Hacker News Books

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: http://jakeseliger.com/2012/03/25/jonathan-haidts-the-righte...

This is a novel, but Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind is fantastic.

Fiction: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is beautifully written and I've recommended it to many people. I've gotten lost in Carlos' worlds over and over again, and the cemetery of forgotten books is mesmerizing.

Humor: Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson. I've recommended this to many friends who needed a good laugh. I don't remember another book that made me laugh so hard that I dropped the book.

Non-fiction: this one's a tough one because many good books are mentioned already, but two that I really enjoyed and have recommended in the last year are: Boyd by Robert Coram and How the Other Half Banks by Mehrsa Baradaran. Boyd tells the story about a brilliant but petulant air force pilot who rewrote the guidelines of US military aviation. How the Other Half Banks is an eye opening account of how broken our banking system is and the history of how we got to where we are.

Business: again, a lot of good books are mentioned already, but two I've enjoyed are Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg and Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. Both are fascinating books that'll leave you thinking about how to improve your own game.

--Edit--

Bonus: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is a tremendous piece. It's a short read but a must read!

2 Highlights:

- "Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison

- "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

These are beautifully written books-- true art. I read intellectually stimulating, non-fiction material every moment of my life. Fiction counterbalances that frenzied information consumption.

I also read 2/3 of SevenEves by Neal Stephenson. Although the first 2/3 were good, I can't recommend the book due to the last 1/3. Those who read the book will know what I'm talking about.

Jared Diamond - "Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed" (non-fiction)

Iván Repila - "The Boy Who Stole Attila’s Horse": short intense novel about 2 boys who are trapped in a well

Margaret Atwood - "The handmaid's tale"

Khaled Hosseini - "The kite runner"

Agatha Christie - "The murder of Roger Ackroyd" (very surprising plot)

Andy Weir - "The Martian"

Charles Dickens - "David Copperfield"

Clare Mackintosh - "I let you go"

Carlos Ruiz Zafón - "The Shadow of the Wind"

M.R. Carey - "The girl with all the gifts"

56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

"Neal Stephenson really matures between Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I read snow crash after some of his later stuff and it's almost hard to believe it's the same author."

This happens with more writers (and other artists) than many people think. I read Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game and loved both: they're incredibly rich and detailed yet driven by plot; they have the action that a lot of unsophisticated readers crave and content that can still satisfy someone who's read 10,000 novels. Oh, and it made me laugh out loud.

U.S. publishers are now releasing his young adult novels. Two so far, two more to come. And they're terrible. Almost unreadable bad. No plot, cardboard characters, wild improbability poorly embedded in a paranormal universe. You can see flashes of his later skill, but his early stuff is lousy.

I said this in another comment, but I'll say it again here: I just started reading David W. Galenson's Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691133808/sr=8-1/qid=13150...), which is where Malcolm Gladwell stole / sourced his New Yorker article "Late Bloomers - Why do we equate genius with precocity?" (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_...). Galenson says that there are two basic modes for artists to follow: the experimentalists who try many things over long periods of time and eventually reach fullness, and the "conceptual innovators" whose sudden insight into a field fuels their work, which is often done at a young age. Under your reading, Stephenson would be the "experimentalist."

When Borders came to Singapore, it became the bookstore with probably the best selection of books in stock. It easily became my favorite place to browse and buy books. Two recent incidents stood out which made me realized that Borders was in trouble before I became aware about all the news of it really being in trouble.

They replaced their information counter with a computerized system that failed miserably in helping me locate a book I wanted. The book in question was Carlos Ruiz Zafón's 'The Angel's Game'. My friend had shared about the book over dinner and some of us had decided to get a copy. We went down, searched for it using the computerized system, was informed that the book was available (at least that's what the system seem to be saying). It could not be found anywhere on the shelves (where the system said it was supposed to be); more importantly, none of the staff could help us. In short, the new information counter was useless.

In the early days, the information counter was run by people who knew and loved books. The proof of that was:
1. They could always help locate the book physically.
2. If the book wasn't in stock, they would also be spot on in recommending a similar book that would interest me. It was the second point that got me buying a couple of extra books.

The lost of knowledgeable counter staff in hindsight was indicative of a culture shift in Borders from that of being a place where people passionate about books gathered to a place where shit got sold and it just so happened to be books.

The second incident was noticing that valuable store space was being used to sell toys and kitchenware. Yes, kitchenware in a bookstore.

In the end, I got 'The Angel's Game' and Carlos Ruiz Zafon's 'The Shadow of The Wind' at a local store http://www.booksactually.com/. I recommend this store to anyone who love books and is in Singapore. Clear showcase of how domain knowledge and intimate customer relations can help a local institution compete against the scale and supposedly lower prices of steam rolling multinational companies.

The Shadow of the Wind is a 2001 novel by Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and a worldwide bestseller. The book was translated into English in 2004 by Lucia Graves and sold over a million copies in the UK after already achieving success on mainland Europe, topping the Spanish bestseller lists for weeks.For more visit : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_of_the_Wind