Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?

[tikkun]

The book is perhaps really dry or long and people kind of act like they've read it, without saying so explicitly. But most haven't read it.

[dan-g]

Gödel Escher Bach? Or maybe that’s just me!

Gonna get through it one of these days…

[usgroup]

I suspect this may be a first contact with deeper philosophy for many, which accounts for its popularity on HN. Its doubtful that it breaks any new Philosophical ground, and interested parties may be better advised to just read a history of philosophy a an approachable introduction such as Bertrand Russell's work.

[thorin]

It's a tough one. I took it as my only distraction on a week long meditation course. I had no technology, phone signal etc and this was the only book I had with me. I managed to read about a quarter of it and would really need to be in that kind of situation to finish it I think. A great desert island book though, I think.

[ironlake]

It's not a good book. The metaphors are tortured and unrelatable.

[tmaly]

no, it's not just you. I only made it about 1/4 of the way through

[clubm8]

i met that guy in a bar once he was amused i had no idea who he is and said his book was too complicated so i read lolita instead.

won't say where other than there was a social event he does -- apparently people low key stalk the poor bastard. it was weird to me, the koi no yukan style japanophile

then the other folks got pissed i started doing poetry at them centered around the fact they read nothing but pornography catering to their fetishes

("lolita loving white feminist, name me any other nabokov" is a fun way to have someone with a juris doctorate chuck a glass at your head)

[mrbeast6001]

I somehow feel everyone pretends to have read “Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman, but whenever I dig deep, most of the time I get to know they just bought the book but watched a video summary (it’s quite a biggie)

[prepend]

I read that it’s the most started and not finished kindle book ever.

It’s great though and definitely worth reading.

[usgroup]

Its a short and approachable -- and turns out wrong in parts -- book, so I'm not sure why its readership is doubtful?

[aniijbod]

In Computers? The Mythical Man Month Fred Brooks In Mnaagement? Turn the Ship Around David Marquet In literature? Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad In Philosophy? The Republic Plato In Religion? The Confessions St. Augustine In Mathematics? The Elements Euclid In History? Parallel lives Plutarch In Physics? Principia Isaac Newton

[satvikpendem]

Please add double line breaks between each point or question as your comment just renders as a big block of text.

[approxim8ion]

CLRS or some Algorithm Design Book, but you could easily be talking about TAOCP or SICP or Clean Code or any of 1000 other books.

[geekjock]

Accelerate - this book has become an excuse for managers to spend outrageous money implementing metrics like lead time and deployment frequency to measure teams, whereas the book actually advises something very different.

[isaachawley]

Frontend software / design. The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman.

It's incredible the number of people who use the words "affordance" and "signifier" incorrectly.

[solardev]

> Frontend software / design. The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman.

Also in FE/UX. Came here to say exactly this. I've heard of this book so many times, and have tried to read it many times, but just can never quite finish it (too many anecdotes for me, vs something like https://www.refactoringui.com/)

> It's incredible the number of people who use the words "affordance" and "signifier" incorrectly.

I wish the UX world used less jargon. It's such a cross-domain concern involving developers, designers, researchers, users, owners, managers, etc., that using plain English is IMO usually a better way to get a point across.

[rrherr]

The Elements of Statistical Learning

[usgroup]

Well, it is a textbook -- one doesn't necessarily read a textbook from cover to cover. However, over the years I've certainly covered and re-covered large swathes of it. It is largely irrelevant for deep learning but its still the best reference I know of for the classic methods.

[satvikpendem]

Capital in the 21 Century by Thomas Piketty is quite long and dry as there are many facts and figures, but it's essential reading to understand that the United States' 1960s, where people could buy a home, car, got to college etc working a minimum wage job and where people often say they want to return to in the modern day, is instead an anomalous post war boom and that the level of wealth inequality today is actually the norm for most of modern history.

[randomcarbloke]

in your industry it's important to have read a pop-econ book that has been proven to misrepresent facts and figures in favour of the authors ideological bent?

What industry could that possibly be? it certainly isn't economics related.

[srhtftw]

Perhaps it's because it's not my field that I found the After Piketty¹ collection of shorter essays easier reading.

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Piketty

[neversaydie]

In software:

Could plausibly have read, but also likely to blindly recommend without having read them (I've done that myself, only ever skimmed either): The Mythical Man Month, Code Complete.

Very unlikely to have read: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. (I'm moderately sure Donald Knuth has read these, but beyond that, dubious. Personally I've read their titles on a shelf three times now.)

[ironlake]

I read Code Complete twenty years ago and it was a revelation. Revisiting it recently, it seemed dated and bordering on irrelevant. It wasn't that the ideas weren't good, they were just incorporated into modern language and API design. It won. People code like that now.

[blokmena]

The Design of Everyday Things can be a bit of a drag, and it's just my hunch that not many folks bother to read it all the way through.

[solardev]

It's ironic that the "bible" of design is itself so hard to use, full of lengthy anecdotes that bury the important examples. I wish someone would modernize and update it into a few screenshots and infographics, similar to Refactoring UI.

[elijahwright]

The Phoenix Project.

[philomath_mn]

That's the opposite of dry and long. Not exactly a page-turner but I think I read it in 3 or 4 sessions.

[grvdrm]

CustomerCentric Selling. Not clear to me if it actually helps but it was excitedly recommended to me.

Anyone else!

[vtns]

Communications / Media studies: Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan

[anacrolix]

SICP

[ParallelThread]

Knuth.

[kolinko]

With proofs or without proofs? :D

[dmvdoug]

Anything by John Dewey or A Lev Vygotsky. (Field: education.)

[moomoo11]

Clean code.

Their actual work output suggests otherwise.

[bhag2066]

Playing to Win

[n8henrie]

The House of God

[babyeater9000]

Extreme Ownership