Posted by dan-bailey 1 day ago
Ask HN: What are you reading?
Oh hell, what truly great novel. It’s a long collection of people’s inner monologues, and it’s confusing as hell at first that every Russian has at least three names. But so good.
Before this: The Subtle Art Of Folding Space… biggest pile of shit I’ve read in years. Fuck. So stupid. If you made me pick between reading it again and a Kristin Hannah… I’d just go get my wine glass and basic bitch sweatpants now. It was supposed to be “modern sci fi” it was actually a food snob that seems like they’re in a cult and trying subtly to tell you how everyone else is so fucking stupid except the smart people that choose to be mentally superior to everyone else. Bad bad bad.
* Iain M. Banks is a bad writer. His books are predictable. You know the goodies (1990s neoliberals with space helmets) are gonna win. There's no moral uncertainty and not even really any jeopardy.
* I'm seeing an alarming amount of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Look, if you don't want to read, just don't read! There's no point reading rubbish. Just play a computer game or pick your nose or something. There's a thousand years of literature out there. Some of it is really good.
* Neil Gaiman. American Gods was so unbearable I couldn't finish it. How can any decent person like this vain, pompous writer?
I am judging typical hn-er tastes, sorry, but it's as if I thought PHP was the best programming language or something. No. It is not.
Genre is fine! There's great SF and fantasy. But bad writing is bad writing. Genre is not an excuse.
- Fiction: Pure entertainment, with no shame, although I do enjoy working in a mix of slop and more high-brow works. I generally go through one of these every 5-10 days.
- Non-fiction: Big, meaty, interesting book. These take me forever to finish but I really enjoy them. I get through like 100 pages in a good month.
- Children’s: I have been reading to my son, which is entirely for me as he’s only ~5mo old. But I have a stack of lovely children’s classics that I have greatly enjoyed going through.
Here’s what I’m currently reading and some recommendations on previous stuff I’ve read.
Fiction
Right now I’m finishing up The Kremlin’s Candidate. Not great, the series has been going a bit downhill. Some recent hits:
- The Dog Stars (Heller): Awful movie, incredible book. Highly recommended.
- True Grit (Portis): For everyone recommending Lonesome Dove, definitely get a copy of True Grit. A fantastically fun masterpiece. A real achievement.
- The Force (Winslow): The first 80 pages are deep cringe but it picks up into a really compelling and fast crime novel. Pulp for sure but fun.
- All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy): Incredible book. I could read it 100 times.
Nonfiction
- The Politics of Heroin (McCoy): Dense but very very good. First hand reporting of the CIA’s role in the global drug trade and how it has, to a surprising degree, shaped the modern world.
Children’s
- The Last Unicorn (Beagle): Surprisingly nice. Some rough edges but I’m enjoying it. If my son was able to understand more than just that he’s spending time with me and that I’m making comforting noises I think he’s enjoy it.
- The Wind in the Willows (Grahame): Stop everything you’re doing and go read this. Aloud, your kids if you have them but as a treat to yourself if you don’t. What a joy this is.
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Some things I haven’t read that are on the shelf thaf I really want to dig in to:
- Challenger: History of the tragic NASA accident.
- First Casualty: Inside the CIA’s paramilitary ops and the early days of the Afghanistan war.
- The Great Game: Historic book on the power struggles of the British and Russian empire in Afghanistan.
- Lonesome Dove: I love westerns, I have this whole series on the shelf, and am kind of just waiting and keeping it in my back pocket for a rainy day.
- Power of the Dog series: I just know I’m going to love this. Cartel/DEA saga spanning decades.
- McCloskey’s CIA series: It’s slop, and the tradecraft is dated to the point that what is happening in the field now is completely unrecognizable from the dead drops and SDRs and such of the cold war, but… it’s fun!
On the non fiction side, I'm slowly chipping away at Joe Studwell's book How Asia Works, about East Asian development. In the first section of the book, the author argues that the foundation for successful development was boosting agricultural output -- instead of spending precious foreign currency on food imports, surplus agricultural output can be exported & intensive farming provides a way to soak up and use labour before other industries develop.
Studwell also argues for the importance of land reform in boosting agricultural output -- appropriating land from wealthy landlords & redistributing it to landless peasants & tenants. This happened in both socialist & capitalist societies. There was a huge demand for land reform from landless peasants. I was completely ignorant of this chunk of history & found it fascinating. Agricultural output increases on a per hectare basis when farmers have the incentive to work hard - unlike if they're day labourers or share croppers paying much of their output as rent. Landlords don't have an incentive to increase output as its easier for them to earn money from renting out their land & lending money. Studwell gives examples of small farmer-owned farms being much more productive than colonial plantation style farming. Developmental success stories (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea) were those where governments supported their huge newly created markets of tiny landowner-farmers with subsidised fertiliser inputs, better varieties of crops etc & where peasants & tenants got a seat at the table to influence the land redistribution process. There are also stories of failures where wealthy elites got control of the land reform process & rendered it largely ineffective (the Philippines).
Having read Steve Jobs by him, I was quite excited to read more by him.