About TheirShelf

Not everything is a universal truth, but these two are: 1) you only have 24 hours in a day 2) Not all books are created equal.

Choosing your next read means committing hours of your life to someone else's ideas. That investment should be worth your most valuable asset: time.

TheirShelf curates book recommendations from some of the sharpest minds in Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry so you don't have to. These are books that have influenced some of the most accomplished people in tech.

Don't judge a book by its cover. Judge it by its publication date.

There's also a growing sentiment that books published after the explosion of AI may no longer be worth reading, as many could simply be rehashes of existing content, especially those based on views rather than facts. I partially agree with that and Marc Andreessen as well:

TheirShelf features plenty of transformative books, many published 10, 20, or even more years ago. Some of the best ideas are just timeless.

Yet another book recommendation site?

The idea of curating book recommendations from famous people, founders, and CEOs is nothing new. Yours truly is pretty late to the game.

What's been missing, in my opinion, is a site with more credible, verifiable recommendations, backed by actual tweets and other primary sources, and a simple, straight-to-the-point interface.

That's exactly what TheirShelf aims to be. Just visit the site, and everything you need is right there. No ads, no endless pages, no frills. Just book recommendations, plain and simple.

How We Source Recommendations

Here's where we get our information sorted by relevance:

• X posts and replies: Books recommended directly by the people we feature.
• Personal websites: Reading lists and recommendations published by the individuals themselves.
• Aggregators: Existing collections of book recommendations.
• Bookshelf photos: We use OCR to identify books from pictures of bookshelves people have shared.
• Direct outreach: We email people asking for their recommendations. Not everyone replies, but we keep trying.

Aggregators are the villains here. We often can't verify whether their information is accurate or where a recommendation originally came from. We'll remove all of them over time.

Genuine Recommendations vs. Favors to Friends

While most recommendations come from primary sources, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish a genuine endorsement from a favor to a fellow tech industry friend who happens to be an author.

This doesn't happen often, but it's a bias worth keeping in mind. If you find yourself wondering why this particular niche book ranks among the most recommended, there's a great chance that friendship bias played a role.

Ultimately, judge for yourself.

About the Author

Hi, my name is Felipe Jordão A. P. Mattosinho | @felipe_japm.

TheirShelf is a personal project I co-authored with Claude (the best coding buddy out there). It has no commercial interests and exists for one simple reason: to help people discover great books, learn from some of the brightest minds out there, and improve their lives along the way.