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Deciding on the Next Book

I have trouble with books in my queue. I want to read them, but I always pick up something totally off my queue when it's time.

Main Question / Premise

"Why would I prioritize a new book when I have a queue of high quality books already ordered?"

Two main topics

  1. How to survey a nonfiction book to decide whether and when to read it?
  2. How to select the next fiction book to read based on the book's properties and your current goals?

Interesting Questions

  1. Why am I reading?
  2. Why did I select this book? What am I getting for the work?
  3. What books am I not reading to make time for this one?
  4. Have I mastered the important parts of the book after reading it?
  5. Am I getting the most I can out of it? Eg using "A Mind for Numbers" techniques?
  6. Is there a shorter path to my learning goal?
  7. Can I set the book aside until a shorter path becomes clear, or do I need to read it now?

Process Goal

  • Avoid recency bias when selecting what book to read next
  • Have a quick process to pick the next book from an existing queue.
  • Have a digital queue to pick from
  • Trim my bookshelves and avoid buying books before they are selected.

Interest Inquiry

Develop a short series of questions I can use to decide what kind of book I want next.

Content Inquiry

Develop a short series of questions I can ask chatgpt about a specific book to supplement the interest inquiry, since it can discover information about the works in question quickly and relatively accurately, including some judgment calls.

Fiction Books

  • classic fiction
  • pop fiction works
  • award winning fiction
  • reading deeper with a beloved author
  • uncertain quality fiction

Nonfiction Books

  • topical overview
  • popular nonfiction
  • topical survey (some depth)
  • textbooks (topical survey?)
  • technical reading
  • where is the boundary of training material?
  • when is reading not learning/training material?
  • self improvement

When to read the audiobook?

  • Peculiarly, some fiction books are terrible as audiobooks
  • Would "American Gods" be better on paper? How about the 4 hyperion cantos books?
  • Topical overviews & popular nonfiction
  • Often better to skip the book / replace with wikipedia
  • might be better to do nothing and reflect/recall your other working topics instead.
  • "Is it bringing you joy?"

Reading Goals

Some Specific Works or "sets"

  1. all historic scifi award winning novels and keep up each year
  2. also historic short stories, a bit harder to locate, but much lower commitment
  3. some classic american literature, both novel and short story
  4. classic story collections:
  5. grimm's fairy tales
  6. burton's collection/translation: "A thousand nights and one night" (known casually as Arabian Nights or 1001 nights)
  7. art of war
  8. tale of genji
  9. romance of the three kingdoms (4 volume translation from my childhood?)