Come on we have an entire community of math and computer science wizards here, I think heuristics like that can be quite easily written. Especially using a tab for "Popular Books" and another "Highly Rated"
Considering the age of this list, would it not be a terrible idea to create a new one using HN suggestions. Or maybe a much better idea, throw together a website where people can add books (using amazon metadata) and then up vote (or down vote) them so we can build a list of the most important books for hackers to read.