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Ask YC: Let's start a Hacker News book club

126 points by robertk ↗ HN
This is in response to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406995

How about each week or month (I know we're all busy, so perhaps monthly is better), we all agree on a book to read and discuss? I am very busy for many parts of the year, and often don't have time to read leisurely even though I would very much like to. I imagine the idea of an HN book club would help in this regard, as I would be much more motivated to make time (like a co-founder motivates you to keep going!).

What do you guys say? If this post has enough upvotes (say 10), start discussing options for the first book, and whether weekly or monthly would work better.

EDIT: lallysingh below has made the following suggestion of topics. This seems like a very good fit judging by the posts on HN, as well as the comments already present.

1. High-level programming, probably functional-related.

2. Business/startup

3. Some quality-of-life stuff.

Perhaps newer releases (or exotic material) might be a good choice due to the presence of ideas not yet assimilated, discussed, or pondered by many of us.

EDIT2: Judging by the time concerns below, maybe it is wise to start with something short (say under 250 pages).

EDIT3: If we're going to go with fiction, this looks like a good list to pick from:

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_Century

Personally, I've read almost none of these!

82 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] thread
vaksel
What kind of book? Coding related? Business related? Harry Potter?
robertk
That was my initial question as well, and this thread exists to find out! :)

I say we mix it up. Something that is readable by and interesting to nearly all of us, but unread by most of us. The former requirement means technical books (even something like SICP) are unfortunately unwise choices, partially due to their nature and partially due to the longer reading times. I will wait for some more upvotes (interest) and comments before expressing my own suggestions.

Shamiq
I honestly don't think it matters.
Zev
People could toss out suggestions and whatever gets the most upvotes gets chosen as the HN Book of the Month?

The only thing i would ask is that when people pick it, remember that book clubs are generally meant to inspire discussion. It's kinda hard to discuss some technical books that take awhile to digest.

lallysingh
By the crowd here, some ideas:

1. High-level programming, probably functional-related.

2. Business/startup

3. Some quality-of-life stuff.

Instead of institutionalizing the topics, we can just start with one good one, and then use suggestions/voting to make up a queue.

My bigger concern is timing. We're all pretty busy.

z3r0p4r4d0x
Seriously, if you don't have time to gain knowledge, you're probably wasting your time to begin with. Sounds like a fantastic idea to me, just get the prototype off the ground ASAP.
lallysingh
Sorry, I should've been more explicit. I'm mostly concerned about synchronization in terms of getting us all to read a book within the same time frame.
SapphireSun
Given that there are so many, it seems like what will probably happen is that some will finish on time, and others will trickle in over the week. Keep the discussion open ^_^
s_baar
Jeez, this sounds good, but if people here are like me then they already have about 5 books on their list that they want to read. I don't know how many would commit.
pierrefar
Not just on the list, but actually bought and stacked on your desk. Right next to the stack of 5 books you previously purchased to read.
tallanvor
And they're stacked on the desk because your shelf of books to read is already full.

Or do I just buy too many books?

tjr
I had to buy more shelves.
russell
The tables are full, the bookshelves are full, the walls are full of bookshelves, the garage is full of boxes that weren't unpacked from the last move, and my GF drags me to the quarterly library sale. I'm looking for a good lossless compression algorithm for atoms.
iamelgringo
That's creepy. When did you come over to my house?
josefresco
Mine reside on an Amazon wish list. I wish I had the money to buy them all and stack them on my desk where I could put off reading them until I'm locked away in a cabin in Maine without an Internet connection.
pierrefar
Oh don't even get me started on my Amazon "to-read" list. My "saved for later" shopping cart list is many pages long. If I buy half the books saved in the shopping cart, Amazon will have a bumper quarter.
KevBurnsJr
Are you sure you aren't me?

http://is.gd/d7G0

wheels
You really bought 6 books just on Rails? That seems a bit ... excessive.
KevBurnsJr
Yes. It is.
kajecounterhack
Well remember you can buy as many books as you'd like but they're no use if you don't read them ;)

Save that money for a cup of coffee or something.

raju
Oh my god! That looks like the pile of books that is currently sitting underneath my desk!

http://twitpic.com/uyw7

I keep moving the pile around hoping a new location will give me the necessary kick in the guts to start reading, but I just keep adding to it.

akkartik
I toss books out on their ear* if I don't get to them in 2 months or so. And it's the book's fault, not mine.

Prioritize. If the stack was smaller and less intimidating perhaps you'd read more of it than you are reading now.

