Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?

117 points · christudor · 8 days ago

I'm looking for inspiration for the Christmas holidays.

Mine were: – Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai (2000) – William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis (1991) – John Ma, Polis (2024) – John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice (1982)

(Apologies if someone has posted something similar recently. I did a quick search and couldn't find anything.)


150 comments
bwb · 7 days ago
If you guys want to browse, I've had 1,300+ readers share their 3 favorite reads of the year here: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024

You can browse by a lot of different genres, etc.

You can also submit yours here -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads

You can see my 3 here: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb *Every submitter gets a page like that.

What were my 3? 1. The Cold Cold Ground - Fantastic police procedural set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. 2. The Aggressor - Near future Tom-Clancy-like sketch of a USA/China war. 3. Wounded Tigris - Amazing Nonfiction about a team traveling down the entire Tigris River. Heavy on environment, history, and people. Utterly fascinating.

whacko_quacko · 8 days ago
The End of Race Politics by Coleman Hughes. Pretty good book. I used to be a bleeding heart liberal with pro social justice (read: pro affirmative action) sentiments, but he makes a compelling case against it. Also, it's very well written and fun to read

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bemmu · 8 days ago
“Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke.

Refreshing and beautiful because it’s a totally new kind of world for a story to take place in, essentially survival in a world of procedurally generated endless architecture.

Most of the time there is just one or two characters among repetitive environments, which was relaxing as I get easily confused if there are 5+ characters to remember or extensive mental visualization required.

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fredoliveira · 8 days ago
Read a lot this year — a lot more than most years. A few highlights:

The making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes was probably the best of the bunch. I read it because I see some parallels between the discovery of atomic power and the search for AGI, and wanted an insight on the ethics and decision making of the time. It didn't disappoint.

The dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow was a solid read and retelling of how civilization began and evolved.

The message by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I read in two sittings — it was that impactful. A reminder of how the oppressed becomes the oppressor again and again. "As it happens, you can See the world but never see the people in it"

Other highlights: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt; re-read Thinking in Systems by Daniella Meadows; re-read Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat Zinn; The light eaters by Zoe Schlanger; I don't want to talk about it, by Terrence Real.

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Yawrehto · 8 days ago
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. If you're into Jewish history/legend, Baba Yaga, intergenerational trauma, or just good books, I would find it difficult to recommend it more. It's well-told and well-paced (note: do not read at night if you have something to do in the early morning the next day). As you would expect from a book drawing heavily on Jewish history, it can be difficult to read.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. Excellent book that handles time travel and its implications reasonablly well. She also wrote a shorter, "children's" book series under a pen name; quotes from it appeared in Middlegame. It's called the Up-and-under series. I've only made it through book one so far, as I lost book two, but so far it's been good!

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. It's been on my list of books to read for ages and it is in fact excellent, if difficult. I'm planning on reading some of her--allegedly much less dark--books about the sea next, because I've heard she can be very poetic and in Silent Spring it shines through sometimes, but not often.

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