ybooks Read

Consensus

The books they agree on

Ranked by how many different people recommended each book in public. Distinct people is the honest unit — one person praising the same book four times is one opinion, four times. Two people is the floor for appearing here.

  1. The Design of Everyday Things Donald A. Norman 9 people
  2. Competing Against Luck Clayton Christensen 7 people
  3. The Mythical Man-Month Frederick P. Brooks 7 people
  4. Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman 7 people
  5. Influence Robert Cialdini 6 people
  6. The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton Christensen 6 people
  7. The Martian Andy Weir 6 people
  8. Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari 5 people
  9. The Beginning of Infinity David Deutsch 5 people
  10. The Lean Startup Eric Ries 5 people
  11. Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman 5 people
  12. Atomic Habits James Clear 5 people
  13. Breakneck Dan Wang 5 people
  14. Deep Work Cal Newport 5 people
  15. Don't Make Me Think Steve Krug 5 people
  16. Dune Frank Herbert 5 people
  17. Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond 5 people
  18. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Harold Abelson 5 people
  19. The Intelligent Investor Benjamin Graham 5 people
  20. The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg 5 people
  21. Antifragile Nassim Nicholas Taleb 4 people
  22. Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future Dan Wang 4 people
  23. Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver 4 people
  24. Finite and Infinite Games James P. Carse 4 people
  25. Foundation Isaac Asimov 4 people
  26. Getting Things Done David Allen 4 people
  27. High Output Management Andrew S. Grove 4 people
  28. How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 4 people
  29. Masters of Doom David Kushner 4 people
  30. On Writing Stephen King 4 people
  31. Poor Charlie's Almanack Charles T. Munger 4 people
  32. REWORK Jason Fried 4 people
  33. Stumbling on Happiness Daniel Gilbert 4 people
  34. The Algorithm Design Manual Steven S. Skiena 4 people
  35. The Making of the Atomic Bomb Richard Rhodes 4 people
  36. The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins 4 people
  37. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin 4 people
  38. When Breath Becomes Air Paul Kalanithi 4 people
  39. Zero to One Peter A. Thiel 4 people
  40. A Mathematician's Apology G. H. Hardy 3 people
  41. A Pattern Language Christopher Alexander 3 people
  42. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 3 people
  43. Continuous Discovery Habits Teresa Torres 3 people
  44. Creativity, Inc Ed Catmull 3 people
  45. Crossing the Chasm Geoffrey Moore 3 people
  46. Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 3 people
  47. Digital Minimalism Cal Newport 3 people
  48. Energy and Civilization Vaclav Smil 3 people
  49. Factfulness Hans Rosling 3 people
  50. How Big Things Get Done Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner 3 people
  51. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert Cialdini 3 people
  52. Letters from a Stoic Seneca 3 people
  53. Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 3 people
  54. Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 3 people
  55. Meditations Marcus Aurelius 3 people
  56. Moby-Dick Herman Melville 3 people
  57. Nonviolent Communication Marshall B. Rosenberg 3 people
  58. Not the End of the World Hannah Ritchie 3 people
  59. Originals Adam M. Grant 3 people
  60. Radical Candor Kim Scott 3 people
  61. Seeing Like a State James C. Scott 3 people
  62. Shoe Dog Phil Knight 3 people
  63. Skin in the Game Nassim Nicholas Taleb 3 people
  64. Superintelligence Nick Bostrom 3 people
  65. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Steven Pinker 3 people
  66. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 3 people
  67. The Effective Executive Peter Drucker 3 people
  68. The Happiness Hypothesis Jonathan Haidt 3 people
  69. The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz 3 people
  70. The Iliad Homer 3 people
  71. The Lessons of History Will Durant and Ariel Durant 3 people
  72. The Little Schemer Friedman and Felleisen 3 people
  73. The Most Important Thing Howard Marks 3 people
  74. The No Asshole Rule Robert I. Sutton 3 people
  75. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master Andrew Hunt and David Thomas 3 people
  76. The Prize Dale Russakoff 3 people
  77. The Psychology of Money Morgan Housel 3 people
  78. The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt 3 people
  79. The Rise and Fall of American Growth Gordon, Robert J. 3 people
  80. The Secret of Our Success Joseph Henrich 3 people
  81. The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky 3 people
  82. The Timeless Way of Building Christopher Alexander 3 people
  83. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy Adam Tooze 3 people
  84. Turn the Ship Around L. David Marquet 3 people
  85. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 3 people
  86. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 3 people
  87. Getting Real 37signals 2 people
  88. The Dream Machine M. Mitchell Waldrop 2 people
  89. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari 2 people
  90. 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2 people
  91. A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 2 people
  92. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Mark Twain 2 people
  93. A Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles 2 people
  94. A History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell 2 people
  95. A Little History of the World E. H. Gombrich 2 people
  96. A Promised Land Barack Obama 2 people
  97. A Random Walk Down Wall Street Burton G. Malkiel 2 people
  98. A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson 2 people
  99. Abundance Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson 2 people
  100. Accelerate Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim 2 people
  101. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk Peter L. Bernstein 2 people
  102. Albion's Seed David Hackett Fischer 2 people
  103. Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life Rory Sutherland 2 people
  104. Algorithms Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne 2 people
  105. An Elegant Puzzle Will Larson 2 people
  106. An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore 2 people
  107. An Unfinished Love Story Doris Kearns Goodwin 2 people
  108. Awaken the Giant Within Tony Robbins 2 people
  109. Battle Cry of Freedom James M. McPherson 2 people
  110. Becoming a Technical Leader Gerald Weinberg 2 people
  111. Behind the Beautiful Forevers Katherine Boo 2 people
  112. Better Than Before Gretchen Rubin 2 people
  113. Black Wave Kim Ghattas 2 people
  114. Born a Crime Trevor Noah 2 people
  115. Built to Last Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras 2 people
  116. Business Adventures John Brooks 2 people
  117. Business Model Generation Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur 2 people
  118. Chaos: Making a New Science James Gleick 2 people
  119. Chip War Chris Miller 2 people
  120. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World Adam Tooze 2 people

Only books with two or more independent recommenders are listed. The rest — thousands of them — are on the feed and on each person’s page.

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.