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Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

613 points by seinvak 9mo ago

begueradj 9mo ago
The 6 first books reflect the quality comments I often see here on HN.
codingdave 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
    > "probably should’ve added a disclaimer" It's a violation of the Amazon Associates program to not have one.
    - mtlynch 9mo ago
      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-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#affiliateornetwork https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...
- whatamidoingyo 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
    Good catch, I didn’t read through the comments where it’s mentioned.
- mohamez 9mo ago
  I'm really trying so hard to understand how did you come up with this correlation.
  - dozerly 9mo ago
    The US has shifted to becoming an authoritarian fascist state. It’s not surprising that people reference another prominent authoritarian fascist manifesto.
- an0malous 9mo ago
  I think 1984 is more of a sign of the times, and not just mentioned in the context of banned book threads
  - Barrin92 9mo ago
    >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.
babblingfish 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  do you not read the comments?
- silexia 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
    You must confuse news.ycombinator.com (a U.S.-American site) with hn.se ?
  - Yizahi 9mo ago
    If you seriously call HN "far left" you may try looking at Vox, Parler and Truth for the "centrist moderate" crowd :)
  - lowkey_ 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
    > 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 9mo ago
  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 https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code
  - groundzeros2015 9mo ago
    I haven’t even read your recommendation and know you are right.
endlessvoid94 9mo ago
Have you seen https://hackernewsbooks.com https://hackernewsbooks.com ?
- zoklet-enjoyer 9mo ago
  Mind Games at number 2? I got that book years ago and was so disappointed I still think about it sometimes.
  - Rendello 9mo ago
    You just bumped it up by mentioning it ;)
Cloudly 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  An Abundance of Katherines has only been mentioned on HN three times, and none of those are listed among the 19 claimed mentions.
GenerocUsername 9mo ago
Hitchhikers guide to the universe having 42 mentions is a cosmic level coincidence
- kaangiray26 9mo ago
  the ultimate coincidence of life, the universe, and everything
- duckerduck 9mo ago
  Now its 43 :'(
  - jama211 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
      But that really makes me wonder what the question was?
      - jama211 9mo ago
        Hmm, might need a few more cycles for that one
  - georgefrowny 9mo ago
    The eternal fate of the Googlewhack.
  - kenjackson 9mo ago
    Actually still 42. The guide to the “universe” is a different book.
- QuantumNomad_ 9mo ago
  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 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_Guide_to_the_Galaxy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guid...
tonymet 9mo ago
great project! how did you do tokenization and alignment of the titles to their ISBN / Amazon ID
- seinvak 9mo ago
  Thanks! I used OpenLibrary's API to get the book IDs, and then Gemini 3 to generate the Amazon links.
hubraumhugo 9mo ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28596207
- seinvak 9mo ago
  > 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 9mo ago
The Book of Dragons by Edith Nesbit is listed instead of "the Dragon book"
- thcipriani 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
  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-First/dp/B0012NKJ6E#:~:text=Compilers:%20Principles%2C%20Techniques%2C%20and,8580001401003:%20Amazon.com:%20Books https://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Tools...
  - jll29 9mo ago
    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.
barddoo 9mo ago
The Holy Bible mentioned.
torben-friis 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
  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.
Der_Einzige 9mo ago
Embarrassing to see 0 works by Max Stirner in this work. HN is truly spooked.
omoikane 9mo ago
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, "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (20 mentions) and "GEB" (7 mentions) are listed as separate books, but they are the same book.
- losvedir 9mo ago
  Similarly, "The Book of Dragons" I'm guessing might be the so called "dragon book" about compiler design.
- throw0101c 9mo ago
  > 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
furyofantares 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
Love this. Is there a scrape-able list of these?
- seinvak 9mo ago
  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_books_final.json https://storage.googleapis.com/globalhnbucket/normalized_boo...
emodendroket 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  I think it has to do with the author generating controversy on this website for news discussion.
- harshreality 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
  What are some books from other regions that you hope might get discussed here more?
  - ffuxlpff 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=clean+code All (justifiably) against clean code methodology.
  - ruraljuror 9mo ago
    https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code is a great find from that list. Thanks!
- TheAceOfHearts 9mo ago
  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.
Freak_NL 9mo ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46269991 six days ago.
- seinvak 9mo ago
  Just missed by a day I guess. Cutoff is 15th December.
cwnyth 9mo ago
There's a mistake with The Rust Programming Language. It counts Programming Rust as the same book.
stego-tech 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  > 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 9mo ago
    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.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  - Idesmi 9mo ago
