hacker-recommended-books

Learning and science

book recommendations

SHOW HN2021

1,359points
273comments
#3of 2,533 in 2021
Top 1%of 2021 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

48 positive, 51 neutral or asking, 15 mixed, 32 critical, out of 146 comments about the project. Thread score +0.15.

Execution: 12 for, 29 againstIdea: 11 for, 2 againstDesign: 7 for, 0 againstPricing: 4 for, 0 againstDocs: 2 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Fast, clean UI that mirrors HN comment styling

    From 2 comments
    • This is awesome. The best thing is that it's so fast to navigate. I like how the HN comments are styled just like on HN. A couple of thoughts: * It would be great if each book…
      rahimnathwani on HN
    • Awesome idea and nice looking UI! I will definitely visit when I am looking for new books to read. One thing that I've noticed is that when I select another book, the scrollbar…
      FinanceAnon on HN
  • Interesting, useful idea for finding books

    From 2 comments
    • This is great work. There are a lot of great recommendations on HN. Before this, I had this page archived and have been reading through it-…
      rg111 on HN
    • This is amazing. Thank you! Does it take into account negative reviews/comments? I have seen that Why we sleep is being recommended in the 6 months tab, but, while it was…
      samuel on HN

Objections

  • Model sometimes counts mentions, not recommendations, including negative ones

    From 2 comments
    • Interesting idea but not completely accurate. My own comment about how I hated Thinking, Fast and Slow seems to be counted as a recommendation.
      unmole on HN
    • Interesting idea, but this is mentions of books, not recommendations. It includes comments by someone that's reading the book, has it on their reading list, or read it and…
      bachmeier on HN
  • Limited book database misses popular books

    From 2 comments
    • Interesting lack of 1984, even though it is mentioned way too often. The lesser known "Animal Farm" and other dystopias like "Brave New World" and "Fahrenheit 451" are here. Is…
      GuB-42 on HN
    • That might be that the book database I used is quite limited, sadly.
      tracyhenry on HN
  • Wrong matches on short titles like Zero

    From 1 comment
    • Very cool. This one’s wrong though: “Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea”. Comments are talking about other books with “zero” in the tile, such as Thiel’s “Zero To One”.…
      leobg on HN

Requests

  • Author search and per-book URLs

    From 1 comment
    • This is awesome. The best thing is that it's so fast to navigate. I like how the HN comments are styled just like on HN. A couple of thoughts: * It would be great if each book…
      rahimnathwani on HN
  • Affiliate links or donation option

    From 2 comments
    • You mention the Amazon links are not affiliate links. As a default, that's a nice move, but I believe you are within your rights to add a toggle to enable affiliate links. The…
      hoten on HN
    • You helped me spend $150 on books! Two comments 1. I regret you earned $0 for helping me spending so much on books. Have you considered setting up affiliate links or a donation…
      srcreigh on HN
  • Write-up on how to replicate

    From 1 comment
    • Love it, will you do a write-up on how to replicate this with other sources? I'm currently analyzing both Indie Hackers and StartupsForTheRestOfUs Interview Transcriptions and…
      maiensch on HN

Questions

  • How does the system work?

    From 1 comment
    • @tracyhenry: how does the system work exactly? I cannot find any documentation on your website.
      oakfr on HN
  • Where does the book data come from?

    From 1 comment
    • Impressive work. What data source are you using for the books, authors and covers? I looked at OpenLibrary [1] but the covers are not the same, so I suppose it is something else?…
      deaddabe on HN

Alternatives named

  • hackernewsbooks.com

    From 1 comment
    • This is great work. There are a lot of great recommendations on HN. Before this, I had this page archived and have been reading through it-…
      rg111 on HN
  • hackernewspapers.com

    From 1 comment
    • Not much - but it needs a new set of training data for research papers. Btw - there seems to be an existing website for this already: https://www.hackernewspapers.com/ Although…
      tracyhenry on HN
  • Amazon lists

    From 1 comment
    • Great work but do note that the list basically looks slightly better than an amazon list (atlas shrugged lol). I think some effort into more useful ranking (looking for metrics…
      ramraj07 on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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