
Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books - rollinDyno
http://herman.asia/how-i-choose-nonfiction-books
======
tptacek
John Carreyrou wasn't an expert on phlebotomy or biochemistry. Roger
Lowenstein wasn't an expert on hedge funds or technical finance. Eric
Schlosser on nuclear command and control? Nope. Woodward and Bernstein and
constitutional law? Not so much!

I don't think these are very good rules.

I thought it was especially amusing that this person doesn't trust journalists
to write about anything but journalism. If you believe that, why are you
interested in reading about journalism in the first place?

HN has an unfortunate fixation on Michael Crichton's supposed Gell-Mann
amnesia effect (wherein you read something in the news that pertains to your
field, spot errors, get angry, and then forget that happened when you go on to
read the next story). I propose the countervailing Djikstra amnesia effect,
wherein a technical professional produces workmanlike output with all the
attendant errors and omissions that attach to any work produced by humans
(Christ knows our field is intimately acquainted with errors and omissions),
then forgets they did that, and expects every other professional to measure up
to the standard they themselves failed to meet.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
I don't know any of the authors you've mentioned, but in my own experience,
not reading books written by journalists is a good _rule of thumb_. That
doesn't mean, obviously, that it's impossible for a journalist to write a good
book. By profession, journalism is both shallow and narrow: it focuses on the
surface of events in the given moment. That tends not to equip someone with
the knowledge or expertise to write a truly insightful book.

~~~
claudiawerner
As a funny counter-point, Marx was a journalist and _Capital_ is one of the
most insightful books I'm reading at the moment.

~~~
kortilla
Insightful maybe but drastically wrong about the whole LTV thing.

~~~
claudiawerner
I think that's a point if we argued about we'd agree to disagree.

~~~
kortilla
I’m honestly not sure what there is to disagree with. There has been no
quantitative evidence supporting it. “Things should cost based on labor” is a
nice thought for laborers, but it’s completely unrealistic. Nobody is going to
pay twice as much for something because one manufacturer used a really shitty
process that took twice as many man hours.

There’s a reason the “criticisms” section of the wiki is one of the largest
and links to a full article on it. It’s a religion, not an evidence-driven
theory. Prescriptive, not descriptive.

I suppose we would agree to disagree if you believe in ideas not grounded in
reality (a.k.a. backed by empirical evidence).

------
jawns
I am an author of several nonfiction (pop-sci) books. I am also a former
journalist.

I readily acknowledge that I am not an expert in the fields I write about.

That is why the bulk of my work is finding out who the experts are and
presenting their work in an accessible way. (Granted, once you've been writing
about a certain area for long enough, you do tend to become educated about
it.)

One of the things that makes me feel good about what I do is that I am able to
expose readers to intriguing information they might otherwise never encounter,
unless they've got subscriptions to a bunch of academic journals in fields of
study outside of their own.

Keep in mind, it's not a given that people who are the most well-respected
experts in their field are also talented writers. People like Douglas
Hofstadter certainly are both, but not every expert is like him. And if you
follow Rule #1 religiously, it sounds as if you're limiting yourself to
experts who are both. In the process, you're likely missing out on a lot of
cool information, just because you are only willing to read first-hand
accounts.

~~~
specialist
I'm a big fan of science writers.

There's a lot of day light between journalists and celebrity pundits.

------
hoytech
"When I'm in a book store nowadays, or when I'm at a conference looking at a
table full of new books, I try to gauge how good the books are by picking them
up and -- yes, I guess it's okay to reveal the secret -- I turn to page 316. I
try to read that page rather carefully, and this gives me an impression of the
whole book. (Often the book is too short; then I use page 100. Authors, take
note if you expect me to buy anything you've written.) This system works quite
well, I think."

\-- Donald Knuth in "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About"

------
minouye
Here's what I do. If I get a book recommendation, I immediately buy it and put
it on a bookshelf. Every time I walk by, I scan the shelf and pick what speaks
to me at that given time: fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, science, history,
classics, short-story collections, biographies, etc. If you match your what
you read to your mood and frame of mind, you can consume and retain
information much more quickly and enjoyably. And having the book on hand is
really important since my interests and mood change from day to day.

I also try follow some other general rules, that work for me:

* Read several books at once, esp. across disciplines.

* Read paper books.

* You don't need to finish books. Stopping mid-way is fine (still have problems with this!)

* Seek out durable works over bestsellers ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect))

* Read across disciplines

* Write in books and make notes. Write up notes a couple of weeks after finishing (create your own commonplace book)

* Avoid audiobooks (if you want to retain the content). I just can't retain when I listen while driving/multitasking, but like listening to fiction for fun.

* Tag interesting books/papers cited in the books you like. Look them up and read them too.

* Find interesting/prolific readers on Goodreads. Lookup the books they read, esp. the ones you've never heard of.

* Let other people know that you like reading, and ask what they've read recently. When they read interesting books, they'll recommend them to you.

