Brennan-Jobs [Neutral]

Gut - Giulia Enders [Two thumbs up]

Born a Crime - Trevor Noah [Two thumbs up. Learned more about the nuances of apartheid than I thought]

I'm Proud of You - Tim Madigan [Thumbs down]

Night - Elie Wiesel [Thumbs up]

Since you called out working on a container ship, a lot of these have a nautical bent but that’s an area of my personal interest as well.

Looking for a ship, John McPhee,
Book about a sailor looking for work and eventually catching a ship.

Born A Crime, Trevor Noah, not about another career but Apertheid South Africa, I enjoyed it and wished I would have read it before traveling through S.A. For work.

Don’t Tell mum I work on the rigs, she thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse, by Paul Carter, read this one awhile ago but it’s about an oil well driller. The industry has changed quite a bit since this book was written but I remember really enjoying it.

Salvage: a personal odyssey by Ian Tew. I enjoyed this book about a a salvage master out of Singapore

The ride of a lifetime by Robert Iger, book about Iger’s journey to being CEO of Walt Disney Company. A bit of insight to what the company executives are doing/ supposed to be doing?

Quench Your Own Thirst, Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Beer company. He discusses some of the mistakes he made along the way too.

Good clean fun, Nick offerman

1. Born a Crime (audiobook) by Trevor Noah is an entertaining yet thought-provoking listen

2. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (just gives a different perception to success all together, at least did for me)

3. Mastery (Robert Greene) - can be dismissed as Anecdotes but really powerful ones

4. Deep Work (Cal Newport) - a guy who doesn't like to be on social media and I found reading about him and stumbled upon this and it's absolutely an insightful read

5. The subtle art of not giving a fk - This is a short, beautiful and an amazing read even if you aren't looking for self improvement

Some books I've enjoyed in the past year:

Wish to laugh?

* Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah

* Yes please! by Amy Poehler

Think?

* Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

* Where Good Ideas Come from, by Steven Johnson

* The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene: An Intimate History both by Mukherjee Siddhartha

Learn (more) about great thinkers?

* Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci or Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

* Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight

Yuval Noah Harari 3 good ones:

* Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

* Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

* 21 lessons for the 21st century

From time to time, I try to put some good ones over here: https://greenido.wordpress.com/?s=book

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah.

What? Is this a cry for help? Is it ax-grinding? Are there "unorthodox and true" statements that pg would like to make but is afraid of "terrible trouble"?
I find the idea of "orthodox privilege" an oxymoron. I don't understand what the phrase captures that isn't just "privilege". Maybe the whole essay is just going over my head. Or perhaps I don't hear the same "high-pitched noise"?

Look, I do something called "Reiki". For some people it's commonplace, for others it's crazy-town. I also do something called "computer programming". For some people it's commonplace, for others it's crazy-town. (Being a computer nerd used to be cause for abuse and shunning, now we're celebrated. So it goes.)

My point is, there are lots of ways to rile up the mob and get them to pick up their pitchforks and torches. In some places all you have to do is exist and be black or gay or a woman or white or straight or a man or neither a man nor a woman, or both-at-the-same-time (hermaphrodite), or be both black and white (Trevor Noah's autobiography of his childhood in S. Africa, "Born a Crime", is worth reading, IMO), or be a computer nerd in the locker room at the wrong time, or wear the wrong kind of hat.

Mob-ism, with the pitchforks and torches, is a problem (this is hardly news though, eh?)

What? Is this a cry for help? Is it ax-grinding? Are there "unorthodox and true" statements that pg would like to make but is afraid of "terrible trouble"?

I find the idea of "orthodox privilege" an oxymoron. I don't understand what the phrase captures that isn't just "privilege". Maybe the whole essay is just going over my head. Or perhaps I don't hear the same "high-pitched noise"?

Look, I do something called "Reiki". For some people it's commonplace, for others it's crazy-town. I also do something called "computer programming". For some people it's commonplace, for others it's crazy-town. (Being a computer nerd used to be cause for abuse and shunning, now we're celebrated. So it goes.)

My point is, there are lots of ways to rile up the mob and get them to pick up their pitchforks and torches. In some places all you have to do is exist and be black or gay or a woman or white or straight or a man or neither a man nor a woman, or both-at-the-same-time (hermaphrodite), or be both black and white (Trevor Noah's autobiography of his childhood in S. Africa, "Born a Crime", is worth reading, IMO), or be a computer nerd in the locker room at the wrong time, or wear the wrong kind of hat.

Mob-ism, with the pitchforks and torches, is a problem (this is hardly news though, eh?)

For someone who didn't read at all for the longest and started a couple of years back, I'm glad I read 20 books this year. Here are the few that stuck with me -

Bad Blood (John Carreyrou) - Story of Theranos, its founders and the conception of terrible ideas. Great record of their actions based on subjective ethics and morals, how they can lead you to going insane.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain) - Fun read for functional introverts like myself.

Stuff Matters (Mark Miodownik) - I wish every science lesson is taught like this

Em and the Big Hoon (Naresh Fernandes) - Fiction, but based closely on the author's mother, her control over the English language, poetry and the mental illness' control over her and their family here in Bombay.

Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) - A biography of the Daily Show host. He's seen a lot of terrible situations and come out unscathed!

Being Mortal (Atul Gawande) - Hospice care - all its good and bad.

A Man Called Ove - Fictional and funny book about a man with a strict code, who lost his beloved wife and still dislikes everyone.

I would recommend most of the books I read this year:

* Born a Crime by Noah Trevor

* Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi

* Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Alexievich, Svetlana

* Ex-Formation by Hara, Kenya (best book I read this year)

* A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bryson, Bill

* Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human
Decisions by Brian Christian (applying algorithm theory to daily life)

* Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Voss Chris (meh)

* Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Knapp Jake (meh)

* All the Light We Cannot See by Doerr Anthony (loved it)

* The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro Kazuo (loved it)

I can say I've got through something similar.

A book that made me very introspective was David Brook's The Road To Character . It made me ask my self a lot of questions which I have documented here https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/packages/55/david-brooks-humi...

Another book was Paul Kalanathi's When Breath Becomes Air I also copied some quotes, questions, and answers here https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/packages/135/paul-kalanithis-...

I'd recommend reading biographies because they can help you give perspective about how a person leads their life. The ones I found thoroughly fun was Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, Phil Knight's Shoe Dog.