[HN Gopher] Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025
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Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025
Author : seinvak
Score : 572 points
Date : 2025-12-21 16:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hackernews-readings-613604506318.us-west1.run.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackernews-readings-613604506318.us-west1.run.app)
| codingdave wrote:
| Affiliate marketing is such a mixed bag. I absolutely love it
| when people can monetize their writing by adding some affiliate
| links that are relevant to the audience - win/win for all sides.
| Yet it is as slimy as anything else when the sole purpose of
| creating content is to publish affiliate links.
| seinvak wrote:
| My bad -- probably should've added a disclaimer :) For what
| it's worth, I only added sponsored links to the top ~50 books
| out of ~10k total. Mostly just trying to cover the cost of a
| decent domain so I can keep the site running.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| > "probably should've added a disclaimer"
|
| It's a violation of the Amazon Associates program to not have
| one.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Also, it's illegal in the US and many other countries to
| not disclose that you're earning money from a
| recommendation.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-
| endorse...
| whatamidoingyo wrote:
| Eh, I've shared your views before. But Amazon affiliate link
| payouts are trash. The OP made it to the front page of HN, but
| I'd be surprised if he makes more than $100. It's possible, but
| probably highly unlikely. Let him them make some money, it's a
| cool project.
|
| But, OP, if you're going to have this, disclaimers, and a
| privacy policy are really important (especially for collecting
| emails).
| odie5533 wrote:
| Great books listed here! Added some to my TBR list. Thanks! I'm a
| little surprised the numbers aren't higher across the board.
| Insanity wrote:
| The fact that Mein Kampf was mentioned so often in 2025 is saying
| something about the political climate lol..
|
| Nice website though, I like it.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| It seems to have mainly come up in discussions about banned
| books, rather than discussions about popular fascist movements,
| so it might not be saying what most people would first assume.
| Insanity wrote:
| Good catch, I didn't read through the comments where it's
| mentioned.
| mohamez wrote:
| I'm really trying so hard to understand how did you come up
| with this correlation.
| dozerly wrote:
| The US has shifted to becoming an authoritarian fascist
| state. It's not surprising that people reference another
| prominent authoritarian fascist manifesto.
| an0malous wrote:
| I think 1984 is more of a sign of the times, and not just
| mentioned in the context of banned book threads
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >I think 1984 is more of a sign of the times
|
| Honestly given that the thing gets brought up about five
| times per day by absolutely anyone for any conceivable reason
| I think it's the opposite. The real dystopian picture of the
| future is getting hit on the head with a copy of 1984,
| forever.
| echelon wrote:
| The surveillance and censorship system being built around
| us is alarming.
|
| It only takes one leadership failure to turn it into
| shackles.
| silexia wrote:
| There are no banned books in America. Not spending taxpayer
| money forcibly taken from citizens on books they disagree
| with for public school libraries is far from banning books.
|
| If you are okay with a book indoctrinating kids with far left
| ideology, why not put in copies of far right books to balance
| it out?
|
| No one wants kids indoctrinated in culture war garbage.
|
| If you want to own a book, go buy it yourself.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| "The federal mafia" by Irwin Schiff is currently banned
| from sale in the USA
| 47282847 wrote:
| Can you point me to one book banned by libraries that
| contains "far left ideology"? And one with "far right
| ideology" not found in libraries?
| echelon wrote:
| I was apparently 6% of the 1984 mentions.
|
| Doing my part.
| Yizahi wrote:
| It would be even higher if we would add any string with
| "orwell" in it, since in 99% cases it's about the same idea
| and in the same context.
| tonymet wrote:
| This comment is a helpful way to understand Mein Kampf and
| whether it means its readers are Nazis.
| graemep on 4/15/2025 Mein Kampf IS a rant.
| I recommend people read it so you can understand how people
| like that think.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Not something I want anyone to see on my bookshelf though!
| tonymet wrote:
| Depends on how spicy your friends are.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| 'spicy'?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Maybe there's a german-language subset of comment threads where
| they discuss their struggles against the C++ standard.
| babblingfish wrote:
| Neat. I'm seeing a lot of overlap with books mentioned on
| r/reddit. I didn't realize, until know, how demographically
| similar hacker news and reddit are.
| tonymet wrote:
| do you not read the comments?
| silexia wrote:
| HN used to be a site for entrepreneurs to share ideas and work
| on things. Now the far left Reddit crowd has crashed it and
| anyone who has a successful business is just "lucky" and anyone
| who has earned wealth should have it stolen at gunpoint by the
| government to redistribute to those who don't produce anything.
| jll29 wrote:
| You must confuse news.ycombinator.com (a U.S.-American site)
| with hn.se ?
| Yizahi wrote:
| If you seriously call HN "far left" you may try looking at
| Vox, Parler and Truth for the "centrist moderate" crowd :)
| lowkey_ wrote:
| If I compared HN today and Reddit 5 years ago, I'd agree, but
| I'm still extremely grateful for HN as I tried looking at
| Reddit this year and it actually made me feel like there's an
| extremely misinformed, radical, brainwashing happening there.
| I've never seen so much misinformation and negativity in one
| place aside from Truth Social or Threads.
|
| HN today is equivalent to Reddit 5 years ago: not as great as
| it was when smaller 10 years ago, but still better than
| Reddit today.
| joshdavham wrote:
| The top 3 programming books mentioned this year were
|
| 1. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs 2. Clean
| Code 3. Crafting Interpreters
|
| Also, it's quite fascinating how often fiction books were
| recommended! I wouldn't've expected that on HN.
| mirashii wrote:
| I'd be curious about sentiment analysis applied to these. I
| expect two of the listed to have very positive sentiment, and
| one generally negative in 2025.
| seinvak wrote:
| > I expect two of the listed to have very positive sentiment,
| and one generally negative in 2025.
|
| You are quite correct! Crafting Interpreters actually has the
| highest average sentiment score across all books with more
| than 10 comments. This is the average sentiment score of all
| three( range being -10 to 10) :
|
| Crafting Interpreters(7.8) > SICP(4.3) > Clean Code(-3.2)
| WillAdams wrote:
| The world would be a better place if _Philosophy of Software
| Design_ would replace all mentions of the second book.
|
| https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| I haven't even read your recommendation and know you are
| right.
