> it's unhelpful to throw book titles at a person without any context or guidance
Here's one reason it's unhelpful; After 4 or 5 people list a bunch of books, you now have a long list of books, and no way to know which to start with, unless there is a lot of overlap - you could just as well google/search amazon and look at ratings, which would give you far better results.
Furthermore, many people tend not to read multiple math books on the same subject, so they just recommend what they know w/o having any knowledge of how that book fares against other suggestions.
If they expand on either their own credentials, and reading on the matter, so you have the context of their knowledge; or give reasons why that book is good, this gives a better basis for comparison.
As an aside; I like the coursera structure of following video lectures with content summaries of what was covered in the video. The advantage is 1) quick reference of material without having to search through a video; 2) if you already understand the topic, you can often just read the summary, and skip the video if you think you already know the material.
Another aside; one problem with books versus videos is often books are long compendia of a field, where as videos are shorter. if you already know topic A and want to learn B, then there may already be a video on topic B, where as a book might cover B in some chapter. For these cases, it might be good to discuss individual chapters/sections of book, but that assumes you can ready them somewhat independently given prior knowledge.