Theirshelf

Theirshelf is a very straightforward site: it answers one question — what books do famous people in tech actually read? Open it and you see a wall of book covers, with a list of names on the left. Click Bill Gates and you see the books he has publicly recommended; the same goes for Paul Graham, Elon Musk, and Karpathy. Under each book it also notes who else recommended it.

Its lists are not made up by editors: they are put together from these people's real tweets and public aggregators, and the site has a "How we source this" button where you can see how the data is gathered. Finding books is simple too: browse by person, or wander through hundreds of books and click any cover that catches your eye to see who recommended it.

Two things to note: first, it is only a recommendation list — it doesn't sell books, and it can't promise you'll like them. A book a famous person loves may not suit you at all. Second, the lists and the counts keep changing, so numbers you see in a screenshot may already be out of date later — don't take exact figures too seriously.

It suits anyone who flips through book lists before bed: when you don't know what to read next, pick someone you respect and work your way down their shelf. That often beats an algorithm's list.