| endlessvoid94 wrote:
| Have you seen https://hackernewsbooks.com ?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Mind Games at number 2? I got that book years ago and was so
| disappointed I still think about it sometimes.
| Rendello wrote:
| You just bumped it up by mentioning it ;)
| Cloudly wrote:
| The recent novel Abundance seems to be agressibley grouped with
| the John Green novel An Abundance of Katherines - which I think
| is a humorous retelling of 2025 but also maybe needs some
| matching work
| card_zero wrote:
| _An Abundance of Katherines_ has only been mentioned on HN
| three times, and none of those are listed among the 19 claimed
| mentions.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Hitchhikers guide to the universe having 42 mentions is a cosmic
| level coincidence
| kaangiray26 wrote:
| the ultimate coincidence of life, the universe, and everything
| duckerduck wrote:
| Now its 43 :'(
| jama211 wrote:
| List was to a time point, and list says 42. All good! You
| could even say after waiting the right amount of time, 42 was
| the answer this computer program generated...
| amarant wrote:
| But that really makes me wonder what the question was?
| jama211 wrote:
| Hmm, might need a few more cycles for that one
| georgefrowny wrote:
| The eternal fate of the Googlewhack.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Actually still 42. The guide to the "universe" is a different
| book.
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| It has wrong author.
|
| The author and book cover it is showing is for a comic book
| adaptation by John Carnell.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41725880
|
| Instead of showing the author and book cover for the original
| text book by Douglas Adams.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guid...
| seinvak wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up. Corrected it.
| belter wrote:
| So does Project Hail Mary...I sense a Easter Egg by the
| Author...
| tonymet wrote:
| great project! how did you do tokenization and alignment of the
| titles to their ISBN / Amazon ID
| seinvak wrote:
| Thanks! I used OpenLibrary's API to get the book IDs, and then
| Gemini 3 to generate the Amazon links.
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| Would love to learn more about how this is built. I remember a
| similar project from 4 years ago[0] that used a classic BERT
| model for NER on HN comments.
|
| I assume this one uses a few-shot LLM approach instead, which is
| slower and more expensive at inference, but so much faster to
| build since there's no tedious labeling needed.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28596207
| seinvak wrote:
| > Would love to learn more about how this is built. I remember
| a similar project from 4 years ago[0] that used a classic BERT
| model for NER on HN comments
|
| Yes, I saw that project pretty impressive! Hand-labeling 4000
| books is definitely not an easy task, mad-respect to tracyhenry
| for the passion and hardwork that was required back then.
|
| For my project, I just used the Gemini 2.5 Flash API (since I
| had free credits) with the following prompt:
|
| """You are an expert literary assistant parsing Hacker News
| comments. Rules: 1. Only extract CLEARLY identifiable books. 2.
| Ignore generic mentions. 3. Return JSON ARRAY only. 4. If no
| books found, return []. 5. A score from -10 to 10 where 10 is
| highly recommended, -10 is very poorly recommended and 0 is
| neutral. 6. If the author's name is in the comment, include it;
| otherwise, omit the key. JSON format: [ {{ "title": "book
| title", "sentiment": "score", "author" : "Name of author if
| mentioned" }} ] Text: {text}"""
|
| It did the job quite well. It really shows how far AI has come
| in just 4 years.
| dgeiser13 wrote:
| The Book of Dragons by Edith Nesbit is listed instead of "the
| Dragon book"
| thcipriani wrote:
| Same with Ezra Kline's "Abundance" vs. John Green's "An
| Abundance of Katherines." But I kinda like swapping in John
| Green--"Everything is Tuberculosis" was a good read for me this
| year.
| giraffe333 wrote:
| I thought this was "the Dragon Book" Compilers: Principles,
| Techniques, and Tools
|
| by Aho, Lam, and Sethi
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Tools...
| jll29 wrote:
| I prefer the first edition by Aho, Sethi and Ullman, which I
| own twice (single volume hardcover and two-volume softcover
| German translation).
|
| The "modernized" version leaves out some fundamental parsing
| material.
| begueradj wrote:
| The 6 first books reflect the quality comments I often see here
| on HN.
| barddoo wrote:
| The Holy Bible mentioned.
| kace91 wrote:
| No offense intended towards anyone, but it usually strikes me how
| basic/surface level literature references are here. For a crowd
| pretty much defined by intellectual curiosity, it's mostly
| highschool reads, _very_ mainstream scifi /fantasy and corporate
| self help.
|
| I wonder if it's an american thing, for engineers to be detached
| of liberal arts? The vibe tends to be quite different in local
| engineering groups.
| emodendroket wrote:
| There is some real stuff in there if you scroll through but I
| don't disagree with your point. But it is easier to
| perform/identify oneself with intellectual curiosity than to
| truly be intellectually curious.
| DashAnimal wrote:
| I think it's more about how using "most" as a measurement, no
| matter who the audience is that you pool from, is not a good
| way of producing a valuable list. In the end, having someone
| learned and well read produce a hand-written list with deeper
| cuts brings more value.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think two factors are in play:
|
| The first is that there is likely more diversity the deeper you
| go down the intellectual hole. You and I may read much more
| sophisticated books, but the books you read and the ones I read
| differ significantly. Thus, the list is biased towards the more
| popular (it _is_ , after all, a popularity list).
|
| Second is this:
|
| > for engineers to be detached of liberal arts?
|
| Most of us just haven't found value in the other types of
| books. It would help if you gave some examples of books that
| should be here. For me (perhaps as an engineer), I like books
| to kind of get to the point. When it comes to fiction, I'm a
| very firm believer that, although a given novel may give great
| commentary about a social/philosophical issue, its primary
| purpose is entertainment. If I wanted to understand the
| underlying social/philosophical issue, a more direct,
| nonfiction book will always do a better job.
|
| I've yet to find someone "changed" because of fiction. Those I
| know who claim to already had the sentiments before they read
| that piece of fiction, and the story was merely preaching to
| the choir. What they are glorifying is how _well_ the story
| depicted an issue.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Behold a super-satured solution. A crystal touches it and
| where before was a liquid, now hard unyielding crystals
| spring forward, hard enough to scratch diamond. Some books
| are seed crystals, changing the shapeless into eternal forms.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Let me know when you find such a book ;-)
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| All books can be seed crystals, provided they find an
| appropriate super saturated solution in their readers
| (that was my point, actually, as a counter argument to
| OP's "preaching to the choir". Although the super
| saturated solution is already there, it needs to seed
| crystal to (physically) transform).
