Meta book recommendations from Ask HN threads

In plain words

This project aggregates book recommendations mentioned across Hacker News "Ask HN" threads. It collects and organizes suggestions from community discussions, making it easier to discover what books people are actually recommending to each other. The tool is useful for anyone looking for reading suggestions based on crowdsourced recommendations from the Hacker News community. It launched in March 2020 and transforms scattered thread recommendations into a searchable, organized collection.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

• TB
  Top books mentioned in comments on Hacker News2016 · hackernewsbooks.com · ▲463
• 
  40k HN comments mentioning books, extracted using deep learning2021 · hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app · ▲1,359

  Thinking, Fast and Slow - with 523 comments from the Hacker News community

• BM
  Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025Dec 2025 · hackernews-readings-613604506318.us-west1.run.app · ▲613
• 
  An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber2020 · abooklikefoo.com · ▲344

  Find new books that break you out of your echo chamber!

• 
  My recommendation engine for Hacker News2023 · hn-recommend.julienc.me · ▲314

  Hi! I’m Julien and I built a recommendation engine for Hacker News. I feel like this website is a gold mine. Every day, I find some very interesting stories about a topic. And sometimes, I want to find other stories covering that same topic but I can’t. Hacker News has years of history of awesome discussion and ressources. Unfortunately, I think HN Algolia isn’t helpful in searching these old threads. As a student, I want to learn a lot from this website. This is why I created HN Recommend. Input a sentence or the URL of an article, and get the most popular and similar posts from Hacker…

• 
  Exploring HN by mapping and analyzing 40M posts and comments for fun2024 · blog.wilsonl.in · ▲520

  Accessible end-to-end deep dive of crawling, embedding, projecting, and semantic searching all of Hacker News for my Hackerverse project.

• 
  SimCity, but with Permits▲922

  A free city-building game in your browser. You are the mayor. You know what the city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.

  Life & fun · 2d ago · permit.petercai.com

• IV
  I've been paying for a rural Tanzanian's education for 10 years▲778

  Life & fun · 14d ago · tanzaniaeducationproject.org

• 
  Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app▲728

  Turn a phone, tablet or TV into a sign. Type a message and it fills the screen: welcome signs, timers, Wi-Fi passwords and more. No app, no account, free.

  Life & fun · 15d ago · bigwords.page

• 
  Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard▲573

  Play a free virtual guitar online with your keyboard or by touch. Slow songs down and see every chord, string and strum. Acoustic, classic, electric and bass.

  Life & fun · 9d ago · guitoro.com

• 
  See *almost* any carriers phone settings▲432

  Carrier settings from iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy firmware, decoded and compared: APNs, VoLTE, 5G and Wi-Fi Calling per carrier, and what each build changed.

  Life & fun · 13d ago · carrierexplode.com

• 
  The whole Solar System and every tracked satellite, live in the browser▲407

  Life & fun · 23d ago · space.bl2.net

• 
  Unscreen▲955

  Remove video and GIF backgrounds 100% automatically

  Dev tools · 2020 · canva.com

• 
  Around▲870

  Next-gen video calls for a new era of work

  Work · 2020 · around.co

• 
  Fraidycat▲807

  Life & fun · 2020 · fraidyc.at

• 
  MainStreet▲540

  Founders: You're owed $50K. Get it back in 20 minutes 🤝

  Commerce · 2020 · mainstreet.com

• 
  Control Illustrations▲540

  108 free flat illustrations with customizable characters

  Dev tools · 2020 · patterns.page

• TF
  To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends▲515

  Life & fun · 2020 · bingetogether.com