Hacker News Books

11/22/63 - Stephen King

77 Shadow Street - Dean Koontz

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss

Zero History - William Gibson

Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson

Battlefield Earth (the book, definitely not the movie)

The Land: Founding - Aleron Kong

Steel World - B.V. Larson

Ready Player One / Ready Player Two - Ernest Cline

Twinborn Chronicles - J.S. Morin

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

With that said, you may want to check out" The Name of the wind" and any of hugh howys stuff (start with wool)...

Yes, then re-read both, as well as the entire catalog of Dostoevsky, the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, The Illiad, and The Odyssey, and by then Rothfuss might actually be finished with the third book in the trilogy...

The Lies of Locke Lamora (and sequels, 3 books total so far)

The Name of the Wind (and sequels, 3 books total so far)

Ancillary Justice (and sequel, 2 books total so far)

All of Iain M. Banks Culture series

Old Man's War (and sequels)

De ontdekking van de hemel (The Discovery of Heaven), by Harry Mulisch

1984, by George Orwell

Night Angel trilogy, by Brent Weeks

Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, by Robin Hobb

Gentlemen Bastards series (first two books), by Scott Lynch

Das Parfum (Perfume), by Patrick Süskind

Some may have been from end 2010

I started reading the Eternal Golden Braid after, which was really good but dense, and for some light fantasy The Name of the Wind was an overall impressive book.

https://github.com/johnfn/GoodReadsScraper

Particularly, load bigdata.js into nodejs and then run a command sort of like this to parse out the results, filtering out young adult/romance/religion stuff/comics:

    bigdata.filter(f => f.ratings > 5000 && !f.genres.includes('Young Adult') && !f.genres.includes('Religion') && !f.genres.includes('Romance') && !f.genres.includes('Sequential Art')).map(f => f.title)

    'A Song of Ice and Fire',
    'Collected Fictions', (by Borges)
    'The Name of the Wind',
    'Infinite Jest',
    'The Complete Works',
    'The Way of Kings',
    'The Wise Man\'s Fear',
    'Ficciones',
    'A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold',
    'The Complete Stories',
    'Labyrinths',
    'Don\'t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!',
    'The Hiding Place',

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Name-of-the-Wind/Patric...

The next one, The Wise Man's Fear is coming out in March, but neither Amazon or BN have the ebook version listed yet.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Wise-Mans-Fear/Patrick-...

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand was a long one, but very very good also.

Lastly, The Empire of Austria: Its Rise and Present Power by John S. C. Abbott. It gave me a deeper understanding and historical context on where I am currently based.

I also look at The Book of 5 Rings and The Art of War on a regular basis.

Out of the 90 books I get, 53 either have the word "Dragon" in the title, or a dragon on the cover of the book. Clearly, a majority of the results also fall in the Fantasy genre, so have my doubts this counts as escaping the echo chamber.

On the other hand, there are a lot of books in that list that I have never heard about, and that look interesting (insofar as you can judge a book by its cover).
When I'm done with my current series of books, I'll have a good look at this :-)

Any of these would provide better material than the Kingkiller Chronicle, for example. I have read The Name of the Wind and found it so incredibly frustrating that I just couldn't bear to read the rest of the series.

> you may want to check out" The Name of the wind"

...which is the first book of a projected three-book series, of which only two have been published.

I mean they're well-written and so far it's not as bad as the twenty-three wait for the next Chtorr book but, well...

* The Gone-Away World (Harkaway) [1]

* Ready Player One (Cline) [2] and

* The Martian (Weir) [3]

each of which is impossible to put down. Actually Harkaway's entire oevre is terrific. The steampunk Angelmaker [4] was a ton of fun.

Also, many of Iain M Banks' Culture novels (The Player of Games [5] is at the top of my personal list; they can be read in any order) and The Wind-up Girl (Bacigalupi) [6] are must-reads too.

This is not meant as criticism of the OP, rather as fodder for commenters referencing other longer and more contemporary lists.

Oh and a final, related tangent: if, like me, you really enjoy G.R.R. Martin but generally avoid straight-up fantasy [it seems to me the genre is awash in mediocre Tolkien rip-offs] please give The Name of the Wind (Rothfuss) [7] a chance. You'll be glad you did. :)

[1] http://smile.amazon.com/Gone-Away-World-Nick-Harkaway-ebook/...

[2] http://smile.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline-ebook/...

[3] http://smile.amazon.com/Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir-ebook/dp/B00...

[4] http://smile.amazon.com/Angelmaker-Nick-Harkaway-ebook/dp/B0...

[5] http://smile.amazon.com/Player-Games-Culture-Novel-Book-eboo...

[6] http://smile.amazon.com/Windup-Girl-Paolo-Bacigalupi-ebook/d...

[7] http://smile.amazon.com/Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicle-Day-e...

