Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2024?

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overview

  • Thread is a big book-sharing list: mostly enthusiastic recommendations across fiction, non-fiction, technical books, and manga.
  • Many comments emphasize books that changed perspectives, clarified difficult topics, or simply reignited the joy of reading.

Non‑fiction, Ideas, and Society

  • Several readers highlight works on systemic violence, extractive institutions, and why nations succeed or fail, appreciating multi-factor explanations (institutions, history, culture).
  • Environmental reports on wildlife decline and biomass distribution leave some feeling we’re in an ongoing ecological crisis that isn’t treated with appropriate urgency.
  • Other praised topics: ethics under rapid technological change, the history of American research universities, global material and energy systems, happiness and psychology, and personal transformation memoirs (education, crime-to-profession arcs, mental health).
  • Some mention books that eased existential dread about current politics and culture.

Technical, Physics, and ML

  • The Feynman Lectures are lauded for making concepts click once calculus/linear algebra are understood; related math/physics books are recommended.
  • A long subthread debates a critical video about the Feynman persona.
    • One side claims the video misrepresents authorship and unfairly portrays his stories as fabricated for attention.
    • The other side says the video acknowledges his role in the lectures, suggests only embellishment rather than total fabrication, and criticizes the mischaracterization of the video.
  • Other valued resources: Next.js docs, interpreters and language design tutorials, systems programming texts, ML overviews, and applied ML system design. One commenter laments that fewer people seem to read technical books.

Fiction, Sci‑Fi, Manga, and “Light” Reads

  • Strong enthusiasm for: post-apocalyptic trilogies, hard sci-fi epics, space operas, alternate histories, and intricate fantasy series with coherent magic systems and mental-health themes.
  • Many appreciate “brain candy” series (action thrillers, procedurals) as relief from coding, though one reader is put off by a hero’s repetitive romantic patterns.
  • Classics (e.g., long 19th‑century novels, Russian literature) are described as emotionally devastating, perspective-changing, and worth overcoming initial resistance; some readers only appreciated them later in life.
  • Manga and graphic stories (post-apocalyptic, intricate magic systems, large-scale mysteries) receive praise for long-term plotting, moral complexity, and distinctive art, though one commenter finds a particular mystery series’ resolutions weaker than its setup.