Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read? ↗
The books people recommended
2024-10-06 · 376 points · 940 comments · 219 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.
- 24
- 21Neuromancer
- 13
- 10The Count of Monte Cristo
- 9The Fountainhead
- 8The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- 8Anna Karenina
- 8A Canticle for Leibowitz
- 8Ulysses
- 7Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
- 7The Stormlight Archive
- 6Dune
- 6Catch-22
- 6Project Hail Mary
- 5
- 5
- 5The Three-Body Problem
- 5Moby Dick
- 5The Glass Bead Game
- 5A Confederacy of Dunces
- 5Mistborn
- 5A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
- 5The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
- 4
- 4Antifragile
- 4The Master and Margarita
- 4Snow Crash
- 4Anathem
- 4Ender's Game
- 4Brave New World
- 4Diaspora
- 4The Dictator's Handbook
- 4Discworld
- 4House of Leaves
- 4Infinite Jest
- 4Jonathan Livingston Seagull
- 4The Wheel of Time
- 4The Last Ringbearer
- 4Illusions
- 3
- 3The Brothers Karamazov
- 3Siddhartha
- 3Cryptonomicon
- 3Walden
- 3The Dawn of Everything
- 3The Soul of a New Machine
- 3War and Peace
- 3The Diamond Age
- 3Slaughterhouse-Five
- 3The Making of the Atomic Bomb
- 3The Republic
- 3Foucault's Pendulum
- 3Hyperion
- 3The Murderbot Diaries
- 3Sirens of Titan
- 3The Name of the Rose
- 3Propaganda
- 3Gravity's Rainbow
- 3Frankenstein
- 3Worm
- 3The Extended Phenotype
- 3The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
- 3How the Mind Works
- 3The Black Company
- 21984
- 2Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
- 2Zero to One
- 2The Lord of the Rings
- 2The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Carl Sagan
2 here · 18 all-time · #49 overall
- 2Blindsight
- 2The Beginning of Infinity
- 2The Name of the Wind
- 2Children of Time
- 2The Magic Mountain
- 2Steppenwolf
- 2Mindset
- 2The Odyssey
- 2The Hobbit
- 2East of Eden
- 2The Catcher in the Rye
- 2Les Misérables
- 2The Iliad
- 2Baroque Cycle
- 2The Silmarillion
- 2To Kill a Mockingbird
- 2Flowers for Algernon
- 2History of Western Philosophy
- 2Understanding Power
- 2Cloud Atlas
- 2The Grapes of Wrath
- 2Cannery Row
- 2Harry Potter
- 2Ficciones
- 2Sometimes a Great Notion
- 2Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
- 2Roadside Picnic
Roadside Picnic
2 here · 4 all-time · #433 overall
- 2The Egg
- 2Middlemarch
- 2The Man Without Qualities
- 2100 Years of Solitude
- 2Commonwealth Saga
- 2The Broken Earth Trilogy
- 2Way of Kings
- 2The Holy Bible
The Holy Bible
2 here · 3 all-time · #608 overall
- 2Culture novels
- 2The Question Concerning Technology
- 2Against the Day
- 1
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman
1 here · 49 all-time · #7 overall
- 1
- 1The Design of Everyday Things
- 1Meditations
- 1
- 1The Mythical Man-Month
- 1The Black Swan
- 1The Goal
- 1Permutation City
- 1The Art of Computer Programming
- 1The Righteous Mind
- 1Guns, Germs, and Steel
- 1
- 1Getting Things Done
- 1Man's Search for Meaning
- 1Peopleware
- 1The Martian
- 1Never Split the Difference
- 1The Dispossessed
- 1Crime and Punishment
- 1Tao Te Ching
- 1The Left Hand of Darkness
- 1The Culture
- 1The Alchemist
- 1Seveneves
- 1Blood Meridian
- 1Finite and Infinite Games
- 1The Book of the New Sun
- 1Manufacturing Consent
- 1Stoner
- 1Rationality: From AI to Zombies
- 1I Am a Strange Loop
- 1The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- 1The Better Angels of Our Nature
- 1Factfulness
- 1Ready Player One
- 1Steve Jobs
- 1The Blind Watchmaker
- 1Debt: The First 5000 Years
- 1VALIS
- 1Narcissus and Goldmund
- 148 Laws of Power
- 1Exhalation
- 1Poor Charlie's Almanack
- 1Sherlock Holmes
- 1Lila
- 1Impro
- 1Prisoners of Geography
- 1The Psychology of Money
- 1Feynman Lectures on Physics
- 1The Wealth of Nations
- 1Stories of Your Life and Others
- 1The Lathe of Heaven
- 1Progress and Poverty
- 1Treasure Island
- 1The War of Art
- 1Start With Why
- 1Bhagavad Gita
- 1Self-Reliance
- 12001: A Space Odyssey
- 1Piranesi
- 1Enlightenment Now
- 1Seeing Like a State
- 1The Little Prince
- 1A Short History of Nearly Everything
- 1Flatland
- 1The First Law
- 1Autobiography of a Yogi
- 1A New Kind of Science
- 1The Red Queen
- 1
- 1Solaris
- 1Shogun
- 1The Malazan Book of the Fallen
- 1The Idiot
- 1Don Quixote
- 1Axiomatic
- 1Hackers
- 1The Quran
The Quran
1 here · 4 all-time · #376 overall
- 1A Wizard of Earthsea
- 1I Am That
- 1Sophie's World
- 1Replay
- 1Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
- 1Leonardo da Vinci
- 1Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned
- 1This Is How You Lose the Time War
- 1Philosophical Investigations
- 1Signals and Systems
Signals and Systems
Alan V. Oppenheim, Alan S. Willsky, S. Hamid Nawab
1 here · 4 all-time · #455 overall
- 1The Fabric of the Cosmos
- 11Q84
- 1The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
- 1Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
- 1Animator's Survival Kit
- 1The Idea Factory
- 1Pride and Prejudice
- 1The Night's Dawn Trilogy
- 1Robinson Crusoe
- 1Emperor of All Maladies
- 1Red Rising
- 1Leaves of Grass
- 1The World of Null-A
- 1The War of the Worlds
- 1Anthem
- 1Pale Blue Dot
- 1Player Piano
- 1There Is No Antimemetics Division
- 1The Road
- 1When We Cease to Understand the World
- 1The Master and His Emissary
- 1Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- 1The Guns of August