~~~
madcaptenor
One problem with buying books when they're recommended is that it's a lot
easier to _buy_ books than _read_ them. I recently went through my shelves and
counted the books I owned but have not read and was shocked.

So my current method is now to read the books that past-me thought sounded
interesting.

~~~
minouye
Yeah that's true. And having a small apartment makes that problematic as well.

I like this Umberto Eco anecdote: [https://fs.blog/2013/06/the-
antilibrary/](https://fs.blog/2013/06/the-antilibrary/). Having a lot of
unread books around is a good reminder of how much there is to read, learn,
and experience. And it makes reading instead of turning to Netflix an easier
decision.

------
jcoffland
Like the article's #3, I have my own silly rule, but it's a good one.

No books with the author's name written in a larger font than the title.

This eliminates books who's main merit is the author's fame. It's especially
good at filtering out crappy New York Times best sellers and it works for
fiction too.

~~~
kakarot
100% agree when dealing with non-fiction. It shows a lack of respect for the
book as an art form or information resource. It shows the author is writing
for exposure and money and not to produce something of true value.

> it works for fiction too.

Nonfiction authors usually write on a small handful of subjects, and chances
are you're looking for a book on a particular subject and will compile a list
of contenders, then do some light research on each author to gauge their
authority on a subject.

But with fiction, you aren't likely to know the general contents of a book
before you read it. You may be looking for a particular genre, but not a
particular story. If someone like Stephen King or Isaac Asimov have proven
that they are capable writers within their genres, it's actually beneficial
sales-wise for these names to stand out in a book rack. If I see a bunch of
books on a rack and one of them says _Asimov_ then I'm honing in on that book
first.

------
fasteddie
In recent years I've switched a lot to watching a non-fiction author's 30
minute talk on youtube about their book rather than reading the book entirely.

This is especially true for business/self-improvement type books, where I've
found its almost never really time efficient when I'm really just looking for
the list of 5 things I should be doing and skipping the extraneous pages of
anecdotes.

~~~
e1g
For me it's the opposite: for example, I had watched countless videos on
"disruption" but did not fully grasp it until I read The Innovator's Dilemma.
The same holds true for theory of constraints vs reading The Goal, Robert
Cialdini's works on influence, Richard Dawkin's views etc. In all cases, I
thought I understood the material before reading the original source, and in
every time the books blew me away.

Perhaps there is a dimension about how rigorous the thinking is behind the
book. I struggle to imagine a YouTube video that could effectively and
convincingly unpack ideas from The Intelligent Investor, The Sovereign
Individual, Sapiens, etc. Other topics like "How to get rich with x" or pop-
sci covered by the likes of Kurzgesagt are simplistic enough for a video
essay, but those are seldom worth consuming regardless of medium.

~~~
tynpeddler
I think you're hitting at the dichotomy of knowing vs grokking. A lot of
powerful concepts have high level summaries that can trick the audience into
thinking that's all there is to it. Chris Voss's excellent "Never Split the
Difference" comes to mind. A lot of his negotiating strategy can be boiled
down to "develop a mutual and deep empathy with your negotiating partner". On
some level this makes intuitive sense; people who empathize with you will help
you solve your problems, and empathizing with other will help you tailor your
solutions to their concerns. But when you sit down to pull this off, you run
into two major problems. What is the strategy for doing this? Some phrases
tend to antagonize people, while others help build rapport. There are often
emotional stages that relationships have to go through, so you need to behave
appropriately at each stage, but also you need to move the relationship to the
point that is beneficial for you. The second major hurdle is actually
implementing these strategies. Even with the head knowledge, when the pressure
to perform is on, you may not behave appropriately.

~~~
scott_s
Put another way: it can be easy to gain an understanding of a particular goal,
but very difficult to develop a deep understanding of the systems that allow
you to achieve that goal.

------
kakarot
_It’s also a good idea to read some of the lowest-rated reviews first, to see
what the main complaints about the book are, and whether they would put you
off reading it._

This goes for basically anything you purchase online. Read a couple highly
positive reviews, read a couple highly negative reviews, then read some
somewhat positive and somewhat negative reviews. Get the entire spectrum.

Emotions or lack of consideration cause some people to leave inaccurate
ratings but still give useful information in the reviews themselves. Therefore
you should never trust a 5-star or 1-star rating, but you should still
consider why the reviewer felt compelled to leave such a rating.

At the same time, less extreme ratings might provide a fair and comprehensive
assessment but the reviewer might have overlooked a particular edge case or
issue.

~~~
jodrellblank
The positive reviews are always "I bought this for my grandson, I'm sure he
will love it, 5 stars" or "I liked it". Negative reviews are a mix of "I hated
it" _and_ actionable information "can't use both sections at the same time,
wobbles, and edge is too sharp"

I contend that only negative reviews have information; positive ones are
propaganda you read with excitement to reinforce your emotional feeling of "
_I want this thing to enhance my life, I want to be part of the people
experiencing this 5-star feeling, I 'm dreaming of who I can be if I own this
product, let me join in!_", they don't tell you useful things.

