A Good Summer Read? 1485
binaryhead asks: "Well, the semester has just ended, and I have graduated from school! :-) I start my full-time job in a month and want to read a good book in the mean time. Having read Snowcrash, Neuromancer, and most of the hacker biographies, I am trying to find a scifi-geek-hacker book that people like. I might try the new Kevin Mitnick book, but I wanted to see what Slashdot preferred. Thanks."
Gibson.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Gullivers Travels (Score:5, Interesting)
books in pre-Change Internet form (Score:3, Interesting)
For Brain or Pleasure (Score:1, Interesting)
Apart from that I like crime fiction by Michael Connelly, not exactly typical slashdot fodder, but hey you asked.....
Re:Ender's Game (Score:2, Interesting)
Summer Reading (Score:2, Interesting)
Or if you have already read those too many times, try out The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Reading (Score:5, Interesting)
- The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft (Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!)
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes: Stories and Novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Tales and Poems (the tales, mostly; I'm not big on poetry)
Not exactly sci-fi geek hacker stuff, of course, but I've read through most of Stephenson and Gibson's stuff and found that I like classic mystery/suspense as well. If it's hard sci-fi you're looking for, check out a book called The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, if you haven't already. It's old (circa 1950s or 1960s IIRC) but a great read. And then there's the classics like Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama or 2001 series.Wicked (Score:3, Interesting)
How was this missed? (Score:2, Interesting)
Iain M. Banks SF Books (Score:3, Interesting)
Reading "Consider Phlebas" (title is a nod to T S Eliot's "The Waste Land") right now.
Seek the path less read (Score:2, Interesting)
Good hacker mystery (Score:2, Interesting)
A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin (Score:1, Interesting)
Sci-Fi Fantasy books on a 1-10 scale (Score:5, Interesting)
I rank the books I read on a 1-10 scale.
Not everyone agrees with me
http://www.remsbox.com/showBooks.php
might give you some ideas if nothing else.
Re:Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Score:2, Interesting)
Jailbird is another Vonnegut classic worth picking up.
You read one Lovecraft story you've read 'em all. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lovecraft is much the same. Read Cthulu, be disappointed at the ending, ask "Is this it?" and move on. The rest of his stories are reformulations of the same.
Re:How about... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Just one? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there are the ones written after his death by other authors. Don't bother. I got about 1/4 of the way through Foundation's End and realized I had no idea what was going on.
Good Read (Score:5, Interesting)
good read, great plot, and the tech stuff isnt too shabby either.
bonus treat: perl source for the cryptographic alogrithm described [and used in the story] called solitaire [the algo, courtesy of bruce schneier of counterpane and "practical cryptography" book] presented at the back of the book...
Re:Good Omens by Niel Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (Score:4, Interesting)
My mother bought me this book because she thought I would find the "motorcyclists of the apocalypse" amusing. It was a great read, and I have often laughed about some of the images.
Do yourself a favor and get this book. Then start listening to NPR. Buy the books they review. You get a wide variety of good reads this way. I got _Ice_Masters_ via NPR last summer, and I never would have bought it otherwise.
If you haven't read _Confederacy_of_Dunces_ do it soon. _Catch_22_ is another classic I have read more than once. _Jupiter's_Travels_ is a winner and the author is currently going around the world again.
I'll spare you a longer list.
Stuff I wish I had read & some I have (Score:3, Interesting)
Don Quixote by Cervantes
The Divine Comedy by Dante
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
War and Peace by Tolstoy
Various Mark Twain works
The Bible
so much more. Curse me for my laziness.
Stuff I have read and recommend highly...
Kurt Vonnegut books, particulary Slaughterhouse Five It is hilarious.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller It, too, is hilarious and biting.
J. D. Sallinger books and stories
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Re:I don't read much fiction but... (Score:2, Interesting)
That book changed my world view by applying game theory to behaviour of evolved creatures. The Selfish Gene is probably the best book on popular science I've read in my life. (If you know any better books, please add them as comments!)
Be aware that religious people (e.g. christians, marxists, etc) tend to hate the research presented by TSG. The idealists can't accept that some of people's mental characteristics are partially genetic. (Personally, I have the ambition to look at facts first and build opinions on how the world works after that. No theory that goes the other way will succeed since there are so many more ways of being totally wrong than close to correct.)