| kace91 wrote:
| >although a given novel may give great commentary about a
| social/philosophical issue, its primary purpose is
| entertainment. If I wanted to understand the underlying
| social/philosophical issue, a more direct, nonfiction book
| will always do a better job.
|
| I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding there, if you
| think all the potential value of a fiction book is some
| commentary padded by a story.
|
| Good fiction usually exercises the mind in ways a non-fiction
| book never would. You experience life through someone else's
| eyes, you try to understand someone's mind by the actions
| they take and the words they say, you wonder in a meta-plane
| what the author is trying to show, you see language being
| used in non-common ways to provoke emotions or express ideas,
| you wonder how you would have acted in someone's shoes...
| Saying the author could get to the point quicker is like
| saying that lifting weights in the gym is done faster with a
| forklift, the process is the point rather than the extracted
| output.
|
| There is also a fundamental difference between being told
| 'pain is an unpleasant feeling that living beings take effort
| to avoid' and being punched in the face. Fiction gives you a
| fraction of the extra wisdom you get with the latter.
|
| >It would help if you gave some examples of books that should
| be here.
|
| That's the thing, there is not specific book I could
| recommend that is most likely change your life for the
| better, for the same reason there is no single specific
| equation I can mention that will make someone good at math if
| they solve it. Some exercises are better, some are pointless,
| but it's the act of engaging that counts in the long term.
|
| My comment about this list had no implication that the books
| at the top of the list were less valuable than other hidden
| works; they're just a sign of a path not travelled quite far,
| if that makes sense.
|
| And leaving aside the usefulness of it all, pleasant
| experiences not all amount to entertaining. You'd probably
| agree that having sex with the love of your life and watching
| TV are not equivalent experiences, even if you come out of
| both with roughly the same level of self-improvement.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > if you think all the potential value of a fiction book is
| some commentary padded by a story.
|
| Actually, I'm flipping the two: The potential value of a
| fiction book is a good story - social commentary is purely
| optional. Fiction that has commentary padded by a story are
| valued only by those who are sympathetic to the commentary.
| Whereas I can easily love a good story even if I disagree
| with the commentary.
|
| > Good fiction usually exercises the mind in ways a non-
| fiction book never would. You experience life through
| someone else's eyes, you try to understand someone's mind
| by the actions they take and the words they say, you wonder
| in a meta-plane what the author is trying to show, you see
| language being used in non-common ways to provoke emotions
| or express ideas, you wonder how you would have acted in
| someone's shoes... Saying the author could get to the point
| quicker is like saying that lifting weights in the gym is
| done faster with a forklift, the process is the point
| rather than the extracted output.
|
| I don't think we're in disagreement. I'm merely saying that
| I've yet to see someone _changed_ by a fiction book. If
| there was change, it was always "change in the same
| direction" (e.g. "a renewed appreciation of X").
|
| I have seen plenty of folks changed by nonfiction, though.
|
| Incidentally, most/all of what you wrote above can be done
| as effectively with nonfiction. Books like _When Broken
| Glass Floats_ by Chanrithy Him are extremely powerful. As
| was _Killers of the Flower Moon_. I doubt any works of
| fiction dealing with the same topics would be more
| powerful. Both of these books could have been written (and
| read) as fiction, but knowing the events were true makes a
| huge difference in appreciation.
|
| > There is also a fundamental difference between being told
| 'pain is an unpleasant feeling that living beings take
| effort to avoid' and being punched in the face. Fiction
| gives you a fraction of the extra wisdom you get with the
| latter.
|
| This seems like a false dichotomy. You can have nonfiction
| do this very effectively without simply "telling" you.
| desmoulins wrote:
| The context of these book titles appearing in comments might
| skew the results. Ulysses is high up on the list, but the
| source comments have a lot of people using it as an example of
| a lengthy, difficult book.
|
| I read a lot, but if I'm going to use a book to make a point or
| example in a comment, which will be read by someone I don't
| know, I'll reference a well-known book that most people have
| heard of, even if it was just from 9th grade English class,
| instead of something more obscure.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Most people will barely read through a couple basics, so it can
| be a bit of a though sell to start recommending more niche
| stories. And part of the reason that some of these books are so
| successful is that they tend to have pretty widespread appeal,
| while more niche books will be more divisive and less likely to
| get recommended broadly.
|
| If you're so well-read why don't you grace us with some of your
| non-mainstream S-tier recommendations?
|
| From this list, one of the books that I recommend to everyone
| is Piranesi, which is fairly mainstream, and if they want to
| explore Russian magical realism then Vita Nostra. Unsong is
| another favorite. In general I love to explore magic systems
| that experiment with breaking a system, or stories that explore
| how different rules might interact within a system.
|
| I think people sometimes underestimate the value of lighter
| more fun reads, like cultivation stories. The best western
| adaptation of this style of novel is probably the Cradle
| series, by Will Wight. Even though the stories tend to be
| fairly light, they're quite enjoyable for exploring new modes
| of thinking. For example, we can analyze the interactions of
| energy as an abstract / symbolic form, and how it influences
| human behavior; which is an abstract / symbolic application of
| the cultivation lens over reality. To give an easier to
| understand example: Feng Shui isn't real but it's true, in the
| sense that the way in which we organize furniture within a
| space determines how people navigate it and how they interact.
| And why might this be useful? Well, sometimes we fail to see
| the full picture when using a single lens, and different lens
| might let us see things in a new light.
|
| I've read some terribly generic web novel slop and gotten
| fairly unique and interesting perspectives from them, but most
| people aren't good enough readers to enjoy bad books, so they
| can only read and enjoy good books.
| rramadass wrote:
| Not surprising. It is just "herd mentality" and "parroting"
| which is the bane of all general Social Groups/Crowds. There
| are some well-known (generally not too taxing and not
| necessarily good) books which keep being amplified.
