Not exactly on topic, but in case anyone is interested, the most reliable source I know for fiction recommendations is the Tournament of Books: https://themorningnews.org/tob/
Seeing that website and its picks it reminded me of the acerbic comment of a Swedish academic:
"Permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl told the Associated Press that US writers were "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture", which he said dragged down the quality of their work. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."
For sure; I should have added a note to say it's not any sort of definitive list of books – they cover a pretty narrow set of tastes, mostly English-centric literary fiction [^1] – and they're pretty explicit about the idea of it being a contest is really just "dumb fun" (their words) to kindle discussion about books they like. I'm always looking for good sources of book recommendations if you've got any that cover a wider array of tastes.
For sure. For worldwide literature translated to English you could do a lot worse that the Complete review[1] its father site the Literary Saloon is quite good too[2]
If you know French La Republique des Livres is a good choice[3]
In Spanish there are lots of sites, but this book recommendation section from Clarin has a good selection from all over the world [4]
I really liked this site[5] in English about "post-modern" writers (Kafka, Borges,Joyce,Beckett etc), too bad it was shut down, but you can still read it on Internet archive.
Surprisingly 4chan /lit has very good taste in literature.They have several guides,for example one by origin of the work[6]
To finish I will give 7 books, very well known, but they wont always appear in, say a reddit top 100 books or whatever:
1. The tartar steppe. Dino Buzzati
2. Pedro Paramo. Juan Rulfo.
3. Life and fate.Vasily Grossman
4.Memoirs of Hadrian. Marguerite Yourcenar
5. The book of disquiet. Fernando Pessoa
6. The House of the Sleeping Beauties. Yasunari Kawabata.
Every year, I add Gates' recommended books to my reading list. This year, 2020, when the Pandemic hit and our prospective Investor walked off, leaving me with a team I cannot support; I turn to extra reading for support. In early 2020, when I realized I read over 50+ books in 2019, I had decided to read slower, and more picky to digest the books better.
Unfortunately, I ended up reading lot more this year. By GoodReads counts I have already read 70+ books, so, with the re-reads and other physical books, I will be hitting 80+ books this year (I didn't participate in their book count this year).
When I'm anxious, I either read or play chess. If I'm pitching or have an important meeting, I would have likely played few games of chess.
Can you share a little about how you read a book? Do you do it cover to cover or do you skim it and then read the sections you find especially compelling?
I don't have strict rules, methods, or patterns. However, I follow common themes such as skimming (or speed-reading) boring/mundane sections, change books and come back later, read multiple books at a time.
Personally, I feel something missing if I totally skip something, so I tend to or try to finish what I read. I was known to be that kid who read Newspapers top to bottom of all pages, so that is that.
My tricks;
- Don't drive, get an Uber and read. I have finished so many books inside an Uber car.
- If I'm flying, I finish about 2 typical books per leg of the flight.
- Always have your Kindle or a Book with you. Read instead of looking at your phone. ;-)
- If you have kids, read to show them that you read, they will follow.
Re:your point about kids, as a brand new father, I think about this a lot. Kids model and mimic what they see, for better and for worse.
Up to a certain point 'reading from a Kindle' looks exactly the same as burying your face in a phone. Do you prefer physical books at home to model the reading behavior? Or have you found that young kids understand that e-book reading is not the same as phone-use?
Absolutely right about Kindle. I did not elaborate that point. My daughter, when she was 5-ish, used to think I do not read because I'm on a Kindle. So, after going fully digital I went back to physical books about 5 years back. Now, I mix about 1 physical for every 4 kindle books. At 11-year, she do gets it now and have her own Kindle with one -- you can read as many books as you want.
> Personally, I feel something missing if I totally skip something, so I tend to or try to finish what I read. I was known to be that kid who read Newspapers top to bottom of all pages, so that is that.
I am the same way. This makes it very hard for me to skim books or even sections of books because it feels like I’m “cheating” and not really finishing the book properly. This also makes it hard for me to quit books halfway, even if I don’t enjoy it.
I know that both of these things (skimming and knowing when to quit early) are vital skills for readers, but my completionism borders on obsessive.
