Ask HN: How do you decide what non-fiction books to read? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you decide what non-fiction books to read?

10 pointspersonjerry7 comments

Hey HN, I find that I always have a long list of books to read, and to be honest I can only read one book at a time, and it takes me a week or two to read it. For this list I compile self-help, learning, entrepreneurship kind of books, not the fiction entertainment kind of book. Fiction I can consume much quicker. A good self-help book usually means actionable, concrete guidance with just a sprinkle of theory.

The reviews from Goodreads or Amazon are inconsistent and often just false, and I've found the only reliable source of good books are my friends (and only a handful of them).

What system are you currently using to narrow that book list down and find the truly helpful reads?

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The MIT press series is like a gateway to the subject.

I often pick them up when I’m flying, they’re short enough to read on the flight.

Recently I picked up the data science book it was quite good and I found I had a better understanding of the industry and relevant buzzwords to go and learn more.

The cloud computing one was not as good, it was more aimed at managers deciding to buy cloud services rather than say a dev wanting to figure out docker and aws.

The real value is they have great references to learn more and can point you in the direction of good technical books to dive deeper.

Find a subject or something that is important to you right now. A lot better to learn things just-in-time instead of just-in-case. Questions like "what I am obsessively thinking about or struggling with" tend to be helpful.

I keep track of book recommendation by people I know or from sources I follow on the internet using Goodreads. So whenever I decide to learn about about X, I check first my book recommendation books.

If available also try to read a book summary before reading the actual book. Often I find myself reading books based on the title & description and only halfway through I discover that the book isn't really about the things I thought it is.

My Goodreads list if it is any helpful: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/46183317

If you're saying that you generally can't trust positive reviews, maybe read some of the negative or mediocre ones. Try to see the "why" of the reviews. Then pick the book that claims to have information about the topic you are interested in and reviews that seem to come from a similar point of view that you have.

If you start reading the book and it isn't helpful, skip ahead and see if the next chapter/topic is. If not, move on to the next book. Libraries can be helpful for this since you can read a bit before checking it out.

I love to read and constantly struggle with finding good book reccomendations. I've considered building a book reccoemdation platform around this problem.

I too have found good reads and Amazon to be near useless for discovery. Some of the tricks I use are as follows.

Podcasts: any time I'm listening to someone interesting on a podcast and they mention a book I write it down. Bonus points if the podcast host frequently asks guests for book reccomendations (good podcasts for this strategy include Tim Ferris, Tyler Cowen, and Lex Friedman)

Personal reccomendations: I ask everyone I know who reads if they've read any good books lately. That tends to be a good way to get out of my bubble too.

Google + reddit: searching for threads on reddit about good books. The /r/books subreddit tends to focus on bizare minuta about reading rather than book recommendations, you're looking for threads on subreddits like /r/AskReddit. Good queries include "best book you've ever read Reddit", "favorite book of all time Reddit", "book that changed your life Reddit". You can also narrow it to the genre you're looking for "favorite sci-fi book of all time Reddit"

Google + hacker news: exact same strategy as above but with hacker news instead of Reddit. There are also several book aggregators that scrape hacker news. I prefer the search method but of those sites this one is my favorite: https://hackernewsbooks.com/

References from other books: If I'm reading a book I like and another book is referenced I'll write it down as a potential next book. If there is a concept I'm unfamiliar with but sounds interesting I'll use the Reddit or hacker news method to try to find good books about that topic. If there is an author I like I'll also try to read all their books.

TikTok: I've found TikTok to be the best social network for reccomendations generally, that also applies to books. Lots of channels dedicated to book reccomendations usually by genre.

You mentioned non-fiction specifically. Something I've become a big fan of recently is textbooks where possible. Usually it's much more detailed and complete than say a pop science book. Most textbooks are terrible so make sure you use the Reddit or hacker news method to find the best textbook(s) for the relevant subject.