Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read? ↗
The books people recommended
2024-10-06 · 376 points · 940 comments · 326 books named by at least one person here and at least 3 people overall. The number on the left is how many people named it in this thread.
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- 7Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
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- 7The Belgariad
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- 5The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
- 5A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
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- 4Jonathan Livingston Seagull
- 4Illusions
- 4The Way Things Work
- 4The Dying Earth
- 4The Last Ringbearer
- 4Pillars of the Earth
- 4The Consolation of Philosophy
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- 3The Brothers Karamazov
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- 3The Dawn of Everything
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- 3Walden
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- 3Foucault's Pendulum
- 3The Name of the Rose
- 3Worm
- 3Frankenstein
- 3The Communist Manifesto
- 3Propaganda
- 3The Extended Phenotype
- 3How the Mind Works
- 3The Black Company
- 3The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
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- 2Harry Potter
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- 2Understanding Power
- 2The Magic Mountain
- 2Ficciones
- 2Broken Earth
- 2Cannery Row
- 2The Silmarillion
- 2Commonwealth Saga
- 2Middlemarch
- 2Cloud Atlas
- 2Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
- 2The Holy Bible
The Holy Bible
2 here · 8 all-time · #870 overall
- 2Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking
- 2Papillon
- 2Blindness
- 2The Once and Future King
- 2The Goldfinch
- 2Burning Chrome
- 2Sometimes a Great Notion
- 2The Culture novels
- 2The Egg
- 2The Man Without Qualities
- 2100 Years of Solitude
- 2Against the Day
- 2Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me
- 2The Question Concerning Technology
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- 1Permutation City
- 1The Goal
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- 1Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
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- 1The Culture
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- 1Bhagavad Gita
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- 1The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
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- 1Solaris
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- 1The Quran
The Quran
1 here · 27 all-time · #216 overall
- 1The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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- 1Poor Charlie's Almanack
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- 1Rationality: From AI to Zombies
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- 1Starship Troopers
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- 1The Idea Factory
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- 1Malazan Book of the Fallen
- 1I Am That
- 1The First Law
- 1Sophie's World
- 1Impro
- 1Lila
- 1Lord of Light
- 1Piranesi
- 1Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
- 1Narcissus and Goldmund
- 1Annihilation
- 1The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- 1Leonardo da Vinci
- 1Pride and Prejudice
- 1The Lathe of Heaven
- 1The Courage to Be Disliked
- 1Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos
- 1The Idiot
- 1Breakfast of Champions
- 1The Blind Watchmaker
- 1The Martian Chronicles
- 11Q84
- 1The Guns of August
- 1This Is How You Lose the Time War
- 1The Fabric of the Cosmos
- 1Titan
- 1There Is No Antimemetics Division
- 1Philosophical Investigations
- 1Treasure Island
- 1A Wizard of Earthsea
- 12001: A Space Odyssey
- 1The Fifth Season
- 1VALIS
- 1Prisoners of Geography
- 1The Jungle
- 1Replay
- 1Autobiography of a Yogi
- 1Simulacra and Simulation
- 1Self-Reliance
- 1The Psychology of Money
- 1The Invisible Man
- 1Dungeon Crawler Carl
- 1The Principles of Product Development Flow
- 1The Red Queen
- 1A New Kind of Science
- 1Anthem
- 1Start With Why
- 1The Gods Themselves
- 1Master of the Senate
- 1Apollo
- 1On Lisp
- 1Darwin's Dangerous Idea
- 1The Lord of the Flies
- 1Demian
- 1Pale Blue Dot
- 1Going Postal
- 1Naked Lunch
- 1Maus
- 1The Master and His Emissary
- 1When We Cease to Understand the World
- 1Star Wars
- 1Outlive
- 1Robinson Crusoe
- 1Progress and Poverty
- 1Axiomatic
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- 1The World of Null-A
- 1Star Maker
- 1The Ancestor's Tale
- 1The War of the Worlds
- 1Bluebeard
- 1The World as Will and Representation
- 1The Elements of Typographic Style
- 1No Country for Old Men
- 1As I Lay Dying
- 1Warbreaker
- 1The Night's Dawn Trilogy
- 1The Evolution of Cooperation
- 1Dragons of Eden
- 1Zorba the Greek
- 1The Wizard of Oz
- 1Leaves of Grass
- 1The Gap
- 1The Library of Babel
- 1The Gift of Fear
- 1Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- 1Mother of Learning
- 1Stainless Steel Rat
- 1The Theory of Moral Sentiments
- 1Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned
- 1Player Piano
- 1Carrying the Fire
- 1Signals and Systems
- 1Braiding Sweetgrass
- 1The Hot Zone
- 1The Theoretical Minimum
- 1The Years of Rice and Salt
- 1Bird by Bird
- 1Ward
- 1The Passenger
- 1From Bacteria to Bach and Back
- 1The Long Run
- 1David Copperfield
- 1A Briefer History of Time
- 1The Creative Act
- 1Planiverse
- 1Vehicles
- 1Empire of the Sun
- 1Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
- 1Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
- 1The Kingkiller Chronicles
The Kingkiller Chronicles
1 here · 4 all-time · #1934 overall
- 1The Singapore Story
- 1South of the Border, West of the Sun
- 1Working Backwards
- 1Fictions
- 1The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
- 1Animator's Survival Kit
- 1The Aleph
- 1God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
- 1Cradle series
- 1In Search of Miraculous
- 1Death in Venice
- 1Immortality
- 1The Shadow of the Torturer
- 1Guards! Guards!
- 1The Little Prover
- 1Exact Thinking in Demented Times
- 1Phaedrus
- 1Best Served Cold
- 1Lyndon Johnson
- 1Mason & Dixon
- 1Hound of the Baskervilles
- 1Losing the Signal
- 1Cry, the Beloved Country
- 1How We Think
- 1Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
- 1Tao Teh Ching
Tao Teh Ching
1 here · 3 all-time · #2448 overall
- 1Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
- 1The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
- 1The Age of Wonder
- 1The Roman Empire in Crisis