Based on my own measure of "read a book" I read zero books in 2020. Based on OP's measurement I read about 20. It's interesting what comes out when asking a simple question. My main take away is I should be less rigid as I'm like you where the fact I don't read anything thoroughly creates a block to reading more.
I’ve read 121 books this year, and I read 129 last year. I’ll probably meet or exceed that number this year.
Generally I’m reading at least two books at a time, one non-fiction and one fiction. I tend to listen to the non-fiction books and read the ebook/physical fiction book.
I wake up in the morning, make coffee/breakfast for me and my wife, and read the ebook/physical book while I’m eating. I read whenever I’m in the car (audiobook non-fiction) and when I’m doing simple chores around the house or at work. I recently started reading the audiobooks during my exercise time, so that adds at least an hour a day. If I’m eating alone for lunch I’ll read the ebook/physical book. On days off I’ll read the ebook/physical book as a form of relaxation for a few hours as well. Finally, I read the ebook/physical book every night as I fall asleep. I generally have to go back a page or two the next morning as I might have missed a few paragraphs as I drift off.
I generally boost the speed of the audiobook to as fast as I can deal with (depends on the narration), but I can’t do that with any voices I’m familiar with. I read Obama’s audiobook recently and I kept that at 1X speed.
I’ve been reading the audiobooks for ~3 years, and before that I averaged around 60 or 70 books a year with a range of 50 on the low end to 82 on the high end.
Last year I took notes on all the non-fiction ebook/physical books I read. I haven’t done the same this year and I feel like I’m not missing out on anything, although the notes were useful when trying to find a reference quickly.
I sleep at least 8 hours a night, and I don’t feel rushed in my reading or anything like that. I think what allows me to read so many books is that I have been reading like this since I was a teenager (~20 years) so I read and comprehend quite quickly. The high-speed audiobooks also almost double the number of books and I don’t see a huge drop off in knowledge/usefulness/entertainment. I also don’t really watch TV so this is my main form of entertainment, along with movies a few times a week.
I have time for a solid sleep schedule, lots of exercise, work, and at least three other hobbies (bicycles, metalworking, and skateboarding) so I think so!
Fiction recommendations:
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. This book absolutely wrecked me emotionally (in a good way) for weeks after reading it
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I enjoyed this even more than the Underground Railroad, which was also great. Both also won a Pulitzer for what it’s worth.
- The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea. This book gave me a glimpse into what it’s like for Mexicans who immigrate to the US, and the storytelling was just wonderful.
Non-fiction recommendations:
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Mix together equal parts science, indigenous knowledge and myth, botany, and wonderful writing and you get this book. I love Kimmerer’s voice (both in terms of her writing and her performance of the audiobook) and I read Gathering Moss by her this year as well because she’s just that good.
- American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. In my opinion is the definitive book about the atomic bomb and Oppenheimer. I also read The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman and I think that was a pretty good follow up about the arms race and Cold War that came after.
- Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. I knew nothing and cared little about surfing before this book. I couldn’t put it down after I picked it up though. I’ve heard the audiobook is great so I might just read it again in that format because it was that good.
There are so many more but I think those are a good start. If you want recommendations in a certain genre I can probably give some because I’ve read widely over the years.
If you consider listening to an audiobook to be reading a book (I do), you can likely fit in a lot more listening time without changing too much. I've replaced most music listening with audiobook / podcast / text-to-speech article listening. And I pretty much always have bud-type earphones around my neck so I can plug them in when I go to do some 5 minute chore. I'm not necessarily getting through 70 books a year, but I suspect I'm in the top one percent or so for magazine article consumption.
This does mean you're not, say, having a lot of quiet time for your thoughts. I don't necessarily miss this, but I'm sure others will.
Holly molly!! That's impressive. I've managed to read 11, I'm a bit disappointed I didn't make it to 12 (1 per month). What other activities do you do during a normal day?
Pretty much all books gives you something or the other to learn. I started writing about the books I read, each year, since 2018. For this year, here are few, in no particular order that I feel happy and fulfilled reading them. I will be digging deeper and doing a retrospective, and write a blog post by early 2021.
- Cant't hurt me by David Goggins.
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.
- Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. (Re-read)
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. A very un-assuming book that taught me lot about leadership.
- How to influence and win friends (re-read 3rd or 4th time).
