Stats for nerds
4recommend
4mentions
4people
2010–2023years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Instantly reminds me of "La Horde du Contrevent" a magical adventure on a planet with constant wind, and wind-scholars
- Usually not into fantasy, but La Horde du Contrevent is a French fantasy classic, written by Alain Damasio, which was published in 2004. He went later on to collaborate on a few games that might be more known in the US (Life Is Strange, Remember Me). Damasio has a creative use of the language, but which must then make it hellish to translate into any other language. According to Wikipedia, it has only been translated in Italian.
- Fiction, mostly:
- Reamde, by Neal Stephenson. What a let down, very formulaic.
- Vortex, by Robert Charles Wilson (sequel to Spin and Axis). Spin is a must-read, Vortex was quite pleasant and brings a satisfying closure to the series.
- Permanence, by Karl Schroeder (re-read). Lots of awesome tidbits (property, rights, AR, anthropocentrism) scattered through an entertaining semi-hard sci-fi space opera.
- La Zone du Dehors, by Alain Damasio. A spiritual sequel to 1984.
- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (finally!)
- The Affinities, by Robert Charles Wilson
- La Horde du Contrevent, by Alain Damasio (in progress). A fantastic, ontologic, poetic story about the wind.
As well as a couple non-fiction:
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! This is made of pure awesomesauce and perfectly captures the kind of spirit at the root of hackerdom.
- Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan (in progress). Humbling.
- Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. Surprised me in many ways.
- I'm currently reading multiple books. Some are technical, some are small enough to read in the subway, some are far too big, and are read before going to sleep ;)
- La Zone du dehors by Alain Damasio, a french author. I must admit I liked his more recent book, La Horde du Contrevent, a lot more. Sadly, it is not available in English. Read it if you understand French and like SF.
- Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny (finishing the 9th book). It's a good story, but not a must-read.
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Liked the first 150 pages I read.
- Cryptography Engineering by Niels Ferguson, Bruce Schneier, and Tadayoshi Kohno. I'm learning tons about cryptography.
- The Non-Designer's Design Book (3rd edition) by Robin Williams. Only read a few chapters, but I'm learning a lot about design. Very simple principles that change everything.
- Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman & Nat Pryce. I decided to go with this book instead of reading Beck's book on TDD. I'm learning / revisiting a lot of best practices from TDD masters. I recommend it to Java Developers (once they have read Effective Java, of course).
I still have a lot to read ( http://i.imgur.com/lgpjf.jpg and http://www.google.com/buzz/neveue/Kc4GhaSSoLE/Un-weekend-pro... ), and am looking forward to it :)
I anyone is interested, I've spent some time researching (on HN, StackOverflow, and other communities) about design & UX, Linux & System administration, and programming. Here's the list I ended up with: http://www.google.com/buzz/neveue/NBBSEryBonS/Woot-ordering-...