If you read the negative reviews looking for dealbreakers, and think you can
live with the defects described, then it might be a good enough buy. If you
want to read the negative reviews with an emotional view, you can use it to
reject the dream and stop wanting to buy the item or anything like it
entirely, but that's not mandatory.

~~~
kakarot
That's simply wrong. In order to make an educated purchase, you need to know
the weaknesses _as well_ as the strengths. Reading 1- or 2-star reviews is
unlikely to uncover all of the strengths of a product. Comparing products
solely based weaknesses is just dumb.

~~~
jodrellblank
Uh, if you're an alien, maybe. Most people want to buy a particular thing - a
wood chipper, a paintbrush, a laptop - first. They already know the strengths
without reading the review - that's what brought them to these specific
products and what the marketing bullet points are.

If it has a "surprise strength" which the company who made it didn't notice,
and didn't advertise, that's also something which probably brought you to it
by referral (like a DVD player which is region unlocked - the reason you're
looking at that one, is because it was linked on a forum, and now you read the
weaknesses.

You want a bluetooth speaker, you find all the ones you can, then look for the
negative reviews of which have poor battery life and which have weak suckers
for glass. You don't look in the positives to see if one is secretly really
loud, because the negative reviews will tell you by complaining if it's too
quiet, or too loud.

~~~
kakarot
You're not understanding. Wood chippers don't have "strengths" compared to
other objects. It's a wood chipper, you can only meaningfully compare it with
other wood chippers.

Some are better than others. Why? Because each product will have its strengths
and weaknesses. This wood chipper has a great coat of paint which is
impervious to scratches! But this wood chipper is much more fuel efficient!
And this wood chipper is fully electric!

Those are all examples of a product's strength, not a weakness.

> If it has a "surprise strength" which the company who made it didn't notice,
> and didn't advertise ...

The whole point of reviews is because we can't trust the advertiser.
Especially on Amazon where it's likely from a reseller who may be ignorant or
straight up lie about the product.

> Want a bluetooth speaker, you find all the ones you can, then look for the
> negative reviews of which have poor battery life and which have weak suckers
> for glass.

Lol. I also care about how good they sound. I don't want to see an absence of
reviews saying how bad it sounds. I want to see motivated reviews by
enthusiastic users claiming how _great_ the sound is, and then taper my
expectations by checking the negative reviews to make sure someone more
educated about speakers hasn't made a more in-depth analysis of the sound
stage and quality of drivers, cables, etc. Using either source alone provides
an incomplete picture.

You're arguing for arguing's sake. You clearly don't have a good method of
making an educated purchase, so consider improving it before evangelizing it
over well-established, comprehensive methods of making an educated purchase
which are undeniably superior.

The idea that "negative reviews by themselves will always contain the full
amount of information needed to make an informed purchase" is an axiom of
online shopping is laughably preposterous.

------
maceurt
The idea that only 4+ star rating books are worth reading is laughable.
Reading only very popular books is a recipe to read only books that fit into
your own preconceived worldview.

~~~
gnclmorais
Quality assessment is not necessarily the same as popularity, surely.

~~~
maceurt
Most people rate books not based on rather they are good books, but rather if
they enjoyed the books and believed in what it was saying. Furthermore, there
is a certain demographic of people who uses and rates nonfiction books on
goodreads, which will skew the rating.

------
nearbuy
I found The Lean Startup relied heavily on anecdotes. The article gives it 5
stars, despite this being one of their main complaints about other books.

To give one example, the book talks about how in their 3d virtual chat game,
IMVU, as a shortcut, they initially had the characters teleport around because
they didn't have time to implement walking animations. They got some positive
feedback from users about the teleporting "feature", and concluded teleporting
was a great selling point and they shouldn't implement walking. The book then
starts teaching what lessons you should take from this story.

However, around the same time they were making IMVU, Linden Labs made Second
Life which did have walking animations and I believe was more successful than
IMVU.

It was a common pattern in The Lean Startup to point to a single example that
the author thinks worked out well for IMVU and extrapolate advice from it
while ignoring any counter-examples.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
The point of The Lean Startup isn't to give you advice to run a successful
VR/gaming company, though. It's to teach you that your assumptions are
probably wrong, and you should figure out ways to test them and get feedback
as quickly as possible. It's easy to run a bad test or misinterpret your
results -- which is I think what you're getting at -- but it's still important
to test things, and at least for me, it seemed like that was the main takeaway
from the book.

~~~
nearbuy
I think part of why I didn't enjoy The Lean Startup was because I read it too
late. By the time I read it, MVPs, "fail fast", and "make something users
want" had been the motto of startups for years, and the points the book was
making just seemed obvious. Maybe that wasn't obvious in 2011. (Although Paul
Graham's essays have been saying this since at least 2005 and are a much
better read IMO.)