- Humble Inquiry by Edgar Schein.
- I am Malala (daughter like it and so I read it)
- Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Issacson. (I'm taking this real slow, still reading after 6+ months.)
- Range (the one mentioned by Bill Gates)
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.
- The Future is Asian by Parag Khanna.
- Turn the Ship Around.
- Under Pressure by Lisa Damour (I have a daughter, turning teenager in another year.)
- Venture Deals (still valid in today's fund raising scenes)
- Why we Sleep by Matthew Walker. Still reading but learning a lot already.
Also just finished Can't Hurt Me. It's probably not for everyone. Goggins has a pretty unhealthy view of himself when he was 'fat' and his relationships with other people are kind of suspect. But it's an intense read and incredibly motivational.
If you need a different perspective on exercising and pushing yourself to your limits this book is a must. Don't try to be David Goggins (you might die). But to read his story is to see what extremes a human can push themselves to and it might help you push a little harder.
I agree. I would still recommend the book to most people, but with a number of caveats. I think the most important takeaway from that book is the concept of embracing mental discomfort to strengthen yourself.
Learning to work with intention and not just when I feel "focused" or "energized" has been hard work for me and something that this last year has really forced. His book was very helpful to me in framing mentally uncomfortable things as "workouts" and opportunities to grow.
It's a great book if you apply that concept to things like family, marriage, work, LIFE, and not just increasing your suffering personal record.
I also read Range and I too was a bit underwhelmed. I took it as a sign that I’ve read too much in this area already as much of the book was familiar. It would probably be a good introduction for those who haven’t read about the topic before.
I keep telling people that 2020 is our chance to both address the lousy situation many are in, and to recognize what is truly important in our lives. The fact that many people did in fact have a very lousy year and you did not also falls into that category. Why do you think your year was not lousy, and what can we learn from it?
Book reports/reviews are a thing in their own. The thesis of a text is somewhat straightforward to summarize in articles and reports of that length.
Personally, I thought Range was a fantastic book. I agree that it was repetitive at times but that drum beating of the theme was welcome and showed the un/kind learning environment thesis in many areas of human learning.
I gave copies of the book out to my group at work in 2019 and everyone in the group loved it (so they told me!). My team members appreciated the other examples beyond the Woods-Federer example and my boss brings up those examples from time to time.
The central core idea of un/kind learning environments is a crucial one and has really helped me when I have to learn new things too. As my career is not generally in a kind learning environment, it has made me more confident to graze for new information far and wide, like here on HN (:
And while I think attributing negative adjectives to 2020 is arbitrary, since the bad things happening now are not bound to the calendar, this year was particularly bad for an even bigger number of people than the average year. It may not have been bad for you, but passing off the year as remotely good is disrespectful and shows a lack of empathy to the millions who had it bad because of covid, racial conflicts, natural disasters, terrorism, increased poverty etc etc.
Or a wiki page [1]. The question then turns to what value the long form book adds. I think one aspect is that consuming content over multiple days approximates the first few cycles of a Spaced Repetition system [2].
This is the case for most non-fiction life/business advice books that come out these days. Many of them actually start out as articles/talks. The author then gets contacted by a publisher who proposes to stretch things out into a book.
I havent read it, but reading Gate's blurb, calling Roger Federer (A guy who has dedicated all his life to one specific sport) a generalist told me everything I wanted to know about the book, a Malcom-Gladwellian work.
I completely agree regarding your thoughts on "Range". I think quite a number of books dealing with same/similar subject areas can be shortened. But for some reason "Range" felt too long even by those standards. I felt like the author had nothing much to say in the second half and just keep going on for no reason.
Ha, I actually associate Netflix with the opposite, killing their best works before they come of age.
Non-fiction books are terrible for this though, there's often a few brilliant pages buried in hundreds of pages of filler. Fiction (ironically, as a deliberate consumption of free time) is often not nearly as bloated.
Agreed. I think many books, even that have an interesting idea, take their main idea and slice it up into too many pieces and then add enough anecdotes per piece to really stretch it out.
When I see this kind of lists I always think of getting some of these books and reading them. However, I feel like reading books that have no relationship with my job (software engineer) is a waste. Do any feel the same? Is this a harmful mindset and should stop worrying about "wasting" my free time?
