from Hacker News

Five Books: The best books on everything

by pps on 5/7/23, 4:33 PM with 85 comments

• by nindalf on 5/7/23, 9:32 PM

  The Economist does something similar with their Economist Reads column. Their topics are more esoteric though. The best books to understand

  - The Scottish Independence Movement - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/05/02/wha...

  - Poker - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha...

  - Florida - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha...

  - Investing - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/26/fiv...

  - Books you’re forbidden from reading - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/02/24/sev...

• by deevus on 5/7/23, 11:28 PM

  I was recently recommended the sci-fi space opera "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge. That was an absolute blast to read. If you're into computer science, you'll really dig it.

  There is a summary with no spoilers at the start of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5jTNUSIR18

• by leto_ii on 5/7/23, 9:37 PM

  I find this to be simplistic pop intelectual nonsense. This is not how to learn anything.

  It's way more meaningful to understand and pursue your own actual interests than to humble brag by ticking the "correct" readings.

  Not to mention that talking about the best anything is basically meaningless, except for very tightly constrained achievements (e.g. we can talk about the best sprinter, but who's the best philosopher? or the best mathematician?)

• by ofalkaed on 5/7/23, 11:00 PM

  When ever I am getting into a new topic I try to start with OUP's Very Short Introduction series [0]. They generally do not give good understanding but they orient you in the field and provide extensive bibliographies along with the knowledge required to navigate that bibliography and select the sources which will give you the information you desire instead of what someone else thinks you want. Failing that I just go down to the library and talk to the librarian.

  0: https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/v/very-short-...

• by jamesgill on 5/8/23, 12:29 AM

  These are just personal book recommendations with affiliate links. That's fine, but the headline sure is clickbait.

• by AlbertCory on 5/8/23, 12:06 AM

  I can't tell if "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" is in there or not. If not, "The Elegant Universe" would be my suggestion for the one to throw out to make room for it.

  String theory is not science. Maybe that one could fit somewhere in Religion /s

• by UweSchmidt on 5/7/23, 9:59 PM

  I would love to see a small, maybe opinionated list of science books, each, in one volume, giving a full overview of the field in an approachable way, like:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Life

  but of course state-of-the-art.

  It would be a nice collection and a chance to at least get a general overview over all of science, and discover just how patchy my knowledge really is :)

• by activitypea on 5/7/23, 9:10 PM

  I've been looking for something like this, hopefully other users can weigh in if the curation is any good.

• by wzy on 5/8/23, 2:39 AM

  I love this is just a WordPress website with a custom theme and some plugins.

• by rcarr on 5/7/23, 10:57 PM

  The D&D reading lists look pretty good for fantasy:

  https://www.dicegeeks.com/dnd-recommended-reading/

• by riemannzeta on 5/7/23, 11:08 PM

  Would be more interesting/useful to see a meta-list ranking the books that come up more than once in recommendations, sorted from most frequent to least frequent.

• by sophiestephanie on 5/9/23, 8:43 AM

  I'm one of the founders of the site. We set it up in 2009 and have kept it going by using affiliate links. The affiliate links cover some of the costs, but not all. We interview people who know about a field (often professors) either via Zoom (now, it used to be Skype or phone) or in person, as my background is in journalism. Feel free to ask questions!

• by kragen on 5/8/23, 2:59 AM

  i struggle to find categories on the front page containing falsifiable assertions

  where are the best five books on linear algebra, on signal processing, on control theory, on equid phylogeny, on group theory, on energy-efficient architectural design, on civil engineering?

  they do have https://fivebooks.com/best-books/artificial-intelligence-gpt... to be fair, and all five seem to actually exist, but kahneman is in the list?

  some of the lists on https://fivebooks.com/category/technology/ look more promising

  for example, they do have a list of five books on programming. but it includes 'clean code', by that unqualified blowhard bob martin? the cs for data science list looks possibly okay

  and their recommendations for philosophy of technology come from... evgeny morozov? are they deliberately trying to get terrible recommendations?

• by WoodenChair on 5/7/23, 10:31 PM

  This is very similar to Shepherd: https://shepherd.com

• by yboris on 5/7/23, 11:13 PM

  I love that you can see by author. My favorite, Peter Singer is on so many lists:

  https://fivebooks.com/people/peter-singer/

• by TedDoesntTalk on 5/7/23, 10:17 PM

  For sci-fi, they recommend the Arthur Clark award books. The first 2022 title I clicked is summarized like this on Amazon:

  “Part sci-fi, fantasy, and Afro-futurism but not squarely one or the other, A River Called Time…”

  What is “Afro-futurism”?

• by joshcsimmons on 5/8/23, 2:15 AM

  What is unique about this that warrants an HN submission? These are just highly-opinionated lists. A neuroscience category without Jaak Panksepp? Get real.

• by mrwnmonm on 5/8/23, 2:25 AM

  It is like someone posted the link to upset others here.

• by cgeier on 5/8/23, 5:06 AM

  I looked for the best book on ants, but was disappointed it didn't offer anything.

• by ibitto on 5/7/23, 11:21 PM

  > The best books on Artificial Intelligence, recommended by ChatGPT

  Hm...

• by cratermoon on 5/8/23, 4:34 AM

  Many of the lists on that side look about as reliable and honest as Amazon reviews.