* How to stop worrying and start living by Dale Carnegie

* The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Actually, just reading through the list, I was a little disappointed. Yes, there are some great classics, but Timeline" by Michael Crichton as the "time travel" sci-fi novel of reference. No, just no.

For time travel based sci-fi, Timescape by Gregory Benford is my pick of the lot. Bedford is actually an astrophysicist, so his version of time travel actually make sense. Plus, the characters in the books are scientists. It's a very thought provoking book. He has a second book along those lines, Cosm, which I loved as well, for it's portrayal of the lives of scientists.

"1984" - Orwell - 5/5 French law on surveillance made me want to read it again

"Fahrenheit 451" - Ray Bradbury - 4/5

"La zone du dehors" - Alain Damasio - 4/5

"The name of the wind" - Patrick Rothfuss - 4/5 A great fantasy story. It's a big book, there is a lot of details, but very well written.

"Stranger in a Strange Land" - Robert A. Heinlein - 3/5 Awesome concept, but very slow

"The Inverted World" - Christopher Priest - 4/5 Great short book

Pillars of Earth, read by John Lee, is another one, simply about building a cathedral in medieval europe. Great characters, a villain you love to hate.

If you haven't, you cannot claim to be a fan of science if you haven't listen to Foundation by Issac Asimov.

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss, read by Nick Podehl. It's Harry Potter but for grownups. Fantastic story.

Edit - I'm adding this because I doubt anyone will mention it - there is an audio production company called Graphic Audio, their tagline is "a movie in your mind."

The absolute BEST story I have ever heard, in my entire life, is the Stormlight Archives Series - Way of Kings & Words of Radiance books. These are written by Brandon Sanderson. I don't actually read much fantasy when I read fiction it tends to be scifi or historically based. But this series, with the voice actors and the properly timed music/sfx, is absolutely fantastic. I know OP mentioned audible and Graphic Audio isn't available there, and they are very expensive. But if you can afford it, you won't get a better experience. There are some "jump out of your chair and fist pump" moments in these books.

Erikson's Malazan series - excellent - in my opinion much better than Jordan's WOT.
WOT started very well but (IMO) degenerated into cloned characters with nothing ever significant happening.
Each Erikson book can more or less stand alone, however the intra and inter plots are suitably intertwined and complex.
Reapers Gale did waver a little, one or two new characters are too similar to other ones (a constant issue for me in WOT - the characters seemed so similar that i could never remember who did what)
But the characters are believable and the archae/anthrop - ology expertise of Erikson is very evident.
Patrick Rothfuss' first book, The Name of the wind, was a great start to a new series.
These two (modern fantasy) authors are the only ones i trust currently to give me a good read - in comparison to sci fi, fantasy seems (again IMO) to be in a bit of a rut.

It feels like most people here read books to acquire knowledge and philosophy to apply to real life.

Most fantasy books are read for entertainment and imagination. There's no hidden message to parse and put toward your next start-up project. That doesn't mean Fantasy books are a waste of time though if they're engrossing and entertaining. That's why I read them.

Some fantasy recommendations:

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

The First Law series, by Joe Abercrombie (especially the standalone books #4, #5 and #6)

The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

Wonderful fantasy that treats the reader as an adult and doesn't over explain. It has perfected world building, doing so organically rather than through exposition as is common in the genre. A lot of people I know came out of the woodwork as fans when I posted about this book. They mostly wanted to lament the delay of the third book, something I wasn't aware of when starting #1!

* 'Better' by Atul Gawande (also his 'Complications' and of course 'The Checklist Manifesto')

* 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson.

Fiction:

* 'Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders' by Neil Gaiman

* 'The Name of the Wind' by Patrick Rothfuss

Graphic novels ("comics"):

* 'Watchmen' by Alan Moore

* 'Promethea' by Alan Moore (actually I'm halfway through this, and loving every bit of it)

Special mentions:

* 'How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big' by Scott Adams - I only gave this a 4-star rating on Goodreads when I finished it, but I'm finding that I'm usefully applying more and more of the things I learnt from this book as the months go by.

* 'Yoga Benefits Are in Breathing Less' by Artour Rakhimov - to be considered more of an article, taught me useful stuff about O2/CO2 balance in the body, their respective effects, and hence ultimately the effects of different rates of breathing.

The Name Of The Wind. I bought this because it was the #1 selling book in Borderlands Books last month (I always swing by that bookstore when I'm in San Francisco). Entertaining read, good world-building.

Linux: What Every Superuser Should Know. A No Starch Press book about Linux. It weaves a rich tapestry out of disparate knowledge I already had.

Fiction:

Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson

Zero History - William Gibson

11/22/63 - Stephen King

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss

Non-fiction:

Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick

The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene

The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Built To Last - Jim Collins

Business Model Generation - Alexander Osterwalder

Started, but unfinished, may yet make the list:

Simulacra and Simulation - Jean Baudrillard

Reamde - Neal Stephenson

The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene