Stats for nerds
4recommend
6mentions
5people
2009–2020years
83% recommend17% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Strongly agree. Just started reading it myself. One note for people picking it up: the English translation for ‘The Last Wish’ is not great but, if you power through it, all the remaining books are fantastic.
- I read about 25 books this year, here are the top 10 I look forward to reading in 2020, many of them informed by my favorites of 2019:
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari - I read Sapiens this year and really enjoyed it. I just started this today one so I may finish that before the end of the year.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - I like books that make me think and from what I've heard, this will definitely do the trick. I read Factfulness this year and this was a suggested follow-up.
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker - I've gotten really into natural languages since I've lived outside my country of origin for the last 2 and a half years and I've heard good things about this book being an entry point into linguistics.
Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski - With the new Witcher show coming out on Netflix I finally went back and beat The Witcher 3 then read the first book, The Last Wish. It was enjoyable enough that I want to keep going with the series.
Educated by Tara Westover - Was convinced by Bill Gate's blog this is worthwhile. I'm a teacher so it wasn't hard to convince me.
Robot Builder's Bonanza by Gordon McComb - I've been asked to teach a robotics course next year and this one seems to be The Book everyone recommends to dive into robotics.
Divided by Partition: United by Resilience by Mallika Ahluwalia - I recently visited the Partition Museum in Amritsar, Punjab, India and purchased this book there to learn about more stories about people impacted by this event.
The Elements of Computing Systems by Noam Nisan and Shimon Shocken - I just read Code by Petzold and it was one of my favorite books. Even though I studied Computer Science in University and most of the concepts weren't new to me, it was such a fun experience mentally "building" a computer from relays/transistors to logic gates and up to assemblers, compilers, and interpreters. I want to keep going with this and jump into the Nand2Tetris online course.
The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold - Again, I loved Petzold's Code so I looked up other books he wrote and this one looks great. I've never actually read Turing's work so I'm excited to have some background and explanation to help me not just read the words but grasp their significance.
ZACH-LIKE by Zachtronics - I played through several Zachtronics games this year (TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O and Opus Magnum) so I can't wait to dive into some of the thinking behind creating these and similar games.
- I liked Moorcock books as a teenager, especially the Runestaff cycle, but they felt a little shallow to me when I reread them recently. Maybe it's because of the new more sophisticated fantasy books I've read since then. Elric cycle was a little better in that respect, but still felt "backward".
I think there are a few writers more deserving to be called "Anti-Tolkiens": obviously George R. R. Martin for Game of Thrones, and less known Andrzej Sapkowski with his short stories cycle about The Witcher (only 1 out of 2 short stories collections - The Last Wish - is translated to English, but it is worth reading just for the fresh and original view on fantasy book structure - it's short stories, nicely packed with interesting and original multi-sided conflicts, each short story shows different conflicts, and it's about characters and conflicting interests (and points of view), not about Good and Evil, Chaos and Law or anything like that.
It's different from regular fantasy in the way that Stanisław Lem Cyberiad is different from regular sci-fi. Highly recommended. Novels by Andrzej Sapkowski are a little worse, but in the short stories he's brilliant.
BTW Moorcook accused Sapkowski of copying his character, because Geralt (the Witcher) is old albino fighter anti-hero. It always felt to me like Moorcook should actually read the books - the similarities are just apperances - Geralt is very different (and more intersting IMHO) character than Elric.
Good short review of The Last Wish with most points that make this a great book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP1cMitE530
- I read mostly fantasy and sci-fi - some favorites:
"Lord of the Rings" J.R.R.Tolkien
"The Last Wish", "The Sword of Destiny" A.Sapkowski
"The Last Unicorn" P.Beagle
almost anything by S.Lem.
My favorite mainstream book is
"Wielki Las" Zbigniew Nienacki (unfortunately no English translation available).
- If you want real subversive fantasy, I recommend Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish and the other of books from the saga. It has everything: The main character is a male witch (or witcher), the female wizards have formed a secret society to take over the world and nonhumans (elves,dwarfs) are subjected to human racism and bigotry.
- Well, Warhammer's Chaos gods are also inspired by Moorcock ;)
Warhammer is definitely more shades of gray than D&D, but I think D&D has some of that too, especially with its less common (and less heroic) settings such as Planescape, Dark Sun, etc.
PS: in case you're a Pole, how did you like Netflix's Witcher? Years ago I read the English translation of The Last Wish and it felt very fresh to me -- I really liked that the monsters are non-standard, it resembled Jack Vance's fiction in that way -- but stopped short of the novels, because what I've been told about them didn't impress me. I really, really liked the short stories though.
