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Here is a slightly different suggestion, that may avoid the problems with open ended book recommendations.

# Book lists? No
I'm not entirely against opinion based questions, but I am against opinions that are not attached to any meaning. It doesn't help me to know that one book has more votes than another. Some of the most misleading books in existence are very popular. Similarly, some excellent books are very popular but irrelevant to what I need to learn. I don't need to know how many people the book is useful to, I need to know what type of people the book is useful to: their prior experience, specific aims and requirements. Otherwise I have no idea if a good book is good for me personally.

In a book list question, even an answer that only contains one book is no use - the votes tell me that some people who know about software like that book. But people working in software may have very different ideas of what makes a book good. If they work in a field I know nothing about, the book may be too advanced for me. If they have fond memories of the book from when they first started out, the book may be irrelevant to my current understanding.

# Specific book questions? Maybe
A question about a specific book can have answers that give reasons why that book is useful, and specific areas it is relevant to or not. Then votes won't be for the book, but for the answer that best sums up who this book is good for.

A book is not good or bad, it's fit for a specific purpose or not. The question should ask about a specific book, and not ask "is this book good?", but instead explain in detail why the question author is considering the book: what they have heard about it, what they are looking for, what is their background, what is their aim?

# New post Category
Even having said this, I'd still question whether it is a good idea to allow book questions in amongst software questions. Is it worth considering a separate Category? If so, would that Category be for book questions, or for questions about general educational/reference materials?

I'd like to see a different term introduced, to replace "book recommendations". Although accurate, it also brings expectations of judgement of the book as good or bad, rather than as suitable for a specific set of needs. Maybe "book suitability question" would work - or perhaps someone can come up with a catchier Category name that gets the same point across - possibly not restricted to just books.

An advantage of a separate Category is that it can have a separate tag set, which might help people searching for specific fields, tasks, backgrounds or experience levels. I'd expect some of these tags to be problematic to introduce to the main Q&A tag set. Moving from language A, or moving to language B, might be useful tags in a book Category, but would probably just be noise if people start using them in the Q&A Category.

# Strict focus
If this Category is introduced, I'd want questions to be closed unless sufficiently detailed. Not just mentioning a field and a few words describing experience level, but specific examples of what kinds of work has already been done and what needs to be learned.

This would not be a book review site. It would be for specific questions each from one person seeking a solution to match their individual circumstances - much like the Q&A Category.

# One book per question
There will understandably be people who want to ask a question comparing 2 similar books, or asking for helping narrowing down from a shortlist of 5.

I would recommend putting in writing at the top of the Category page that it is strictly 1 book per question. This way the answers focus on the question author's requirements and current understanding, rather than tending towards spotting the differences between 2 books, where those differences may not be relevant. This also avoids the problem of voters rewarding the answer that favours their preferred book (voting for the book) rather than the answer that best addresses the requirements of the question author.

# Potentially multiple questions per book
Personally, I would not necessarily consider a question about the same book to be a duplicate if it describes different requirements or a different current understanding/background.