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Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

421 points| ellinoora | 6 years ago | reply

Any great books you cannot wait to read next year? Maybe something you wish to learn? Curious about all kinds of great book suggestions for 2020. Thank you for sharing! (And I wish you all a great, educational new year)

320 comments

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[+] pjmorris|6 years ago|reply
I hilariously overestimate the number of books I can get through when I make these lists, but my current list for 2020 is as follows:

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution

Book of Proof

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation

Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War (for a friend)

Master and Commander

Educated

Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark

Stretch goal: The Power Broker, as a warm-up for Caro's LBJ series

The Bible (perpetual, I don't get through it every year, but I get through much of it, often)

EDIT: I also hilariously underestimate the number of books I want to read. Here's one more I think is vital for my 2020:

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

[+] douglaswlance|6 years ago|reply
My top priority books:

    Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers

    Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny

    Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan

    Design Patterns - Gang of Four

    Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler

    Programming Pearls - Jon Bentley

    Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler

    The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

    CSS: The Definitive Guide - Eric A. Meyer, Estelle Weyl

    Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers

    Head First Design Patterns - Eric Freeman, Bert Bates

    Code Complete - Steve McConnell

    Peopleware - Tim Lister, Tom DeMarco

    Clean Code - Robert C. Martin

    The Clean Coder - Robert C. Martin

    Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin

    Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

    Functional Design Patterns for Express.js - Jonathan Lee Martin

    The Surrender Experiment - Michael A. Singer

The best books I've ever read:

    Principles - Ray Dalio

    The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

    The Effective Executive - Peter F. Drucker

    Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

    Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

    Influence - Robert B. Cialdini

    The Startup Way - Eric Ries

    The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

    12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson

    Measure What Matters - John Doerr, Larry Page

    The Fish That Ate the Whale - Rich Cohen

    The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber

    The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh

    Management - Peter F. Drucker

    Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows

    Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
[+] dmos62|6 years ago|reply
I've begun reading The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, his first novel. It's left a very good impression so far. It's a fourteenth century murder mystery, set in a monastery, where the mystery is mostly an excuse for exploring the historical and cultural contexts, which are very interesting. Wikipedia has a nice summary: "an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory". Eco was a semiotician and a philosopher and he brings the best of that to the table in this book.
[+] puszczyk|6 years ago|reply
I look forward to read “Meditations”[1] by Marcus Aurelius and re-read “Black Swan”[2]. On the _craftsperson_ front I’ve heard good things about “Designing Data-Intensive Applications”[3] by Martin Kleppman.

Also hope to get some good recommendations here :)

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30659.Meditations?ac=1&f...

[2]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242472.The_Black_Swan?ac...

[3]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23463279-designing-data-...

[+] Havoc|6 years ago|reply
Before diving into meditations spend 15 mins researching Aurelius. Because it's written diary style without intention to publish the context triggering his thoughts isn't always explained in the text.

e.g. Parts seemed quite obsessed with death - which is in part a stoic thing - but also just because at time of writing he was already old & his health was failing.

[+] beaconstudios|6 years ago|reply
Meditations can be a slog - he repeats himself constantly, as is the tendency in published ancient Greek diaries/correspondence. It's a great grounding for stoicism though. I'd recommend also reading the Enchiridion and Discourses of Epictetus - I found them easier to absorb.
[+] 0kl|6 years ago|reply
Re Aurelius: preview a couple different translations if you can - I have found there to be significant differences.

If you have the time/inclination and haven’t already I’d also suggest reading Epictetus and Seneca first.

NB: My favorite of all the available Aurelius translations so far is Martin Hammond (Penguin Classics)

[+] rramadass|6 years ago|reply
Get a few different translations of "Meditations". I recommend the ones by Gregory Hays, Martin Hammond and Robin Hard. The book is basically a collection of thoughts on various aspects of cultivating one's character and developing a "stoic" approach to whatever life may throw at you. It has no overarching framework/grand theory and thus you can read the individual thoughts in random order as the mood strikes you. It is quite practical and needs to be practiced in everyday life (with some commonsense changes to adapt to current time period).

You might also want to look into the works of Epictetus, Seneca and Cicero.

[+] kedean|6 years ago|reply
I just finished Kleppman last week. It took me since August since I was mostly reading during working hours, but I highly recommend it, especially as a companion piece if you already have a lot of familiarity with database technologies.
[+] Scarblac|6 years ago|reply
I read Meditations this year, and found it very repetitive and only occasionally inspiring.

It might be good to spread out reading it over a long time. Read until you find something that clicks with you. Repeat after a few weeks.

