That makes more sense. I was thinking about the big box discount store Big Lots and my first thought was "they have a Discord?" followed by "they talk about books!?!".
But this seems just way too broad, basically what I would see in a curated local book store that I have anyway. Maybe this was the intention, but seeing all those books without the context why they were originally recommended on the discord doesn't seem to add a lot of value.
Agreed. If that would be too cumbersome to add, then a simple counter showing how many times a book has been recommended would help guide, me at least, a little better than just categories.
I used to live in central London, so I know what you mean, but here's the thing: LOTS of people don't have access to curated local book stores, so doing the same thing but doing it online does add value. I live in rural Germany now. Reaching a brick-and-mortar bookstore is a 30mins drive, looking+paying for parking, 10 mins walk, and then the bookstore won't be curated at all. It'll be a branch of a soulless chain trying with all their might to stay afloat by pandering to whatever islands of book-buying-taste have half a chance of achieving critical mass given the geographical constraint: cookbooks, self-help, books on parenting and pet-rearing, paperback love stories, etc.
Personally, I really like the idea that's at work here, and I like the fact that it generalises: Find an online community that has self-selected for some kind of criterion. Doesn't even matter which, as long as there is a side effect of selecting for people who aren't completely brain-dead. Scrape it for book recommendations. Make it into a list. Done. Value added. Use affiliate links; maybe you can even get paid back for your efforts. As a book-buying consumer, I'll say: Let's have more of this, please.
If you enjoy the podcast or the newsletters, I do recommend the Discord (https://discord.gg/oddlots) - the folks there are generally very smart and it is a great place to discuss everything from the economy to climate to transportation to defense.
Why are they recommending a China Miéville book which won’t be out til the end of the year? I mean, it’ll probably be good, his stuff usually is. But I don’t think even reviewer copies have gone out yet?
And while Ann Leckie’s Translation State is great, I think you pretty much have to read the Ancillary Whatever books first; otherwise it’ll just be baffling.
Nice work but please consider fixing the cursor styling. It doesn't change to `pointer` when hovering over the books, which is what you'd expect as they are clickable. Then, when you click on a book to open the modal, the cursor does mysteriously change to `pointer` - and stays that way wherever the cursor is.
I agree that it shouldn't mysteriously be a pointer all the time, but using a pointer for the cursor is a preference, not a standard. In native apps (outside the web), the cursor is often not turned into a pointer when hovering clickable content.
It's everything mentioned that's then filterable via tags, there's a joe-recommended tag for books that are directly recommended by one of the cohosts.
The book that I looked at had the same blurb on odd-lots-books.netlify.app as was used in my local library catalogue, so I assume it's the standard publisher's blurb?
PSA: 99.999% of people should ignore most of the entries on lists like this.
I devour reading material. I love books - fiction, non-fiction, audio books, trade paperbacks, newly minted hardbacks, old musty stuff in a basement, all of it - and subscribe to Literary Review and Granta, and check in on London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement when I can. I subscribe to quality newspapers and periodicals, and I'd rather spend an evening in a bookshop with late opening hours than a nightclub. Reading is great. Everyone should do a lot more of it - it's food for the soul.
But reading lists put together by other people aren't good for you. If anything, they get in the way of you figuring out what you want to read.
Here's some simple maths: life expectancy in my home country is 83 years for females, 79 years for males. I am male, have multiple (not imminently life-threatening), health conditions, and so with a little maths I can expect to live perhaps 25 more years. Sobering. But it is reality.
If I read a book a week (which is way higher a rate than the average reading rate, and slow for a fan of reading - but I like to absorb books a little more slowly), I am going to max out at 1,300 books in the rest of my life.
Most people read a few books a year. At that rate I'd have just 75-100 books to read in the rest of my time alive. If that were my number, I should probably make each one of those books count in some way.
You should do this maths yourself, and across a few dimensions. You only have so many books, films, music gigs, vacations/holidays, restaurant visits, whatever left in your life.
As an aside, you only have so many side projects, business ideas you'll get a chance to build and test in the market, and opportunities to invest in somebody else's ideas. You should do those maths too: figure out what your error bars could look like. They're probably not as optimistic as you'd hope for.
At first, this might feel terrifying. I prefer to see it as "focusing".
