31–40 of 54 posts
One person's indispensable book can be, and often is, another person's complete waste of time. It depends as much on the reader as on the book.
Which is why you should not feel bad about abandoning a bad book, life is short, not everything is worth reading (or not everything is going to be interesting to you), so spend more time on the good ones, or on the ones you enjoy.
I'm not a huge reader so I finish few, but occasionally I come across a gem and relish it, re-reading whole chapters, trying to absorb as much as possible. As others have pointed out, even the good ones contain less interesting sections, but sometimes this is more intrinsic to the subject, sort of like the vegetables that might not be as palatable but you should eat in order to maximise your absorption of the nutrients... Distinguishing this from books of generally low value low quality is not always quick, but you gain an instinct and will know when to ditch it.
My hunt for books is completely random and infrequent, and I think I could personally do a lot better here, by going after the classics, books that stood the test of time..
I have a huge collection of quotes I gathered from Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter which are from classic self-help books and I prefer them over memorizing a whole book. You can sometimes distill the essence of what was said in a book into a small morsel/quote. The stoic ones are my favorite. They were the kings of one-liners.
I enjoy finding special nonfiction books that present the essence of a subject in an expedient way, but these are hard to find and they require a great focus from the author to stick to a specific topic or subtopic of huge fields.
Novels are different.
I have learned to stay away from popular science and nonfiction writing. Almost every single such book could be less than 50 pages, but they are artificially extended. There are a few good ones, but they are rare and require great humility and honesty from the author. I enjoy finding special nonfiction books that present the essence of a subject in an expedient way, but these are hard to find and they require a great…
for the rest of the books, my life hack is to watch/listen to summaries about books, or find videos or interviews where the writer talks about the book. so many non-fiction books should be a blog post. don't be afraid to skim.
This isn't just a problem with non-fiction books. I find more often than not in long form journalism lately the writers seem to not be able to resist becoming characters in their own writing. I could have sworn at one point it was considered bad journalistic form to become part of the story versus reporting it. Apparently those days are gone.
It depends very much what you're trying to read. Start with the 90 day Harvard classics https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120622 And also check out Penguins Great Idea series https://www.penguin.co.uk/series/PEN02/penguin-great-ideas If a book was read 100 years ago and is still being read today then it's worth a read. Most books written a few hundred years ago are just as relevant (if not more so) today…