    I loathe movie adaptations and never watch them, but the source material The Martian was a very good read in my 12th grade. I like hard SciFi with no aliens and plausible rules.
    - nottorp 9mo ago
      I don't like scifi or fantasy, hard or not, that turns into a technical manual. Which is another thing I heard of in connection to Weir. Brandon Sanderson's fantasy series with all those metals is another example. I managed to finish like 3 books but I simply skipped all the d&d manual like descriptions of metal usage.
WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago
Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz is absent. We cultists have fallen down on the job.
- seinvak 9mo ago
  By searching in all categories, I can see it's mentioned once : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42659243#42662874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42659243#42662874 For a cult, this is some remarkably low-effort proselytizing though :/
  - WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago
    > 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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  > 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 9mo ago
    This isn't slashdot :)
Rebelgecko 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  Not really, there are quite a few books "missing" that I definitely saw mentioned in discussions not so long ago.
notepad0x90 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  Another mistake is to place "The Road"(Cormac McCarthy) under "On the Road"(Jack Kerouac).
  - johngossman 9mo ago
    Imagine you were expecting one of those and read the other!
- Try1275 9mo ago
  Yesterday I finished a long listen of the audio book "The Raise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer (on audible, 60 hours). He frequently quotes "Mein Kampf". I am not sure one can stomach the whole thing but it's interesting to read quotes of it in context.
- BrandoElFollito 9mo ago
  I think "Mein Kampf" is the equivalent of celebrity gossip: you are very superficially interested because why not. The depth of the book is similar to the depth of this gossip's interest. I had a look at the book a few years ago. After a few pages (somewhere in the middle of the book), you can see the writing style (not very good, overexcited, and that would appeal to people who look for it), but it would take longer to get a grasp on the content.
krick 9mo ago
CSV export (just the book list) would be welcome.
Cheetah26 9mo ago
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-science-fiction-fantasy-books https://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-...
deleted 9mo ago
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lo_zamoyski 9mo ago
The indexing must be flakey. I have mentioned various books multiple times with links to their respective Amazon pages. No mentions of them.
- seinvak 9mo ago
  [dead]
jackconsidine 9mo ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44977536
recursivedoubts 9mo ago
If you are the creator of this site can you grab one of the covers for hypermedia systems off the website? https://hypermedia.systems https://hypermedia.systems thank you for making this!
analogpixel 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  Here, did it for you (.tsv): https://limewire.com/d/iZp6i#ZEhH4XXWBC https://limewire.com/d/iZp6i#ZEhH4XXWBC
brcmthrowaway 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  Accelerando is one of my favourite too! Thanks for sharing the reply, always love book recommendations
  - jaggederest 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
      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 9mo ago
        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.
    - 9mo ago
bookofjoe 9mo ago
Best HN post of the year. I just surfaced after hours exploring.
therobots927 9mo ago
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.
deleted 9mo ago
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blintz 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  That would be ruinous, it's probably just doing a simple full text search against a database of titles.
defrost 9mo ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45399031#45400264
muzani 9mo ago
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=false&query=mein%20kampf&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... Also, some of it is just Godwin's Law.
- ggm 9mo ago
  Godwin's law was made up as an example of dawkins meme, and now means more than its original.
libraryofbabel 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 ;)
ilteris 9mo ago
I bet it's the same books every year
teleforce 9mo ago
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 https://nostarch.com/system-programming-linux
- mvkel 9mo ago
  Is it because it's not on Amazon?
  - teleforce 9mo ago
    It is.
JDye 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  > 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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
Were there any books that mentioned Hacker News?
why-o-why 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
Such a great collection! I wonder how it was achieved, definitely not by LLM, was it?
Brajeshwar 9mo ago
There was another one, HackerNews Readings, but seems to be not updated. https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/ https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/
tramtrist 9mo ago
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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46296428 https://www.thebeatleworksltd.com/ https://www.thebeatleworksltd.com/
TZubiri 9mo ago
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
watersb 9mo ago
I would love more people to know about science fiction strangecore author qntm: https://qntm.org/Self https://qntm.org/Self There Is No Antimemetics Division freaked me the hell out. Recommended.
- lencastre 9mo ago
  fantastic story thru and thru, thumbs up!!!
- tnolet 9mo ago
  100% the most original and truly scary hard SciFi from the last year.
crobertsbmw 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 societé, parties and games are necessary to describe this character.