Do you really want to read all 842 of the books on that list? Is this the oeuvre you want to invest a sizeable chunk of your remaining life in? Are you confident this will make you feel whole, that you will get to the end and have no regrets about making this your mission? If you yes to all these questions, and are sure: brilliant, you have found a purpose in life few others ever will. Godspeed and good luck!
For most people though, lists like this are just another todo list that create a sense of inadequacy, FOMO or regret.
In 1880, the designer William Morris said "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful".
Apply this to your reading lists[0]. Curate. Edit. Find what makes your heart sing or your brain grow, and dive in.
Do not worry about what other people think you "should" read. Do not read "the great classics" if they do not interest you. Safely ignore award winning writers - from Nobel laureates, to Pulitzer Prize winners, to Booker short-listed authors - unless something about that book speaks to you and you almost yearn for it.
Because when you do that, you'll realise a) most books are junk to you (but might be great for someone else), and b) that as you start to develop the habit of reading the things that you genuinely want to, it becomes a healthy, mind-nourishing obsession.
Come on in, the pages are lovely.
[0] Actually, apply this rule to everything you can in your life. It can be hard to start, but worthwhile.
Odd Lots is a podcast hosted at Bloomberg, and so the discord is about analyzing market crazes and important economic trends.
This explains why the book recommendations appear to be heavily focused on understanding history and economics at a deep level.
I wonder what Solvej Balle is doing in there then ...
That makes more sense. I was thinking about the big box discount store Big Lots and my first thought was "they have a Discord?" followed by "they talk about books!?!".
Yes I was hoping this was the case!
Love the podcast!
But this seems just way too broad, basically what I would see in a curated local book store that I have anyway. Maybe this was the intention, but seeing all those books without the context why they were originally recommended on the discord doesn't seem to add a lot of value.
Agreed. If that would be too cumbersome to add, then a simple counter showing how many times a book has been recommended would help guide, me at least, a little better than just categories.
> curated local book store
I used to live in central London, so I know what you mean, but here's the thing: LOTS of people don't have access to curated local book stores, so doing the same thing but doing it online does add value. I live in rural Germany now. Reaching a brick-and-mortar bookstore is a 30mins drive, looking+paying for parking, 10 mins walk, and then the bookstore won't be curated at all. It'll be a branch of a soulless chain trying with all their might to stay afloat by pandering to whatever islands of book-buying-taste have half a chance of achieving critical mass given the geographical constraint: cookbooks, self-help, books on parenting and pet-rearing, paperback love stories, etc.
Personally, I really like the idea that's at work here, and I like the fact that it generalises: Find an online community that has self-selected for some kind of criterion. Doesn't even matter which, as long as there is a side effect of selecting for people who aren't completely brain-dead. Scrape it for book recommendations. Make it into a list. Done. Value added. Use affiliate links; maybe you can even get paid back for your efforts. As a book-buying consumer, I'll say: Let's have more of this, please.
If you enjoy the podcast or the newsletters, I do recommend the Discord (https://discord.gg/oddlots) - the folks there are generally very smart and it is a great place to discuss everything from the economy to climate to transportation to defense.
I love such lists. Thank you!
i like the show and i tune especially for the chip chippy chip chips show… all things semiconductors is always fun to listen to
It recommends Consider Phlebas over any of the other Iain M Banks Culture books - surely thats not right
No it doesn't mention the other books.
It just recommends Consider Phlebus
love these ~5MB vibe coded HTML files, Joe Weisenthal is vibing hard
it's built by a subscriber
800 books? That seems too large of a list to be useful, even for the most voracious reader.
I agree. In my youth, I will just read anything that catches my fancy.
Nowadays, I have to be picky about what books I read, even one amongst a pool of books that I like.
That or I have to reduce my time for my other hobbies.
I found the sci-fi tag interesting and a managable 32 books!
https://odd-lots-books.netlify.app/?q=tag%3Asci-fi
Why are they recommending a China Miéville book which won’t be out til the end of the year? I mean, it’ll probably be good, his stuff usually is. But I don’t think even reviewer copies have gone out yet?
And while Ann Leckie’s Translation State is great, I think you pretty much have to read the Ancillary Whatever books first; otherwise it’ll just be baffling.
yeah I didn't notice the CM wasn't out til september and searched for it too.
