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Ask HN: Got a Kindle. What now? What books should I read?

12 points by sebilasse ↗ HN
Kinda silly question, but honestly i've got no idea where and i should start searching. I can find the best ruby gem for a given problem, but i never learnt how to find a (non-technical) book. I typically enjoy non-fiction investigative stories on economical,business technical "revolutions", e.g. Deluxxe, Kingpin, The big short, etc. Or fictional stories on non-fictional issues like the movie/book(?) "up in the air". Technical book recommendations are of course also appreciated as long as their readable on a beach or in an airplane.

20 comments

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mattm
I maintain a book list that I developed for my personal use but you could just as easily use goodreads.com or Amazon's wish list. Everytime I see or hear a book recommendation I add it to the list. My list now has over 1200 books that I'd like to read so I have no problem finding a book.

You could also find the books on Amazon you like and then check out the recommendations. That should lead you to others.

To suit your interest in business I would recommend: - Barbarians at the Gate: The Rise and Fall of RJR Nabisco (I'll never look at public companies the same after reading this book) - Founders at Work

intuitionhq
Our local bookstore regularly publishes top 100 lists in various categories which often have good selections. Goodreads is pretty good for that as well, and Amazon as mattm suggested.

Asking people for suggestions is a good idea too - obviously that's what you're doing here... I recently read 'A Town like Alice' by Nevil Shute which I really enjoyed. Maybe you could check that out?

Good luck!

dfc
How does owning a kindle effect what books you should read? if you did not want to read them before why would you want to read them now?
waterlesscloud
Availability. In two directions.

One, not everything is available on Kindle, so it's worth asking for suggestions from the subset of materials that are available.

Two, local and immediate availability. Kindle greatly increases convenience by allowing you to have a selection of books with you much more often than you would otherwise. This can (and in my case has) lead to more reading than you might otherwise have done.

Kindle is one of those things that's made a bigger difference to my habits and choices than I expected prior to owning one.

aorshan
I would recommend taking a look through all of the free classics available on the Kindle store. There are thousands of old books that are out of copyright and are completely free to download. You can find stuff like the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, papers by einstein, Gulliver's Travels, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and lots of other really great reads.
fabiandesimone
Forget about the spammy title, this is an amazing book on copy writting:

Cashvertising: http://amzn.to/nrwKnf (all links have my affiliate link. On my way to richness baby! ;)

I'm currently reading this one, so far so good:

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything http://amzn.to/nGEnkv

This is a small list of books I want to read:

The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us http://amzn.to/oiEIDs

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength http://amzn.to/qTNpgB

Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup http://amzn.to/njSDPh

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement http://amzn.to/okuaFh

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal http://amzn.to/rptuZ9

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home http://amzn.to/oaIDgu

sebilasse
ok. i'll give cashverditising a go, even though the corny title... :-)
mattm
The Power of Full Engagement is great. I recently read it and it would probably do me good to read it again at least a few more times.
achompas
For a book on a literal revolution, read George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia." For a book on how to generate revolutionary ideas, I'd recommend Steven Johnson's "Where Good Ideas Come From."

More generally, Kindle lets you sample the first chapter of any book for free. Amazon also lets you lend books to other Kindle owners, but I've never found that feature for myself...

marcamillion
Even more important than what books you should read, install this bookmarklet asap - http://kindlebility.com/

That allows you to just send articles to your kindle with one click. I think, if I am not mistaken, the author is actually a member of HN, just don't remember his handle.

But this is an awesome service that I love.

I started off with Instapaper, but after a while it started acting weird and getting support from Marco was a major pain in the ass, so I switched to that. Been happy ever since.

If you are a voracious consumer of news and such, there are long-form articles that are perfect to send to your kindle. Check out: http://longform.org/ and there is another one somewhere just can't remember it right now.

Be careful with this bookmarklet though, you can get carried away.

I believe I have a backlog of about 15 pages of articles that I am yet to read and there is no end in sight for me to stop sending them :|

sebilasse
That is awesome. Just installed and already kindled a longform article :)
f7u12
I think the scala/lift books are available free in PDF form.

A free nontechnical book I recently read is fitness related: brain before brawn.

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sid6376
A shameless plug for my site http://vipreads.com. It lists the famous books of favorite people. From hackers to entrepreneurs to singers, writers etc. etc.