- datameta 9mo ago
  Oh how I wish we could know what Iain M. Banks thinks of the LLM revolution...
thoughtpeddler 9mo ago
Is anyone else surprised that Gödel, 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 9mo ago
This is just great! Thanks for building.
- kaizenb 9mo ago
  No design category though, broke my heart :(
JDEW 9mo ago
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 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176444106-abundance [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215526423-an-abundance-of-katherines?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_7 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215526423-an-abundance-o...
frm88 9mo ago
You missed some of mine, for example Theatre of the God's is not on your list: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45718536 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/ https://hackernews-readings-613604506318.us-west1.run.app/
mkbkn 9mo ago
Can you also make it for 2024 and previous years?
coopykins 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
Seems like a great training set for a hn astroturf bot.
rienbdj 9mo ago
Any info on how this site was implemented?
DiskoHexyl 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
Given the current political climate, I'm surprised Kafka didn't make the list.
dewey 9mo ago
It looks like it's not handling comments correctly and counts books mentioned in ">".
4ggr0 9mo ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44965191
atlasunshrugged 9mo ago
Probably most surprising here was how many mentions Twilight got! Not the book I expected to see mentioned often on this forum
mcc1ane 9mo ago
Mentions of “Genesis” are attributed to “Armageddon's Children (Genesis of Shannara)” by Terry Brooks.
timerol 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
There's a really long tail in this list. What diamonds are there in the single-mention rough?
- WillAdams 9mo ago
  Books which I have read and would recommend include: - _Ashley's Book of Knots_ --- everyone should be aware of knots and now at least the basics interesting, _The Klutz Book of Knots_ was also mentioned once - James Clavell _Noble House_ --- part of his "Asian Saga", not sure if it has aged well --- if a person could read only one of these, I'd recommend _King Rat_, based on his experience in a Japanese prison camp in WWII. - Hesse _Steppenwolf_ --- that Hesse is no longer read saddens me deeply, and not just because this makes _The Glass Bead Game_ less likely --- his thoughts on the difficulties of interpersonal relationships resonate even now - Knuth _Literate Programming_ --- I _really_ wish this style f programming would gain traction and that there would be more instances of taking famous programs and re-writing as a Literate Program, e.g., http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf - Knuth _Digital Typography_ (and not just because I have a reward check) - Knuth _Mathematical Writing_ --- if you do any work in math, you probably already have a copy --- if you don't, you probably need one - Dewdney _The Planiverse_ --- response to the classic _Flatland_, this has a real charm and despite the dated computer technology, has held up well - Walter jon Williams _Hardwired_ --- an amazing cyberpunk novel, part of which was published in _Omni_ - Steven Brust's _Jhereg_ --- one of my favourite fantasy novels, which I've been reading since picking it up in a Waldenbooks when I was in high school, waiting for the last two books, and esp. glad of these since they made the "Paarfi Romances" exist --- anyone who enjoys Alexandre Dumas and fantasy should read _The Phoenix Guards_ - C.J. Cherryh's _Regenesis_ --- her entire Alliance--Union series is amazing and books are so varied pretty much everyone will find something which appeals - Trevanian _The Eiger Sanction_ and _Shibumi_ --- not sure if this and _Shibumi_ have aged well or no, but the latter was a big part of my childhood - Ben Franklin's Autobiography --- read presidential biographies to my kind in chronological order as a trial and regret not continuing with the actual project: biographies of important persons in chronological order - Sanora Babb's _Whose Names Are Unknown_: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_Unknown https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_... (ob. discl., that was my mention) Other books which only I mentioned: - Hal Clement _Space Lash_ now available in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Spheres https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Sph... --- I recommend folks read it in reverse chronological order, starting at the back, then working to the front and bailing when things get too quaint/old-school/golden-age. - H. Beam Piper "Omnilingual" --- this should be a part of the middle school canon, lightly updated version at: http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html - _Foxfire_ --- a classic series what predated the "Maker" movement - Tolkien's _The Fall of Arthur_ - Knuth _TeX: The Program_ Books which were sufficiently striking that I have made a note of them to get to read (hopefully this will work out better than _The Black Swan_ which I found annoying) - _Visual Thinking in Mathematics_ - _Hardcore VisualBASIC_ --- still a bit bummed that I managed to miss this and MacBasic.... - _Phoebe and her Unicorn_ --- getting this for my daughter - _Harmony with Lego(R) Bricks_ --- book on music improvisation - Ornamental Origami Note that a number of books weren't actually mentioned, e.g., Isaac Asimov's _Book of Facts_
objectdynamics 9mo ago
Oddly (well to me at least) "Compilers: Principles, techniques and tools" is categorised as literature.
yoan9224 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
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.
udev4096 9mo ago
[dead]
GuB-42 9mo ago
How are the data processed? It doesn't look easy. For instance there is "Foundation" in the list, a common word, how does the algorithm distinguish between just the word and a mention of the book. Same idea for "The holy Bible". It is almost always just referred to as just "the Bible" but "Bible" is also used to refer to all sorts of reference books.