Reading books that are unrelated to what you do for a living is not a waste - not in my opinion at least.
The stuff you read "for work" will undoubtedly increase your technical knowledge and make you a better software engineer, but the books you read for pleasure might just soothe your soul, increase your knowledge about the world you live in (good, interesting biographies, history books, etc) or they might just be good fun and a good way to switch off.
So while I don't necessarily think your mindset is harmful per se, I do think it is perhaps a little self limiting. That's just my opinion of course - I like literature so for me books are definitely a pleasure. Your mileage might vary :)
Lists like these are great for finding books that are worth reading. Find someone you respect and then just pick one of the books they recommended. Or look at a few lists and see if there is one that keeps popping up. Books are a bit of commitment so it is nice to have at least the promise that a book is going to be good when you are just starting to read for more than work.
>I feel like reading books that have no relationship with my job (software engineer) is a waste. Do any feel the same? Is this a harmful mindset and should stop worrying about "wasting" my free time?
This is very harmful to your "intellectual growth" and you should break out of the mindset that everything you read should be oriented towards your job and career only. Something from the book The 7 habits of highly successful people which i had read a long time ago stayed with me. There is a concept of P (for Production) and PC (for Production Capability/Capacity) mentioned in that book. P is what gets you a job in the present time since you are employed to "Produce" something for the Company immediately. However your future growth, both professionally and personally depends on how well you cultivate your "Production Capability/Capacity" so as to take advantage of whatever the future might throw at you. This is why expanding your mind and intellectual horizons by reading on widely different domains is so important. Don't limit yourself by reading only job/career related stuff. Go outside your comfort zones and expose yourself to various ideas and concepts. Life is much more fulfilling that way.
One thing to note is that you don't read all books cover-to-cover. You skim and jump back-and-forth to quickly identify the gist and essentials. Only then do you sit down for serious study of the identified sections. Also don't try to remember everything you study; only the essence/core is to be assimilated, for everything else keep a mental bookmark so that you know where to look for when you need the details later.
There's an (apparently untranslatable) word in German for people who are only interested in amassing knowledge in their own domain and totally ignorant of anything else: "Fachidiot" (see also https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/327748/is-there-...) - it's not really a flattering term. So, in my book, expanding your horizons is a good thing. Of course, Sherlock Holmes would disapprove (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3605300).
Ah, No! As a lifelong Sherlockian/Holmesian i cannot allow you to cast my hero in a unflattering light :-) That was Holmes being flippant. Over the timeline of the stories, it turns out that Holmes is actually very well and widely read and has a large personal library into which he often dips for some long forgotten fact which has suddenly become relevant to his current case.
Fascinating... "Kraftidioten" could also be a German word, but with a different meaning. In Norwegian, the "kraft" ("powerful") refers to the idiocy, whereas in German it refers to the idiot. That's why the film was called "Einer nach dem anderen" in German - "Kraftidioten" wouldn't have gone down well with bodybuilders...
This was my first thought as well. It looks like "Fach" translates to something like compartment, or subject, which I suppose makes sense in the context:
Your free time should be the time when you do things unrelated to your professional work. A healthy advise I got from Usenet a long time ago is that one should have a hobby unrelated to computers.
That advise was given when there where no eBook readers, Smartphones or other mobile stuff. But it's still a good advise IMO as long as you use these tools for mainly recreational activities.
So long note, short answer: reading books isn't a waste of time.
I'd advise you try to not think of all reading as something that needs to "improve" something in you.
We do many things just for pleasure; we go on holiday, we have friends, we eat dessert, we go for walks, we read books.
If you feel you need to improve your English or your technical skills, that's fine, you can study. But that's unrelated to all the other activities you might do for your own pleasure.
>I'd advise you try to not think of all reading as something that needs to "improve" something in you.
Well said! This is the curse of the modern society/economy that everything you do should be towards some "improvement" either materially or otherwise. The concept and importance of "play" has all but been forgotten. Incidentally, much of Science progressed only because many of the Scientists actually loved "playing" with what interested them. The actual inventions/discoveries were more accidental like.
Knowledge for Knowledge's sake is a very good thing.
