
Reading list for those who love to learn - sivers
http://sivers.org/book
======
zzzmarcus
I've read quite a few of the books on the list, the ones that have stayed with
me and actually changed my life are, in order of impact:

1\. The Art of Learning - I'll never think about practice the same way.

2\. Getting Things Done - Enough has been said about this elsewhere, but the
whole concept of "what's the next action" has really worked for me.

3\. E-Myth Revisited - This was my MBA in one book. It came at the right time
for me and really changed the way I think about creating businesses as assets.
I wasn't a fan the cheesy example of the pie shop, but the advice has been
invaluable.

Others that I found interesting, and that changed the way I think were:

4-hour Work Week. Yes, there is a ton of hype around this book, but I'd be
surprised if anyone read it with an open mind and didn't learn anything or
come away motivated to experiment with their lifestyle.

Outliers. This one probably stands out to me since I read it so recently.
Gladwell gets a lot of hype as well, but I think he deserves at least some of
it.

The Culture Code drastically changed the way I think about marketing.

And, a few random notes on the others I've read:

I found Predictably Irrational, Brain Rules and The 48 Laws of Power to be
mostly garbage.

The Wisdom of Crowds, Wikinomics and Made to Stick are decent essays in book
form.

Stumbling on Happiness is not nearly as good as Haidt's The Happiness
Hypothesis which would be in the first list I made above if it were on Siver's
list.

Seth Godin's books are good for motivation and for changing the way you think
about marketing, especially if you've been doing it for a long time (I
haven't). They're quick and fun, I think they're worth reading.

Fooled By Randomness is worth reading if nothing else because Taleb is such an
entertaining writer.

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callmeed
I've really been digging Sivers's blog, but he lost me at Ferriss on this one
...

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Have you read 4HWW? Did you seriously find nothing of value?

~~~
callmeed
I listened to the audio tape version all the way through.

The small nuggets I did find of value were few and far from original. Read
David Allen, Thoreau, or the book of Ecclesiastes.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Read all three, multiple times. I still found 4HWW interesting, but to each
his own.

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dinkumthinkum
There sure are a lot of posts going to this web site on HN lately. These are
all exactly the kinds of books I don't like. The only one I have considered
reading is "Getting Things Done."

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deepakjois
FWIW, here is my reading list <http://deepak.jois.name/books> categorized into
different topics.

I am primarily interested in programming and tech, but I have tried to spread
my readings into a wide range of topics, which I believe is a good thing.

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lispm
hmm, could that list not be replaced by one book?

    
    
      Common Sense for Dummies

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luckyland
Did you just return from an executive retreat? Not the list of books I was
expecting.

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scscsc
Well, the guy is pretty smart. The books are likely to appeal to certain
people and they will hurry and buy them and he'll make some cash. I was
surprised it got to the first page.

~~~
TheSOB88
Seriously. I mean, only an idiot wouldn't want to buy "Personal Development
for Smart People".

~~~
oscardelben
Why would anyone be an idiot by reading that book?

~~~
TheSOB88
What exactly are you saying? I'm saying the pyschology behind that title makes
it more likely to sell. The person who _wouldn't_ want to read it is not a
"smart person"; hence an idiot. That's what the title says.

~~~
oscardelben
I misinterpreted your phrase. My fault :)

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radu_floricica
I'm a bit skeptical about some of the books (I don't know much about Seth
Godin for example), but at least some some of them are good. James Surowiecki,
Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Dan Ariely are all well worth the read (though I would
have chosen Black Swan instead of Fooled by Randomness), and I already ordered
the first one on the list - Philip Zimbardo is an impressive name. Oh, and
Barry Schwartz too, haven't read the book but I've seen him on TED.

Overall it's a list worth selecting from.

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slvrspoon
this list is for people who know very little about what learning constitutes.

~~~
Ardit20
would you like to elaborate on that?

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joubert
The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype (Richard Dawkins)

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TriinT
IMHO, this list contains only BS books. Tim Ferriss? Seth Godin? Malcolm
Gladwell? Please. This is a list for those who need self-help and "motivation"
books. Only exception is Livingston's F@W. The rest is pretty much junk.

Please allow me to write down my personal list for those who _love_ to learn:

\- The Art of Computer Programming

\- Algorithms (by Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, and Vazirani)

\- Algorithm Design (by Kleinberg and Tardos)

\- Feynman Lectures on Physics

\- Landau & Lifschitz's series

\- Vladimir Arnold's books on ODEs and Classical Mechanics

\- Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays (by Berlekamp _et al._ )

\- Elements of Information Theory (by Cover & Thomas)

\- Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms (by MacKay)

\- Network Optimization (by Bertsekas)

\- Convex Optimization (by Boyd & Vandenberghe)

\- Nonlinear Control Systems (by Isidori)

\- Visual Complex Analysis (by Needham)

\- Lasers (by Siegman)

\- Game Theory (by Fudenberg & Tirole)

\- Trading and Exchanges (by Harris)

