

Ask HN: How do you choose your technical books? - sharmi

Hi, 
  For any given language&#x2F;framework&#x2F;concept there are several technical books available.<p>How do you choose your technical books?<p><pre><code>  1.I just read amazon reviews.

  2.Go by friends recommendation.

  3.Check out what others have said on Hacker News, stackoverflow or a relevant subreddit

  4.I read the book reviews in blogs.

  5.I get the book recommended on the technology&#x27;s site or the book recommended by a tutorial I used.

  6.I don&#x27;t think. I just get the first one I see.

  7.I get multiple books and use-them-all&#x2F;choose-the-one-i-like.
</code></pre>
Do you search online about the book you are going to purchase?<p>Would you like a site that collates all the relevant recommendations in one place?
======
arh68
Some books I choose, some books I see mentioned (like here on hn).

To find books on a fresh topic, I google _site:stackoverflow.com books TOPIC_
to find an already-curated list or two (ex: [1]). I find a few of those books
on amazon, inspect the reviews. Positive reviews often all sound the same, so
negative reviews are usually more worthwhile. I try to ignore the reviews (and
the books) from people who've never read another book in the genre. If the
book is on Safari, I skim the ToC and jump right to the middle to see _what_
they're building, _how_ they're building it. I may even look for a pdf to skim
(but not read, I don't like to keep/read e-books, I only buy paper).

If the book is on Amazon for $0.01 (+ $3.99 shipping), I just buy it. If I
still want the book, I check CamelCamelCamel for the ' _proper_ ' price to buy
it at, and I set an alert. For example, I recently waited for Koza's _Genetic
Programming_ to hit $15, then I purchased.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1017017/what-is-the-
best-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1017017/what-is-the-best-way-to-
learn-erlang)

~~~
sharmi
thank you very much, Arh68, for the detailed answer. If a site provides a
summary of reviews for each book from different sources like stackoverflow and
reddit, similar to rotten tomatoes does for movies, would that save you time?
Will that interest you

