You can just read 25 books | Hacker News Reader

You can just read 25 books

a16z.substack.com

25 pointsrawgabbit47 comments

I would love to read more, but apart from not finding a lot of time lately, when I do read, it's fiction. Occasionally I have read a textbook on a topic I am really interested in, and I've read blogs and articles on various sciency themes, but when it comes to books, I have just never been very into reading non-fiction. I don't try often, but when I do, I get one or two chapters in and just .. fail to pick it up again.

I know that non-fiction would be "good for me." Particularly reading more in topics I'm less knowledgable about, like finance and business and politics. Personal growth. However, I do find that fiction helps expand my perspective and even, somehow, knowledge, but it's different from non-fiction, less direct. I don't read for that, explicitly, although I do like the effect. But I read because.. I guess, because it's nice for my brain to be somewhere else. I don't know. But non-fiction has never done it for me.. my mind just gets.. bored, I think, trying to absorb what someone else wants me to know. Even when I find the topic interesting.

I guess there are people who like non-fiction and people who like fiction and they often cross-over but I think most people lean one way or the other. I can see there being positives and negatives to either side. People who equally read both must be rare? Or maybe it's just my impression.

> I know that non-fiction would be "good for me."

I think this depends heavily on which non-fiction, particularly when contrasted with which fiction you're currently reading.

I don't think reading the same self-help books as a bunch of CEO's who see themselves as bold outsiders to the system will actually benefit you; it didn't make them self-aware.

Fiction contains information and ideas; it helps you expand your horizons, and that's generally a good thing. As long as you're not reading a very limited subset of fiction, it will be beneficial.

Reading science fiction has given me ideas that I would have never had before. I can comfortably say that it has expanded my narrow mind. Even pulp space-opera helped here!

Apart from that, taking the time to grok the architecture or top-rated issues of open source projects helps to make you a better developer - or at-least avoid obvious mistakes when coding some new feature of your own.

Of the 25 authors listed there are:

  18 americans.
  24 people in the global north.
  24 men.

EDIT: people reaalllllyy hate when this is pointed out. See child comment for some alt recommendations.

And 24 non-fiction books.

Identity doesn't matter. Ideas matter. If you think the ideas in those books are bad, attack the ideas.

Ideas matter, yes. And distribution. If you want good coverage, read books from a more diverse crowd. If you want narrower ideas, do the opposite.

In a vacuum you would be right. However, such a skewed distribution is virtually guaranteed to be biased and expose you only to a very small sample of the ideas and experiences of humanity. It's not even a matter of the "ideas" being "bad", but rather being only a tiny sliver of the world.

Well, my point is that you don't actually know how diverse the authors are. It was just assumed by their identity. They could be immigrants. They could have been abused as children, or hungry. They could have been raised by wealthy tennis pros. They could have spent their lives hacking on electronics and playing chess, or they could have spent their lives camping and herding cattle. You have no idea. And this is true of someone from any part of the world.

> Identity doesn't matter. Ideas matter.

Your ideas are shaped in large part by your identity, which includes your socio-economical background, race, gender, sexual proclivity, country, and on and on.

When you are only exposed to ideas from the same homogeneous group, your view of our heterogeneous world becomes deeply flawed. Diversity of identity is paramount for a diversity of ideas.

Diversity of ideas is not what most people want, is it?

They want to know how to survive in a tough world.

If you want to learn “how to survive in a tough world”, the worst strategy you could follow is to to only read ideas from the group which dominates much of it. By your logic, you should be reading books specifically from people who face constant hardship and discrimination, which includes trans, homosexual, black people… Sure, throw in a few books from rich white men in the global north to learn how they think, but to only read from them would be a mistake.

Even if you don’t want diversity of ideas, you need it to form an accurate picture of reality.

>Diversity of identity is paramount for a diversity of ideas.

I don't think we really need a proliferation of diverse ideas. Put 10 people in a locked room with 10 different ideas, and you're probably going to find them arguing, not out, in a few hours.

Don't get me wrong being stuck after 1 idea is bad, but I don't feel that's where we are today.

None of that has anything to do with the conversation, which is about reading books.

I mean, we’re looking at a list of books—and 24 out of 25 of them were written by men. So clearly identity matters to the compilers of this list.

Another assumption.

Nah, it’s just math.

Which alternatives would you suggest? Why are they particularly relevant to people in the startup ecosystem?

Some randoms I remember : )

  - Thinking in Systems - by Donella Meadows
  - Dead Aid - Dambisa Moyo
  - Day of Empire - Amy Chua
  - Mistakes Were Made (not by me) - Caroll Tavris 
  - Brotopia - Emily Chang

Maybe you could just, idk, provide your own diverse list?

You mean rich, powerful, and ambitious. Yes, American men are well represented in that category. Sorry?

You seem to be arguing as if those are unambiguously positive traits. They’re not. The biggest societal problems we face are caused by people with too much money and power who always thirst for more.