|
| One or two might be worthwhile but most would be mainstream and
| pedestrian.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It seems quite obvious to me why it looks like this, and other
| people have explained it. All I'll say is if you meet someone
| who doesn't read, please _please_ encourage them to try a
| "highschool read" or something "very mainstream" and don't put
| them off for life with some obscure liberal arts piece. If
| someone hasn't read something you read in high school, it's
| still better than they read it now.
| kace91 wrote:
| >All I'll say is if you meet someone who doesn't read, please
| please encourage them to try a "highschool read" or something
| "very mainstream" and don't put them off for life with some
| obscure liberal arts piece.
|
| I think you assumed implications in my comment that weren't
| at all intended. By all means read whatever you enjoy, and by
| keeping at it you'll eventually reach less known work just as
| a side effect of getting deeper in your niches.
|
| As I said in another comment, I just see the selection as a
| sign of a lack of exploration.
|
| It's not that the books themselves are bad -the original
| super Mario is a nice game, but if it's the only game being
| significantly mentioned the crowd is probably not really into
| gaming. It's just surprising to me that the HN crowd isn't
| really into literature.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I haven't read much "deeper" than the stuff in the list and
| most people I meet read way less than I do. Many read
| approximately zero by my estimations. I have a PhD so I
| know how deep the rabbit holes goes. I just think between
| TV, social media, kids etc. most people don't have time to
| do something that demands complete attention, sadly.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Embarrassing to see 0 works by Max Stirner in this work. HN is
| truly spooked.
| omoikane wrote:
| I see that there is "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury (33
| mentions), and "The Martian" by Andy Weir listed much later (11
| mentions), but most of mentions for "The Martian Chronicles"
| appears to be referencing "The Martian" instead.
|
| Also, "Godel, Escher, Bach" (20 mentions) and "GEB" (7 mentions)
| are listed as separate books, but they are the same book.
| losvedir wrote:
| Similarly, "The Book of Dragons" I'm guessing might be the so
| called "dragon book" about compiler design.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _I see that there is "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury
| (33 mentions), and "The Martian" by Andy Weir_ [...]
|
| While on the general topic, also check out the Mars Trilogy by
| Kim Stanley Robinson:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
| furyofantares wrote:
| You should scrape 2024 also and then 2025 should be sorted by the
| delta. Otherwise it doesn't have that much to do with 2025 and is
| largely just books commonly mentioned on HN.
|
| It's possible this idea isn't straightforward due to more or
| fewer total mentions but I think you could get there.
| wellpast wrote:
| Love this. Is there a scrape-able list of these?
| seinvak wrote:
| Thanks for the love.No need to scrape, just use this json
| containing all the data used in making the site :
|
| https://storage.googleapis.com/globalhnbucket/normalized_boo...
| emodendroket wrote:
| Harry Potter apparently either the best book to read or the one
| with the most for engineers to learn from, I have to conclude.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I think it has to do with the author generating controversy on
| this website for news discussion.
| harshreality wrote:
| There's EY's _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ ,
| which might generate cross-interest in Harry Potter for those
| who wouldn't have read it otherwise.
| samx18 wrote:
| Kind of surprising that HN still is quite limited to the US-West,
| expected a little more diversity with the readers and discussions
| out there
| xp84 wrote:
| It's mostly an English language site and there are a lot of
| English speakers in "the West" - I would expect that if there's
| a China equivalent there aren't that many Americans having
| discussions there.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| What are some books from other regions that you hope might get
| discussed here more?
| ffuxlpff wrote:
| Maybe the German, French, and Russian classics from around
| 1830-1950. The material that was considered the backbone of
| modern literature. At least War and Peace was mentioned in
| the list.
|
| They might be a bit heavy reading but pretty much
| understandable even for less educated reader. The literature
| before that is written for people who know the Bible, Homer,
| Ovid etc, classic philosophies and European history
| thoroughly. For others it looks like nonsense or they might
| read it but not really get much out of it.
| yoan9224 wrote:
| Love this. The top programming books being SICP, Clean Code, and
| Crafting Interpreters feels very on-brand for HN.
|
| Surprised by how much fiction shows up though. I'd assumed HN
| skewed heavily technical but seeing 1984, Dune, and Foundation in
| the top mentions suggests the community has broader reading
| habits than stereotypes suggest.
|
| One bug: looks like "The Martian" by Andy Weir is getting grouped
| with "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury. Might want to add
| some disambiguation logic for common title collisions.
|
| How are you doing the extraction? LLM-based NER or something more
| traditional like regex + entity matching?
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| I wouldn't think clean code is on-brand at all.
|
| Maybe mentioning it for what not to do?
|
| Just search it: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=clean+code
|
| All (justifiably) against clean code methodology.
| ruraljuror wrote:
| https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code is a
| great find from that list. Thanks!
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I was recently reading through Ursula K. Le Guin's The Language
| of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, and she
| has so many great quotes that are directly relevant to this
| situation.
|
| Here's a shorter one:
|
| > "The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your
| understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own
| feelings, and your destiny."
|
| And a longer one:
|
| > "We read books to find out who we are. What other people,
| real or imaginary, do and think and feel - or have done and
| thought and felt; or might do and think and feel - is an
| essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are
| and may become... A person who had never listened to nor read a
| tale or myth or parable or story, would remain ignorant of his
| own emotional and spiritual heights and depths, would not know
| quite fully what it is to be human. For the story - from
| Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools
| invented by the mind of man, for the purpose of gaining
| understanding. There have been great societies that did not use
| the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell
| stories."
|
| Engaging with fantasy and scifi helps us understand ourselves
| and the world around us. It helps find what truly moves and
| inspires us. It teaches us to dream of a different, better
| world.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| What Le Guin is expressing is a beautiful idea, but it is a
| false beauty. It feels like truth because it aligns with how
| narrative engages the human mind, not because it accurately
| explains what stories are or why they exist. The sense that
| fiction reveals destiny, inner depth, or essential humanity
| is an illusion created by evolved cognitive machinery, not
| evidence of genuine insight.
|
| From an evolutionary and cognitive standpoint, imaginative
| fiction is not a privileged tool for understanding who we
| are. It is a byproduct of more basic adaptations. The human
| brain evolved as a prediction engine optimized for survival
| in social groups. Its primary function is to anticipate
| outcomes, model other agents, and reduce uncertainty well
| enough to reproduce. Narrative arises because the brain
| naturally organizes experience into causal sequences
| involving agents, not because stories convey deeper truths
| about the self.
