I stopped reading it somewhere in the middle because it did not tell me anything new at all.
I understand we are all different and have our strengths and weaknesses, what is totally obvious to you is probably a new concept to me.
However, I think the important point of the book is that Carnegie succinctly collects a small number of behaviors that will improve your social life if you apply them. So you might not learn something new in the book, but hopefully it will teach you to focus on these known things instead.
I read a lot of movie user reviews on IMDb, and often people rant angrily about incredibly overrated movies, with the impression they're saying something about the movie and not about themselves. Maybe they feel smarter or better than the people who liked it. As if not being able to appreciate something is a virtue.
Anyway, why try to stop people reading a book millions have learnt something from?
That was not my intention, to stop someone from reading it. I explicitly said that:
> I understand we are all different and have our strengths and weaknesses, what is totally obvious to you is probably a new concept to me.
It is fascinating though how the most common subject in lists like this on here seems to be How to Win Friends and people saying it's great, other people saying it's overrated, not worth reading. Another thing I learnt from those movie reviews was that someone writing about why they love something is usually far more worth reading—is for much better reasons, says more about the thing—than someone not liking it, which often depends on arbitrary personal factors - not being advanced enough to appreciate it, being too advanced, feeling misled by the advertising or word-of-mouth, preferring or being used to a different style etc
I probably want other readers to remind that they should not blindly trust recommendations from HN.
Edit: If everyone agree's on something, new readers will more likely accept the fact that this book is worth buying, but if a few say the opposite, the reader has to evaluate before buying.
I once bought the book 'garry kasparov - how life imitates chess' because of HN reviews, It was probably the worst book I've ever read, full of obvious things.