Also, be sure to read the notes in the second edition -- they are as interesting as the book itself.
Re:Gibson.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I read it a few months ago and STILL think of Cayce Pollard every time I'm in a clothing store. And every time I remove a label from the stuff I buy.
I think she's my new idol.
Anything by Kurt Vonnegut or Chuck Palaniuk (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gullivers Travels (Score:3, Interesting)
If we want to wax philosophical but still keep the reading accessible to the casual -- unlike, say, Spinoza's "Ethics" -- there's material such as Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia". Fiction-wise, there's plenty of philosophical fiction, especially in the woe-is-the-world apocalyptic genre typified by, say, John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" or other dark material such as most anything by Philip K. Dick or Franz Kafka. History can get one thinking, as well... and readers shouldn't confine themselves to their own histories, either. Need to learn about evil? Pick up something on, say, Stalin's gulag system.
Or grab a well-written satire. Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" fits; it's well-written, damn funny, and absolutely brutal regarding the nonsensical bits of '30s life in the Soviet Union.
Hell, my collection meanders between history, hard-boiled detective novels, science fiction, oft-depressing literature (e.g. Camus, Kafka...), a couple of books on photography, epic novels (RoTK), the occasional thoughtful satire, Le Carre-ish suspense/espionage... I see no reason for anybody to pigeon-hole himself to the point where he specifically wants just "geek books". I'm a human being, not a dedicated organism whose sole purpose is geekdom.
Of course, it also costs me enough that Jeff Bezos probably
That's easy... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Terminal Experiment, by Robert J. Sawyer.
It's about what happens to society when someone discovers proof of the human soul... and a whodunit involving virtual personas created as a method of simulating possible afterlifes.
Heck, nearly any of his works would do.
Re:Gibson.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Neuromancer's "Miss Linda Lee" is in the song "Cool It Down"
The book "All Tomorrow's Parties" appears to be named after a VU song as well.
There are others as well, but I can't recall of the top of my head.
Re:How about... (Score:1, Interesting)
Shameless Self-promotion (Score:4, Interesting)
You may like my book, Dancing Barefoot [monolithpress.com]. There's a really long story all about Star Trek (scifi) and me (geek) and Vegas (hackers, I suppose, if you count Bringing Down the House, which is a GREAT summer -- or anytime, really -- read.)
But I won't pimp the link for BDTH, because I'm only shamelessly promoting myself.
Re:Ender's Game (Score:2, Interesting)
As for the Ender series, I enjoyed them all. The first book stands on it's own. The next three (chronological by publish date) are sequels, and you should definently read them in order. The last two (Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon) are directly along/after Ender's Game. Read them at the end of everything (I did) or after the first. I personaly think that Hegemon was the weakest - but undoubtly leaves room for an another sequel.
-dave
How about something USEFUL? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Adventure Reading (Score:1, Interesting)
O'Rourke is funny and insightful, and he does not take himself too seriously. He's also (or was in the past) a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, for what it's worth.
Hmmm, better post this anonymously - it's not yet karma burn Friday.
Re:Ender's Game (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were going to recommend a couple of really excellent books for hacker summer reading, I'd aim for some quality writers who are also going to make you sit down and think a bit afterwards.
First, I'd go with Jack Womack. Strictly in terms of how he writes, I think he's one of the most interesting SF writers around. His books experiment very interestingly with language (although they are page-turner readable), with ideas about the post-national or post-government future of the world, with artificial intelligence, and even with mutant post human freaks.
The first book I read by him was Ambient [powells.com], about a corporate assasin in New York City in the not-so-distant future. The main character thinks and tells the story in an oddly compelling near-future english slang that will have you thinking in Ambient yourself by the end of the book. Another, Random Acts of Senseless Violence [amazon.com], is a kind of prequel to Ambient, in which a young Upper East Side rich girl watches her world collapse into post-national chaos. The language in the book changes from proper english (with a snotty schoolgirl attitude) to Womack's invented post-English gradually to reflect the character's own slide into violent street life as the city collapses around her.
Another hacker classic I have not seen mentioned here (surprisingly) is Vernor Vinge's Across Realtime series [amazon.com](there are three, read them all), which many people credit with inventing cyberpunk (the first one precedes Gibson). A more recent Vinge book, and my favorite, is A Fire Upon the Deep [amazon.com]. Vinge is not (I would say) as good a writer as Womack, but he is a hell of a lot better than most of the hacks I've seen mentioned in this discussion, and he's had by far some of the most interesting and influential ideas in SF writing.
