I have started to find a perverse pleasure in reading bad books. At least this is why I tell myself when I am wringing reading out of something awful I've bought.

"Oh my god, they're not going to do predictable thing __X__ are they? Bwahaha"

"Hahahaha, this dialog is completely unbelievable"

"Welp, that unwinds all the interesting things happening in that character's arc."

A couple things that laughter can't even redeem:

- Incessant deus ex machina. The prose can be good, the dialog believable, the world interesting, and the characters likable... but if all the problems just get waved away in some random unpredictable way, that's infuriating.

- Even worse: when a POV character has an ace up their sleeve the entire time that could have been played at any point to avoid all the conflict, and the only reason why we're in suspense is that POV character didn't share that with us.

I’ve done the same but with TV! My all time favorite TV show is “The 100”. It’s incredibly dumb and has so many plot holes it’s honestly amazing. However it never gets boring! Really would recommend it if you like that kind of stuff.

I hear that L Ron Hubbard's writing is spectacularly terrible

Same, but my genre has become terrible historical romance. I get many groans of enjoyment from the terrible similes (no, you can't compare what she's experiencing to that; it wasn't invented for another 150 years), the inaccuracies, and being able to plot the whole thing within the first 10 pages mostly accurately.

These books give me hope I could write a book.

The problem with books is that, while there are a lot of good books with good content, 5% of it is good content while 95% is filler material to get the book to a certain amount of pages in order to sell it.

I read a ton and this is my #1 complaint about nonfiction (and sometimes fiction too). I’ve read two books recently that broke this pattern (replacing guilt by Nate Soared, and hell yeah or no by Derek Sivers). It was a huge breath of fresh air, to not find myself skimming over the 32nd time the author feels the need to restate the premise of the book in only slightly different terms. Most authors just don’t have 200 pages of insight into whatever they’re writing about; I’m not sure why exactly they all feel the need to write 200-300 pages anyway.

I’m not sure where the disconnect lies, between the people that view this as a huge problem with nonfiction and the rest. I don’t think it’s book selection, because I’ll often read a book where I felt the last half was 90% rehashing, and in the reviews no one else will mention that the author ran out of interesting things to say halfway through.

I find this true for some of the recent horde of nonfiction books with names like “numb: the astounding new science of how your leg falls asleep”. Their topic is usually fascinating, but the content is full of random stories, speculation, and drawn out conclusions.

I wonder though whether this is a situation where everyone agrees that only 5% of a book is good, but no one agrees on which 5%.

+1. I find non-fiction books infuriating to read due to the endless repetition and pointless anecdotes, typically in books for the US market.

Well that's just not true at all

Walter, it would be great if you could share your list of good books!

If I could only remember them all!

If you ask me at different times I'll give different answers, but some are just on top:

War of the Worlds, Lord of the Rings, The Mote in God's Eye, Replay, Earth Abides, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, 2001, Nothing Like It In The World, Reach For The Sky, Winnie The Pooh, The Last of the Mohicans, The Hunt for Red October, With the Old Breed, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman, Moby Dick, Shogun, Romeo and Juliet

I envy anyone reading these for the first time!

I agree! I'm a voracious reader but I am very put off by books that I find to be, to borrow the phrase, "garbage." I spend a lot of time curating my reading list, as a result, and I'm always on the lookout for solid recommendations.

Hey Scruple, it would be great if you could share your reading list or recommendations.

Hey there. I'm not sure where I'd start, to be honest. My wife and I recently had our 3rd child. As a result, I've been opting for easier reading material over the last ~4 months. I don't really maintain reading lists, or lists of reading recommendations. But, I do endorse the books that I read and enjoy.

Here are the books I've read in the last 4 months, not in order:

* Frank Herbert - Dune

* J.R.R. Tolkein - The LotR trilogy + The Silmarillion

* Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot

* Stephen King (short story) - Jerusalem's Lot

* Stephen King (short story) - The Night Flier

* Stephen King (short story) - The Children of the Corn

* Stephen King - The Stand (uncut version)

* Stanisław Lem - The Cyberiad

* John Whyndham - The Day of The Triffids

* Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic

* Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

Okay, so... Dune was a re-read ahead of the film release. LotR was a re-read that was provoked by some conversations I had with a group of friends (who form a loose book and movie club) after we discussed the Dune film and books / universe.

