A long list of books

May 12, 2009 9:36 AM

Here is a books-only list, broken up by subject, of the What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople? thread. (via)
posted by nitsuj to MetaFilter-Related at 9:36 AM (17 comments total)

I would have jumped on that thread, but Printing T-shirts For Fun and Profit is a really shitty book.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:40 AM on May 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Wow! Thanks.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 9:47 AM on May 12, 2009

Wow, nice work. Did you filter out some of the selections? I only ask because my own immortal contribution to the thread seems to be missing.
posted by Bookhouse at 9:54 AM on May 12, 2009

I should have been more clear: this is not my list. This guy did all the work.
posted by nitsuj at 9:56 AM on May 12, 2009

There's always a "metafilter user" out raining on a parade somewhere in cyberspace.

Nice work on the list!
posted by fire&wings at 9:58 AM on May 12, 2009

Sorry, nitsujin. Guess I'll have to find someone else to blame for my lack of immortality.
posted by Bookhouse at 10:11 AM on May 12, 2009

Very nice.

By the way, that book you have under Hunting looks like a book on how to ride horses in the "hunt seat" style, which is a sort of competitive show riding or show jumping that has little or nothing to do with real hunting. If you look at the TOC, there is nothing about stalking prey or using weapons or speaking like Elmer Fudd.
posted by pracowity at 10:12 AM on May 12, 2009

Didn't this get brought up before and pointed out that he's using his affiliate link to make a bit of cash off this list? I don't have a problem with this when the original person did the work, but he's just meta-mining and replacing meta's link with his amazon link.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:14 AM on May 12, 2009

Didn't this get brought up before and pointed out that he's using his affiliate link to make a bit of cash off this list? I don't have a problem with this when the original person did the work, but he's just meta-mining and replacing meta's link with his amazon link.

It did, in the comments of the post itself. The author wrote,

"In spending some time compiling this list myself, and linking to the original source and encouraging people to go and read it, I felt justified in changing the affiliate links. If nothing else, it’s more transparent — it seems odd that an Amazon link on one site contributes some money to another."

Mathowie even chimes in, saying: "Yeah, I’m cool with you making the links to your account Phil, no worries. It was a shit-ton of work to compile the list and you’re welcome to point the few bucks anywhere you want."
posted by nitsuj at 10:21 AM on May 12, 2009

As a working biologist, I had to look up "Macrobiology." I don't really think that is the word you were looking for.
posted by grouse at 10:37 AM on May 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is really useful - thanks for posting.
posted by paduasoy at 10:49 AM on May 12, 2009

I saw what Matt said but now I'm curious: where is the line on making money by repurposing Metafilter content? That userfriendly guy would probably be interested.
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:50 AM on May 12, 2009

So would this guy.

As with a lot of these lines, I would guess that the moderators would prefer to judge on a case-by-case basis.
posted by box at 12:02 PM on May 12, 2009

I jotted a couple of these down to find at the library. But, like, Psychology of Computer Programming is from the early 1970s. That's at least one, possibly two generations of programmers ago. I'm sure some of it is timeless, but I couldn't even figure out the code examples I was looking at.

I guess what I'm driving at is: No matter how great the book was to you (or even everyone) at the time, that doesn't make the book still great now.
posted by DU at 5:48 PM on May 12, 2009

Yeah, but it's a great idea for a list even if it is difficult to compile a timeless one.
posted by BrotherCaine at 7:28 PM on May 12, 2009

Hi, I'm responsible for Septivium and put the list together from the original thread. To respond to some of the points above...

Did you filter out some of the selections? I only ask because my own immortal contribution to the thread seems to be missing.

Yes, I did filter the list somewhat. I'm most interested in how to find the very best books about a topic. One way of doing that is to get recommendations from people who know the field well, which is what the original thread was all about. But some of the responses didn't do much more than name a book. I wanted to stick solely to books where the poster gave some indication (however vague or brief) that they'd read other, lesser, books on the topic or that they really knew the subject well. I also filtered out some books that were on really, really specific subjects, purely because the nature of my project (how to learn about everything) is looking at broader fields of study. Both ways of filtering were probably a bit hit and miss and arbitrary, so please don't be offended if I missed a contribution.

Macrobiology

I have no idea... I just copied the term from the original post and assumed that those who knew about biology would understand it. Obviously not :)

Didn't this get brought up before and pointed out that he's using his affiliate link to make a bit of cash off this list? I don't have a problem with this when the original person did the work, but he's just meta-mining and replacing meta's link with his amazon link.

I'm sorry if I've offended anyone with my last minute decision to use my affiliate link rather than Metafilter's. I couldn't decide whether to do that or not at first and made the choice I did simply because I usually err too far on the side of being nice and cautious. (As a direct example, five years ago I wrote a post asking some bloggers what books they were reading. If they had an Amazon affiliation set up, I added it to their links even if they didn't send them to me that way. They seemed pleasantly surprised.)

I'm not sure what to add that I haven't said already in the comments on that post. It is a tough call. If I'd copied the entire original post and changed the affiliate links that would have been very wrong in at least two ways. But I thought it would be a useful thing for people to have the list in a more easily browseable format, and after doing the work of compiling the list I felt a little more justified in changing the affiliation. If Matt or someone had put their foot down then of course I'd have been happy to change them back.

And don't get the impression I did it to make my fortune... I've been using Amazon affiliate links sporadically on my array of little-trafficked sites for years and can't remember the last time I received any money from them!
posted by fabius at 1:09 AM on May 13, 2009

I'll go one the record to say I am retracting any objects I had to the idea. I didn't know the affiliate issue had been resolved before.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:07 AM on May 13, 2009