Bought and Unread Books

(And I wasn't commenting on Black Swan, just on the concept of not finishing a book. I'm unfamiliar with Black Swan.)

I currently have to two books to finish. One is Ulysses. Reading that book is really more like a project. Tried chewing through the first chapter, everything went over my head. Its nearly unreadable. I guess I need a guide book along with it.

The mechanics work something like this:

- its easier to read a book you're motivated to read

- you're not sure what you will be motivated to read until after you've finished your current book(s)

- so, buy books you might be interested in advance, they'll be there and ready when the motivation hits

I buy books in theme areas: pragmatism, biographies of creative people, mythology, etc. That makes a smooth transition from one book to the next easy. You tend to read your current book with an eye to what's coming up on your shelf this way.

Also consider that you don't always want to read dense books. So having more books on hand helps you regain motivation in the down times by having easier stuff on hand. Jonathan franzen had a really nice essay on this about how pulp mystery novels kept him sane.

It helps that I have a used bookstore nearby where I can buy books for a dollar or so. But, anyway, there's so much cheap stuff on amazon that anyone can apply this approach without breaking the bank.

Hope this helps other folks read more. Reading has helped my coding and business more than any other habit.

From the kitchen, without much interest: "No idea."

"They'd always ask it with the kind of voice people use in the presence of large sculptures in museums. They'd ask me, 'Have you read all these books?'" He waited again, but Billy Kinetta was not playing the game. "Well, young fella, after a while the same dumb question gets asked a million times, you get sorta snappish about it. And it came to annoy me more than a little bit. Till I finally figured out the right answer.

"And you know what that answer was? Go ahead, take a guess." Billy appeared in the kitchenette doorway.

"I suppose you told them you'd read a lot of them but not all of them."

Gaspar waved the guess away with a flapping hand. "Now what good would that have done? They wouldn't know they'd asked a dumb question, but I didn't want to insult them, either. So when they'd ask if I'd read all those books, I'd say, 'Hell, no. Who wants a library full of books you've already read?'"

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