I will go against the grain here a bit because on anonymous forums humans (myself included) have this nasty habit of forgetting they might be talking to a 12 year old child and instead imprint a vague version of themselves on the people they talk to.
If you are close to the beginning of your journey, like say 1-3 years ago you didn't know how to program at all, them I would take the advice you are getting with a grain of salt. I would recommend pouring your free time into your trade, gaining both a breadth of knowledge about software engineering (like spending 3 hours learning about C++ not to write a program in it but to be able to understand what it is and what it isn't so you can carry a brief conversation when the topic turns to it) and a depth of knowledge with your preferred toolset (like 200+ hours going through 3-4 ground up resources on Python because its your most reached for language to get work done).
Once you have that strong foundation, the other advice here is very sound. Turn your computer off and go do wood working, or read a comprehensive history series that tackles each decade (and then do it again from an Asian focused author rather than a Western focused one), or find a solid podcast to listen to while you go for long walks in nature, etc. Pretty much anything other than sitting at your computer for both your job and your hobby.
A lot of the time I feel the same way, just a bit more broadly, that everything I do must improve me in some way, especially in the technical realm (I'm a software engineer as well). Even when I do stuff for "fun", I try to be strict about it and sort of analyse the fun to make sure I'm getting my time's worth.
But then reading your message made me think: this sounds a lot like Sartre's waiter [1]. I don't think I can change the way I feel and approach life, and I'm quite comfortable with my approach, but if you're not and you want to make a change, you might want to dig into why that's the case.
I understand where you're coming from. What you might consider is that many ideas can be abstracted out and applied to aspects of life that, on the surface, aren't closely related.
For instance, Range, one of the books that Gates recommends, isn't specific to any occupation, but can inform one's general perspective on the hazards (or benefits) of taking a software job that is more specialized, and whether it's the best thing for your career in the long-term.
Relatedly, I can't tell you exactly what genre the You're Not So Smart or Freakonomics podcasts fit into, but like a lot of good books, each fleshes out all sorts of high-level ideas that can relate to day-to-day life.
I really enjoy learning about behavioral psychology/economics-type stuff.
Reading is rarely a waste of time. Who knows, maybe you won't be an engineer forever? Maybe you'll become management, or leadership? Reading will help. Maybe you'll read something that will inspire you to switch careers? More reading will help you get there. And then of course there's reading to start and carry conversations. You'll be surprised what asking, "Have a book you recommend?" can do.
Finally, if you have children, reading is a great habit to instill in them. Trial and error is a good way to learn, but it's time consuming and sometimes painful. Reading is one of few shortcuts in life that's not a fool's errand.
In that case read the book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" from that list first. You will notice that the people that came up with solutions came from a total different discipline, while the people in that field were stuck
Or another book recommendation from Gates Notes ‘Where Good Ideas Come From” https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From which argues that some of the most innovative discoveries from history come from exaptation - the application of ideas from one discipline to an unrelated field.
Reading immersive fiction makes me significantly more productive. I believe there are two main benefits: 1) It hones my ability to stay focused, and 2) It exercises the world-simulation part of my brain, which I use heavily for understanding problems and visualizing solutions.
Whenever I go more than a few weeks or so without reading fiction, I tend to notice a drop in my productivity and problem-solving ability. Binge-reading a good book fixes it every time.
If you want a breadth of grounded fantasy (IE takes place in our world but contains elements that don't really exist in our world) then I would recommend picking through Stephen King.
If you want to completely escape our world then I recommend the old Conan books or the modern Brandon Sanderson starting with Stormlight Archive.
If you want fiction that is grounded in reality with little to no fantasy elements then the murder mystery genre has quite a few gems that are fun to try and guess the twist of when you are reading. Murder on the Orient Express is great if you havn't experienced the story yet.
I'm a big fan of King and as such implore you to recommend specific works: nobody should read 'Rose Madder' on accident (or even as punishment, I don't care the transgression).
Have you read Robert Jordan's 'Conan' books? I just reread them (after finally getting around to reading Sanderson's final two books of Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' series) and they're more fun than I'd remembered!
This is super important. I think a lot of people would understand this better if they experienced burn out.
I used to spend a lot of time working. Then over time that just started destroying me. I got let go from my job and while I had noticed this a bit, particularly on vacations, I had no idea how to "not work."
