The Master and Margarita

I've never really felt like Kafka seems to have and I read a lot, mostly novels. For what it's worth, I don't love Kafka's novels: I think he wanted them burned for a reason -- they're meandering failures. Very clever but they don't go anywhere. His short stories, though, are excellent. Off the top of my head, the most moving books I've read are The First Circle, any long Dostoevsky novel, The Master and Margarita, The Tartar Steppe, any Elena Ferrante, any Cormac McCarthy, some Murakami (Ryu and Haruki), Gene Wolf (The Book of the New Sun), 2666, parts of Moby Dick, any Alice Munro. All well known "good books".

Going to be reading: - Staff Engineer - Thinking in Systems: a Primer - Team Topologies And for fiction: - The Master and Margarita Might re-read peopleware again as well.

it's a fantastic book, philosophical and silly, beautiful and funny and sad, & arguably made more moving by the fact that bulgakov left it in a drawer when he died, broke and obscure. it's one of my all time favorite books and perfect for rn. sidenote, here's a pretty (non-spoiler-y) animation that someone made about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BrA-XHXZ07E

The burgin and o’connor translation is by far the most excellent english version. chapter end-notes that tell you all the soviet jokes you missed.

see my nick, but in addition to stephenson, the books i come back to over and over again for comfort and wisdom include: - Lord of the Rings: The other bible. Not even the very wise can see all ends; be of good cheer. - A Wrinkle In Time: 9 year old me, there is such a thing as a tesseract, and there is also Mrs. Beast. - The Master and Margarita: apocalyptic reading from someone who knew, and a cat who always pays his way. - the Discworld series: Sir Terry knew our hearts better than most, and sin, young feller, is treatin’ people as things. - If On A Winter’s Night, A Traveler: a perfect joke that you can tell once, plus a love story. - Good Omens: Gaiman and Pratchett team up, what’s not to love? - Moby Dick: And so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content. - Lucky Jim: grad school, a survival guide. Come in on the fa la la las, there’s a good chap. This doesn’t include poetry, which is also in my head constantly.

I've seen The Master & Margarita mentioned a few times in this thread and for anyone who might pick it up, you'll want to familiarize yourself with popular historical Christian names and events first. I was not raised Catholic and was a bit lost reading through some of it because I had no idea who some of the characters were or what the references meant. Made for some fun conversations with my girlfriend who read it first and was familiar with all those names and their historical context. It was a fun book to read though. Got a bit boring for a while but the ending is great so I'm glad I stuck with it.

i actually just finished reading it last night. probably one of the best bits of fiction ive read.

This is disappointing to hear, but to anyone who is deterred by this comment from reading it in English, don't be. Even in English, the book was undoubtedly one of the best books I have ever read. There's something about it that makes you go "What happens next?!" for all 400 odd pages of it, and before you know it, you're at the end. It's truly a masterpiece - Bulgakov spent 10 years writing the final version of the novel after burning his initial manuscript twelve years prior in 1928, but as you will come to learn, manuscripts don't burn ;)

My highlights from this year: 1. "How to Measure Anything" (Douglas Hubbard) Presents a few simple techniques (confidence intervals, Monte Carlo simulations, regression analysis, Bayes, etc) to help with decision-making. E.g., should we build this feature or spend the same money on marketing? I put it alongside "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (Daniel Kahneman), "Superforecasting" (Philip Tetlock), "The Art of Thinking Clearly" (Rolf Dobelli), etc. These books explain how our thinking is often flawed; "How to Measure Anything" gives you some tools to avoid flawed thinking. Note: if you already know the math (a lot of people on HN would), you might not get that much out of it. 2. "Why We Sleep" (Matthew Walker) As I read this book I kept thinking about all the people I knew who would benefit from it: family and friends whom I want to have healthy happy lives, managers who believe that they'll get more out of people by pushing them to work crazy hours… and lots of people who think they’ll get more out of themselves if they sleep less.…

I loved this book. Everyone has a different opinion on what the best translation is, so it’s worth briefly scanning a few different ones to see which you like best. I had a really hard time getting into the Ginsburg translation, but really enjoyed the Pevear/Volokhonsky one. Also, this site: http://masterandmargarita.eu/en/ is a great resource if you’re not familiar with 1930s Soviet history and the Gospels (both canonical and apocryphal). Without knowledge of those things you won’t get nearly as much out of the book as you could.

