18 Book Recommendations from the HackerNoon Team

Winter is coming...so there's no better time than now to add to your want-to-read backlog and get ready to hunker down and stay warm with a nice book. In this post, the HackerNoon staff and blogging fellows talk about some books we've been reading recently, as well as some of our favorite authors.

This Slogging thread by Limarc, Mónica Freitas, Khunshan Ahmad, Gimbiya Galadima, Ashutosh Mishra, Amy Shah, Adebola and Blake Cram occurred in hackernoon's official #fellowship-central channel, and has been edited for readability.

LimarcNov 4, 2021, 10:51 AM

What books are you all reading these days? Who is your favorite writer or one of your favorites?

LimarcNov 4, 2021, 10:53 AM

I'll go first I'm reading Exit Kingdom which is the second installment of a literary zombie novel series by Alden Bell. It's gothic and the best zombie novel series I've ever read so far.

I'm also reading Dotcom secrets as recommended to me by Utsav Jaiswal our Head of Business Development

LimarcNov 4, 2021, 10:55 AM

Also to get more philosophical, my therapist recommended Staring at the Sun which is a book about death anxiety 😅 basically I wanted to learn how therapists approach the topic of mortality

LimarcNov 4, 2021, 10:56 AM

As for favorite writers: Cormac McCarthy, Nicholas Sparks, John Green (for a short time in college), Higashino Keigo

Mónica FreitasNov 4, 2021, 12:19 PM

Limarc Hey! I'm currently reading Children of Blood and Bone. It's a fantasy book with obvious takes on colonialism, race, and a bit of magic.

This year I read "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi - it's amazing and one of my favorites! It's a reflection on time and relationships (love, friendship, parenthood), and it uses time travel as a centerpiece for developing each character's story.

Mónica FreitasNov 4, 2021, 12:31 PM

"Caim" by José Saramago it's also a trip! Highly recommend.
As for favorite authors, that's always a hard one for me. I read a lot of Leigh Bardugo and V.E. Schwab this year. If you like fantasy and adventure books, they wrote several good series like "Six of Crows" and "A Darker Shade of Magic." The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is one of my highlights of the year as well.
In the thriller department, I love Stephen King. On the classics, Edgar Allan Poe, Eça de Queiróz, Kafka, George R.R. Martin and Markus Zusak.

Khunshan AhmadNov 4, 2021, 1:44 PM

“Never Split the Difference.” I am trying to improve my weaknesses i.e. negotiation. It has 4.8 ratings by 20k+ on Amazon. The book is writen by Chris Voss who used to do hostage negotiations for FBI.

Gimbiya GaladimaNov 4, 2021, 2:36 PM

I just finished reading Ogadinma, a feminist narrative that tells the story of a young girl who has to deal with so many negative experiences. I enjoyed reading the piece, but it left me with so many questions at the end. I don't want to drop any spoilers, so it's a great read by Ukamaka Olisakwe, a Nigerian writer. Children of Blood and Bone is another beautiful fantasy story written by a Nigerian US based writer. <@U02ED8YNUKX> I hope you enjoy reading the story till the end.

Mónica FreitasNov 4, 2021, 5:07 PM

I loved the first book. I'm starting the sequel now. I hope it's as good as the first one :crossed_fingers:

Gimbiya GaladimaNov 4, 2021, 6:14 PM

Great. I hope you enjoy reading everything

Ashutosh MishraNov 4, 2021, 6:21 PM

I haven't read from last few months, but want to restart in some days with any deep book on future of tech and humans, either Homo Deus or one of Michio Kaku's books.

There are so many amazing books and writers so I don't have any favorite writer as such. My favourite writers are generally those whose books I like and read recently.

Amy ShahNov 4, 2021, 7:35 PM

My current read is Thinking Fast and Slow by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Daniel Kahneman. I tried listening to the audiobook of this but the actual book is better I feel. It has been slow going. I am not even a quarter of a way through with it. This paradigm Kahneman talks about: System 1 and 2 thinking, has underscored many conversations I have had lately. I needed to get the information from the source here with this book (if I ever finish it 😉

Amy ShahNov 4, 2021, 7:39 PM

Another very old book I read recently is a book called Go For It by Dr. Irene C. Kassorla. The book is so old the pages are tan and brittle. Dr. Kassorla was a psychologist in the 1970s and she wrote the book in 1984. It's a great uplifting book about reframing thoughts to help one accomplish what they dream of.