Free Radical (Score:2, Interesting)
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Score:2, Interesting)
The books begins at MIT in the late 50s, with hacking at the model railroad club, and ends at MIT in the 80s with the Richard Stallman about the freedom to hack software. I found the beginning and the end of the book much more interesting than the stories in the middle set in Stanford and the Valley.
Re:Sci-Fi Fantasy books on a 1-10 scale (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm looking to index my collection and what I've read..
some of my favorites ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Trader by Charles de Lint -- A story about waking up in a stranger's body sounds a bit cheesy, but this one sucked me in with its exploration of identity and personality. The ending wasn't the predictable warm, fuzzy, everything's okay type, either.
Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice, both historical fiction with no vampires or magic whatsoever. She does a wonderful job of bringing these places and times to life.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson -- just incredibly engaging. The book is huge, but it's a page-turner from start to finish. Actually, I haven't read anything by Neal Stephenson or Steven Bury (an alternate pen name) that I haven't adored.
The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams (Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower). Epic, beautifully written coming of age story set within the context of a compelling war between good and evil. The characters really come alive.
Re:How about... (Score:2, Interesting)
I loved Fury and Midnight's Children. Reading Satanic Verses right now and The Ground Beneath Her Feet is on my post-graduation list.
Also try Bill Bryson's books. A Walk In The Woods is very good.
Cry of the Kalahari was one my favourite books of all time.
Surely You're Joking, My Feynman - while not very "non-hacker", this book is _the_best_ I've read. Funny, nay hilarious, witty, amazing. Quite a few things to learn.
Finally, if you're coming out of tech school with an engineering degree or something of the sort, (ie without a significant liberal arts background) now might be a good time to round off your educations with some books about religion, philosophy, economics, politics and business (to name a few). While the subjects might sound drab, you might just find your calling (econ for me).
Happy reading.
carnegie (Score:3, Interesting)
caller id (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fantasy? (Score:2, Interesting)
His characters have been marking time for close to 2000 pages. I love epic fantasy...but only if it GOES SOMEWHERE.
Only thing that annoys me more, is that his success is making Terry Goodkind do the same thing.
More productively, I just read Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow, which was fun and short. The previous night I read Mil Millington's Things my Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, which was also short and fun.
Now I'm reading Interface, by Stephen Bury, which is a Neal Stephenson pen name. Interesting political sci-fi joint. I'm only 50 pages into it, and it's great stuff.
Other staples of my library: David Weber's Honor Harrington books are just fun bubble-gum reading. Nothing profound, just good space opera.
Anything by Orson Scott Card. Highlights: Pastwatch; The Redemption of Christopher Columbus and the Alvin Maker books. Ender: Duh. Of course. : )
Anything by Sheri S. Tepper. She won't be to everyone's taste, but she's always very imaginative. And very feminist. Be warned.
Signal to Noise and Signal Shattered by Eric S. Nylund. Imaginative and dark.
Deepness in the Sky and Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
Uplift War series (9 books?) by David Brin.
If you haven't read it, turn into a thirteen year old again and read The Belgariad and The Malloreon by David Eddings. The rest of his books get a bit tiresome but the first ten have legs. Also, while in the same mindset, the first three Dragonlance books by Weis and Hickman (Dragons of Autumn Twilight &c) are worthwhile and not too masturbatory.
Hmmm....what else? OOOH!
Rudy Rucker. His 'ware series (Software, Wetware, Freeware, Realware) is funny cyberpunk. Saucer Wisdom is...indescribable and bizarre.
That should keep you busy. Let me know when you're done with these.
Re:For the love of God, don't start the Wheel of T (Score:3, Interesting)
Everything that's come out of Neil Gaiman's pen is freakin' awesome. I haven't read all of Sandman, but his novels are really imaginative and evocative. I loved his children's book, Coraline.
