
Show HN: Books Paul Graham recommended on Twitter - vhpoet
https://www.readthistwice.com/person/paul-graham
======
simonebrunozzi
First, thanks for doing this - it's a useful list of books.

Second: I don't think we should "idolize" Paul Graham. He's certainly an
intelligent and cultured man, but there's no reason to think that his book
suggestions are either amazing or current.

I think a more diverse and organized review system can be a much better to
discover great books, e.g.
[https://www.goodreads.com/](https://www.goodreads.com/).

~~~
AlchemistCamp
> Second: I don't think we should "idolize" Paul Graham. He's certainly an
> intelligent and cultured man, but there's no reason to think that his book
> suggestions are either amazing or current.

He's one of the best identifiers of and advisors of startups in this
generation. _If_ you are interested in startups, the subject of this site,
it's hard to think of many people whose suggestions there's more of a reason
to follow.

The average of _everyone 's_ recommendations will get you average results.
Some people want to beat the averages.

~~~
nefitty
How about an HN-user focused recommendation aggregator?

~~~
m00x
Results uncertain, but definitely would have missed out on Dropbox.

~~~
muzani
While HN gives poor career advice, the books recommendations around here have
been top notch.

------
kbenson
I'll see your PG list, and raise you the latest fogus best things and stuff
(of 2019) list.[1]

1: [http://blog.fogus.me/2019/12/30/the-best-things-and-stuff-
of...](http://blog.fogus.me/2019/12/30/the-best-things-and-stuff-of-2019/)

------
kirillzubovsky
Love the business idea. In theory, all the book scraping is automated through
Twitter api and then compiled through Amazon API. The page basically self-
assembles using Nextjs template and API data call. You get paid via referral
purchases. It's genius.

Curious: where do you get high-resolution book images. I wanted to add those
to my own book list
([https://kirillzubovsky.com/bookshelf](https://kirillzubovsky.com/bookshelf))
and haven't found a source with high res.

~~~
vhpoet
In reality tho, there's a lot of manual work involved haha. Thank you! I get
the images from Amazon api
[https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/).

~~~
kirillzubovsky
Oh interesting, I'll take a second look. Whatever Amazon API I checked was
only returning pixelated thumbs. Good luck with the product. Next up is "How I
made a million bucks reselling books" blog post ;)

~~~
vhpoet
hahah thank you! definitely check out their API, it's a bit messy, but works.

~~~
kirillzubovsky
Crazy idea, but it might work. Sometimes podcast guests recommend good books,
and I happen to have hundreds of transcripts stored to some of the best
podcasts ([https://smashnotes.com](https://smashnotes.com)). I don't expose
full transcripts to public, as I've learned that almost no one actually reads
them, but I could scan for book recommendations and send them your way.

~~~
vhpoet
That'd be super cool, sending you an email.

------
contingencies
Note Library Genesis [http://libgen.is/](http://libgen.is/) provides equal
access opportunities for those unable to purchase or afford books, and can
provide an unrestricted preview function for those considering purchasing.

------
JadoJodo
This is great! I love the fact that it includes people like John Piper and
Timothy Keller, but was disappointed I couldn't find more via the 'Pastor'
tag. Is that a future feature?

Edit: This comment addressed the site as a whole (though I like seeing PGs
recommendations as well).

~~~
kogus
I think I'm missing something - I don't see any John Piper or Timothy Keller
books in Paul Graham's list. As a fan of Desiring God (Piper), I'd love to
hear PG's take on it. But I don't see it (or any of his other books) there.

~~~
vhpoet
He means the website also has John Pipers and Timothy Kellers recommendations
(they only recommend one book each tho).
[https://www.readthistwice.com/person/john-
piper](https://www.readthistwice.com/person/john-piper) and
[https://www.readthistwice.com/person/timothy-
keller](https://www.readthistwice.com/person/timothy-keller).

~~~
JadoJodo
Correct. Sorry for the confusion!

------
codingdave
I'm just always curious when I see it - is the monetization of the links
something done as an afterthought, to get some cash from a project you were
working on anyway? Or was it the other way around, looking for some side
income and then came up with the project?

~~~
vhpoet
It was both. Started as a side toy to solve my own need, but the monetization
potential got me to spend so much time building it.

~~~
swyx
how much money do you make as an amazon affiliate? i heard they can be pretty
nasty about randomly taking you down for no reason

~~~
bemmu
You get very little from book sales, but they also pay you for any other items
the user checks out during the same session.

------
DoreenMichele
To sidestep the ridiculous criticisms here about _idolizing_ pg, you could
reposition this ever so slightly as "A booklist paired with Paul Graham's
tweeted opinions of them." Maybe find a more succinct way to say that, without
the word _recommend._

Books _recommended_ by him seems a little strong. People pay attention to what
he says because of his accomplishments. But a lot of these tweets are fairly
conversational and are not really in the format of "You should totally go read
this book right now because I said so."

Paul does not appear to be the author of this list. He likely had zero say in
how it was titled.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
It doesn't much matter. Any time any of PG's writing, recommendations or
accomplishments come up here, someone jumps in with the same generic warning
against idolizing PG and derails the entire thread.

Not only do I disagree with the idea that there's something wrong with taking
opinions from very successful people, it leads to an incredibly boring
discussion.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm suggesting that language concerning how it is framed can help move that
out of the way.

It's a thing I've thought a lot about. There's no perfect solutions, but that
doesn't mean nothing at all can be done to mitigate such things.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
If I agreed with the premise that his recommendations have no value, I'd
probably look for framing solutions, too.

Since I do value the recommendations of some people over a simple aggregated
popularity score, I'm more interested in how to effectively communicate how
unhelpful derailing every PG-related thread is.

