December 2011 – Miles's Thoughs

So I recently had the idea of asking folks for a book recommendation. The way I phrased it was,

“a stranger approaches you on the street and asks you for a book recommendation. What do you say?“

I got a lot of great answers. One of them, Handi’s sleep book recommendation, I’m reading right now. It’s very interesting.

What did I hope to achieve with this question?

Well, I do a fair amount of reading. A lot of that reading is on similar topics or genre’s. If I just ask someone for a recommendation for me, they’ll base their recommendation on what they know about my views, interests and opinions. If that was what I really wanted, I would have phrased the question:

“my opinions are: x,y and z. The topics I like are a,b, and c. Can’t you recommend a book that reinforces my existing preferences.”

Some people responded with “deep” non-answers. “why would a stranger ask me?“, “are they trying to rob me?“, or “only the reader of a self-help book would ask such a thing“. That was only a minority of people.

I was surprised by the variety of answers. I expected more “preachy” answers like my own (Omnivore’s Dilemma), or Fast Food Nation. Some of them are pop non-fiction. Outliers and Freakonomics. Some classic fiction made it in there. History.

I plan on reading several of them.

Below, I’ve compiled the list of them all. A couple notes:

Since I was providing a bunch of Amazon links, I took it as an opportunity to embed a Amazon Affiliates tag. If you click and buy, I get a kick-back. I hope everyone believes that this is not the main motivation behind the list. I’ll be happy if I get $10 or $20 out of it. Enough to buy one of the books on the list 😉
I’ve tried to make everyone’s name identifiable yet not have it show up on a google search. If you know the individual, you’ll probably recognize the name I attached.

1. Daleen

Dawn’s Early Light Elswyth Thane

2. Liisa H

Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton

3. Candace (Candy)

The Demon Haunted World – Carl Sagan

4. Konradi

The Thirteen Clocks – James Thurber

5. Doug T

Guns of august – Barbara Wertheim Tuchman non-fiction

Three Novellas – Leo Tolstoy

6. J Arasmith