The Essential Question: “What should I read next?”

The Essential Question: “What should I read next?”(thenewcuriosityshop.substack.com)

32 points by benbreen 6 days ago | 21 comments

The biggest library in my country has a wide selection of books. I go there sometimes and find books that interest me. For example I currently have 8 books about different aspects of music production on borrow and am currently reading one of them.

I never even felt a need to consult goodreads or other online sources when deciding on the library what books to look at or to borrow. Setting enough time aside and going to the shelves that interest me is enough, thanks to great amount of books they have there.

In smaller libraries I more often end up empty handed because the books they have in smaller libraries about my interests are either non-existent or not particularly interesting.

The library is one place where more is better. Even though they have a lot of books, I don’t get paralysis about which to choose, because only a subset is of interest to me. The problem is rather when the selection in a library is too small so that my interests are not well catered to.

I like the big library a lot :)

doorpheus 10 minutes ago |

A few collections i've been reading are the sci-fi and fantasy masterwork ones by gollancz. A few standouts have been the dying earth by jack vance and A Voyage to Arcturus. There are some amazing works in here which i would never have found without the curation that shows the history and evolution the genres. https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_fantasy_masterworks.a...

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_sf_masterworks.asp

JennyWeston 2 hours ago |

https://ultimatebooklist.com/ https://ryanholiday.net/the-reading-list/ https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/info/index.html

Start somewhere.

Go places.

It's fun.

jnpnj 1 hour ago | |

I'd extend the advice with "put yourself into a reading friendly context" so you wonder less and dive in more easily.

Sebastian_09 2 hours ago |

I find the best recommendations to be the works cited in other works you like. You can press pause in a movie when the camera goes over the bed side table book, or write down the movie they go see in the book you read. Gives a growing list to discuss with your librarian, although some time you need to branch out. Nice idea that’s mentioned there, shame it is only for non fiction books, would be interested in a fiction equivalent!

kreyenborgi 26 minutes ago | |

Well, it sometimes happens if you read about the bool, e.g. Pynchon's V put me onto Heart of Darkness

giobox 2 hours ago |

This for me is one of the last great unsolved problems on the internet. I've yet to find a book recommendation site/algorithm/social thing/whatever that actually works well enough for me to trust it and invest my time in logging my own reads to improve the results etc.

I've had far more success personally in growing my reading list with books I ended up loving by following a few people on Instagram who share their reading groups choices. Similarly, anytime anyone whom I vaguely trust recommends me a book I just order it immediately on Amazon and add to the input pile.

It's vitally important for me to keep the next read pipeline well stocked - I get through a lot of books, and if I run out for whatever reason it can take me weeks to get the habit going again.

Virtually every other form of media, I can find a recommendation system that works well enough, even if it's not perfect. Books have always been an outlier for me personally.

thataccount 1 hour ago |

Poster is drinking the "Breen Cola". I don't find that prizes, especially modern ones awarded for literature, equate to "stuff worth reading". In most cases, something worth reading is going to typically be 70-80 years old—back when people had to use their imaginations and more extensive vocabulary that wasn't being doused and invaded by vile AI swill.

The same thing is often true of movies in that the older ones are more well-crafted and better paced and carry messages still relevant now.

arjie 1 hour ago | |

The Hugo Award nominees are all pretty good. Winning isn't any more significant than getting shortlisted. For a short while I thought it was dropping in quality but a discussion here led to my changing my mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48929545

thataccount 32 minutes ago | | |

The article you list which is referred to reads to me like the books she is judging are not standing out on their own enough to instill in the reader a sense of their "greatness" as a work. Old school book awards were obvious then, and are obvious now. You know when you put one of those puppies down that you've done something that has re-arranged how you process life.

I'm not clear what in the convo changed your mind?

dominotw 33 minutes ago | | |

ever since i was a teenager i always read all the booker prize nominees and nothing else. But they've seemed to have jumped onto social justice bandwagon and are nominating books with an agenda. i have no problem with social justice and belive in mission 100 percent but for some reason my heart doesnt agree with books slected for an agenda.

kidnoodle 1 hour ago |

Aha! I was posting about a thing I made for just this purpose the other day - it is called Leafle. You talk to it about books you’ve read and enjoyed or not, and it uses that plus the fact that llms have very extensive knowledge of pretty much all books, to suggest ones you’ll enjoy (or in fact, that will meet your need - reading isn’t just about ‘enjoying’ after all).

It can suggest them to buy, or as audiobooks, or it can find ones currently available to borrow from your local library!

It is at https://leafle.nanosheep.net if you’d like to give it a go :)

spockz 1 hour ago | |

I signed up but there appears to be a waiting list. Is this real or just a way to figure out market fit?

kidnoodle 1 hour ago | | |

You should be in now! Just trying to manage my limited credit that I’m funding the openrouter account with.

monkeydust 2 hours ago |

I use embeddings to create suggestions on what to read when it comes to blogs and articles. It semantically matches articles from sites I provide (like HN of course) against previous things I have read and a set of topics/themes I am interested in. It does this periodically and provides a suggested list of what to read next. Implemented this a few weeks ago and its throwing up pieces I might have otherwise missed.

I am however concious that sometimes the most interesting things in a given day are not related to anything else I am reading or would read - this is what I get through scrolling through HN serveral times a day.

abstractspoon 6 days ago |

I always have a few novels on the go at the same time. As I finish each one I put it on the 'read' pile and pick another complementary book from my bookshelf whose last rereading I can't recall. This way I work my way through all the books I own before starting again a year or more later. No need to buy any more books ever...

bobsoap 1 hour ago | |

I have a different strategy that I've greatly perfected over the years. I buy a book whenever one piques my interest. I squeeze it in on the bookshelf somewhere. Life happens and I forget all about it.

A few years later, when I look for a new book to read, I find all sorts of books that I don't remember ever buying. I pull one out, start reading a few pages.

Life happens. At some point my wife dissolves the ever-growing stack of half-started books on my nightstand and puts them all back on the shelf.

And so the cycle begins anew.

mohamedkoubaa 1 hour ago |

Pro tip: never feel guilty about leaving a book unfinished. If it's taking too long to read, pick up the next thing on your list.

Arubis 1 hour ago | |

My favorite rubric for this is: give yourself permission to put the book down and never pick it up again at page (100 - your current age). Which means that, yes, once your turn 100, you're allowed to judge a book by its cover.

QuantumNomad_ 14 minutes ago | | |

One of the books I most strongly remember giving up on was “Infinite Jest”. I only got through a few pages and trying to read it just made me really angry. I don’t remember why exactly, but I remember very strongly that it was so unpleasant and annoying for me that I absolutely did not want to read any further. Regardless of how important this book may be according to some. I have no intention of ever picking that book up again. I might miss out on something, but I’m fine with that. There are plenty of other books to read.

mohamedkoubaa 1 hour ago | | |

Brilliant