
Ask HN: What books have you given to other people as gifts? - wallflower
This is a specific question that goes a bit beyond normal book recommendations.<p>What books did you enjoy so much that you felt a strong need to share it with others, to the point of “eliminating friction” by giving them a copy (almost always physical not digital)? I’d like to know your cherished favorites.<p>I’ve bought many copies of “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre” by Keith Johnstone and “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand. The former is a brilliant book about thinking and reacting creatively while the latter is quite possibly the best book about building software that is not about building software specifically.
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dang
This could make for an interesting thread. If you want to try it again, let us
know at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll put it in the second-chance pool
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)).
Normally we'd just email a repost invite but those don't work for Ask HNs.

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ohduran
My favourite one is How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler. It was given to me
by a friend of mine and I thought "but I already know how to read!"

Turned out I didn't. There's so much going on when you look a book closely
that you don't even notice it's there. Also, it helped me plan and prioritise
how to read. It's a wonderful read, believe me.

In case you want to check out more, I put together some notes of it here:
[https://alvaroduran.me/how-to-read-a-book](https://alvaroduran.me/how-to-
read-a-book)

Happy to hear your thoughts!

