HN Books
Learning and science
book recommendations
SHOW HN2024
285points
61comments
#227of 3,515 in 2024
Top 7%of 2024 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
14 positive, 18 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 8 critical, out of 44 comments about the project. Thread score +0.16.
Design: 5 for, 2 againstIdea: 6 for, 1 againstPerformance: 1 for, 3 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 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
Clean, fast, tasteful interface
From 3 comments
Congrats! The interface is beautiful and fast! Adding direct links to the comments that mention the books could be a good feature to add. Hacker News Books [1] does this and it's…
alabhyajindal on HNReally cool! Never thought "I Am That" based on the conversations with Nisargdatta Maharaj would show up here. That's the beauty of HN. You never know what you're gonna get :)…
r_singh on HNNice, super responsive - what's this using underneath? I see canvas + svelte
bestinterest on HN
Useful for finding books to read and checking favourites
From 3 comments
Well, now I have recommendations; ty! I just bought 9 books from this list, filling in around ones I know I like. This is outstanding.
the__alchemist on HNLove this. I like that the clustering allows me to start from a book I've read and liked, and then move on the similar books in the cluster. For example, I just finished The…
ijidak on HNI think it's useful as a tool for browsing a getting a general gist of what people are into and seeing if your favorites are there, too. As for a tool to maximize one's reading…
allenu on HN
Objections
Site crashes or becomes unresponsive due to heavy load
From 4 comments
Really cool to see my favs show up, but I honestly don't understand what we're actually looking at; the groupings seem very opaque beyond very general themes like sci-fi,…
peteforde on HNFYI I have a runaway recursive processing when I load the site... it goes down in ~30 seconds or so.
jppope on HNFor my system: becomes unresponsive within the first second. * Google Chrome form flathub. Version 128.0.6613.119 (Official Build) (64-bit) * Debian 12 bookworm under KDE Wayland
Eduard on HNI'd like to explore this more, but I'm getting THOUSANDS of errors: Failed to load module script: Expected a JavaScript module script but the server responded with a MIME type of…
Nathanael_M on HN
Map visualization is unclear and cluster meaning is opaque
From 3 comments
Really cool to see my favs show up, but I honestly don't understand what we're actually looking at; the groupings seem very opaque beyond very general themes like sci-fi,…
peteforde on HNI find the graphical nature of this to be disorganized and distracting. If you didn’t explain to me what the meaning of the map was it would be essentially a meaningless cluster…
dangus on HNInteresting but the visualization is useless. How about a standard tabular format maybe grouped by genre?
SoftTalker on HN
Requests
Tabular or list format
From 2 comments
This is awesome. Can I please request a way to have a list or a tabular format?
Brajeshwar on HNInteresting but the visualization is useless. How about a standard tabular format maybe grouped by genre?
SoftTalker on HN
Cluster names or labels and axes
From 2 comments
Is there a way to see cluster names?
LudwigNagasena on HNNiiice! I really like it. The spatial approach is cool, though labelling/annotations/axes would help. I share the frustraion with getting book covers for my project ablf.io.…
padolsey on HN
Links to the HN comments that mention each book
From 1 comment
Congrats! The interface is beautiful and fast! Adding direct links to the comments that mention the books could be a good feature to add. Hacker News Books [1] does this and it's…
alabhyajindal on HN
Questions
What do the axes and cluster shapes represent
From 3 comments
I'm not sure I understand the "map" part of this. What does the geography represent exactly?
kthartic on HNWhat does each axis represent? What is the significance of the placement of each cluster?
WillAdams on HNNice project. I also would love to hear more about the cluster shapes and cardinality of the coordinate system. I consider myself am pretty versed in data analysis, however with…
mooreed on HN
How were book covers sourced reliably
From 2 comments
Fyi regarding cover images: I have built and run a handful of book related websites and Amazon is the easiest place I found to get book covers. You just need the Amazon id and…
pstorm on HNCheck out the OpenLibrary Covers API: https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/covers
paulwarren on HN
Alternatives named
Hacker News Books (hackernewsbooks.com)
From 1 comment
Congrats! The interface is beautiful and fast! Adding direct links to the comments that mention the books could be a good feature to add. Hacker News Books [1] does this and it's…
alabhyajindal on HN
Literature Map (literature-map.com)
From 1 comment
Well, for fiction there is: https://www.literature-map.com/
WillAdams on HN