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

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Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#31

Post by billo-ollib »

I do the following for non-fiction titles:

Make a list of book titles from the footnotes of books I am currently reading. Then just check the average review on Goodreads, if it is over 3.5, I give it a go. This allows me to read about different subjects from respected subject matter experts (since they have been cited in a book I enjoy) while also making sure that they are well written and accessible to a noob (3.5+ rating).

For fiction, I just pick a random book from my local library. Surprisingly, this has served me well so far.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#32

Post by redelbee »

antognini wrote: post #27

I won't claim my method is any good, but what I do is keep track of every book I come across in Goodreads if I have the slightest inclination to read it. As you might imagine, this ends up being a lot of books (more than 5000 at the moment I think). When it comes time to choose a new book to read, I'll select a category (e.g., history, fiction, etc.), sometimes just by picking one, other times by randomly choosing. T…

My Goodreads is intimidating because of the same instinct to add everything that seems even remotely interesting. I hadn’t thought of choosing from that list more systematically though so I might have to do that. Maybe a random number generator with a subset of the books could work.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#33

Post by smogcutter »

mathieuh wrote: post #16
Pamar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity... ever read anything by Gene Wolfe?

No, do you have a recommendation? Currently hooked on the 40k Horus Heresy series, on book 34 and hope to have it finished early next year.

> I imagine I'm not getting the "full experience" by doing this, but even when reading big series like Malazan or the Wheel of Time I don't find I'm suddenly encountering things for the first time: the salient details seem to stick in my head.

Don’t blame you with Wheel of Time, heck Jordan recycles descriptions word for word.

Not parent, but for Gene Wolfe I’d recommend starting with the “Book of the New Sun” series, especially if you’re into classic fantasy. It’s really something.

The thing with Wolfe though is you really gotta keep your eyes open to get much out of it. He plays a lot of games with point of view, subtext, and unreliable narrators. If you aren’t paying attention the actual story can sail right past you. Even then, there are things you’ll only pick up on the second or third time through.

After that, my favorites are The Fifth Head of Cerberus and The Sorcerer’s House. New Sun is imo definitely the place to start though, it’s the closest to traditional fantasy.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#34

Post by redelbee »

loughnane wrote: post #17

First off, counting books you’ve read is a bit like counting lines of code. Sure it measure output in some fashion, but is a pretty fallible proxy for the real thing we’re after: knowledge. But the question remains. There’s so many books and only so much time. For myself after years of taking a haphazard approach (bill gates list, stuff recommended on blogs, economist books/arts,etc) I’ve been working on a new strate…

I agree about counting and knowledge, which was part of the reason I wanted to see how other people think about it. I’ve always read a lot and probably always will, so now it’s all about optimizing what I read.

I hadn’t heard of Great Books of the Western World before but I’ll definitely check it out! I do something similar with movies and “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” which is also a great resource.

I still can’t bring myself to write in books for some reason, but I did take notes on all the non-fiction books I read last year. I haven’t kept up with that because it didn’t seem to help me with processing, remembering, or using the book much beyond being able to find references more easily. It was useful to find the references more quickly but didn’t seem worth the time invested in note taking. I’ll check out “How to Read a Book” to see if I can get better there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#35

Post by redelbee »

billo-ollib wrote: post #31

I do the following for non-fiction titles: Make a list of book titles from the footnotes of books I am currently reading. Then just check the average review on Goodreads, if it is over 3.5, I give it a go. This allows me to read about different subjects from respected subject matter experts (since they have been cited in a book I enjoy) while also making sure that they are well written and accessible to a noob (3.5+…

I hadn’t thought about using reviews in this way before. Do you find the aggregate review numbers to be helpful on Goodreads? I find that most books I’m interested in have seemingly artificially high ratings or very few ratings.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#36

Post by serjester »

redelbee wrote: post #35
billo-ollib wrote: post #31

I do the following for non-fiction titles: Make a list of book titles from the footnotes of books I am currently reading. Then just check the average review on Goodreads, if it is over 3.5, I give it a go. This allows me to read about different subjects from respected subject matter experts (since they have been cited in a book I enjoy) while also making sure that they are well written and accessible to a noob (3.5+…

I hadn’t thought about using reviews in this way before. Do you find the aggregate review numbers to be helpful on Goodreads? I find that most books I’m interested in have seemingly artificially high ratings or very few ratings.

Personally I find anything above a 3.8 on Goodreads to be a safe bet. Above a 3.6 is doable if it's coming off a personal recommendation or happens to be controversial.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#37

Post by redelbee »

snarkypixel wrote: post #25

Hack for you: add all the books you want to read in blinkist, listen to the summary (2-10m in 2-3x mode), then you can classify them as: A) Not interested --> nice, you saved yourself some time B) Interesting, but feel like the summary is more than good enough, so no need to read the book C) Interesting and you want to learn more because it just scratched the surface --> Read the book! You can test this framework by…

This is the first I’ve heard about blinkist. I’ll check it out, thank you

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#38

Post by loughnane »

redelbee wrote: post #34
loughnane wrote: post #17

First off, counting books you’ve read is a bit like counting lines of code. Sure it measure output in some fashion, but is a pretty fallible proxy for the real thing we’re after: knowledge. But the question remains. There’s so many books and only so much time. For myself after years of taking a haphazard approach (bill gates list, stuff recommended on blogs, economist books/arts,etc) I’ve been working on a new strate…

I agree about counting and knowledge, which was part of the reason I wanted to see how other people think about it. I’ve always read a lot and probably always will, so now it’s all about optimizing what I read. I hadn’t heard of Great Books of the Western World before but I’ll definitely check it out! I do something similar with movies and “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” which is also a great resource. I st…

>I still can’t bring myself to write in books for some reason

A lot of us have been taught that it's defacing (which it is if it's a library book or a friends' book), but really it's an act of love. There's no surer sign that someone has spent a lot of time with a book than to see it well worn and marked up.

I used to take notes before marking it books. I still do a bit, but the proble is that the notes are lifted out of the context of the book. Not so if you write in it :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#39

Post by loughnane »

murrkeys wrote: post #5

I'm a library fanatic, so I usually end up browsing at the local library until I find one or two books that look interesting. My local library actually has an "Undiscovered Gems" section that has lead me to some interesting reads from authors I'm not familiar with. I also keep a running list of interesting titles on my library account, putting holds on them as I finish books. I'm like you, I usually bounce around bet…

This is another good one, to just be able to browse.

For me, my local bookstore has an entire downstairs dedicated to used books, with a few shelves for "new non-fiction" and "new fiction". It's great to check in when I'm nearby just to see what's new.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide what books to read?

#40

Post by serjester »

thehealthycoder wrote: post #10

I'm a big fan of rereading the same books that I found super helpful/useful, vs reading a lot Used to do the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge for multiple years, until I felt I was just padding my stats with books that weren't useful Then I saw a Naval tweet that was: "I would rather read the best 100 books over and over again until I absorb them rather than read all the books.” And I adopted that strategy, which has b…

The hardest part is knowing which 100 books to reread.

I'd like to think there's a period in your youth when you devour everything - even, god forbid, modern books on management. From here you move on to the classics - Dickens, Twain, Tolstoy, Fitzgerald. If a book bores you, drop it. After enough years, inevitably, you reach a point where you're ready for real literature - Dostoevsky, Proust, Molière, Kant - the greats.

Some books can't be summarized (poetry and real literature), some can be compressed to about ten pages and the majority to 0 pages.

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