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Posted by dan-bailey 9 hours ago

Ask HN: What are you reading?

I'm plowing through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which is not particularly challenging as sci-fi/LitRPG goes, but entertaining enough. I'm also wrapping up Doctorow's _Enshittification_, and I'm looking for something a little meaty to keep the brain working...
97 points | 242 commentspage 3
ngokevin 46 minutes ago|
Avatar: The Last Airbender books. Yangchen's series. Nothing you'd use to try to show off your knowledge over coffee, but fun well-written read with great world building.
cleandreams 49 minutes ago||
"What Happened to Liberal Democracy" by Daron Acemoglu (Nobel laureate).

As someone who fled the desolation of the rust belt this book spoke to me and I found it credible and compelling. My book club spent 4 hours discussing this book.

mkovach 1 hour ago||
J.L. Austin: Philosopher & D-Day Intelligence Officer.

Austin worked for British Intelligence during World War II, running the Martians section and helping assess possible invasion sites for D-Day. After the war, as a philosopher of language, he helped bring ideas such as performative utterances and speech acts into the discussion.

A fascinating overlap between intelligence work and philosophy of language.

And because the Brewers are in the playoffs, "Catcher in the Wry" by Bob Uecker. Despite being a Cleveland fan, I have to admit the book is amazingly fun. Uecker was Uecker long before he became everybody's favorite baseball storyteller, and he was the Cleveland announcer in Major League.

phugoid 1 hour ago||
Value(s): Building a Better World for All by Mark Carney, the current prime minister of Canada. He starts out with his perspective on the history of economics and money - it reads a bit like a textbook.

He has a knack for being critical and optimistic at the same time. Funny too!

jeremyscanvic 2 hours ago||
I'm reading singer song-writer Lily Allen's 2019 autobiography My Thoughts Exactly. I really liked her last album West End Girl (2025) and I wanted to know more about her and her creative process and inspirations. She tells about lots of different things having happened in her life, her relationship with her parents, how she grew up like. Really enjoyable read so far!
gorgoiler 1 hour ago||
After my father died last year I’ve started going through his collection of popular-science paperbacks.

Done: QED, Richard Feynman. Lectures on explaining quantum electrodynamics but with no more math than geometry.

Currently: One Good Turn: A natural history of the screwdriver and the screw, Witold Rybczynski. The discourse goes into his references in depth. It has yielded an excellent list of museums to visit.

On deck: Impossibility: The limits science and the science of limits, John Barrow. A re-read for me. Barrow discusses what we can never know in a way that’s like P vs NP but for the physical world.*

weldu 46 minutes ago||
I’m reading the gospel! It’s super interesting and accurate account to my understanding.

I’m specifically talking about the New Testament.

I’m currently reading Hebrews 6.

pmg101 2 hours ago||
Middlemarch, finally!

I'm 50% of the way through and it's good but I don't entirely see the hype. Brontë is more atmospheric, Austen funnier and more incisive, Dickens more immersive. But I've still got a way to go.

david927 1 hour ago||
You can't entirely judge a George Sand novel partway through. For my money, it destroys any Brontë, Austen, or Dickens.
imperialdrive 2 hours ago||
Something about it though, feels good to meet folks that have read it.
hackernud3s 39 minutes ago||
Iain Banks - Excession - 5 stars and the most optimistic series on AI

Dungeon Crawler Card - Not for me but I might give it another chance

Bukowski - Post Office - Worth reading, Gen-Z might get triggered

electroweak 6 hours ago|
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Recently passed the bit where Ammianus complained the rich had bought up much of the property in Rome and turned so many into renters and gave stats to show it. Amongst his many other complaints.

Sadly found I could have been reading a better abridgement, which I'll get for the 2nd reading now.

akkartik 6 hours ago|
Tell me more about the abridgements. Which one now, which one next?
electroweak 6 hours ago||
I'm reading Dero Saunders penguin classic which I picked up from a used book store. It's fine, but I'm at the point where the last 6 books of the original should kick in and Saunders treats it as an epilogue. I didn't even realize there were multiple abridgements when I started, and reviews of the others seem to include more about that and retain more of that special "Gibbonness" that's been so much delightful effort to parse. It's been a slow and halting first read I'm looking forward to a more uninterrupted story the second run through. I'll probably go for the Wormesly one and try to spot the differences. You only really start to know a great book after the second reading anyway.
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