But the other part was that it was just poor science, relying almost entirely
on anecdotes for its claims. Which is not to say his claims are necessarily
wrong, just that for any claim that isn't obviously true, there's no
convincing data to back it up. There's usually just one success story where it
seemed to work, and even within the story, it's hard to know if the strategy
was actually successful. Like, as I mentioned before, the book passes off
learning the users preferred teleporting to walking in IMVU as a success
story, but it may have in reality been the inferior choice. We can't know for
sure, but we do at least know other more successful virtual worlds have
walking. IMVU never even tested walking. It undermines his credibility when he
seems oblivious to his own possible failures. It's a lot of, "this is what we
did, and I think it worked out well". Despite advocating split testing, he
never split tested the techniques he advocated. There's no control - no
baseline to compare to.

Or when he prefaces the chapter on small batches with a third-hand story of a
father and two daughters who had to address, stuff, and seal a stack of
envelopes. The daughters, aged 6 and 9, felt it would be faster to address
them all first, then stuff them all, then seal them all. The father thought it
would be faster to do them one at a time. So they each took half the envelopes
and the father won.

I enjoy stories, but a 3rd hand anecdote about a father stuffing envelopes
faster than two children is just... why? That's not going to convince anyone.
He then calls back to this example several times when explaining how to apply
this at a software startup (release frequent small updates, use continuous
deployment). But even if one-at-a-time envelope stuffing is faster, and the
startup advice is right, one does not imply the other. Just cite an actual
study, or do an analysis of what was successful at other companies.

------
kilo_bravo_3
My rule: no index, no sale.

If the author didn't care enough to generate an index, what else did they not
care enough about?

A surprising number of books, especially "pop sci" books, don't include an
index.

~~~
StavrosK
What percentage of "good" books include an index?

~~~
marcosdumay
For non-fiction, I think I have always unconsciously followed the GP rule,
because I don't remember any book, good or bad, that lacked one.

Fiction, of course, rarely gets one.

~~~
madcaptenor
I can't think of any fiction that has an index. Do you have examples?

~~~
madcaptenor
Answering my own question: the American Society for Indexers has a list.
[https://www.asindexing.org/about-indexing/indexes-and-
indexe...](https://www.asindexing.org/about-indexing/indexes-and-indexers-in-
fiction/)

------
miloshadzic
Here's a rule: read stuff that you think is interesting.

~~~
jodrellblank
And what's your answer to " _But how can we identify those, without first
reading them?_ "

~~~
axlprose
by previewing/skimming them first?

I don't get how this is some big black/white issue. You don't have to finish
every book you start, nor do you only have to read a single book at a time,
and you can listen to audiobooks at high speeds if time is your main concern.
Because in the time it takes you to "research" whether a book is worth your
time or not, you could've already read a couple chapters of it and gotten
enough of a broad overview of what it contains to decide for yourself.

I've managed to read about 60-90 books a year for the last 6 years, and that's
only counting the ones I actually finish. Yet I'm sure the tally of books I've
only started/skimmed would be significantly higher than that if I bothered to
keep track of it.

~~~
jodrellblank
It's a big issue because " _There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000
books published every year in the US alone, depending on which stats you
believe._ " \- Forbes.

You aren't going to preview / skim literally millions of books which exist to
find the ones worth reading. You can't.

 _I 've managed to read about 60-90 books a year for the last 6 years_

That's, what, 8 hours worth of book publishing in the USA, in 6 years?

~~~
axlprose
I clearly stated:

> _in the time it takes you to "research" whether a book is worth your time or
> not, you could've already read a couple chapters of it_

Meaning that there would be no actual trade-off in the time invested for you,
to take a slightly less superficial approach when evaluating books.

To compare the approach I proposed to a literally impossible task of
evaluating every single book ever written (as if anybody would actually even
be interested in reading all that) is quite disingenuous. This entire HN
thread and article are already excluding most books in existence anyway, by
the simple fact that everyone here has been mostly talking about "english non-
fiction" books specifically. They may still tally up to a large number, but
there's no point in exaggerating their quantity when we're all still just as
hopeless in trying to read them all anyway. All you did by pointing out this
impossibility is just needlessly restate the obvious, and has nothing to do
with what I said.

I'm already more than satisfied with the amount of books I read, and get a lot
out of them without experiencing any existential anguish over it, so I don't
understand why you're trying to throw my reading habits back at me as if
they're "not good enough" or something all of a sudden. Or is that what
reading is about these days? a mere measuring contest? Am I supposed to feel
ashamed I didn't meet some internet stranger's arbitrary criteria for a habit
that's supposed to benefit _me_? I proposed a viable alternative for
evaluating books that works more efficiently for me than the one presented in
the article, in case others are unsatisfied with their current reading habits.
I didn't claim it was something that was going to win you the "reading
olympics". If anything, I clearly supported the opposite by emphasizing that
people should feel less obligated to finish the books they start, because
feeling like you have to finish them is just going to cause needless anxiety
about the way you've invested your time.