613 points by seinvak 9mo ago

The 6 first books reflect the quality comments I often see here on HN.

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  > "probably should’ve added a disclaimer" It's a violation of the Amazon Associates program to not have one.
  - mtlynch 9mo ago
    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-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#affiliateornetwork https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...
whatamidoingyo 9mo ago
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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  Good catch, I didn’t read through the comments where it’s mentioned.
mohamez 9mo ago
I'm really trying so hard to understand how did you come up with this correlation.
- dozerly 9mo ago
  The US has shifted to becoming an authoritarian fascist state. It’s not surprising that people reference another prominent authoritarian fascist manifesto.
an0malous 9mo ago
I think 1984 is more of a sign of the times, and not just mentioned in the context of banned book threads
- Barrin92 9mo ago
  >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.

babblingfish 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
do you not read the comments?
silexia 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  You must confuse news.ycombinator.com (a U.S.-American site) with hn.se ?
- Yizahi 9mo ago
  If you seriously call HN "far left" you may try looking at Vox, Parler and Truth for the "centrist moderate" crowd :)
- lowkey_ 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  > 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 9mo ago
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 https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code
- groundzeros2015 9mo ago
  I haven’t even read your recommendation and know you are right.

endlessvoid94 9mo ago

Have you seen https://hackernewsbooks.com https://hackernewsbooks.com ?

zoklet-enjoyer 9mo ago
Mind Games at number 2? I got that book years ago and was so disappointed I still think about it sometimes.
- Rendello 9mo ago
  You just bumped it up by mentioning it ;)

Cloudly 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
An Abundance of Katherines has only been mentioned on HN three times, and none of those are listed among the 19 claimed mentions.