Greg Egan and Iain M Banks (Score:2, Interesting)
Iain M Banks is probably not counted as hard-scifi author but his books are thought-provoking and entertaining as hell (I even recommend you to take a look at his non-scifi books, published under the name Iain Banks, some real gems there too). Try The Player of the Games, Use of Weapons or State of the Art which is a excellent collection of short stories. Cheers, Tero
Cryptonomicon's characters (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, reading it now is an opportunity to be nostalgic about that Internet Boom Thing that was so many quarters ago....
Re:Gibson.... (Score:2, Interesting)
by Sergios Theodoridis, Konstantinos Koutroumbas, Ricky Smith
Was just shown to me by a friend... It's on the advanced undergraduate / graduate reading level and introduces the problem of pattern recognition in various domains. What I read was very well written.
I have a background in fourier analysis and error correcting codes and both of these topics are re-introduced and applied by this book. Granted, a bit technical, but I think it could be appreciated by the professional engineer or someone (like me) recently out of college.
GRRMartin (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ender's Game (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I enjoyed the internal dialoges of Ender, but perhaps that simply displays the undiagnoses Asperger's in me. I wouldn't say that Card has tapped any powerful positive human truths or displayed them in a particularly fascinating fashion.
In fact, most of the message is pretty negative. Survival is the first priority. To defeat your enemy you must love them (its written in the book but its not what I'd call supported). The people of the world (and even your parents!) are easily manipulated by children thanks to the power of the Internet and anonymity. People are out to trick you into doing bad things for them. You might argue that the book serves as some form of cautionary tale, like Das Boot, but the lack of consequence, carnage amd dispair makes it a poor one.
Its pretty clear why its popular. When most soon-to-be-fans read it, its what they want to hear, and they haven't looked back. If you want to see SF writing that works well, refer to the first halves of Neal Stephenson's books. Snow Crash was witty, fast paced and full of commentary. The introductory pages were a well written colloquial storytelling. Unfortunately Stephenson ususally lacks an overall plan of where things are going. Focus would benefit the man nicely. Snow Crash had too much going on with the virus, Y.T. and Hiro, Raven, Da5id and ultimately ran out of a point. Diamond age had something to do with the liberation of China from foreign dependence, something do with educating women in the sciences and something to do with a sexual computer. Cryptonomicon had to use two seperate timelines (and a lengthy pornographic letter to the editor concerning grandma's furnature) to accomadate his logorrhea. And apparently he's not done, and moved onto another toilet called 'Quicksilver.' If someone associated with Stephenson could show a little editorial restraint, its likely his works would be among the high eschelons.
About A New Kind of Science (Score:5, Interesting)
First, the parts of the book that I flipped through when I first opened the package and took it out were either A) So self-congratulatory of Wolfram's "discoveries" so as to be annoying or B) Details of simple experiments with Cellular Automata conducted in Mathematica. You might have seen Commodore BASIC source code for similar experiments in Compute! magazine in 1982. Okay, maybe not, but you get my point. Even with those points against it, Wolfram appeared to make some interesting conclusions, so I decided to attempt it.
Which brings me to point the second: When I sat down and started to read the book, the lengthy copyright notice caught my eye. Lucky for me it did. Rather than go off on a rant, I'll let the copyright statement speak for itself:
I read no further than the end of the copyright statement and haven't opened the book since except for the purpose of this post.
Perhaps people might think it unreasonable, but I have to take issue with a book claiming to deliver A New Kind of Science in which all the science appears to be held under lock and key. Where the hell would we be if Newton, et al. patented calculus, or Knuth patented algorithmic analysis?
So all I can offer is my completely uninformed opinion based solely on my layman's interpetation of the copyright statement: Stop before you infect your mind with Wolfram's IP.
Snot (Score:2, Interesting)
I am looking forward to reading his other books.
Things I liked about it
1) Intelligent. Not scared of hard things
2) Funny sense of humour. eg the breakfast cereal thing
3) Way out there storyline, combined with nitty gritty details (similar to Miss Schmilla's Feeling for Snow)
4) nerdiness. The nerd-as-protagonist (if not hero) appeals to my inner nerd.
Still 'non degustebum' and all that...
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Score:4, Interesting)
Anything by Hofstadter (Score:3, Interesting)
Godel Escher Bach, The Mind's I, Fluid Concepts and Creating Analogies, or if you are adventurous and don't mind getting headaches from thinking about things, Metamagical Themas.
All his books from Amazon [amazon.com], but I would go to best book buys [bestbookbuys.com] to find the best prices on them.