Besides, who cares if your entire lifetime of reading could've been published
in a day? Is your goal in life to out-pace authors and publishers, or is it to
get fulfillment out of books? Because in my experience, reading a single
chapter out of a bad/mediocre book is a lot more fulfilling than reading a
bunch of amazon/goodreads reviews.

------
dlkf
> Malcolm Gladwell’s books are enjoyable—there is no denying he tells
> compelling stories—but ultimately they rely heavily on anecdotal evidence.
> In general, I find that books by journalists cherry-pick examples to fit the
> argument, and gloss over (or completely ignore) evidence to the contrary.

The irony.

------
veddox
Addendum to rule 1: Browse through the bibliography.

Quick but effective heuristic to gauge how serious the book is, and how well
the author knows his field. If there isn't one, don't bother buying it. If
it's a 20 page list of citations from reputable journals (or original sources,
if you're reading a history book), then the author doesn't have to be a
professor to be believable.

------
yoran
I would add #4: books that are at least 10 years old. I feel like knowledge
has to pass the test of time. This rule would rule out "Why We Sleep" for
instance, but you'll be able to read it in 10 years if the science behind it
still stands.

~~~
jodrellblank
Terence McKenna's suggestion was "if a book is less than 100 years old, don't
read it".

I think it's a combination of "contemporary books will be from the swirl of
life around you that already know, old books will be from a different culture
and time and that difference is important" and "knowledge lost, from people
who are no longer living".

It would also have the test of time - Darwinian natural selection of
information. Something we're missing when we want the internet to keep data
forever, we should be letting data rot and be lost, taking ongoing action to
keep it in the present is a vote for its importance, setting up a system which
preserves information without effort is cheating the system and leaving us
swimming in e-waste.

------
munificent
I like reading non-fiction. I think my rough heuristics for picking books are:

1\. Aim for topics I was already interested in before I knew the book existed.
There is something to be said for books so good they draw attention to the
topic, but that also increases the odds of the book's rating being based on
popularity and not quality. I'd rather read a good book about niche topic that
is particularly meaningful to me than a better book that just happens to hit
the zeitgeist. In other words, I pick a topic and hunt for books.

My most recent non-fiction books were Derek Wu's book on Spelunky, Chapman
Piloting & Seamanship, and Thinking with Type. None of those are going to make
Oprah's Book Club, but all were very enchriching for me because they aligned
with areas that matter to me.

2\. Aim for books that are "canonical" according to people in the field.
Signals for this are lots of reviews, especially many reviews over a period of
years because that shows consistent relevance. When people I respect that I
share interests with mention a book, that's a strong signal. When reviews of
other similar books mention as a point of reference, that's a strong signal.

3\. Read a few pages and judge the quality of writing. I have read very very
few books where the underlying concepts were valuable enough to be worth
wading through bad writing. On the contrary, my experience is that deep, clear
thinkers produce quality at all levels of exposition. They wrap their good
ideas in good chapters with good paragraphs full of good sentences. Life is
too short for shitty prose.

I also have a simple rule for how to increase the _quantity_ of non-fiction I
read: Put it in the bathroom and don't bring my phone in there. You'd be
surprised how much text you can get through one poop at a time. This is great
for books where reading it is not super engaging but I want to _have read it_.

------
pcprincipal
Worth noting that Nassim Nicholas Taleb has some interesting explanations
about why practitioners write better and more accurate books than journalists
in "Skin in the Game". As you probably guessed from the title, practitioners
have a lot to lose by writing a bad book about their practice because it
impacts their livelihood. Journalists - while they do face some consequences
for bad books - don't pay the same price, and are more likely appealing to a
general audience when they write a non-fiction book.

------
baddspellar
I would argue that goodreads is _not_ a particularly good way to determine
whether a non-fiction book is worth reading. goodreads reviewers are just
regular people who evaluate books based on how much they enjoyed them, not how
accurate of useful the books are.

If I'm looking for a book I want to learn from, I scout recommendations from
journals, magazines, blogs, respected radio programs/podcasts. End of year
"best of" lists are also a good source of ideas. Then I read some in-depth
reviews of books that strike my fancy by reviewers who have reason to know
what they're talking about. Many of these have 4+ star ratings in goodreads,
some don't.

Also, a blanket rejection of books by journalists or other non-experts is
going to lead you to miss some really good books. That rule immediately called
to mind Tracy Kidder. So, "The Soul of a New Machine" is off limits. Really?
No thanks. I can think of many others.

~~~
hermanschaaf
Although I haven't read Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine", Google
categorizes it as Biography, so if you buy that then by the rule of thumb it
would not be off limits. And thanks, I have added it to my to-read list!

------
jcoffland
A trick I use to "read" books much faster is to feed them through Google's TTS
but set a much higher than normal read speed. I call it robotting a book.