* - They go to the library whether I purchased or borrowed them: http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/6f0fz/comments/c03nzlo

Haskell
Jeez, this sounds good, but if people here are like me then they already have about 5 books on their list that they want to read. I don't know how many would commit

Read? Who spoke about reading? I thought we would discuss the books without actually read it. Isn't that what everybody does?

mattmaroon
Why isn't there a startup that just facilitates book clubs?
staunch
I'm going to launch BookClubiouslyr before anyone else can!
Shamiq
How the heck do you pronounce that?
brandonkm
I think the trend now is adding a 'd' to the end of your startup name, so possibly bookclubd? or maybe just bookd?
ramchip
bookclubd 1.0 ☆βeta
woodsier
Hey! We can keep it in BETA for a few years! Nice idea.
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Alex3917
Why isn't there a startup that just facilitates book clubs?

Because the average American buys one book a year and then doesn't read it.

mattmaroon
That doesn't matter. The average American only plays poker maybe once a month, but Party Poker still makes a billion. Startups don't need to target average Joe, they just need a big enough audience to make money, and there are a lot of bookclubs out there.
motoko
I'm sitting on the domains KNOLBLE.COM and NOVELBITE.COM in case anybody would like to use them. I'm not using them for anything right now.
patio11
Because the kind of people who start software companies don't participate in book clubs.

Same answer for "Why isn't there a startup for knitters?", "Why isn't there a startup for school supply purchasing agents?", and "Why isn't there a software company which makes educational bingo cards?" (OK, last one perhaps not a great example.)

P.S. Somebody explain to me why more people haven't clued in that a) adult women have money and b) nobody else is trying to get it with software. Oh no, lets take the 473rd attempt at showing a 17 year old unemployed World of Warcraft player banner advertisements instead.

tommusic
Its construction is already in-progress. :-)
antiform
I have a suggestion for what to read: the posts that make up Joel Spolsky's Introduction to Best Software Writing I. [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BestSoftwareWriting.h...]

Most of the entries included in the book are solid articles, but most tend to merely skim the surface of the topic at hand, and I would love to go deeper and discuss the posts with the HN community.

They are brief enough to have something like one per week, and not distract too much from our day jobs (no more than HN itself, anyway). Also, I believe all the entries are still freely available at their original sites, so we don't have to worry about people not participating because they could not find the book.

As for downsides, I think a couple of the posts were submitted to HN before, but I think most, if not all, of them are worth revisiting. Also, it could be the case that many members have already read the book, but again, I think these posts are good enough to read again and discuss.

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gruseom
Sounds like fun. I think monthly is better. If people suggest titles here, you could collect them and make a poll after a day or two.
jacobscott
It seems to me like you get much better bandwidth talking about books by meeting in person. Do internet book clubs work?
shutter
Skype, Ventrilo or something similar might work, depending on how many people meet at once.
mlLK
4. Hacker Porn? [ascii only]

EDIT: It only seemed appropriate given item number 3

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wheels
Sounds silly to me, honestly. We don't have the same gaps in our knowledge and I don't have time (or interest) to read about the stuff that you're interested in that I'm not.

Book clubs seem to make more sense for fiction where the goal is entertainment or being more cultured or whatever. For non-fiction, my reading choices are much more pragmatic and I also don't mind just reading the parts of a book that are interesting to me. I don't fundamentally want to read more business or hacking books; I want to fill the gaps in my knowledge.

josefresco
Business books are mostly trash, avoid them like the plague. Also non-fiction does not have to mean 'hacking' books, there's lots of good stuff out there that can fill gaps you never knew you had.

I usually take a note when Charlie Rose has authors on, or even Stephen Colbert (although I skipped the whole doom+gloom book style of the last two years)

wheels
Comments about things that are universally bad are universally bad, and should be avoided like the plague.

I've got some good business books around here. Most of the ones that are wretched are self-help books with a little business language sprinkled on top to cover the flavor.

chris11
I agree with you that most business books are overrated. Although, for business advice, I have a lot of respect for anything harvard business review publishes.
robertk
Please upvote this suggestion if you are in favor.

To overcome the quarrel of choosing a new book each time, how about the highest-upvoted commenter from the previous book club meeting (i.e., someone we all agree is insightful) pick the next book (unless it is massively vetoed)? Or, perhaps provide a list of 5 recommended books, in case a single choice might be restricting the next book choice too tightly.

This both stimulates us to discuss the book insightfully (so we can pick the next book), and it resolves the dilemma of picking the next book!

zitterbewegung
TAOCP ,SICP, Lisp in small pieces, Probably the upcoming clojure book comes to stuff that should be consed on the list.
robertk
TAOCP? Isn't that thing like 2,000 pages long now?
edb
This should be a feature of hacker news, have a books link at the top menu where you can submit a book and a deadline, then people can commit to reading it, and then everybody can discuss. Upmod if you're committing, then the top few books will generally get a following and a good discussion going.