My stress level was through the roof and I had no outlets for anything.
2020 has been the year of me trying to create a life outside of work. Kind of a weird ass year to try it but despite 2020 being 2020, I've rediscovered my love of reading, really started learning music theory, and a bunch of smaller things.
I should be able to go into 2021 a lot better as a person and feel my life is "better" in a lot of ways that it was previously pretty poor. I still don't think my life is amazing or great or anything, but baby steps.
A big change in mindset to accomplish a lot of this is that my job exists to plan for the future (planning for retirement has been a big deal this year), it pays for me to have fun (enjoy the now), and it pays for me to pay my bills to live. My job is not my life, it's a means to an end. I show up, I do my job, and I leave at the end of the day and I don't think about work until I come back in the next morning.
Don't let your job run your life. You're more than an employee, even if development is your passion.
And if you read the same books as everyone else, you'll have the same ideas as everyone else :-) Read about other industries - do they have stuff you can re-use? Read some of the great books and learn about history and human nature.
I certainly hope you consider yourself something more than a software engineer. As a human, living with other people in a society, reading other books will not only help you and make your life richer, but also enhance the lives of the people around you.
Learning about a variety of topics can help with that - the world is not full of discrete boxes, skills from different things often will indirectly improve your abilities in other areas.
Read "poor charlie's almanack" - it will illuminate you on why you should read across different topics. In short, if you only have one mental model (way of thinking) through which you're viewing the world, you will incorrectly apply it to everything around you. As you read more broadly and learn different ways of thinking and will apply the appropriate one to each situation.
Unless you're a "code monkey" being a software engineer involves using creativity, which in my experience requires giving your brain enough "downtime" as well as a broad range of inputs.
Reading a broad range of books (fiction too) will give your brain the stimulus to create the connections that enable creativity.
I'm not a code monkey but, in my current place of work, there is no much place for creativity (micromanaging) and I miss that. I'm trying to learn some things on the side (because I'm not assigned enough challenging tasks.
Well, I don't necessarily mean just creativity in that sense but also where you have a problem to solve and during a walk or shower you get that flash of inspiration, a way to solve it that comes from your brain making unexpected connections... I find that one of the most satisfying aspects of the work.
Though maybe I'm lucky in that I have very broad architectural responsibilities in my job...
Think of it like a proof of concept. You don't just write perfect code every single time you sit down, right? Sometimes you write something and test whether it'll work. Sometimes you find it works, other times it doesn't.
I encourage people to try to do the same with their life.
I was always of the mind "Meditation is some kind of stupid mumbo jumbo and it's dumb and a waste of time"
I now meditate, because I tried it and realized it was helping me.
You don't have to go into some idea thinking this is the rest of your life, it's not, you can try something, see if it helps you or you enjoy it. If you aren't enjoying it or you don't see it actually helping you then stop and do something different.
I read a lot, over 20 books this year, most of it fiction. It has replaced watching tv in 2020 and I set a goal to read at least 30 minutes a day.
Amusingly, one of the books in his list (Range) is precisely about this.
Reading more about areas outside of your own domain of expertise can only be a good thing as it introduces you to thoughts and concepts you otherwise wouldn't know about.
Frankly, more people in your field should read more broadly, particularly in the humanities.
I don't think it's a waste. A good chunk of my reading involves content unrelated to my job (software engineer). Not every hour of the day has to be spent chasing "productivity". Unstructured free time outside of work is essential to keeping me productive at work.
As a software engineer who didn't read almost any books about software engineering I have a question: How did reading any books about SWE changed the way you work?
I found that reading books on other subjects (from non-fiction I've read some biographies, some economics books, the usual suspects like Sapiens and such). I find that knowing a bit about everything is mainly a good way to keep conversations going because it enables you to chip in on many different subjects while otherwise it might be hard to find a common interest.
It also helps to see some issues that one might overlook. An example would be American Kingpin which shows how a good technical idea with no moral oversight might end up creating something that ultimately makes world a little bit worse.
Reading technical books has helped me pass some interviews and improve my programming skills. It also helps me learn new languages (Go) and do some personal projects. No personal project has helped me get a job though...
Usually the part of out-of-scope of software is dealt by product managers. Maybe it is a problem of working in a big corporation?