One of the reasons to read books is to expose yourself to other perspectives. Reading 25 books from exactly the same group of people is just a waste compared to reading a diverse selection of books. You should read some books from the rich, power and ambitious. You should also read books from other people.

Yup, we've all been cornered at a party by that dude, the one who has all these great contrarian ideas he got from reading books. And listening to podcasts. And reading blog posts like this one.

Reading books is an excellent idea. Reading books for the reasons in this blog post is a terrible idea.

Reading books is extremely important

However, as a nitpick, I don't think you're going to "beat the experts" as a "contrarian outsider" by reading books like Man's Search For Meaning and Lee Iacocca's autobiography.

Aside from the dubious value of building one's brand as a "contrarian", you're not going to get any information the experts don't have if your reading list looks like you grabbed the first 10 books you saw at the business paperback section at the airport book store.

That's not to say these aren't valuable books. But it's IMO a truly odd collection if your lead in is talking about contrarianism.

Completely separate point on the topic of branding as contrarian: One of the authors, Thomas Sowell, is mainly known for being politically conservative in a predominantly liberal field. That might unintentionally reinforce the impression that "contrarianism" means "I align closely with my in-group but my in-group is not the largest in-group." Whereas I would suspect that we wouldn't call a protestant in a predominantly Catholic country a "contrarian" or vice versa. But perhaps it's about trying to rebrand belonging to an unpopular identity with a kind of renegade status.

It's certainly a choice to call Napoleon, poster boy for great man history, underrated, but I think it's emblematic of the kind of thinking that makes up this list.

It's also pretty notable how few of these choices are fiction of any sort. They're mainly non-fiction books describing conventionally successful people and organizations.

Recommendations of business books to read. I suppose for the aspiring CEO.

Couching the list in a kind of self-help framing is a little odd.

Also reading framed as “beating the competition”. Why does it have to be zero sum?

Tech culture, startup culture, whatever you want to call it... is sick. They do see the world in this way. Hyperscale, burn money faster than the other guy until you dominate everything (the only possible way to pay it off).

Techbro culture also discounts experience, which is how you get silly articles like this that claim you can beat "insiders" by reading 25 books. Please.

Because this post is from the VC company of real-life conehead Andreessen Horowitz. They’re well known for, like most VCs, seeing everything in life as a way to extract money for themselves.

imo this is missing fiction which is a key part of building empathy, becoming a better communicator and also just enjoying yourself

I fail to see how any of those points will make me any money.

I'm here to make a trillion-dollar startup that dominates the competition, not any of that wishy-washy nonsense.

If I could only read 25 books (I have read 80-something books this year) none of this would be this business self-help pablum.

(That said _The Wide Wide Sea_ is good). 1/25.

I just hit 25 books read for the year which was my goal for 2025. To make it happen I did a few things: - Listen to audiobooks when doing chores (dishes, laundry, mowing the lawn) - Keep a book on me and use a bookmark. Being able to quickly open and read a page or two when I would normally doom scroll on my phone - Rather than watch TV at night or play video games, read instead - Use goodreads to track progress and add my friends who are readers to provide motivation and goal visualization.

This year has been quite enjoyable and I have found my reading tastes evolve over time. For a while I was reading books like the ones on this list, self-help, business/management/leadership focused, and memoirs. I then got bored and moved into fantasy, and now I have been getting into history.

Americans hate this one little trick...

From my experiences, a good book takes me a year to several years to read. I have one book (science & philosophy involved) which I kept re-reading for the last 16 years.

There are levels to reading.

> Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Napoleon kill the first French republic and actually reduce the size of territory control by France. Napoleon is IMO one of the most overrated historical figure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_%281815%29

In terms of his impact on Europe and beyond, it's hard to find more influential people. There's a running joke on the History Matters Youtube channel: if you ask a question about European history post-Napoleon, there's a pretty good chance the answer starts with him.

He has a lot of impact it's true. But is he a figure to be inspired of ? I don't think so, his hubris kill more than 400k men (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia).

One can argue that Hitler or Mao were also impactful people, but do we want to learn from them ?

If I can only read 25 books,

I would be too scared to add them to that list because then I could not read crap books, and even crappy books sometimes contain useful ideas.

CEO of Decagon’s quote about Man’s Search for Meaning, a book that’s largely a first hand account of the horrors of the holocaust: “Not hard for founders to maintain grit when others have suffered far worse.”

That really made me laugh. What an insane takeaway.

As a westerner (USA), I would add a good interpretive book on the Bhagavad Gita. Just a few years of study might be life changing.

It helped me. And I’m an atheist.

From the lead image (tweet screen cap): “You don’t want experts…I just read books.”

Isn’t reading books just learning from experts?

Preferably, read 25 good books, not 25 pieces of linkedin-bait.

Why flag a list of books? Is it specifically because it's from A16Z? If it's just "I don't like the books they've chosen" that seems like a wild reason to flag a submission.

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