[+] james_s_tayler|6 years ago|reply
Meditations has some cool phrases here and there. It mostly gets very repetitive and you figure out his philosophy pretty clearly early on because he restates the same idea in hundreds of different ways. It's largely the same idea though.
[+] kidintech|6 years ago|reply
My compiled list for 2020, as suggested by friends I respect and HN:

General

====

- Master & Margarita (w reader's guide)

- Why we sleep

- The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion

- The wisdom of insecurity

- The denial of death

- The three body problem (friend's advice: slow burn, stick with it)

- The dubliners

- The devils (Dostoyevski)

- The name of the rose

- Enten-Oller (Kierkegaard)

- Zero to one (Peter Thiel, recommended reading as palantir new joiner - not fantastic but has some thought provoking ideas; i.e. which very important truth would very few people agree with you on?)

Economy/finance

===

- Basic economics (Thomas Sowell)

- How an economy grows and why it crashes

- Know the city

Math

===

- Coffee time in Memphis

- Real analysis (mathematics textbook)

- Problems from the book (Halfway through this one, and I found it really enjoyable, even with only a CS bachelors)

If anyone has read any and has feedback/notes, I'm looking forward to hearing them!

[+] CaRDiaK|6 years ago|reply
My fiancée is an avid reader of fiction and canonical literature, she averages around 40 books a year. I was looking for something interesting to get her one Birthday for a change and was recommended "The Master & Margarita" by some folks on reddit. She loved it. It's a very strange book apparently but it steered her into some other Russian authors since.

I've read "Why we sleep" on your list—I average about 20 non fiction a year. It made me think about my own sleeping habits, although I believe there is a blog post out there that claims there is little scientific evidence to back up some of the medical claims made in the book, I still found it beneficial and thought provoking. The history and theory around sleep and it's role in human evolution I found particularly interesting.

[+] sshine|6 years ago|reply
Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of overlap in my have-read/wants-to-read:

Master and Margarita: Very recommendable.

Three body problem: Got bored.

Enten-Eller: Delightful.

Basic economics (Sowell): Very recommendable.

How an economy grows and why it crashes: Childish and grossly simplifying. I read this one while taking a year's of economics on top of my CS. My impression is that some economists have a bad habit of not stating their basic scholastic assumptions. Sowell and Krugman are, in my opinion, not unbiased, but able to inform you at a level where you don't feel like they're also trying to brainwash you.

As for the remainder, I've taken a few notes for myself, so thanks. :-)

[+] pgeezy|6 years ago|reply
Each of the books in the three body trilogy started a bit slow for me, but the payoff was worth it. Opens up into a pageturner about 1/3 of the way in.
[+] ronyfadel|6 years ago|reply
Can someone tell me why Master and Margarita is a masterpiece? I’ve read it this year and it was a slow read, of basically (possibly) the author’s dreams or long mescaline trip.
[+] madhadron|6 years ago|reply
Master and Margarita is one of my "level 0" books (the small shelf of books that get dumped in the suitcase when I uproot and change continents). It bears rereading over the years.
[+] entropyneur|6 years ago|reply
> If anyone has read any and has feedback/notes, I'm looking forward to hearing them!

The wisdom of insecurity: very very good if you are at all interested in the matters it explores

Zero to one: the whole genre of business wisdom books is crap IMHO, but at least this one is short

Basic economics (Thomas Sowell): total must read

[+] inertiatic|6 years ago|reply
Interesting list, commenting to have a look again later. I'm already reading the name of the rose after giving up half-way a few years ago.
[+] MattConfluence|6 years ago|reply
The Dune movie isn't due until December 2020, but I figured I'd get started with Dune the book, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while. Maybe if I enjoy it I will get my hands on the rest of the Dune series.
[+] zeroonetwothree|6 years ago|reply
The first book is great but the sequels are awful. So yeah
[+] firko|6 years ago|reply
Can't recommend it enough
[+] 0kl|6 years ago|reply
I plan to reread a couple core works for myself. Of that list the ones that I’d recommend for others are: Aurelius (trans. Martin Hammond) Fear and Trembling Man’s Search for Meaning Tolstoy’s Confessions Kundera’s The Art of the Novel

After doing a thorough reading of “How to Read a Book” I decided to try rereading a few books to pull more out of them.

I can’t recommend “How to Read a Book” enough - despite its anachronisms and glaring faults, it’s the only book I’ve found that has genuinely made me feel that I’ve not really read a single book in my life.

