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Can I ask a question about book recommendation on MSE? I'm not sure whether that would be against the quality standards of MSE or not.

EDIT: I found the book recommendation tag on MSE with many questions asked under the tag, so I gues it would be okay to ask for book recommendations.

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    $\begingroup$ It depends how you ask it. Simply asking "what is the best book to learn algebra from?" is a bad question (high school algebra, or abstract algebra? Also, any answer will be opinion-based, due to the word "best"). Saying "I've finished the book X and really liked the topic Y; is there a standard text I can move on to now?" would be better. $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    Sep 24, 2020 at 18:04
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for the help. $\endgroup$
    – Devansh Kamra
    Sep 24, 2020 at 18:05
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    $\begingroup$ Also, it is worth searching to see if your specific question has been asked before. People not searching first is often a factor when a book recommendation question is poorly received. $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    Sep 24, 2020 at 18:09
  • $\begingroup$ You can find some older related discussions here on meta. For example: How to properly ask a “textbook recommendation” question? $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Sep 24, 2020 at 20:11
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    $\begingroup$ Asking a good Question on Math.SE is not assured by using an existing tag. Do your best to frame any book recommendation request in a way that Readers don't have to guess your background and goals. Check out some of the previous Questions with that tag to get an idea of what context contributes to successful answering. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Sep 24, 2020 at 20:46

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It depends how you ask it. This is true of every type of question*, but it is easy to forget about when asking for a book recommendation.

Simply asking "what is the best book to learn algebra from?" is a bad question (high school algebra, or abstract algebra? Also, any answer will be opinion-based, due to the word "best"). Asking "I've finished the book X and really liked the topic Y; is there a standard text I can move on to now?" would be better.

I link hardmath's suggestion in the comments: look at the tag and try to see what would be required before posting. You should look at both good questions and bad questions. For example, if you have enough reputation you can see this question, which is pretty bad and was closed as a duplicate. However, the linked question there is this one, which is excellent.

*Just because there is a group theory tag doesn't mean I can dump all my group theory homework here - I'd have to craft my questions nicely.

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