> Usually the part of out-of-scope of software is dealt by product managers.
Life happens outside of work too, it's nice to be able to talk about other things than coding. Out of scope questions can be also useful when asked the feared "do you have questions?" question during recruitment.
Ha, initially misread your question as its opposite (~"would reading technical/non-work related books in my spare time be a waste of time") and immediately thought no, of course not! To me, doing non-work related things outside of working is what makes _both_ activities things fun.
Don't be hard on yourself for not spending every waking minute of your life working, preparing for work, or feeling bad because you "should" be doing one of those two. That's a very quick way get burned out.
YMMV, but in my experience, even if you want to optimize your life for doing the best work possible, not working all the time is a winning strategy!
Especially software engineering is one side technical knowledge about programming, and the other side the ability to understand new problem domains from scratch so you understand what is needed.
It is more important for software people to know a wide range of subjects. Our job is to automate away the job of other industries, and every time we succeed we need to move on to a new domain and automate it. You should consider it a personal success when your current employer lays you off because the current version is good enough that they don't need as many people.
Your best bet to success in this industry is to know a lot about something that isn't automated enough yet.
Well, one could at least argue that reading a book that has no relationship to you in any way might be a waste. But narrowing this down to only your work - yeah, that's a harmful mindset for sure. You are not just your work ...
While I do read non-technical books, I don't read fiction for the same reason. It does feel like a waste of time when I could simply watch TV/surf the net instead :)
I read a lot of SciFi, and have actually found that while I might not learn a ton from a book directly, I'm often inspired to do nonfiction reading on ideas or events mentioned in the book.
I've read The Spy and the Traitor, and it was quite good. I had just come off a binge of spy novels written by John LeCarre and it was amazing to read the same exact sort of craziness, but in a real life situation. I would actually recommend doing something similar, as the fiction definitely help set the mental stage for the history.
That said, Roger Federer is a generalist?!? Why, because he has trouble beating Rafa on clay?? As a techie generalist who has knowledge a mile wide and an inch deep, I'm not sure he would qualify. But I'll read the book and see.
> That said, Roger Federer is a generalist?!? Why, because he has trouble beating Rafa on clay??
I don't know why people bother to take umbrage at things without even trying to learn the context. What you are assuming the author claims doesn't exist anywhere in the book.
He never says the Federer is a generalist. The only mention of Federer in the book is to contrast his childhood with Tiger Wood's childhood.
"By the time [Federer] finally gave up other sports—soccer, most notably—to focus on tennis, other kids had long since been working with strength coaches, sports psychologists, and nutritionists. But it didn’t seem to hamper his development in the long run."
In contrast, Tiger Woods famously focused on golf exclusively at an early age.
Woods specialised in golf from a young age. Federer didn't specialise in a single sport from a young age.
Federer is never mentioned again after the 4th page of the book.
But if you follow Gates link, he writes a whole blog post titled "We need more Rogers: David Epstein’s Range explains the greatness of Roger Federer and other generalists," so I assumed he was featured a bit more prominently.
Did you follow that link and read Gates post before moaning about my comment? Probably not.
It's an opinionated tale of someone actually doing the business of catching spies.
Even better for the HN crowd, the author was an engineer so there's some tidbits about just how advanced spook technology was even in the 50s and 60s (i.e. using acoustics to lift encryption keys through embassy walls as they were being typed)
The more factual parts are genuinely dangerous if not for the late date it was published.
The more speculative aspects like the authors' judgement of Roger Hollis is genuinely really weird. We will probably never know the truth, but if he wasn't a spy there are some genuinely abnormal correlations to be explained. If you're familiar with the case the Australian intelligence analyst Paul Monk gives a fairly strong case that even if the official story on Hollis isn't wrong, it is wildly inconsistent and economical with the truth.
Wright is a bit of a loose cannon, but the late Chapman Pincher wrote an enormous book on effectively everything publicly known about the (at the age of about 100 no less) which is much more methodical.
There was a IWP panel about the case a few years ago; some evidence is so murky that some analysts were, even with a fastidiously planned and documented "argument map" to summarize the known evidence, joking about resorting to sending a freedom of information request to the GRU.