It takes some getting used to and requires more focus but it's very efficient
in terms of information dump. I've been able to increase the speed over time.
My wife thinks I'm crazy. I use headphones.

~~~
Benjammer
I do this with informational youtube videos. I crank the speed to 1.5-2x
depending on how fast the presenter is talking, but I push it to the point
where I feel like I'm just barely keeping up and I try to get faster over time
where I'm setting more and more videos to 2x rather than 1.5x.

~~~
codemac
Use youtube-dl and you can train yourself to go past 2x pretty easily as well.

~~~
the_jeremy
I use the "video speed controller" extension to set the speed in increments of
0.1x. Works on any HTML5 player (netflix, youtube, most random websites).

~~~
Benjammer
Nice, I figured I'd probably get some of these suggestions posting this on HN,
thanks! I'll check these out. I've been meaning to find something that will
let me go past 2x.

------
misiti3780
Interesting post, but i would say you can easily read more than 3000 books if
you retire at 65 and live to be 90+. Also there are great non-fiction books by
journalists that are not about journalism, a few that come to mind are Bad
Blood, The Chickenshit Club, Angler, All The President's Men, books by Matt
Taibbi, etc.

~~~
cfmcdonald
For similar reasons to the "time value of money" concept, books read now are
worth more than books read in the future. e.g. reading GEB at 20 and having it
change the course of your life to become a Computer Science Ph.D. is very
different from reading it on your death bed.

Moreover, 3000 books is still only scratching the surface of all non-fiction
ever published in English (let alone other languages), so strong heuristics
will still be needed.

~~~
misiti3780
good point

------
Emma_Goldman
In my experience, the best way of finding good books has been:

1) Find authors and intellectual subcultures that you are interested in, and
follow what they are doing.

2) Read intelligent long-form reviews of books. Most good intellectual
magazines and journals have a review section.

3) Read whatever you can on Amazon preview and Google Books before buying a
book.

------
padolsey
For lack of ideal heuristics, I recently built myself a tool to find books
that "people like me" read most. This is similar to the rating heuristic,
except it relies on a collaborative filtering & clustering of sorts. The
internet is full of people who have reviewed and curated lists of books, books
that can thus be associated with each-other. And so now I can ask my tool the
simple question: For people who enjoyed these N books, what other books did
they most enjoy? This is something I've found incredibly lacking on the likes
of Amazon/GR/etc. recommendation mechanisms, hence why I built the tool. I
won't plug it here since I don't want to be spammy but I can share directly
with people if they'd like.

------
publicfig
I do think these are some good guidelines that are definitely worth at least
considering if you're struggling with choice. One other method I've used to
great effect is to read books that I see cited at least 3 times in 3 different
places. So if I'm interested in or researching a topic and I see a book or
work cited (or recommended) by multiple independent sources, I'll add it to my
list. It really helps me find a lot of non-fiction/research-based works with
generic titles that I may not come across otherwise.

Obviously, YMMV. This can lead to issues (for example, ideological hegemony in
a lot of the fields I'm researching in) and it's by no means the only method I
use to pick works. But it has been really helpful for me!

------
gruppen
#2 shouldn't be a hard and fast rule, especially, with respect to textbooks
and, especially, when it comes to subjects like math. A student rating a
phenomenal book 2 stars because "...it was assigned and we had to buy our
book. But the book is too hard to understand, explains jack shit and totally
worthless. I give it two stars only because I bought it at 1/4 the price on
sale, otherwise this book barely deserves 1/2 star at most. Believe me, I am
not dumb - I sometimes even read straight out the textbook." is not rare.

I read comments only after I'm done with the book.

------
scandox
Wait. Good books stick around. 10 years is a reasonable minimum delay. What
are you going to miss?

And yes this does not apply to books about JavaScript.

------
amai
A simpler rule: Read what nobel prize winners read:

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/03/steven-
weinber...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/03/steven-
weinberg-13-best-science-books-general-reader)

------
awillen
I think the journalist rule is good for books that go deep into a topic, like
many of the ones you've cited here. On the other hand, I would expand your
caveat around biographies to say that journalists are generally very good when
it comes to writing about events.

Barbarians at the Gate is a good example of this - it required authors who
were able to dig deep into _what_ happened. There's obviously some info on why
things happened there as well, but the primary purpose of the book is to
inform the reader of what occurred, which is a good use of the journalistic
skill set.

------
fitzroy
Paul Fussell's book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System is one
of my favorite non-fiction books. I consider myself lucky to have discovered a
copy at a used book store 20+ years ago. Unfortunately, it only has a 3.95 on
Goodreads, so I guess it's going in the trash.

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison only has a 3.63 and I don't think she's
really an "expert" in any of the specific topics she writes about. It's
brilliant ...but maybe I can still return it?

This system is a great way to hyper-optimize for narrow-mindedness.

