1. Joel Spolsky's reading list: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/11/22/reading-list-fog-creek-software-management-training-program/
2. Robert Anton Wilson's reading list: http://www.rawillumination.net/2010/09/raws-recommended-reading-list-following.html
I'm just wondering if you have also some reading lists that you go back to?
He also created the weekly newsletter “hacker news books“ which collates the book recommendations in hacker news comments each week:
That's not to say I won't glance at a reading list from time to time, if it's somebody I respect or find interesting, just to see if I can find some inspiration for something novel or whatever. But by and large, I don't go looking for reading lists. Probably I found that sort of thing more interesting when I was younger and didn't already have as many of my own ideas about what I need to be pursuing.
Having said all that... the one person whose name comes to mind, in terms of people who I have often appreciated reading recommendations from (in terms of "celebrities" and not, say, random HN commenters):
- Bill Gates
Even though I'm far from a "Gates fan boy". In fact, I am one of those "old school open source" guys who thought of, and still thinks of, Microsoft as "The Great Satan" more or less. Go figure, right?
So where do I get ideas for new books, aside from the ones already on "the list"? A combination of:
- HN - random HN commenters recommend books quite often and more than a few have made my reading list. I found out about The Pyramid Principle here, for example.
- Twitter - occasionally people I follow will mention a book that catches my interest.
- The bibliography of other books I read (for non-fiction, obviously) - I frequently skim the bibliography of books (and references of papers) and chase pointers to other related material that I discover there.
- Amazon - Sometimes I just search for a subject I'm interest in, and skim the list of returned titles and pick a book based on some combination of author, rating, reviews, cover, the phase of the moon, and whatever other subjective factor comes into play.
Alibris - I often search for a topic, and if I find several very cheap (say, less than $10 USD) titles on the subject, I'll just pick 3 or 4 or 5 or 7 or them and order them without much further consideration. A lot of time these are math books or in other technical areas, when I'm probing the edges of my current knowledge, or have some vaguely speculative idea that "learning more about $X could be interesting" for some value of X. Mostly I'm hoping for serendipity to deliver something valuable. If not, I haven't wasted much money, so "no harm, no foul."
Youtube - for math books in particular, I do value the recommendations of certain Youtube creators, like The Math Sorcerer. https://www.youtube.com/@TheMathSorcerer
In terms of fiction, I mostly just keep reading the next new book by a handful of authors who are on my "always read their next new book" list, and/or titles that have been on the "to read" list since I was a kid and that I just haven't found my way to yet. When new fiction I'm not at all familiar with winds up on my list if's often a recommendation from, again, an HN commenter, or something I randomly stumble across on the Internet somewhere. That or something on the shelf at B&N that catches my eye.