[+] bemmu|6 years ago|reply
To start the year off, my casual just-before-sleep reading will be "Ender's Shadow", which is a story that isn't a prequel or a sequel to "Ender's Game", but a story parallel to it.

"What We Cannot Know", which is an exploration of all the topics that we might never be able to know, such as how to predict the weather, is the universe infinite etc.

"Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder", because it's dauntingly long and I'm feeling masochistic.

"Commodore - A Company on the Edge" because I really enjoyed "Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", so I think I'll also like seeing how another computer I really like (the Commodore 64) came about.

[+] Balgair|6 years ago|reply
USMC Commandant's 2020 Reading List.

This year I am finishing up the Harvard Classics and am looking for a new view point. https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1

Unfortunately, the military only publish on New Years Day (traditionally as a sort of holiday gift to those under command), so the 2020 list is not out yet. Every title is free via either the base library or the Navy Digital Library. Most have free audio book narration. There are discussion guides also provided for free. The website is very easy to use and poke around in, I'd suggest looking at it from a Dev standpoint alone. That said, the 2019 list is here: https://grc-usmcu.libguides.com/usmc-reading-list

There are a LOT of titles so here are the Poolee through PFC levels:

Poolee:

BATTLE CRY by Leon Uris

CORPS VALUES by Zell Miller

GATES OF FIRE: AN EPIC NOVEL OF THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE by Steven Pressfield

GRIT: THE POWER OF PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE by Angela Duckworth

STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein

PFC through Lance Corporal:

CHESTY by Jon T. Hoffman

ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card

THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY: A TRUE STORY OF U.S. MARINES IN COMBAT by Bob Drury

THE MARINES OF MONTFORD POINT: AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK MARINES by Melton Alonza McLaurin

ON CALL IN HELL by Richard Jadick; Thomas Hayden

READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline

RIFLEMAN DODD: A NOVEL OF THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN by C. S. Forester

THE WARRIOR ETHOS by Steven Pressfield

The 2020 list should have some froth in it (Greitens likely won't stay, but who knows, judge the art not the artist). I think it'll be a good look into a Corps that has been punched for a long time in Afghanistan. Still, some great titles in there.

[+] aerovistae|6 years ago|reply
I wouldn't bother with Ready Player One, which is an unrewarding story mostly written as an effort by the author to collect every bit of his 80s nostalgia in one place.

Instead I would suggest Speaker For The Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game and a remarkable novel.

[+] madhadron|6 years ago|reply
Neat plan! I'll add a tangent, that if the material on Thermopylae intrigues you, there's a really good trilogy of historical novels by Helena Schrader about Leonidas and archaic Sparta that tries to lay out the best of our current knowledge (which is very different from what scholars thought about Sparta even a few decades ago...it's taken a long time to peel back all the appropriation on top of the fact that most of our sources are Athenian).
[+] gadders|6 years ago|reply
They should add House to House by David Bellavia. Excellent book and as it's written in the present tense you feel like you are right there with him.
[+] dgellow|6 years ago|reply
I want to finish to read Snowden’s autobiography: “Permanent Record”.

I started during a long train trip recently and found that I really enjoyed the tone of the first few chapters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_(autobiogra...

[+] rocketpastsix|6 years ago|reply
I listened to him read it on Audible. It's really interesting. Though it started off a little slow but picks up as it keeps going. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
[+] bluesquared|6 years ago|reply
I enjoyed it, though I thought it ended rather abruptly. I enjoyed reading about his childhood/early adulthood and how that shaped him and prompted him to act, but I thought more time would have been spent during/after "the main event"
[+] lawn|6 years ago|reply
It's great. I was surprised by how well written it was, it was very easy to read and had some good insights.
[+] dvko|6 years ago|reply
I am currently reading it as well. Only a few chapters in but already gained some interesting insights from it.
[+] sbolt|6 years ago|reply
I'm hoping to tackle this list in 2020, I've been wanting to read Caro's LBJ series for a while now.