|
| Fiction works by hijacking the same neural systems used for
| social reasoning, memory, and planning. When reading a story,
| the mind runs simulations of social situations. This feels
| like insight, but feeling insight is not the same as
| acquiring accurate models of reality. Fantasy and science
| fiction are not special forms of wisdom. They are simply
| inputs that exaggerate certain variables, making simulations
| emotionally vivid rather than epistemically reliable.
|
| Le Guin's claim that someone without stories would be
| ignorant of their emotional or spiritual depths is not
| supported by biology. Emotions are not learned through
| narrative. They are innate regulatory systems shaped by
| natural selection. Fear, attachment, anger, desire, and joy
| exist prior to language and independently of story exposure.
| Stories can name, frame, or intensify these states, but they
| do not create or deepen them in any fundamental sense.
|
| The universality of storytelling also does not imply that it
| is an adaptive route to understanding. Evolution does not
| favor truth or self knowledge. It favors fitness. Many of the
| most persistent stories humans tell are systematically false.
| Myths, religious narratives, romantic ideals, and national
| legends endure because they exploit cognitive biases like
| agency detection, pattern completion, and emotional salience.
| Their spread demonstrates susceptibility, not insight.
|
| Fantasy and science fiction do not teach us to imagine better
| worlds. They teach us to imagine compelling ones. A narrative
| can feel profound while being completely disconnected from
| reality. Inspiration and accuracy are orthogonal. The
| persuasive power of stories comes from their alignment with
| evolved psychological vulnerabilities, not from their
| correspondence with truth.
|
| So the correct technical framing is this. Stories are not
| tools invented to gain understanding of humanity or destiny.
| They are artifacts produced by brains shaped for survival
| under uncertainty. They can be pleasurable, motivating, or
| culturally stabilizing. They can sometimes illuminate
| patterns of behavior. But their beauty should not be confused
| with truth. The feeling of depth they produce is an illusion,
| not a discovery.
| thefaux wrote:
| 1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
|
| 2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and
| with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you
| again.
|
| 3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's
| eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| That quote is a category error. It's about moral judgment
| of people, not epistemic evaluation of claims. I'm not
| condemning Le Guin, her character, or anyone who enjoys
| fiction. I'm saying a specific explanatory claim about
| how stories relate to truth and human cognition is false.
|
| If "judge not" applied here, then no scientific criticism
| is permissible at all. You couldn't say a theory is
| wrong, a model is flawed, or a claim is unsupported,
| because the critic is also imperfect. That standard would
| immediately end every serious discussion on HN.
|
| Quoting scripture in response to an evolutionary and
| cognitive argument isn't a rebuttal. It's a frame shift
| from "is this claim true" to "are you allowed to say it."
| That avoids engaging the substance entirely.
|
| If you think the argument is wrong, point to the error.
| If not, appealing to moral humility doesn't rescue a
| claim from being false.
| daemoncoder wrote:
| This is excellent clarity of thought.
| 47282847 wrote:
| > Emotions are not learned through narrative. They are
| innate regulatory systems shaped by natural selection.
|
| Emotions are deeply shaped by culture. Infants need
| emotional mirroring, co-regulation, and guidance in how to
| deal with and "develop" emotions. In some cultures,
| emotions exist not isolated in individuals but only in
| relationships (never "I am angry", but "there is anger
| between us"). In Asian cultures, you typically soak up that
| you cannot feel only joy from winning but at the same time
| feel grief because the other lost. Infants that do not
| receive adequate mirroring develop long term brain damage
| and other pathologies. The narrative is/becomes a crucial
| part of how we perceive ourselves and our emotions.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| I should clarify a mistake in how I phrased this earlier.
| Emotions are shaped by both innate biology and
| environment. Early mirroring, co regulation, and social
| interaction are essential for normal emotional
| development. That evidence is well established. Where I
| disagree is the leap from that fact to the claim that
| narrative is a crucial or primary mechanism of emotional
| formation.
|
| Emotional regulation and differentiation emerge long
| before narrative competence. Infants acquire affective
| patterns through direct interaction and embodied
| feedback, not stories or symbolic self models. Cultural
| differences reflect how emotions are framed and
| expressed, not that narrative creates them. Narrative
| comes later as a descriptive layer that organizes
| experience, but it is downstream of emotion, not its
| cause.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| What is the cut off date?
|
| It seems to miss the mentions of the late John Varley's books in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46269991 six days ago.
| seinvak wrote:
| Just missed by a day I guess. Cutoff is 15th December.
| cwnyth wrote:
| There's a mistake with The Rust Programming Language. It counts
| Programming Rust as the same book.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Lovely site. Got curious about one of my own biases (that the
| perceived libertarian slant of HN would be similarly in favor of
| Ayn Rand), and clicked through the usual suspects to see the
| context they were discussed in.
|
| Pleasantly surprised to see much of the discourse was along the
| lines of, "Oh yeah, read her stuff, found it fascinating [in the
| same vein as a train wreck can be], recommended just to
| understand how those folks think." Not going to pick up her stuff
| any time soon, but I was happy to have a bias prove unfounded.
| bdunks wrote:
| It was nice seeing my 2025 reading list represented.
|
| I started the year reading the first five books of the Foundation
| Series (book #1 on the list). A must read for anyone who hasn't
| read it. I couldn't believe how well it held up 70+ years
| later(!!)
|
| I just finished the 3 Body Problem trilogy, and think it's
| appropriate book #2 (The Dark Forest) is on the list as it's
| probably the best -- but all three are great.
|
| I'm now ready Project Hail Mary. It's been a long time since I
| read the Martian,but Andy Weir's writing style is fast paced and
| practically a screenplay already. It's obvious from the first
| chapter why it was picked up for a movie.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Andy Weir's writing style is fast paced and practically a
| screenplay already
|
| Oh thanks for the warning. I was avoiding him based on a hunch.
| Now I know I was right.
|
| If anyone else is weird like me and likes books to not read
| like a movie screenplay, same goes for The Expanse.
| retsibsi wrote:
| For what it's worth, I found (the start of the first book of)
| the Expanse to be this in a bad way, but the Martian to be
| this in a good way. I can definitely see why some people
| would find The Martian annoying too, but it feels more like a
| passion project than a TV pitch.