------
User23
I pick the shortest one on the shelf for the subject. That’s how I found
Einstein’s Relativity and Feynman’s QED. Omit needless words!

~~~
tasty_freeze
Then check out the "A very Short Introduction To ..." series from Oxford
University Press.

[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=oxford+very+short+introduction+se...](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=oxford+very+short+introduction+series)

~~~
stuxnet79
My experience with the Very Short Introduction series is mixed. I kind of wish
there was more editorial oversight to ensure that the style, content and
pacing are more consistent from book to book.

Some books I've read don't really follow the spirit of "Very Short
Introduction" and are rather dense. The quality of writing also varies quite a
bit.

Overall though, they are a good first stop if you want to get basic
familiarity with a topic.

~~~
User23
I'm actually a fan of dense. If I have to reread a well written paragraph five
times to understand that's fine by me. When I'm reading serious non-fiction
(currently Predicate Calculus and Program Semantics by Dijkstra and Scholten)
I consider it normal to just make it through a handful of pages per day.

------
thisrod
The problem I see with these rules is that you're only going to read new
books.

I use a heuristic that the best book about a given topic was most likely
written half as long ago as people have been thinking about that topic. People
write more books now, but they get less interested in old topics as time goes
by, and those effects tend to cancel out.

------
amai
I know a simpler rule: Just have a look at my list of recommended nonfiction
books:
[https://github.com/asmaier/littlelists/blob/master/books_non...](https://github.com/asmaier/littlelists/blob/master/books_nonfiction.md)
;-)

------
mindcrime
Ratings aren't fungible from person to person, so I reject the whole "4.0
rating" thing. A book could have a 2.0 rating and I might still find it
useful. Generic ratings like that are, at best, a VERY weak signal, and
certainly not something I'd ever incorporate into an ironclad rule.

------
yoz-y
For non fiction I only read what was directly recommended by somebody whose
taste I already know. It takes discovery out of the equation and I definitely
miss good books, but since I do not read that many non-fiction books this
method is highly efficient.

------
kieckerjan
I guess many journalists view themselves as the ideal outsider. If you deny
them a place on your reading list (or demand that they only write about their
job) you deny that whole vocation. The world would be a poorer place if we all
did that.

------
int_19h
#1 is kinda tricky to apply to books that take down pseudo-science. In those
cases, who is and isn't an "expert in the field" (and whether the field even
meaningfully exists) is exactly the question.

------
jcoleh
I would recommend still reading books written by journalists since some can be
very good. But for these books adjust your Goodreads rating threshold to
something more like 4.2 or 4.3 for journalist-written books.

------
EastSmith
I am using the 4 star Goodreads rule and it works pretty well alone (without
the rest of the nice suggestions in the article).

I also use the 6.5 IMDB rule for movies and the 8.0 IMDB rule for TV shows.

------
CharlesColeman
My rules: be interested in some topic, ask around for recommendations, then
pick one or two of the recommended titles based on how people described them
in the responses you got.

------
thecleaner
Do we really need to read a book a week ? I mean just reading a book once wont
really help much. Isnt it better to read less but read those books deeply ?

------
urubu
Rule #1 should probably be complemented with Tyler Cowen's proviso: If the
book lists PhD after the author's name, run the other way.

------
meijer
Wrt to "How the Mind works": The beginning is really pretty dry, but it gets a
lot more interesting in the later chapters.

------
leopoldsw
Just follow Bill Gates' blog. Lol.

------
cryptosteve
I love reading nonfiction. But, as I am sure you can relate, I only have
limited time. Even if we were able to make enough time to read one book a week
on average—certainly not the case for me right now—we would still only be able
to read around 3,000 books in our entire adult lives. At my current pace, the
real number will likely end up being far lower.

------
droithomme
> no books by journalists, unless it’s about journalism

Charles Mann's 1491 and 1493 remain the best books on the topic.

Robert Whitaker's Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic likewise.

------
crimsonalucard
Rules restrict the diversity of your learning and restricts your knowledge.

You don't have time for everything, so it's good to have rules. But always
remember that on occasion you need to break your own rules otherwise your
knowledge becomes biased.

My extra rule to overcome this bias is. Anyone who recommends me their
favorite book I will read it no matter how stupid I believe the recommendation
is, no matter how many rules it violates.

I found the DaVinci code this way. That book was a huge mistake, but still I
now have actually read the book and have the definitive knowledge to know it's
a mistake.

------
jamesrcole
[EDIT: the post says "Prefer books by experts in the field" and says these are
people who have spent their lives researching that field. It gives GEB as an
example of such a book. That claim is factually incorrect and calls into
question the idea of requiring books to meet that criteria. Does anyone of the
many people who've downvoted my comment care to explain why you find it
objectionable?]

> _The best nonfiction books I have read have invariably been by folks who
> spent their lives researching that particular issue. A couple of books in
> this category immediately come to mind: Why We Sleep, The Language Instinct,
> Gödel Escher Bach._

Hofstadter was only 34 when GEB was published

