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Ask HN: I'm risk averse to reading books, what you recommend?

3 points by dumb2223 ↗ HN
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) "Rationality from AI to Zombies" (someone in HN recommended it in other thread) 2) "The Tyranny of Metrics" 3) "The Elefant in the Brain" 4) "Enlightment Now" of S. Picker. This one should be One star review of that was demolishing. What you recommend?

Edited to emphasize need to read one stars reviews. Perhaps navigating through reviews and books is like reading a non writen book?

8 comments

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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.

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. :)
gt2
Try reading summaries on something like Blinkist.
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.