~~~
DoreenMichele
You may be putting out the fire with gasoline.

Some problems don't benefit from direct argument. There are better ways to
address it.

------
losthobbies
Hi, this is really well presented. Congratulations. I'm working on something
kinda similar myself. It seems to be a popular niche.

I am also looking at monetising via affiliates - is it a viable approach?
Would you say that you could replace your full time job (if you have one)?

Congratulations again.

~~~
vhpoet
Hey, thank you! Not to discourage you or anything but monetizing with
affiliate book sales is a loong long way to replace a full time job. This post
got to the HN front page (first time for me) and I'd be happy to make $15-30
today.. and this is the best day with thousands of visits. I started and
continue working on this because it's a passion. I love books and I love
seeing people buy books because of something I made. Good luck!

~~~
superasn
Once your site gets traction it should be easy to get sponsored listings which
should add at least $2K to $4K per month depending on who is interested. Also
not sure if you're already doing it but try to build an email list. That's
where the real money is imo.

~~~
vhpoet
What do you mean by "that's where the real money is"? I'm already building an
email list, but not sure how exactly you propose monetizing it.

~~~
superasn
The thing about your email list is that you people who are voluntary
subscribing to you have started to trust you a little and you know what they
like.

Now it's time to give them more value in terms of content, bonuses and other
things which they are looking for to create loyality. After that you promote
an existing product as affiliate (in your case it could be blinkist like site)
or better create a product that is aligned with the interests of your list.

Sorry I'm on a mobile so it's hard typing but here is a case study for you(1).
There was another one from nomadlist you should lookup too.

Good luck with your endeavours

(1) [https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/work/ideas/product-
launch-...](https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/work/ideas/product-launch-
formula/)

~~~
vhpoet
Thanks for your help! Reading the article now.

------
Whiteshadow12
Thanks for doing this!, though this idea has been done often. I still think
there's plenty of room for improvement, there was an app called ParrotRead
that did something like this very well but they ended the project for unclear
reasons.

------
Jugurtha
Thank you for the list. Can you walk us over how you did this? Maybe a post
that goes into how this was done on 20.2k tweets, etc. Does that include
replies as well? Does it include screen-shots of a book passage without a
title?

~~~
vhpoet
It's actually a pretty boring technology. The script looks for some keywords
in the tweet (replies included), and then we manually go over the potential
book recommendation tweets. It does not include screenshots. I removed "every"
from the title here, since I can't be 100% sure this includes absolutely every
recommendation.

~~~
wolco
Thanks for the work. Boring grunt work yields great results sometimes.

I wish there was a small version without descriptions. I want to see as many
books as possible on my screen.

~~~
vhpoet
You can actually change the layout so you only see the titles and the covers.
The button to change the layout is right above the list (note to self: make
that more visible).

------
commonturtle
Very interesting. Seems like a more sophisticated version of
[https://mostrecommendedbooks.com/](https://mostrecommendedbooks.com/)

------
ngcc_hk
Quite an impressive list. Wonder whether he has read these all and not sure
what is meant by monetisation. Just a book list?

------
dynamite-ready
This site is a great idea. Would be really useful for people working with
those who don't usually read.

------
gchristenb
This is so clean - good job - thank you. You should do this for other people.
Not many, just good ones, like Paul.

~~~
vhpoet
Thank you! The website actually includes 1300+ people. Whose recommendations
are you interested in?

~~~
gchristenb
What!? Dope :)

------
peter303
I miss browsing the new books shelf at our library (closed to in person access
by covid).

~~~
ryanchants
The worst part for me was identifying a book on a topic that seemed
interesting, and wanting to see the neighboring books on the same/similar
topics were. It's been a key part of how I uncover branching topics. Or just
books with titles/keywords that I don't know to search for.

Luckily, they reopened for browsing recently.

------
adebelov
Incredible product. Love using it :)

~~~
vhpoet
Thank you so much!

------
TurkishPoptart
Great site. How did you make this?

~~~
vhpoet
Thank you! It's built on React/Node.

------
AlwaysBCoding
that's a great reading list, thank you for doing this.

~~~
vhpoet
Thank you!

------
scott31
The guy is a living legend, not sure why he hasn't yet received a Turing award
for creating Arc

------
schrute
Slightly off topic but I couldn't help but notice this scam on Amazon for the
book Paul Graham recommends about Microsoft, "Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the
Making of the Microsoft Empire".

[https://imgur.com/dGiXl21.png](https://imgur.com/dGiXl21.png)

------
Konohamaru
"Woe to you when men bless you!" (Luke 6:26)

The fact that everyone speaks well of Dr. Graham means he's on an extremely
wrong path. Everyone spoke well of Fred Rogers (Hollywood made a biopic
celebrating him) and he was proven to be beyond evil. He encouraged
unspeakably shameful afflictions and never sought to heal sinners of their
brokenness: instead he denied they were broken.

~~~
muzani
That is an unusual chain of thought. And there are plenty of speak poorly of
Dr. Graham.