Lots of comparisons were being drawn to LotR (both the books and the film adaptations) and I wanted to confirm that my memory of Tolkein's prowess and effectiveness as a writer were accurate (they were).

I had never read Stephen King before this year and I found that I quite liked him. I started with 'Salem's Lot and Jerusalem's Lot because of the TV series Chapelwaite (an adaptation of Jerusalem's Lot -- I am a fan of horror film and television) which I want to watch.

I really liked King, so I pushed a little deeper. I'll come back to him later this year.

The books that remain are Sci-Fi books that I had either had on my own backlog (Roadside Picnic and A Fire Upon the Deep) or were recommendations that I saw in HN comments (The Cyberiad and The Day of the Triffids).

edit/ There were probably between 4 and 6 books that I started, read a few chapters of, and put down in this time frame, too, FWIW.

This is unfortunately true. It's hard to find the books that will shake your world, apart of the obvious ones like the classic Russian authors. There are plenty of "if you like book x you'll also like y" recommendation sites out there but so far I have had zero success with their findings.

How to find good books?

I expect you already have some books you’ve been ‘noticing’. They might get recommended a lot on Hacker News - Atomic Habits, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, A Thousand Brains, that sort of thing. Time to learn what all the fuss is about!

A habit I’ve picked up is to follow the deaths of famous authors (the NYT will feature one on regularly on their home page). When that happens, I like to read about their life and oeuvre and pick up one of their most famous books, which is usually both very interesting and worthwhile.

You can also just go to Barnes and Noble and wander around. Find the genre you like, poke around, and you’ll probably recognize some of the titles or authors, which is often a good sign.

If you have some favorite authors, look up their lesser known books! The fact that you liked their other work is a good sign.

Over time, you will develop a long list of books on your list so you can start getting more selective. Check the Goodreads reviews. Try to understand how this book fits into the bigger picture and whether it or the subject seem significant to you.

Honestly, it’s hard to go wrong early on. Imagine you were just being exposed to film/tv for the first time and you ask for recommendations. ‘I dunno, Breaking Bad? The Godfather? Titanic?’ Even though there’s a lot of trash out there, the best books, like the best movies, are easy to find and there are tons of rankings and compilations.

Develop questions you want to answer and then find the books that will help you to do so. If you have an active interest in a book you'll get a lot more out of it.

Don't just read books because they have a good reputation in general.

That's a great idea, but still, You should remember that You do not even know all questions You can ask, thus reading books that has reputation can broaden horizon in ways that You can't event imagine (or alternatively You can try to build computer that will find the question).

A reasonably good start:

Business oriented: try your hand at any of the best books on x, by forbes. Google the list "forbes list of best books". Its prob circa 2010ish. They put books on leadership (annapurna, great read), entrepreneurship, product (beijing jeep), etc etc. Some really solid stuff

Pulitzer lists: Just go on wikipedia anf look at winners by year. For example, controversial but interesting : guns germs and steel.

Reco engines: I think i used tastekid a loog time ago. Type in a book, it would give you recommendations on books you might like. With advances in ML, I'm sure there are tons of engines doing the same now

> guns germs and steel

Sorry, but ick. A less popular viewpoint of this is "Triumph of the West" by Roberts. "Connections" by Burke is very good, too.

A few news orgs in my area have a jury going which every month selects ten non-fiction books. I regularly buy one off of that list. It's in German though. While some of the books are originally English, they only provide the translated title and the list is of limited use if you don't read German.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachb%C3%BCcher_des_Monats

Read.

This is just like the great of life - don't fear failure.

Reading a book you wind up hating is way better then spending that time trying to optimize your process to avoid bad books.

If you do want to look for more promising things, reading is still your best tool.

I used to use what I called the two-minute test:

At a bookstore or library, pull a book off the shelf, read it for two minutes, then put it back.

Often you'll find you really don't want to put it back.

If so, then give it a shot.