Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
Recommendations from 100 sampled comments out of 402 eligible comments. This page covers the sample, rather than the entire HN thread.
127 books
dinofacedude · Dec 29, 2019
Dune and Lord of the Rings. Both have such detail to their worlds that is rarely done well in other works. On top of the world building, I enjoyed the internal struggles that both Paul and Frodo had to go through to become better people and achieve their goals
t-writescode · Dec 28, 2019
A strong upvote for Thinking Fast and Slow. I think it should be required reading in school, or at least parts of it.
onlyrealcuzzo · Dec 28, 2019
The Black Swan by Taleb and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman are two books that pretty much completely changed how I view the world, and have made me much happier as a direct result.
palerdot · Dec 29, 2019
- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius (good peek into the mind of one of the greatest emperors of all time)
nevf1 · Dec 29, 2019
Personally, I would put "Sapiens - A brief History of Humankind"[0] in the list rather than it's successor "21 Lessons for the 21st Century".
Intermernet · Dec 29, 2019
The bible is at least as full of pithy quotes and genuinely helpful, thoughtful points to consider as the usual self help books. It's definitely worth a read
dinofacedude · Dec 29, 2019
Dune and Lord of the Rings. Both have such detail to their worlds that is rarely done well in other works. On top of the world building, I enjoyed the internal struggles that both Paul and Frodo had to go through to become better people and achieve their goals
folli · Dec 29, 2019
Counterpoint: I prefer the abridged version. Dumas was originally paid by number of pages and it shows IMO.
qznc · Dec 29, 2019
His fanfiction "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" serves as a nice introduction.