| druskacik wrote:
| Funny coincidence, these are the exact sci-fi books I read this
| and previous year, in the exact order I read them (I read some
| non-sci-fi books in between to not get overwhelmed). I finished
| Project Hail Mary literally one hour ago. All the books were
| great, but Remembrance of Earth's Past series was literally
| life-changing, truly a masterpiece.
|
| I'm guessing you plan to read Dune next? ;) I plan to start
| with it during Christmas break.
| ajcp wrote:
| FWIW there are actually 4 books in the Three-Body Problem
| "trilogy". The Redemption of Time was written by a fan who felt
| the series didn't provide closure and was recognized as canon
| by Cixin Liu.
| ruraljuror wrote:
| Woah, what an unexpected surprise!
| ajcp wrote:
| I highly recommend the book; it definitely completes the
| series well.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Asimov was a brilliant mind, but I'm not sure the Foundation
| series holds up very well since chaos theory become established
| (it is 40+ years since I read the books though, so I could be
| remembering wrongly).
| vips7L wrote:
| I finished foundation this year too. I really didn't like how
| he ended it. Fun fact I learned from reading Foundation's Edge
| is that he didn't want to write Edge or Foundation and Earth.
|
| Gnome Press owned the original series and he didn't get any
| royalties for them. In 1961, his current publisher Doubleday
| acquired them and for 20 years he told them no to writing more
| Foundation books. In 1981 Doubleday said they would pay him 10
| times his normal rate and that is when he wrote Foundation's
| Edge.
|
| This was all printed in the front of my copy of Foundation and
| Earth. Titled as "The Story Behind the Foundation".
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz is absent. We cultists have
| fallen down on the job.
| seinvak wrote:
| By searching in all categories, I can see it's mentioned once :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42659243#42662874
|
| For a cult, this is some remarkably low-effort proselytizing
| though :/
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > For a cult, this is some remarkably low-effort
| proselytizing though :/
|
| I think we take for granted having dang as a member and it
| makes us apathetic.
| card_zero wrote:
| Some more errors:
|
| _Revelations of divine love, recorded by Julian, anchoress at
| Norwich, A.D. 1373_ wasn 't really mentioned ever. Those mentions
| are of the book of Revelations in the Bible.
|
| _Beowulf_ mentions are all referencing the Old English epic
| poem, not a specific modern version by Seamus Heaney.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > Beowulf mentions are all referencing the Old English epic
| poem
|
| Knowing the HN crowd, it can also be a reference to beowulf
| clusters as well.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| This isn't slashdot :)
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| My favorite reads of 2025 came from an HN recommendation (the
| Steerswoman series). I don't see it on this site so maybe the
| comment I saw was too oblique of a reference
| krick wrote:
| Not really, there are quite a few books "missing" that I
| definitely saw mentioned in discussions not so long ago.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I think some of the book associations are wrong. It shows "the
| martian chronicles" for mentions of andy weir's "the martian".
|
| Otherwise nice to see so many of the books i read this year
| mentioned. Except "Mein Kampf" of course, interesting top mention
| there. perhaps lots of people are reading it to understand the
| past? I'll need to see if it's worth it, I always considered it
| the equivalent of drinking water from the river thames to
| understand victorian england better.
| Erlangen wrote:
| Another mistake is to place "The Road"(Cormac McCarthy) under
| "On the Road"(Jack Kerouac).
| johngossman wrote:
| Imagine you were expecting one of those and read the other!
| krick wrote:
| CSV export (just the book list) would be welcome.
| Cheetah26 wrote:
| Has a lot in common with NPR's top 100 sci-fi and fantasy list
| from 2011 [0]. Cool to see how the classics stay relevant.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-
| top-100-...
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The indexing must be flakey. I have mentioned various books
| multiple times with links to their respective Amazon pages. No
| mentions of them.
| jackconsidine wrote:
| extremely cool thanks.
|
| See a few of my mentions on here, a few of them not [0]
|
| Regardless, this is a real treat
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44977536
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| If you are the creator of this site can you grab one of the
| covers for hypermedia systems off the website?
|
| https://hypermedia.systems
|
| thank you for making this!
| analogpixel wrote:
| Would be nice if you could filter out all the only 1 mention
| books, and then sort by least number of mentions. There seems to
| be a million 1 mention books, and I can't scroll through them
| all, but would be more curious to see books with 2 or more
| mentions.
|
| It was kind of disappointing to see the highest mentioned books,
| since I've read most of them already (nothing new really popped
| out.)
| krick wrote:
| Here, did it for you (.tsv):
| https://limewire.com/d/iZp6i#ZEhH4XXWBC
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Why does this list sound like a 16 year olds "I am very Smart"
| list?
|
| These are classics yes, but I was expecting something close to
| the forefront of the culture
| xandrius wrote:
| You have a wayyy too skewed perception of the general tech
| person.
|
| I normally get way better and varied recommendations from my
| philosophy friends, for example. Here it's generally just the
| usual mainstream sci-fi stuff about tech, space, ai/robots and
| such.
|
| And forefront of culture is by definition going to be full of
| known stuff, else it wouldn't be culture-defining if almost
| nobody knows it.
|
| What would you put in your top 5 "I'm very smart" 30+ yo book
| list?
| stevenfoster wrote:
| Picked up my two mentions of the Interior Castle by Teresa of
| Avila. Going to be looking to see if any of the other doctors
| have been mentioned.
| yboris wrote:
| I once commented on HN how my favorite Sci Fi novel is
| _Accelerando_ and the author, Charles Stross, replied to it
| suggesting I try his _The Rapture of the Nerds_ he co-wrote with
| Cory Doctorow; I loved it when I read it too.
|
| I love HN - it's basically the only website I visit these days
| (aside checking mail, watching YouTube, and gardening my GitHub
| repositories).
| number6 wrote:
| Accelerando is one of my favourite too! Thanks for sharing the
| reply, always love book recommendations
| jaggederest wrote:
| In a thematically similar but very different vein, Adrian
| Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series was an enjoyable read.
|
| I also recommend Eric Nylund's work, specifically Signal to
| Noise and A Signal Shattered.