Agreed. A worthy read[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita

Yes. This book is fantastic.

I can't give just one, but here are a few that had a strong influence on me: "12 Rules for Life" by Jordan Peterson, "Why Switzerland?" Jonathan Steinberg, "Little Book of Common Sense Investing" by John C. Bogle, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Butron Malkiel, "Liberalismus" by Ludwig von Mises, "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "A Treatise of Human Nature" by David Hume, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, "The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat, "Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin, "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, "Gespräche mit Goethe" by Johann Peter Eckermann, "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau, "The Old Regime and the Revolution" Alexis de Tocqueville, "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, "A Treatise on Political Economy" by Jean-Baptiste Say, "The Man Versus the State" by Herbert Spencer, "The Revolt of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset, "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" by Joseph Alois Schumpeter, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper, "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman, "On Power" Bertrand de Jouvenel, "1984" by George Orwell, "The State" by Anthony de Jasay, "Sketched With the Quill" by Andrzej Bobkowski, "My Correct Views on Everything" by…

+1. An absolutely wonderful read. I've found myself constantly gifting copies. To anyone looking to purchase, the Alma Books[0] translation is the one I would recommend. [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/... (https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/1847492428/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496547526&sr=1-6&keywords=master+and+margarita)

Autobiography/Memoirs: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Richard Feynman What Do You Care What Other People Think? - Richard Feynman Crime and Guilt: Stories - Ferdinand von Schirach Fiction: The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov Technical: Bulldog: A Compiler for VLIW Architectures - John Ellis

I separate my books into levels. Level 0 are the books that I reread steadily over the years (also the ones that I pack in my suitcase when I'm moving as opposed to shipping), so I'll just post that list here, in no particular order: 'Good Poems' edited by Garrison Keiller; 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen; 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen; Fitzgerald's translation of 'The Rubaiyat'; Ford Madox Ford's 'Parade's End'; Hafiz, 'The Gift'; Modesitt, 'Gravity Dreams'; Heinlein, 'Time Enough for Love'; Bulgakov, 'Master and Margarita'; 'Ovid in Love' (Guy Lee's translation of the Amores). I've been revisiting a lot of Le Guin's novellas ('The Found and the Lost' is a great collection) and Borges's stories since the election. They have been a source of great comfort. I find that I don't reread nonfiction. I'll reference something I remember in it, but I can't think of a work of nonfiction I've reread in the past few years.

Love that Bulgakov book (apparently the translation you pick matters a lot, but I wouldn't know, since my sister gave it to me as a gift). I like the Hesse book a lot, although the metaphor is more powerful to me than the book, which is probably not the first Hesse book I'd suggest.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The core story is one of stalinist Faust but the whole arc is much better.

"Orthodoxy" - GK Chesterton "The Abolition of Man" - CS Lewis "The Master and Margarita" - Mikhail Bulgakov "The Brothers Karamazov" - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't tend to read biz books, but recently I've read a ton of great Russian texts. The Master & Margarita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita Goethe's Faust & the story of Pontius Pilate retold in 1930s Russia. Really, I mean really damn good. Very readable. Books 1 & 2 of The Gulag Archipelago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago An expansive history of the Soviet prison camp system, almost a folk history. Petersburg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_%28novel%29 Think Joyce writing about a revolutionary plot in the Petersburg of 1910-something, involving patricide and a time-bomb set for 24 hours from now. Yeah. That and slowly working through Proust (book 5). I'm not sure if I really recommend it, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts from other smarty-pants HN people.

I'm not sure about "essential reading", but I like most anything besides Science Fiction or Fantasy (probably the opposite of most folks here) Some of my top choices would be: Anything by Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog and Master and Margerita are both pretty widely available in English) Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood Burmese Days by George Orwell Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham Color of Summer by Reinaldo Arenas Williwaw by Gore Vidal The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Master and Margarita is very good, but you have to take care with which translation you pick up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita#Englis... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita#English_translations)

Things you can easily read on the beach: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain (but read Kitchen Confidential first if you haven't already). Also recommend FiveBooks.com, which does interviews with various academics and "thinkers" each recommending 5 books on a particular subject. It's a bit slanted towards politics but has a fair bit of hard science as well.