Plus a bunch of books on Classical Mechanics, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics,
Differential Geometry, Real Analysis, Algebra, Theoretical CS, Chemistry,
Biochemistry, Cellular Biology, Evolution, Game Theory, Mechanism Design,
Auction Theory, Economics, Finance, etc. That would be a reading list worth
considering! It would also take a lifetime to read all the books...

~~~
Elepsis
With all due respect, what are 99 percent of people gaining from a book on,
say, convex optimization? Yes, these are great choices if you're looking to
become an expert on, say, physics. But not everyone is a physicist, nor does
everyone need to be.

The point of the books on that list is that they are applicable to _many_
situations. You're not going to get oodles of "hard knowledge" from them, and
I think people who go into them with that expectation are setting themselves
up for disappointment.

Rather, they present some anecdotes -- some interesting, and some not -- and
say "Okay, now _think_ about these, and see if any of them can affect the way
you do things." If you read a business book and don't bother to do the
thinking/applying afterwards, you are, indeed, wasting your time.

The books on your list are ones that you go through, finish (though honestly,
if you're just reading those books cover to cover and enjoying yourself,
you're a better person than me... I'd use them as a reference at best) and can
say "okay, I've learned something." The books on the original article's list
are ones where once you've finished the book, you've only started learning.

~~~
TriinT
_"With all due respect, what are 99 percent of people gaining from a book on,
say, convex optimization? Yes, these are great choices if you're looking to
become an expert on, say, physics. But not everyone is a physicist, nor does
everyone need to be."_

Convex Optimization for physicists??? Whaaaat? OK, consider Game Theory,
Machine Learning, Operations Research. All have practical value and all
require optimization. In fact, Machine Learning is mostly applied optimization
theory. The Simplex algorithm is used all the time, in the most various
industries. Yet once again, the need to know a bit of optimization theory is
made evident.

Physicists don't really require the kind of optimization on Boyd's book.
Unless one is an experimental physicist and needs to analyze data sets.
Theoretical physicists usually work with infinite-dimensional optimization,
i.e., variational analysis. I entirely agree that not everyone is a physicist,
nor does everyone need to be... but picking _Convex Optimization_ as an
example was a poor choice.

The list is my personal list. It's a personal thing, and as such, it is non-
transmissible. I am not trying to preach. I couldn't care less if the masses
read junk...

~~~
michael_nielsen
Convex optimization is a standard tool for theoretical physicists doing
quantum information and quantum computing. And B & V is the standard
reference.

(Don't want to engage in the main debate, but I think this is an interesting
tidbit of information. It's an example where a part of mathematics has
recently become useful in an unexpected way.)

~~~
newsio
This is why I love Hacker News. Where else could I expect tp see this sort of
debate in the course of casual browsing?

(well, maybe Metafilter, but I'd have to pony up $5 to leave a comment)

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muhamm
I really like Derek Sivers' blog but I have an issue about affiliate linking.
Maybe it's just my issue but when I see Amazon affiliate links for all of the
books on this list, it makes me hesitant to click them. Call me crazy perhaps.

~~~
sivers
My old version of that page had a blurb about how I've included the ISBN
number for every book there, so you can use your local library, bookmooch.com,
or any book-lookup service you want.

I took away the blurb because it felt like a lot of "blah blah blah" and
giving the ISBN was self-explanatory. But the old blurb is back now.

No need to click the Amazon links. That was definitely not the point of the
page.

~~~
tjr
I for one find text-based Amazon affiliate links to be just about the most
non-intrusive form of making money on the web.

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Ardit20
I was a bit disappointed seeing this list tbh. I thought wow cool before
getting there and once I landed I was like, gee dude, love to learn?

I think the people who love to learn have a big problem, that is there is so
many interesting things that we would love to learn, hence a list like this,
although to start with was met with, well why should I have this guy tell me
what to read, but I thought I might get some cool book, you know one of those
which changes the way you think.

For me, there have been a few books which have changed the way I think, as
they were at different stages of my life, their difficulty rating varies.

The first book to change my way of thinking is "a beginners guide to ideas". I
suggest this book as a present for smart, but deeply devoted religious people.
This is a very "basic" book and mostly introduces a beginner to the history of
philosophy.

The second book, in a time line order, would be (I do not remember the title
exactly) something like WWI and why it happened. This book undercovered the
deeper reasons and explained how the surface stories connect with them.

I think the winner would have to be a book about Nitzches works, the different
way that this guy saw reality, I think shed some light on our nature and some
deeper hidden reasons for things like morality.

A designers book for non designers was just superb, simple, yet deep.

Now am reading ancient rhetorics for contemporary students which is helpful
for me right now for its emphasise on thoroughness which I had ignored.

Another book was about the complete history of human beings, which taught me
that we prefer to improve what we have, therefore lay layer upon layer, and by
association create immense complexity, when there are much more simple ways of
doing things. The examples were the ancient calendars and their numerical
systems.

I could go on, however what I think these books have in common is one, they
introduce you to a completely new field of study, two they are written by
people who taught the subject for years, hence they know how to teach, how
many and which basic things to include and at what pace to progress to
complexity. Another thing they have in common is that these books get lost
haha, even their titles, however they do remain in my memory and what I have
learned from them will probably be taken to the grave.

An egocentred opinion may follow, however I would suggest that the people who
love to learn love to learn many things, yet not necessarily in great detail,
that is what specialism and our job is for. Therefore I was enthusiastic by
this list, yet very disappointed by it content.

