
Ask HN: I'm risk averse to reading books, what you recommend? - dumb2223
I find it really difficult to choose a book to read since I feel compeled to read one stars reviews and next to look for other suggestions. Hence I get into a loop: search, read one stars reviews, and reject. For instance, today I navigated from 
1) &quot;Rationality from AI to Zombies&quot; (someone in HN recommended it in other thread)
2) &quot;The Tyranny of Metrics&quot;
3) &quot;The Elefant in the Brain&quot;
4) &quot;Enlightment Now&quot; of S. Picker.
This one should be  One star review of that was demolishing. What you recommend?<p>Edited to emphasize need to read one stars reviews. Perhaps navigating through reviews and books is like reading a non writen book?
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amorphous
Not sure this question is serious, but just in case, obviously choosing a book
solely on online reviews is not a good strategy. If in doubt, choose a book
that is old yet still popular, because it means it has kept its popularity
through all the fashions and trends, so it most likely provides some deeper
value.

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ryanmercer
Read a book because you want to, not because people have reviewed it. Everyone
has different tastes and let us not forget trolls and competition trying to
tank people's books.

~~~
dumb2223
Thanks, I will read
[https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/8/2/humanitys-...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/8/2/humanitys-
end-the-time-we-waste-on-virtual-lives)

I hope it help me to don't waste a lot of time!

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edburdo
Weight the reviews... 1 star gets .5 points, 5 star gets 1. Then balance it
out. Or take those 1 star reviews with a grain of salt. I don't think you are
risk adverse to reading books... I think you keep talking yourself out of it.
So, next time you have a book suggestion... go get it and read it. Ignore the
reviews. +1 for the Library if you have one that has the book. Easier to
ignore reviews that way. :)

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antt
A voice to speech system such that you don't actually have to sit down and
read a book if you aren't sure you like it.

I suggest espeak-ng since it is the only t2s program that can manage 1,000 wpm
without artifacts, can output wav files - which you can re-encode for mobile
use.

~~~
dumb2223
It sounds nice, but reading reviews allow me to jump and select interesting
stuff. Perhaps a speech system enhanced with a way to select what kind of
content to jump to, something more that a jumpable toc.

~~~
antt
Select the passage of interest:

$ xsel | espeak-ng --stdin

Don't over engineer things.

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gt2
Try reading summaries on something like Blinkist.