GenerocUsername 9mo ago

Hitchhikers guide to the universe having 42 mentions is a cosmic level coincidence

kaangiray26 9mo ago
the ultimate coincidence of life, the universe, and everything
duckerduck 9mo ago
Now its 43 :'(
- jama211 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
    But that really makes me wonder what the question was?
    - jama211 9mo ago
      Hmm, might need a few more cycles for that one
- georgefrowny 9mo ago
  The eternal fate of the Googlewhack.
- kenjackson 9mo ago
  Actually still 42. The guide to the “universe” is a different book.
QuantumNomad_ 9mo ago
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 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_Guide_to_the_Galaxy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guid...

tonymet 9mo ago

great project! how did you do tokenization and alignment of the titles to their ISBN / Amazon ID

seinvak 9mo ago
Thanks! I used OpenLibrary's API to get the book IDs, and then Gemini 3 to generate the Amazon links.

hubraumhugo 9mo ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28596207

seinvak 9mo ago
> 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 9mo ago

The Book of Dragons by Edith Nesbit is listed instead of "the Dragon book"

thcipriani 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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-First/dp/B0012NKJ6E#:~:text=Compilers:%20Principles%2C%20Techniques%2C%20and,8580001401003:%20Amazon.com:%20Books https://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Tools...
- jll29 9mo ago
  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.

barddoo 9mo ago

The Holy Bible mentioned.

torben-friis 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
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.

Der_Einzige 9mo ago

Embarrassing to see 0 works by Max Stirner in this work. HN is truly spooked.

omoikane 9mo ago

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, "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (20 mentions) and "GEB" (7 mentions) are listed as separate books, but they are the same book.

losvedir 9mo ago
Similarly, "The Book of Dragons" I'm guessing might be the so called "dragon book" about compiler design.
throw0101c 9mo ago
> 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

furyofantares 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

Love this. Is there a scrape-able list of these?

seinvak 9mo ago
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_books_final.json https://storage.googleapis.com/globalhnbucket/normalized_boo...

emodendroket 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
I think it has to do with the author generating controversy on this website for news discussion.
harshreality 9mo ago
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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
What are some books from other regions that you hope might get discussed here more?
- ffuxlpff 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=clean+code All (justifiably) against clean code methodology.
- ruraljuror 9mo ago
  https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code is a great find from that list. Thanks!
TheAceOfHearts 9mo ago
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.

Freak_NL 9mo ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46269991 six days ago.

seinvak 9mo ago
Just missed by a day I guess. Cutoff is 15th December.

cwnyth 9mo ago

There's a mistake with The Rust Programming Language. It counts Programming Rust as the same book.

stego-tech 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
> 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 9mo ago
  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.
  - deleted 9mo ago
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- Idesmi 9mo ago
  I loathe movie adaptations and never watch them, but the source material The Martian was a very good read in my 12th grade. I like hard SciFi with no aliens and plausible rules.
  - nottorp 9mo ago
    I don't like scifi or fantasy, hard or not, that turns into a technical manual. Which is another thing I heard of in connection to Weir. Brandon Sanderson's fantasy series with all those metals is another example. I managed to finish like 3 books but I simply skipped all the d&d manual like descriptions of metal usage.

WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago

Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz is absent. We cultists have fallen down on the job.

seinvak 9mo ago
By searching in all categories, I can see it's mentioned once : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42659243#42662874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42659243#42662874 For a cult, this is some remarkably low-effort proselytizing though :/
- WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago
  > 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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
> 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 9mo ago
  This isn't slashdot :)

Rebelgecko 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
Not really, there are quite a few books "missing" that I definitely saw mentioned in discussions not so long ago.

notepad0x90 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
Another mistake is to place "The Road"(Cormac McCarthy) under "On the Road"(Jack Kerouac).
- johngossman 9mo ago
  Imagine you were expecting one of those and read the other!
Try1275 9mo ago
Yesterday I finished a long listen of the audio book "The Raise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer (on audible, 60 hours). He frequently quotes "Mein Kampf". I am not sure one can stomach the whole thing but it's interesting to read quotes of it in context.
BrandoElFollito 9mo ago
I think "Mein Kampf" is the equivalent of celebrity gossip: you are very superficially interested because why not. The depth of the book is similar to the depth of this gossip's interest. I had a look at the book a few years ago. After a few pages (somewhere in the middle of the book), you can see the writing style (not very good, overexcited, and that would appeal to people who look for it), but it would take longer to get a grasp on the content.

krick 9mo ago

CSV export (just the book list) would be welcome.