|
| Edit: Well, there you go, Children of Time had 23 mentions
| now that I've read down further. Disappointed to see Eric
| Nylund's work fade into obscurity, I rate him up with Neal
| Stephenson.
| watersb wrote:
| I haven't been able to find Eric Nylund's "Signal to Noise"
| and sequel "A Signsl Shattered" in ebook format.
|
| But they are strange and great.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Those two novels of Nylund's really captured the "dark
| forest" concept well, though I won't say more so as to
| avoid spoilers.
|
| I haven't read the source material so I can't speak to
| the books, but the adaptations of 3 Body (Problem) that
| I've watched, both the Tencent and Netflix ones, also
| explore similar themes to Nylund's works. Heck, I just
| discovered that Liu Cixin coined the "dark forest" term,
| though he isn't the first to explore it.
| zaneyard wrote:
| I thought I recognized that name: Nylund also wrote some
| books for the Halo series which I enjoyed, although I was
| already a fan of the games.
| jaggederest wrote:
| I believe he was a staff writer for the Halo series in
| house as well, something like Marc Laidlaw at Valve, and
| the books emerged from internal storytelling written for
| the series. Very interesting stuff.
|
| I also highly recommend his older books Pawn's Dream, Dry
| Water, and especially A Game Of Universe. They're
| available on Kindle and part of the Unlimited program so
| easy to check out.
| smoyer wrote:
| Just reread Accelerando ... Still awesome.
| yuzhun wrote:
| Not long ago I came across this book in an HN thread about AI
| and the future. The moment I saw the title, I knew I had to
| read it. Crypto, AI, collective intelligence -- it hits all the
| right notes for me.
| bananaflag wrote:
| If you want some other portrayals of the Singularity, see _The
| Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect_ and _Friendship is Optimal_
| (and also _Caelum Est Conterrens_ )
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| It was good. Depressing, but good. While not singularity,
| some motiff and predictions seem to align.
|
| I would still add:
|
| Snow crash Rainbow's end
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I really appreciate Cory Doctorow's work on digital rights,
| enshittification and other topics, but I couldn't make it more
| than half way through 'Rapture of the nerds'. Just too strange,
| I couldn't connect to it. It is very original though. Some
| people will probably love it.
| parkersweb wrote:
| Amazon lists it as book 3 of 3 in a series - do you need to
| have read the first two?
| yboris wrote:
| Never read the first two, love _Accelerando_ , unsure what I
| was missing; feels like a well-written self-contained story.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Best HN post of the year. I just surfaced after hours exploring.
| therobots927 wrote:
| I tried to get into neuromancer but I'm not a fan of the nonstop
| dialogue. Just a personal reference but it feels more and more
| rare to get new science fiction books primarily driven by the
| narrator.
| blintz wrote:
| I tend to avoid sci-fi that hits too close to home (don't love
| any of the AI/internet/crypto classics, same reason I can't bear
| to watch Silicon Valley), so I was a little bored by the top of
| the the list.
|
| But, there's really good stuff that I've loved just a bit down
| the list: Foundation, The Left Hand Of Darkness, The
| Dispossessed, Stories of Your Life and Others, Exhalation,
| Children Of Time, Dune.
|
| Was surprised the Mars trilogy was pretty low (might be the
| keyword indexing?) - highly recommend, as long as you don't get
| too bored by descriptions of rock.
| specproc wrote:
| So I'm guessing we passed HN through an LLM, looking for book
| mentions.
|
| A number of posts here flagging disambiguation issues, I've run
| into this a lot.
|
| I've been dealing with the problem using cosine distance between
| embeddings, but find it tricky to verify at scale.
|
| Anyone else struggling with this?
| thrance wrote:
| That would be ruinous, it's probably just doing a simple full
| text search against a database of titles.
| defrost wrote:
| Good work, thanks for this.
|
| It would be useful to be able to get an URL for each scrapped
| book so that users could link to, say, the entry for _A Texbook
| of Engineering Mathematics_.
|
| _The TeXbook_ by Donald Knuth has been mapped to _A Texbook of
| Engineering Mathematics_ by N.P. Bali from this source comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45399031#45400264
| muzani wrote:
| Searching Mein Kampf adds some decent data on what to filter out,
| or tag differently. A lot of it comes up in discussions on banned
| books etc.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
|
| Also, some of it is just Godwin's Law.
| ggm wrote:
| Godwin's law was made up as an example of dawkins meme, and now
| means more than its original.
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| Good to see _Designing Data-Intensive Applications_ on there, but
| it should be higher -- certainly above the thoroughly middling
| _Clean Code_ at least! DDIA is still the first book I tell every
| junior to read after they've got a couple years experience under
| their belt. Can't wait for the 2nd edition!
| ajju wrote:
| This is god's* work OP! Thank you!
|
| * Or gods' work if you are polytheistic, or $god's work with
| "god" as a variable for all other belief systems on the Unix
| shell ;)
| teleforce wrote:
| Very strange, System Programming in Linux book was mentioned many
| times in HN before but apparently not in the list, but maybe just
| not this year [1].
|
| [1] System Programming in Linux:
|
| https://nostarch.com/system-programming-linux
| mvkel wrote:
| Is it because it's not on Amazon?
| teleforce wrote:
| It is.
| ilteris wrote:
| I bet it's the same books every year
| JDye wrote:
| Surprised TCP/IP Illustrated (Volume 1) has only been mentioned 6
| times. It's been so helpful for me, so many times. Perhaps it's
| because most people haven't had writing a TCP stack as part of
| their day job, but it's such a fundamental technology I would
| have thought learning about it in depth would be suggested far
| more frequently.
|
| Also, a proper first edition copy is really high quality with
| lovely thick paper. My copy of Volume 2 on the other hand is not
| of the same quality, both in content and physical properties.
| Aachen wrote:
| > most people haven't had writing a TCP stack as part of their
| day job
|
| yeah, I'd just look up the specific thing I want to know online
| bashkiddie wrote:
| I once had to write an IPv6 stack intending to cache poison
| internet targets (alias resolution). I just referred to the
| RFC.
|
| A well behaved reference implementation would not be of help.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Were there any books that mentioned Hacker News?
| why-o-why wrote:
| i soooo live in a reality bubble: harry potter and the bible were
| 1 & 2? i don't associate with anyone that reads either. bubble
| on!
| novoreorx wrote:
| Such a great collection! I wonder how it was achieved, definitely
| not by LLM, was it?