=====

Robert Caro - Lyndon B. Johnson series & The Power Broker

S.C Gwynne - Empire of the Summer Moon

Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Black Swan & Antifragile

Graham Hancock - America Before

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel

Safi Bahcall - Loonshots

[+] haah|6 years ago|reply
My 2019 reading list
[+] melenaboija|6 years ago|reply
"Between the world and me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"A people's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn

[+] outime|6 years ago|reply
My bare minimum is learn more about Alan Watts and his books. I saw him mentioned here many times but it wasn’t until I started reading one of the books that I got hooked by his way of explaining fundamental life stuff.
[+] kaypro|6 years ago|reply
The Body - Bill Bryson

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Rovelli, Carlo

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment - Robert Wright

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari

[+] branweb|6 years ago|reply
The only one on this list I disliked was the Wright book, mainly because it's not a scientific justification of Buddhism. It's really about how evolutionary psychology explains stuff like road-rage and dieting struggles and how insight meditation (Wright's brand of secularized Buddhism) helps us manage those emotions. Which is fine. Only he's not an evolutionary psychologist and almost all the evidence he puts forward for the effects of meditation is anecdotal. For me a pretty disappointing book.
[+] yboris|6 years ago|reply
Can highly recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow and Why Buddhism is True (listened to both as audio books).

I have not read the others, but the 5+ books I read by Bill Bryson have been awesome, putting The Body on my year's list - thanks ;)

[+] lghh|6 years ago|reply
Leisure Stuff:

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga Of Oklahoma City, It's Chaotic Founding... by Sam Anderson

Midnight In Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (tried it this year and stopped, want to give it another go)

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just finished Exhalation and I think it's great)

An Ursula K. Le Guin novel, have not picked one out yet

A book related to basketball (possibly Dream Team, but IDK yet)

Less Leisure Stuff:

Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

The End Of Policing by Alex S Vitale

Either Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power by Chomsky

The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold

Work:

Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws by Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto

Finish Writing An Interpreter In Go by Thorsten Ball

If I can get through all of these, I will be very pleased. Throw in a book or two at recommendation from friends and I think I'm full for the year.

[+] Jallal|6 years ago|reply
Dune is great. Really great, especially the first part. While many books get a lot of praise/hype, Dune is one of the few that lives up to expectations.
[+] chucky_z|6 years ago|reply
For Ursula, I would strongly suggest Left Hand of Darkness. Try to read it without looking into it too much.
[+] renjimen|6 years ago|reply
Some good ones on in your leisure list that I have really enjoyed recently!

I also took two attempts for The Three Body Problem. Gotta say, I don’t understand the hype. Maybe something was lost in translation but it seems like another poorly written SF novel carried by a few interesting ideas. Not in the same league as Dune, Ursula Le Guin or some of Ted Chiang’s shorts.

[+] neeeeees|6 years ago|reply
If you haven’t read it already, I highly suggest Sam Smith’s “The Jordan Rules”. It’s really fascinating to see the tension that’s present behind-the-scenes even on a team that is super successful on the court.
[+] haileris|6 years ago|reply
I feel like I'm way behind on fundamentals so mostly textbooks. I'm focused on CS, maths, and finance mainly, not sure I'll achieve this in a year, kind of my perpetual read this within 10 years list. I'm also interested in literature but prefer reading to enrich my knowledge and skills as opposed to reading for leisure :

Maths:

James Stewart's Precalculus

Spivak's Calculus

How to Solve It

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

I Am a Strange Loop

Introduction to Linear Algebra

Euclid's Elements

The Principia: The Authoritative Translation and Guide: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

CS:

The Algorithm Design Manual

Finish SICP

Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Persepctive

C Programming: A Modern Approach, 2nd Edition

Operating Systems: 3 Easy pieces

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

Lions' Commentary on Unix

TCP/IP Illustrated

Finance/Econ/Business:

Liar's Poker

Investor Z (Manga)

Trading & Exchanges

Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options

Python for Finance: Mastering Data-Driven Finance

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it

Alpha Masters

Fooling Some of the People All of Time

Dark Pools

When Genius Failed

Advances in Financial Machine Learning

Algorithmic Trading

Other:

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free productivity

Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Chaos: Making a New Science

Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World

Data and Reality: A Timeless Perspective on Perceiving and Managing Information in Our Imprecise World

[+] iamjk|6 years ago|reply
> Computer Systems: A Programmer's Persepctive

Can vouch for this one. Provides a great overview of systems through the lens of algorithms they are built on.

[+] mattdanger|6 years ago|reply
Next up on my list is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I was given it as a gift from a friend and have seen it recommend here on HN

[+] nestorherre|6 years ago|reply
AH! So many books to read.. I always get excited when I see these type of threads (because I can get new worthy books to add to my list), but on the other hand I get depressed that it is pretty damn hard to catch up with everything that I want to read.

My list would be too long to post, but these are the ones next in line: - Meditations - Digital Minimalism - I Ching - Art of War - Tao Te King - Steppenwolf - Think and grow rich

In general want to focus on books of: business, leadership, self development, productivity and spiritualism (mostly buddhism).