The problem with most book recommendations is that they’re built for the "average" reader. But you aren’t average. You have a specific, weird, wonderful collection of things you already know and a gaping, mysterious void of things you don't. Maybe you know everything about 18th-century naval history but couldn't explain how a refrigerator works if your life depended on it.
Standard algorithms suggest what’s popular. What you actually need is a Personal Librarian, someone who knows exactly where your intellectual "potholes" are and has the perfect brick to fill them.
Enter the Large Language Model (LLM). If you stop treating AI like a search engine and start treating it like a hyper-literate eccentric friend, you can curate a reading list that actually changes how you think.
The "New York Times Bestseller" list is basically a popularity contest. It’s fine if you want something to talk about at a cocktail party, but it’s terrible for structured learning.
True growth happens when you find the "adjacent possible", the stuff that sits right on the edge of what you already understand. If you’re a coder who wants to understand philosophy, you shouldn't start with a 600-page tome on Kant. You need the bridge. AI is the only tool on the planet that can find that bridge for you in three seconds flat.
To get a great list, you have to admit what you suck at. Most of us pretend we understand things we don't. To the AI, you can be honest.
Try this instead of requesting "books on economics": "I know how to balance a checkbook and I understand the fundamentals of supply and demand, but I have no idea how the Federal Reserve actually influences my rent price." Textbooks with a lot of math bore me. Which three books use history or narrative to explain macroeconomics?
You've already out-filtered every generic list on the internet by defining the Gap (The Fed's impact) and the Constraint (No math-heavy textbooks).
Working backward from someone you admire is one of the best ways to use an LLM as a librarian.
Let's say you love the way Naval Ravikant or Ava from thinks. You don’t want to read what they wrote; you want to read what read to become who they are.