I think a couple of Macintyre's other works even top The Spy and the Traitor in terms of "craziness". Particularly Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat (out of those I've read). They're both thoroughly worth a read if you enjoyed this one.
I like this kind book list. My only complains is most book list is too US centric. I cannot appreciate some of the items in the list. Is there any good book list that is more for international audience?
Range is a great book! I really enjoyed reading it, it is a worthwhile read which expands your line of thinking.
I definitely also recommend Barking Up The Wrong Tree, it goes hand in hand with Range, books which challenge our way of thinking and what success is or what the correlation is.
I'm not sure I'm would be comfortable reading books recommended by Bill Gates.
Maybe the books are good, but I would rather have them recommended from other sources, with a mix of other books. The last thing I would want to do is think like Bill Gates. I wouldn't read books recommend from Donald Trump either. I also question any books that algorithm put together for me.
The only good book list is probably a list of books that have been banned from libraries or the government wants you not to read. I think there are 451 of those books?
I'd look at them more as a representation of the image the older, philanthropic Gates wants to project rather than as indoctrination to become a ruthless billionaire.
I don't tend to read the kind of socio-political stuff he always includes, but he's quite smart and has pretty good taste in science reading.
We will look back at 2020 and we'll think it was not such a lousy year. I personally consider that Covid19 was a godsend. Everyone (including Gates) were saying that a pandemic is not a matter of if but rather of when. And one came. But remember, we have a flu pandemic every single year. For a pandemic to be registered as serious, it has to be more lethal than flu. And Covid19 was, but not by so much. It was quite the minimum extra-lethality needed to shake people into action. And we did act. We saw how bad we are at preparedness (I mean, if the famous "stockpile" doesn't have N95s, then what does it have?). It exposed so many holes. But then Pfizer and Moderna pulled the miracle. What they have done is not just come up with the vaccine for Covid, but they have broken the 4-minute mile of vaccines. Shattered it. Like going from 4:05 to 0:35. When the next one will come (and come it will), a 10-month sequencing-to-EUA cycle will be the target to beat. Not a 5-year timeline. Will we be able to have a vaccine in 6 months, or maybe 3 months? That's not entirely inconceivable now.
So, sure we've paid a dear price in blood with this Covid19, but it could have been much, much, much worse. And when the truly bad one will come, we'll be so much more prepared.
I’ve lost multiple acquaintances, and my significant other works at a hospital that has been slammed with COVID patients for over 6 months, and she is so burnt out and so tired everyday, and there’s nothing I can do to help her. Your assertion that this is a godsend rings very hollow to me.
Of course we have and will continue to learn from this, but that doesn’t mean this is a good thing.
> it has to be more lethal than flu. And Covid19 was, but not by so much.
COVID-19 is five times deadlier than the flu. It's killed over 1.5 million people worldwide, and almost 300,000 people in my home country (USA). It'll be many months before enough people are vaccinated to ensure herd immunity, if it ever happens. Yeah, I suppose it could improve outcomes for an even deadlier next time, but calling it a godsend seems queasily rosy.
Also, fatality rates aren't the only basis for comparison. COVID-19 seems to be leaving survivors with serious long-term and quite possibly permanent damage at many many times the rate that flu does. More like polio than flu, not least in that it was the survivors who reminded everyone day after day of how serious it was.
I would say it's probably more than five times deadlier than the flu. In 2018 about 60k people died because of "influenza and pneumonia" [1], so 300k deaths due to Covid is five times worse, but that's with some quite strict lockdowns. Without lockdowns it's anybody's guess, but twice as many deaths doesn't appear outrageous.
That said, what "flu multiple" would have scared people into action? Even now, in December there are surprisingly many people in denial, up until the last moments of their lives. There are people who think this whole Covid is only a conspiracy (did you hear the one about "Gates' vaccine" which is actually just a way to inject people with nanorobots?). If Covid was only twice as deadly as the flu, would the Congress have passed the CARES act in 2 weeks? Maybe they would've if it was exactly 2.85 times as deadly as the flu, but we'll never know.
What we know is that we all die one day or another. In a regular year 2.8 to 2.9 million people die in the US. 300k is 10% of that. That's bad, and every single death is a tragedy, but this was no Bubonic Plague.