The I wasted time reading (very mixed!!) reviews for the ones I'd not read so I just pulled the trigger on Revelation Space and will see how I get on!
Good thing there are filters!
Nice work but please consider fixing the cursor styling. It doesn't change to `pointer` when hovering over the books, which is what you'd expect as they are clickable. Then, when you click on a book to open the modal, the cursor does mysteriously change to `pointer` - and stays that way wherever the cursor is.
I agree that it shouldn't mysteriously be a pointer all the time, but using a pointer for the cursor is a preference, not a standard. In native apps (outside the web), the cursor is often not turned into a pointer when hovering clickable content.
Does "recommended" just mean "mentioned" or is this curated?
It's everything mentioned that's then filterable via tags, there's a joe-recommended tag for books that are directly recommended by one of the cohosts.
Mentioned, but there's usually a discussion.
Does this include "mentioned" as in "Don't read this book, it's full of errors"?
This. Same question for all those "I analyzed HN comments that mentioned books and you can browse them here" posts.
How did you acquire the rights to display all these book covers?
I would like to understand how OP was able to successfully scrape various channels. I've been banned thrice doing this.
Discordchatexporter probably
What's Odd Lots?
It's a popular finance podcast. https://www.bloomberg.com/oddlots
Ah, thank you.
Where do you source the book covers from? Is there a library to look them up or something?
Looks like books.google.com
Who wrote the blurbs?
The book that I looked at had the same blurb on odd-lots-books.netlify.app as was used in my local library catalogue, so I assume it's the standard publisher's blurb?
PSA: 99.999% of people should ignore most of the entries on lists like this.
I devour reading material. I love books - fiction, non-fiction, audio books, trade paperbacks, newly minted hardbacks, old musty stuff in a basement, all of it - and subscribe to Literary Review and Granta, and check in on London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement when I can. I subscribe to quality newspapers and periodicals, and I'd rather spend an evening in a bookshop with late opening hours than a nightclub. Reading is great. Everyone should do a lot more of it - it's food for the soul.
But reading lists put together by other people aren't good for you. If anything, they get in the way of you figuring out what you want to read.
Here's some simple maths: life expectancy in my home country is 83 years for females, 79 years for males. I am male, have multiple (not imminently life-threatening), health conditions, and so with a little maths I can expect to live perhaps 25 more years. Sobering. But it is reality.
If I read a book a week (which is way higher a rate than the average reading rate, and slow for a fan of reading - but I like to absorb books a little more slowly), I am going to max out at 1,300 books in the rest of my life.
Most people read a few books a year. At that rate I'd have just 75-100 books to read in the rest of my time alive. If that were my number, I should probably make each one of those books count in some way.
You should do this maths yourself, and across a few dimensions. You only have so many books, films, music gigs, vacations/holidays, restaurant visits, whatever left in your life.
As an aside, you only have so many side projects, business ideas you'll get a chance to build and test in the market, and opportunities to invest in somebody else's ideas. You should do those maths too: figure out what your error bars could look like. They're probably not as optimistic as you'd hope for.
At first, this might feel terrifying. I prefer to see it as "focusing".
Do you really want to read all 842 of the books on that list? Is this the oeuvre you want to invest a sizeable chunk of your remaining life in? Are you confident this will make you feel whole, that you will get to the end and have no regrets about making this your mission? If you yes to all these questions, and are sure: brilliant, you have found a purpose in life few others ever will. Godspeed and good luck!
For most people though, lists like this are just another todo list that create a sense of inadequacy, FOMO or regret.
In 1880, the designer William Morris said "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful".
Apply this to your reading lists[0]. Curate. Edit. Find what makes your heart sing or your brain grow, and dive in.
Do not worry about what other people think you "should" read. Do not read "the great classics" if they do not interest you. Safely ignore award winning writers - from Nobel laureates, to Pulitzer Prize winners, to Booker short-listed authors - unless something about that book speaks to you and you almost yearn for it.
Because when you do that, you'll realise a) most books are junk to you (but might be great for someone else), and b) that as you start to develop the habit of reading the things that you genuinely want to, it becomes a healthy, mind-nourishing obsession.
Come on in, the pages are lovely.
[0] Actually, apply this rule to everything you can in your life. It can be hard to start, but worthwhile.