AdebolaNov 4, 2021, 8:54 PM

I need to get me a copy of Ogadinma. Sounds Interesting. I tried reading Children of Blood and Bone earlier in the year but couldn't get past the fact that it was Fantasy.

Foreign gods by Okey Ndibe was such an enjoyable read. I hate when writers do not have an ending though but I guess sometimes It's difficult to end a story.

Gimbiya GaladimaNov 4, 2021, 11:19 PM

Fantasy is different for everyone. I feel like writers write such stories because they want to leave the reader guessing. I haven't read Foreign Gods, the reviews are amazing though. Ogadinma is interesting, I hope you enjoy it.

Blake CramNov 4, 2021, 11:59 PM

I read a ton and am typically working on a couple books at once. I just finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway which I really enjoyed. Even as an English major I somehow didn't make it around to reading Hemingway’s full novels, only a few short stories, so this was fun to dig into. I also just finished Press Restart which is a non-fiction work by Jason Shreier talking about the struggles of video game developers and how unsustainable that workforce is— highly recommend for the gaming writers here, along with his other book Blood Sweat and Pixels which goes into how games are made. Aaaaand, now I'm just getting into Dune for the first time, because I always have to throw some sci-fi or fantasy into the mix!

Blake CramNov 5, 2021, 12:08 AM

Favorite writer is a really hard one… there are so many. But, I particularly love Octavia Butler for her writing style. She doesn't waste words and uses short prose to pack a huge rhetorical punch. And I love what she did socially for the genre as a woman of color writing really bad-ass sci-fi in a very white male dominated genre. The recent landing of the Perseverance on Mars was even called the “Octavia E. Butler Landing” in her honor. She's the shit.

Amy ShahNov 5, 2021, 12:09 AM

Mental note: add all these books to my list....😀

LimarcNov 7, 2021, 8:23 AM

I loved The Great Gatsby, but for some reason, haven’t been able to get into any other of “The Great Works” of American literature. I feel like it may be because some of the stories are outdated. What is a must read Hemingway book that I should try?

Like for example, I tried getting into Charles Dickens but read 10 pages of A Tale of Two Cities and just dropped off.

LimarcNov 7, 2021, 8:23 AM

Amy Shah “It’s a great uplifting book about reframing thoughts to help one accomplish what they dream of.”

What is the TL;DR of how to reframe your thoughts to accomplish your dreams?

LimarcNov 7, 2021, 8:24 AM

Khunshan Ahmad that’s super interesting. i’ll have to buy that one. How are you applying this? Is this mostly helping with like negotiating sales in your company?

Amy ShahNov 7, 2021, 4:53 PM

Limarc One that strikes home for me is: Believe in Yourself.

Amy ShahNov 7, 2021, 4:53 PM

Is that short enough? 😃

Khunshan AhmadNov 7, 2021, 6:06 PM

Limarc and during hiring. 😉

Amy ShahNov 7, 2021, 7:36 PM

2 books/stories/movies that I wish I had watched earlier in my life would be: 1. Dead Poets Society 2. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Both of these I think could be life changing.

Amy ShahNov 7, 2021, 7:37 PM

While they are not my favorites, I can see in them the power to influence strongly and the potential to be positive for someone.

Blake CramNov 8, 2021, 3:36 PM

Limarc I think that's totally fair. What makes it hard is that a lot of the historical context is often lost on us, so you usually have to prepare by doing a bit of research into what the authors were trying to communicate at the time. Because while the context can be outdated, the relevancy and art certainly aren't. While humanity has progressed in some important ways, we see we’re often still struggling with the same issues, so it's interesting to see how folks in different points in history dealt with them. I think we can learn a lot about ourselves that way.

Older works also tend to be a lot slower for us, especially if we are into tech or modern film because we’re used to faster paces and more stimulus. But at the time, books were used as a way for people to see and understand the world, because traveling wasn't as viable and the internet didn't exist. So authors had to be a lot more descriptive of the places and characters in a different way than authors do today.

So if you can get past some of those things, I think For Whom the Bell Tolls is a good Hemingway starting point to see if you're into it. It's humorous and incredibly dark at times that remind me of a Tarantino film, and Hemingway the describes the life and environment of a guerrilla faction in the mountains of Spain is similar to how Haruki Murakami can describe something mundane as beautiful and intricate.