Cheetah26 9mo ago

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-science-fiction-fantasy-books https://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-...

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

lo_zamoyski 9mo ago

The indexing must be flakey. I have mentioned various books multiple times with links to their respective Amazon pages. No mentions of them.

seinvak 9mo ago
[dead]

jackconsidine 9mo ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44977536

recursivedoubts 9mo ago

If you are the creator of this site can you grab one of the covers for hypermedia systems off the website? https://hypermedia.systems https://hypermedia.systems thank you for making this!

analogpixel 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
Here, did it for you (.tsv): https://limewire.com/d/iZp6i#ZEhH4XXWBC https://limewire.com/d/iZp6i#ZEhH4XXWBC

brcmthrowaway 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
Accelerando is one of my favourite too! Thanks for sharing the reply, always love book recommendations
- jaggederest 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
      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.
  - 9mo ago

bookofjoe 9mo ago

Best HN post of the year. I just surfaced after hours exploring.

therobots927 9mo ago

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.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

blintz 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
That would be ruinous, it's probably just doing a simple full text search against a database of titles.

defrost 9mo ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45399031#45400264

muzani 9mo ago

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=false&query=mein%20kampf&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... Also, some of it is just Godwin's Law.

ggm 9mo ago
Godwin's law was made up as an example of dawkins meme, and now means more than its original.

libraryofbabel 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 ;)

ilteris 9mo ago

I bet it's the same books every year

teleforce 9mo ago

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 https://nostarch.com/system-programming-linux

mvkel 9mo ago
Is it because it's not on Amazon?
- teleforce 9mo ago
  It is.

JDye 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
> 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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago

Were there any books that mentioned Hacker News?

why-o-why 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

Such a great collection! I wonder how it was achieved, definitely not by LLM, was it?

Brajeshwar 9mo ago

There was another one, HackerNews Readings, but seems to be not updated. https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/ https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/

tramtrist 9mo ago

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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46296428 https://www.thebeatleworksltd.com/ https://www.thebeatleworksltd.com/

TZubiri 9mo ago

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

watersb 9mo ago

I would love more people to know about science fiction strangecore author qntm: https://qntm.org/Self https://qntm.org/Self There Is No Antimemetics Division freaked me the hell out. Recommended.

lencastre 9mo ago
fantastic story thru and thru, thumbs up!!!
tnolet 9mo ago
100% the most original and truly scary hard SciFi from the last year.

crobertsbmw 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

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 societé, parties and games are necessary to describe this character.

datameta 9mo ago
Oh how I wish we could know what Iain M. Banks thinks of the LLM revolution...

thoughtpeddler 9mo ago

Is anyone else surprised that Gödel, 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 9mo ago

This is just great! Thanks for building.

kaizenb 9mo ago
No design category though, broke my heart :(

JDEW 9mo ago

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 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176444106-abundance [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215526423-an-abundance-of-katherines?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_7 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215526423-an-abundance-o...

frm88 9mo ago

You missed some of mine, for example Theatre of the God's is not on your list: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45718536 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/ https://hackernews-readings-613604506318.us-west1.run.app/

mkbkn 9mo ago

Can you also make it for 2024 and previous years?

coopykins 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

Seems like a great training set for a hn astroturf bot.

rienbdj 9mo ago

Any info on how this site was implemented?

DiskoHexyl 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

Given the current political climate, I'm surprised Kafka didn't make the list.

dewey 9mo ago

It looks like it's not handling comments correctly and counts books mentioned in ">".

