Stats for nerds
3recommend
3mentions
3people
2024–2025years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Unfortunately many of the books I had time to read this year were a bust. But here's some of the ones I did appreciate very much:
* Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive - Philipp Dettmer.
* The Gene: An Intimate History - Mukherjee. Won't necessarily teach you much new if you've already read a few genetics books, but a fine read nonetheless.
* On Sophistical Refutations - Aristotle. Like anything by Aristotle, read it with a grain of salt and as historical document. Still, it's always a wonder how a text like this can be over 2000 years old.
* Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann. Skip the movie and read this instead.
* 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles Mann. It challenges common misunderstandings of pre-columbian society without being anti-Columbus.
* American History, Combined Edition: 1492-Present - Thomas Kidd. Goes beyond just the usual narratives we are all familiar with. Not recommended as a first American-history deep-dive, but a fine supplement.
* The Man Who Saved Cincinnati - Peter Bronson. Entertaining civil war history book. It's not only about Cincinnati.
* Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power - Carwardine.
* The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets - Thomas Cech. RNA is now kinda required reading since 2020. This is a good starting point.
* The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie - Dawkins. His latest is definitely worth a read, like (nearly) all his previous.
* Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI - Harari. How information traveled historically, with modern technology, and in the near future. Enlightening and a little scary.
* Beauty and Sadness: Mahler's 11 Symphonies - David Vernon. Even if you haven’t listened to all of Mahler’s symphonies, still very interesting read on “the first modern composer.” If you /are/ familiar with all his symphonies, the book is even better, and it will show you layers you didn’t realize were there... in case the music isn't dense enough to absorb by itself ;-)
Fiction:
* Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir.
* Dark Matter - Blake Crouch.
* Red Rising - Pierce Brown. A light read, maybe will seem derivative at this point but it was fun.
* Rifters Trilogy - Peter Watts. Super bleak, very creative.
* You Like It Darker - Stephen King. Another fine collection of short stories.
* The Forest of Lost Souls - Koontz
* House of Leaves - Danielewski. I waited way too long to read this. As good as everyone said it would be.
- The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets by Thomas R. Cech — This is a standout for me. Spotlight on RNA with interesting historical context of the field.
- I only have time to listen to audiobooks so I hope this list is not too basic.
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver
The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto by Jonathan Taplin
The Value of Others by Orion Taraban
Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks by Geoff White
Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan
Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter by Zoe Schiffer
Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban
AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor
Hijacking Bitcoin: The Hidden History of BTC by Roger Ver
Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America by Charles Gasparino
The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets by Thomas R Cech
and my book of the year
Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health by Casey Means M D