~~~
Retra
That doesn't refute the fact that he spent his life researching the content in
GEB.

~~~
jamesrcole
"The idea that changed Hofstadter’s existence, as he has explained over the
years, came to him on the road, on a break from graduate school in particle
physics. Discouraged by the way his doctoral thesis was going at the
University of Oregon, feeling “profoundly lost,” he decided in the summer of
1972 to pack his things into a car he called Quicksilver and drive eastward
across the continent. Each night he pitched his tent somewhere new (“sometimes
in a forest, sometimes by a lake”) and read by flashlight. He was free to
think about whatever he wanted; he chose to think about thinking itself. Ever
since he was about 14, when he found out that his youngest sister, Molly,
couldn’t understand language, because she “had something deeply wrong with her
brain” (her neurological condition probably dated from birth, and was never
diagnosed), he had been quietly obsessed by the relation of mind to matter.
The father of psychology, William James, described this in 1890 as “the most
mysterious thing in the world”: How could consciousness be physical? How could
a few pounds of gray gelatin give rise to our very thoughts and selves?

Roaming in his 1956 Mercury, Hofstadter thought he had found the answer—that
it lived, of all places, in the kernel of a mathematical proof. In 1931, the
Austrian-born logician Kurt Gödel had famously shown how a mathematical system
could make statements not just about numbers but about the system itself.
Consciousness, Hofstadter wanted to say, emerged via just the same kind of
“level-crossing feedback loop.” He sat down one afternoon to sketch his
thinking in a letter to a friend. But after 30 handwritten pages, he decided
not to send it; instead he’d let the ideas germinate a while. Seven years
later, they had not so much germinated as metastasized into a 2.9‑pound,
777-page book called Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which would
earn for Hofstadter—only 35 years old, and a first-time author—the 1980
Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction."

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-
man...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-
would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/)

~~~
Retra
What is your point? When Hofstadter was 35, he had spent his adult life
studying a subject which culminated in the publication of a book about it. He
wasn't passively throwing words on pages to get anything published, he was
publishing his life's work.

You seem to be trying to argue that -- because he continued to live afterward,
he somehow didn't spend his _entire_ life on the book. But that's _not_ what
was being asserted -- only that he had spent "his life" up to the time of the
work's publication on the work. And it's not even relevant if it were meant as
you seem to be assuming, because Hofstadter has _continued_ to study the very
same subject ever since. He's also published more books on the very same
matter in the following years. It was his life's work then, and it continues
to be today.

~~~
jamesrcole
> When Hofstadter was 35, he had spent his adult life studying a subject

First, a nitpick - the book was published when he was 34, and he was even
younger when he wrote it.

But the main point is that the post is clearly talking about people who have
spent the entirety of a lifetime studying an area, not someone who has spent
their adulthood _so far_ studying the subject.

And Hofstadter clearly hadn't devoted the entirety of his adulthood up to age
34 studying the subjects of GEB. The quoted passage says that his formal study
had been in particle physics.

~~~
Retra
I disagree with your assessment of what the main point is. I don't think
anyone else is interpreting it that way, and can confidently assert that the
error is entirely on your end.

Moreover, Hofstadter's study of physics isn't unrelated to his study of
intelligence. I personally got a degree in physics to study language and
intelligence, because the way physicists use language, analogy, and simple
concepts to understand the world is particularly effective and interesting. So
I can tell you first-hand that they are related. In fact, anyone who studies
philosophy is probably making a serious mistake to not study physics first.

~~~
jamesrcole
> _I don 't think anyone else is interpreting it that way, and can confidently
> assert that the error is entirely on your end._

The post is very clear that it's talking about expertise in the sense referred
to in my comments (which, as also indicated in my comments, I don't fully
agree with):

 _" Rule #1: Prefer books by experts in the field The best nonfiction books I
have read have invariably been by folks who spent their lives researching that
particular issue. A couple of books in this category immediately come to mind:
Why We Sleep, The Language Instinct, Gödel Escher Bach.

Positive indicators of this in a blurb may include “Professor in [field
directly related to the book’s topic]”, “Long-time researcher in [field
directly related to the book’s topic]”._

Note how they say "Professor in" and "Long-time researcher in".

The way you're using a term, a 21 year old can have "spent their life
researching the topic" if they've been focused on it over the previous three
years.

~~~
Retra
You don't need to focus on these kinds of semantic quibbles if you want to
miss the point. You can do that directly.

Albert Einstein was 21 when he published his first paper, and 26 when he
published his best. Please tell me that he didn't spend his life researching
physics, even then.

~~~
jamesrcole
You've completely missed the point of my comments. Go back and read them more
carefully.

~~~
Retra
I've reread your comments and stand by what I said. Perhaps you should confer
with someone else.

------
AbyormPiranha
Read papers on arxiv and forget books.

~~~
mathnmusic
Papers are written for peers, not beginners.