4ggr0 9mo ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44965191

atlasunshrugged 9mo ago

Probably most surprising here was how many mentions Twilight got! Not the book I expected to see mentioned often on this forum

mcc1ane 9mo ago

Mentions of “Genesis” are attributed to “Armageddon's Children (Genesis of Shannara)” by Terry Brooks.

timerol 9mo ago

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 9mo ago

There's a really long tail in this list. What diamonds are there in the single-mention rough?

WillAdams 9mo ago
Books which I have read and would recommend include: - _Ashley's Book of Knots_ --- everyone should be aware of knots and now at least the basics interesting, _The Klutz Book of Knots_ was also mentioned once - James Clavell _Noble House_ --- part of his "Asian Saga", not sure if it has aged well --- if a person could read only one of these, I'd recommend _King Rat_, based on his experience in a Japanese prison camp in WWII. - Hesse _Steppenwolf_ --- that Hesse is no longer read saddens me deeply, and not just because this makes _The Glass Bead Game_ less likely --- his thoughts on the difficulties of interpersonal relationships resonate even now - Knuth _Literate Programming_ --- I _really_ wish this style f programming would gain traction and that there would be more instances of taking famous programs and re-writing as a Literate Program, e.g., http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf - Knuth _Digital Typography_ (and not just because I have a reward check) - Knuth _Mathematical Writing_ --- if you do any work in math, you probably already have a copy --- if you don't, you probably need one - Dewdney _The Planiverse_ --- response to the classic _Flatland_, this has a real charm and despite the dated computer technology, has held up well - Walter jon Williams _Hardwired_ --- an amazing cyberpunk novel, part of which was published in _Omni_ - Steven Brust's _Jhereg_ --- one of my favourite fantasy novels, which I've been reading since picking it up in a Waldenbooks when I was in high school, waiting for the last two books, and esp. glad of these since they made the "Paarfi Romances" exist --- anyone who enjoys Alexandre Dumas and fantasy should read _The Phoenix Guards_ - C.J. Cherryh's _Regenesis_ --- her entire Alliance--Union series is amazing and books are so varied pretty much everyone will find something which appeals - Trevanian _The Eiger Sanction_ and _Shibumi_ --- not sure if this and _Shibumi_ have aged well or no, but the latter was a big part of my childhood - Ben Franklin's Autobiography --- read presidential biographies to my kind in chronological order as a trial and regret not continuing with the actual project: biographies of important persons in chronological order - Sanora Babb's _Whose Names Are Unknown_: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_Unknown https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_... (ob. discl., that was my mention) Other books which only I mentioned: - Hal Clement _Space Lash_ now available in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Spheres https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Sph... --- I recommend folks read it in reverse chronological order, starting at the back, then working to the front and bailing when things get too quaint/old-school/golden-age. - H. Beam Piper "Omnilingual" --- this should be a part of the middle school canon, lightly updated version at: http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html - _Foxfire_ --- a classic series what predated the "Maker" movement - Tolkien's _The Fall of Arthur_ - Knuth _TeX: The Program_ Books which were sufficiently striking that I have made a note of them to get to read (hopefully this will work out better than _The Black Swan_ which I found annoying) - _Visual Thinking in Mathematics_ - _Hardcore VisualBASIC_ --- still a bit bummed that I managed to miss this and MacBasic.... - _Phoebe and her Unicorn_ --- getting this for my daughter - _Harmony with Lego(R) Bricks_ --- book on music improvisation - Ornamental Origami Note that a number of books weren't actually mentioned, e.g., Isaac Asimov's _Book of Facts_

objectdynamics 9mo ago

Oddly (well to me at least) "Compilers: Principles, techniques and tools" is categorised as literature.

yoan9224 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago

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.

udev4096 9mo ago

[dead]

GuB-42 9mo ago

How are the data processed? It doesn't look easy. For instance there is "Foundation" in the list, a common word, how does the algorithm distinguish between just the word and a mention of the book. Same idea for "The holy Bible". It is almost always just referred to as just "the Bible" but "Bible" is also used to refer to all sorts of reference books.