My wife has read Le Ton Beau De Marot, and she loved it. She has her masters in French Linguistics, and found this book in the bookstore at the same time that I found Metamagical Themas. We were kind of surprised when we went to check out and found that we had found books by the same author in different sections of the bookstore. Hofstadter is a very smart and interesting guy, and writes some awesome stuff. I think that GEB is a must read.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Michael Lewis - Moneyball (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, I know, the idea of reading a book about sports is probably not appealing to most slashdotters. But this one may be different. Essentially the book describes how Beane and his staff of math geeks and computer nerds have been able to succeed on a low budget by employing some radical ideas about player talent evaluation.
If you've ever wanted to see a real-life case study of the smart kids beating the jocks at their own game, this is it.
_Infinite Jest_ by David Foster Wallace (Score:1, Interesting)
to encounter. And reading it will provide you
with oodles of postmodern cachet.
(Don't waste your time on adolecent b.s. like
_Ender's Game_ or the latest Larry Niven wankfest
for heaven sake!)
After you chew through IJ, try _The Tunnel_
by William Gass, _Auto da Fe_ by Ellias Canneti,
or _Gravity's Rainbow_ by Thomas Pynchon.
non geek, but worth reading (Score:1, Interesting)
I've read the following two recently - The New Rulers of the World - John Pilger & Reffer Maddness - Eric Schloser. Both are worth reading. Alternatively take a look at Stupid White Men by Michael Moore.
Fiction wise, Spider by Patrick McGrath, Body of Evidence by Jon Banville and No Great Mischief by Alistar MacLeod would all rate up in my recent reading as being good.
Sci-fi, take a look at anything by Ian M. Banks or else for the fantasty stuff try some Tad Williams, both excellent. Morgan Llewellyn has done some beautiful takes on Irish legends which could be worth taking a look at as well.
Finally if your up to it take a look at Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Beware, its not easy reading, but its one of the best books I've ever read. But beware of following into its theories.
Re:Good Read (Score:2, Interesting)
I loved Cryptonomicon. It was the first of his books that I read. I think the characters are fully realized, fully realistic, and, best of all, dynamic.
The Cap'n Crunch chapter is good, but my favorite is Ronald Reagan's interview with Bobby Shaftoe. Bobby Shaftoe is awesome. Haiku-spouting, Philipina-loving stupendous bad-ass. Actually, I changed my mind. My favorite passage (out of almost any book) is the first paragraph. That and the "until he's 25" section of Snow Crash. Stephenson has the pulse of man-geeks.
Uninteresting characters? Maybe. Maybe...no. Both main Waterhouses are interesting, and I think the depiction of Lawrence's naivete is just amazing. His ability to switch viewpoints from character to character and to modulate his writing style just enough to let you get a feel for each character. He doesn't write the same for Lawrence, Randy, or Bobby.
The worst thing about the book is, unfortunately, the editing. There are quite a few typos, and some major slip-ups that should have been caught.
By the way, if you get a chance, listen to the audiobook of Snow Crash. Audiobooks are the saving grace of commuting.
How about a little philosophy inbetween? (Score:3, Interesting)
I recommend two rock solid classics that are considered the best in putting people to thinking (and finding answers). Aka:
The best in philosophy:
Arthur Schopenhauer; [amazon.com]
The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims
This is, iirc, Schopenhauers last book and is generally considered one of the references in philosophy in general. Basically an extract of modern & classic philosophy since the ancient greek. Actually a must-read for every literate grown-up. Beware Schopenhauers pessimism though, that's the catch with his stuff. Very educative read though.
Rudolf Steiner;
The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception [amazon.com]
This one is generally rewarded as the best 'unknown' work of philosophy of our cultural epoch. Steiner is a monist, just like Schopenhauer, but he unweeds Schopenhauers general pessimism and takes on all the dualists generalisims that are used nowadays to prove that humans have no free will (and stuff like that) and does a very good job at correcting Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Kant and a whole league of all the rest of know philosophers.
I personally consider this a *very* important read for anyone who likes to ponder the life and times of the human race and the human individual. So I think you could say everybody should read it.
BTW: Afaik one could say that the currently very popular Ken Wilbur is something like a 'makeshift Rudolf Steiner'. Allthough I have to admit that I haven't gotten around to reading a lot from him....