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| There was another one, HackerNews Readings, but seems to be not
| updated.
|
| https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/
| tramtrist wrote:
| hmm. I made a post about "Imagining All the People. Poetry
| Inspired by Beatles Lyrics" but it didn't make the list. I'm
| guessing it's because there were no comments?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46296428
| https://www.thebeatleworksltd.com/
| watersb wrote:
| I would love more people to know about science fiction
| strangecore author qntm:
|
| https://qntm.org/Self
|
| _There Is No Antimemetics Division_ freaked me the hell out.
| Recommended.
| lencastre wrote:
| fantastic story thru and thru, thumbs up!!!
| tnolet wrote:
| 100% the most original and truly scary hard SciFi from the last
| year.
| TZubiri wrote:
| This is great!
|
| I think some books might have a boost if we add their informal
| names, namely:
|
| - Dragon book
|
| - Wizard book
|
| - ummm, I'm sure there's more
| crobertsbmw wrote:
| In safari, if I have content blockers enabled (which I have on by
| default for privacy and whatnot) then the site doesn't show me
| anything. I'm guessing these are all ad links or something?
| amarant wrote:
| Pleased to see that the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy was
| mentioned exactly 42 times!
|
| I almost wonder if that particular number was hardcoded for
| humour!
| faizmokh wrote:
| I love it.
|
| Jut to note there seems to be a bug with the comment section.
| When I selected the Rust book and then selected others, the first
| comment from Rust book is shown in other books as well.
| timonoko wrote:
| I finally managed to read Player of Games. @grok explained the
| structure of the book and made list of _personae_ worth
| remembering.
|
| _Playboy is forced to take part in war of the worlds. 50 pages
| of societe, parties and games are necessary to describe this
| character._
| datameta wrote:
| Oh how I wish we could know what Iain M. Banks thinks of the
| LLM revolution...
| thoughtpeddler wrote:
| Is anyone else surprised that Godel, Escher, Bach is as low on
| the list as it is? My experience on HN would have me believe it
| would be in the top 10 for sure. I wonder if it's a string-
| matching issue.
| kaizenb wrote:
| This is just great! Thanks for building.
| kaizenb wrote:
| No design category though, broke my heart :(
| JDEW wrote:
| Nice! The entry for Abundance [0] is listed as another book (An
| Abundance of Katherines [1])
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176444106-abundance [1]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215526423-an-abundance-o...
| frm88 wrote:
| You missed some of mine, for example Theatre of the God's is not
| on your list: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45718536
|
| Edit:the French edition of the Vorkosigan Saga has denfitively
| the wrong author https://hackernews-readings-613604506318.us-
| west1.run.app/
| mkbkn wrote:
| Can you also make it for 2024 and previous years?
| coopykins wrote:
| Surprised to see a lot of mentions to Children of Time, a book I
| picked picked up on a whim in a local Bookshop (something I
| probably hanger done in 5 years)
| throw-12-16 wrote:
| Seems like a great training set for a hn astroturf bot.
| rienbdj wrote:
| Any info on how this site was implemented?
| DiskoHexyl wrote:
| On the one hand it is indeed mostly a high school reading list,
| all very mainstream and relatively popular fiction/sci-fi with a
| sprinkle of tech literature.
|
| Is that really such a bad thing? Most adults barely read at all,
| or, at the very best, consume a current random best-seller here
| and there. I'd say that anything from a high school reading list
| is an upgrade, especially since most of this stuff is lost on the
| kids anyway.
|
| It's all good literature and a nice entry point for someone new
| to the hobby. Expecting more from a top-50 of a tech forum is a
| bit surprising
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Given the current political climate, I'm surprised Kafka didn't
| make the list.
| dewey wrote:
| It looks like it's not handling comments correctly and counts
| books mentioned in ">".
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| i mentioned 5 books in a comment[0], only 3 where registered by
| this tool. Wonder why :D
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44965191
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Probably most surprising here was how many mentions Twilight got!
| Not the book I expected to see mentioned often on this forum
| mcc1ane wrote:
| Mentions of "Genesis" are attributed to "Armageddon's Children
| (Genesis of Shannara)" by Terry Brooks.
| timerol wrote:
| I was surprised to see "An Abundance of Katherines", given that
| it's not John Green's newest or most highly regarded work. I
| looked into the comments to see why it was being discussed, but
| it seems to be a classification error - all of the comments are
| discussing "Abundance", the political nonfiction book by Ezra
| Klein and Derek Thompson. That one makes more sense on the list,
| given that it was released this March
| Dowwie wrote:
| There's a really long tail in this list. What diamonds are there
| in the single-mention rough?
| objectdynamics wrote:
| Oddly (well to me at least) "Compilers: Principles, techniques
| and tools" is categorised as literature.
| yoan9224 wrote:
| This is a clever aggregation project, but I think the methodology
| might miss some important signal-to-noise distinctions. A book
| mentioned once in passing ("oh yeah, like in [book]") carries
| very different weight than a book recommended explicitly ("you
| should read [book] if you want to understand X"). Are you parsing
| comment sentiment or just doing keyword extraction?
|
| The real value would be in clustering books by topic and showing
| which ones appear together in discussions. If someone mentions
| "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" and "Database Internals"
| in the same comment, that's a stronger signal than two isolated
| mentions. You could build a recommendation engine from that co-
| occurrence data.
|
| Also curious about the temporal aspect - tracking which books
| surge during certain news cycles. For example, did "Chip War"
| mentions spike when the AI compute restrictions hit? That
| contextual analysis would make this way more useful than a static
| ranked list. Would definitely use this if it had those features.
| skeledrew wrote:
| It's already pretty useful with the number of mentions
| available. Higher a number, the more that generally find a work
| of interest. Unless there are members who just love to spam the
| names of particular books. My main gripe is that this isn't a
| repo/gist, as a site this specialized is more likely to
| disappear into the wind at any time. Also the Amazon buy links;
| would prefer a link to Wikipedia, or even Goodreads.
| thefringthing wrote:
| If you had asked me to list ten books that would be mentioned
| frequently on HackerNews, I think I'd have gotten at least eight
| of the top ten here.
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