I've gotten many great literary recommendations in random HN comments.
Wondering what the community at large is currently interested in!
omosubi5 minutes ago
Civilisations by kenneth clark - an art critic tries to understand western civilization through the "book" of its art.
chistev6 minutes ago
I'm favoriting this for later.
kapilkaisare2 hours ago
Simmons, Dan. The Terror
I'm about 50 pages in, and am entranced with the prose.
card_zero13 hours ago
I read The Whispering Mountain by Joan Aiken and was struck by similarities to Pratchett, for instance the part where the main character heroically defeats monsters in a wood by using knowledge gleaned from an old encyclopedia that he carries everywhere, and how he ſpeakſ like thiſ when reading aloud from it, and the part about underground camels in Wales. It references The Far-Distant Oxus at one point, which I want to read (a pony adventure story written in 1937 by teenagers).
(I know the long s wasn't really used at the ends of words, that was just a hurried example.)
cafard5 hours ago
A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by Quentin Lauer
Augustine's Confessions
Last fiction: Nice Job by David Lodge
whatamidoingyo5 hours ago
I'm reading The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot for the second time. It's full of gems.
andyjohnson011 hours ago
Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. As with some of his other work, the punctuation can be a challenge and the prose can sometimes border on the ponderous, but I'm enjoying it. Currently about half way through.
wara23arishan hour ago
reading Blood Meridian now, honestly it just flows for me.
I grew up reading arabic and sentences are just feel longer so maybe thats why Im not struggling with it.
jorisboris7 hours ago
Just finished Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
lberk6 hours ago
How did you like the book (compared to the movie)?
jorisborisan hour ago
I like the old world charm
The book was written in the 50s, its way slower than the movie (though still a short read). Some things from the movie plot are the same
I love details like how difficult it was to get something communicated across a border only 75 years ago
aosaigh9 hours ago
"Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History", about our first civilisations.
ValtteriL14 hours ago
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre (1923)
kratom_sandwich11 hours ago
How do you like it?
ValtteriL10 hours ago
I'm 3/4 through it.
It's been quite entertaining to read how he went from picking off bucket shops to going bust on Wall Street and how he proceeded from there. Old-fashioned writing that goes straight to the point.
His art-like approach to speculation is refreshing after spending time on /r/quant. I cannot say if any of his high-level speculation wisdom hold water anymore, though.
Would recommend!
chairmansteve12 hours ago
Post Soviet Britain by Abby Innes. Excellent so far (70 pages in).
Crossing the Unknown Sea by David Whyte. Also excellent. Nearly finished it.
constantinum2 hours ago
War and peace - third attempt
shawn_w16 hours ago
Currently: Moby-Dick and Termination Shock. (That the former gets brought up a lot in the latter is a coincidence.)
chistev14 hours ago
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy D. Snyder
precompute4 hours ago
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson.
alberto_ol9 hours ago
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
badpun8 hours ago
Me too! I'm about 40% through.
SMAAART18 hours ago
Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters, by Jeremy Utley
BOOSTERHIDROGEN9 hours ago
How to get along
jus3sixty17 hours ago
“How Can I Help” by Linda Hand
defrost9 hours ago
Rereading Bliss by Peter Carey after opening a 45 year old box o' books from a back shelf in the shed.
It's a red pill fable for marketing directors (and other threads are pulled).
Later adapted for film, it saw 400 viewers walk out on it when screened at Cannes... most likely when the fish hit the floor. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifR7tsVT_-Y