I guess you could do something like kill all books without more than 20 committed readers or something like that to eliminate the noise.

bluishgreen
Well, Its good thing but it seems highly unlikely that this will work. But hey since when did that stop us from trying?
thomasmallen
I'll briefly recommend "The Black Jacobins" by CLR James: A classical quasi-Marxist study of Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution (the only widely successful slave revolt). Toussaint hacked the slave trade, colonial oppression, and the pernicious influence of the French, Spanish, English, and self-interested bourgeoisie mulattoes.

I'm about half-way through it right now. Good book.

jkkramer
I would be more inclined to do this if the book is non-technical. When you commit to reading a technical book, you're committing yourself to more than just the time spent reading: you're committing yourself to the time spent applying and fully understanding what you read -- installing tools, tinkering with syntax, coding, and so on. I've got enough of that now.

With non-technical books (literature, history, quality-of-life), most of the time will be invested into actual reading, with a bit of pondering and maybe discussing. We can have a conversation right away, and there's still knowledge and insight to be gained.

Here are some non-technical books I'd like to read:

* How to Read a Book - http://amazon.com/dp/0671212095

* Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - http://amazon.com/dp/006124189X

* Liar's Poker - http://amazon.com/dp/0140143459

* Growing a Business - http://amazon.com/dp/0671671642

Herring
"When you commit to reading a technical book, you're committing yourself to more than just the time spent reading: ..."

I wish more hackers took that attitude towards science books. Can't really get much out of a pop-physics book without solving problems.

gruseom
Those last three are great suggestions (I don't know #1). #2 is a classic, but I've read it a couple of times. #3 I've been meaning to read for years. #4 I'm actually in the middle of right now (I think because tptacek recommended it here) and unlike the vast majority of business books, it's superb. It's also older (pre-internet) which is actually a good thing as it focuses one's attention on fundamentals.
charlesju
I think that we should do all 4 categories and create a discussion thread the first of each month for each 4 categories so everyone can talk about what they want to talk about it.

I really like 2 and 3, personally.

Can I suggest our first book be "4 Hour Workweek"? I am reading it right now, very interesting book and concepts, I would love to get everyone's opinion on it.

shaunxcode
all I can say is "yes!". I have a ton of programming books that I would love to re-read and discuss even (the art of the meta object protocol, let over lambda, on lisp etc.) but I would also be down with relevant math and fiction stuff.
Kaizyn
The problem is that you'll maybe find two other people on this site who understand functional and meta-programming well enough to discuss the issues with you (and I'm not yet one of them).
kleevr
I'll tell you what would be awesome. A peer reviewed hacker reading list. But, only the really sacred books. For instance GEB or from the post that prompted this post, after reading that review, I can tell you it will absolutely be my next non-fiction book. I've been wanting to read through some old textbooks to try and pick up somewhere I might've left off, but always found them distancing. This looks like a great way to dive back into it.
woodsier
I'm keen.

Someone want to hack it together? Maybe have a vote site built similar to YC/reddit where anyone can submit a book and discuss it, then the most popular submission every 2 weeks is chosen and we all read it?

Maybe decide 5 groups of books (business, technology, scifi, philosophy, etc) and choose 1 from each every month, to facilitate those who may want to use this book club for different reasons such as a learning facility (those who would gravitate to functional books on tech for example) or an escape from the every day (and read/discuss scifi or philosophy). I don't know, I havn't really thought this out. Maybe I'm over complicating it - I do that when I'm boozy!

Either way, it sounds like it could be a fun way to play with the Amazon API.

swombat
EDIT3: If we're going to go with fiction, this looks like a good list to pick from:

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_...

Personally, I've read almost none of these!

1) How can you have read none of these? Get started already! And don't wait for others to tell you which books to read!

2) That list is very suspect... I don't know how they compiled it, but it's a bit strange that it does contain some good books but then simultaneously allocates several positions to enjoyable but trashy books such as Harry Potter. Also gives several position to LotR (one is warranted, no more!), including one for the Silmarillion (wtf? I enjoyed it, but "best book of the 20th century"? no way!) Memoirs of a Geisha is also nice but hardly a thought leader. And it seems to be completely missing immortal masterpieces such as Narziss & Goldmund (Herman Hesse), Joseph and his Brothers (Thomas Mann), The Trial (Kafka), and many others.

An "OK" starting point, but not even the shadow of a definitive list.

zby
Goodreads looks nice - but is rather unresponsive. There are many similar sites - but I have not yet found any that would make it easy to do the practical things - like finding people who would like to talk about a book (instead of just finding out who has read one), with added bonus if that was also location aware or finding bookclubs with most similar reading taste to mine.