How I Pick Books to Read: Creating Better Reading Lists

Hello everyone,

In this week's blog post, I am going to talk about a topic I enjoy a lot, reading. More specifically I am going to talk about how I pick books to read, something that can at times be a challenge. If you want to read more on my thoughts as to why reading is such an important skill and how it has helped shape my life you can find the post where I wrote about reading more generally here.

I think I read more than most, but even then there are too many books in the world for me to not be picky about what I read. In a year where I read "a lot", I might finish 20 books, and in a year where I read less, it might be 3. So say I read 12 books/year (=1 book/month), assuming I live to 95 (somewhat optimistic) I have 70 years left. This would mean I have around 840 books left to read. This might sound like a lot at first but then consider how many books were published in 2022. A quick Google search puts the number around 4 million new books that were published in 2022. Consider then how few of those titles you will manage to read in your life. It can be a little daunting.

The hurdle to "read more than most" is not that high, according to a Washington Post article in the US reading two books in 2023 puts you in the top 50% of Americans.

How I Pick Books

I will share some of the ways I try to pick my next books to read. This is not the optimal way to do it of course, but it is a way that has helped me to both read more and have a higher hit rate on books I like and feel like I learn from. Here are three factors I consider when picking a book:

1. Recommendations - Trusted recommendations are a great way to find new books to read.
   1. Podcasters and/or their guests often recommend books that have had an impact on them and their lives and this leads to me adding them to my reading list. For non-fiction books, it is even better when authors guest podcasts as they tend to summarize the main ideas from their books. Then if I want to learn even more about the topic I know that picking up the book to read might be a smart choice
   2. Friends - If I get good book recommendations from friends that intrigue me I try to pick up the books. This can be especially good if you talk about what books you like and you find someone with similar tastes in books.
   3. Movies/TV - Many movies and TV series are based on books. This can lead to me falling down the rabbit hole and reading the books that they are based on or even based on a cool trailer. This is how I came to read A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), Dune, and Foundation. This has been a great way for me to find epic fictional stories from mostly fantasy and science fiction.
2. Age of the book - Older books that are still being read have proven themselves by surviving the test of time.
   1. I originally picked up this tip from Tim Ferriss who stated that he would not read books published in the current year. This was a tactic to avoid having new books sent to him for reviews but there is also something wise about reading books that have stood the test of time.
   2. Ryan Holiday also shared this advice along with some other great rules for reading. Quoting the following passage from Emerson's essay "Reading", highlighting the 3 rules followed by Emerson:
      “1. Never read a book that is not a year old [because only good books survive]. 2. Never read any but famed books [same reason]. 3. Never read any but what you like.”
3. Benefit in my life - Some books I have to read, in the case of textbooks or books included in the curriculum for instance. However in addition to these books I also like to learn new things and then I will often pick up books to read on those topics. For instance, after having started this blog I picked up a few books on writing as I wanted to improve my writing skills (granted I have not gotten through most of them yet, but in time I will).
   1. Books for school I don't really have a choice but to read so might as well get through them and try to get as much as possible from them.
   2. I like to learn things outside of school and then try to read books that can help me learn. At the moment I am reading Good to Great by Jim Collins. Many consider it one of the great books on business strategy. This book combines both a professional benefit with a topic I am highly interested in.

When to Quit Books

One thing I want to become better at is quitting books that don't get me going. This is often a big hurdle to reading more great books. You have to be able to put books down and pick a different one. Ryan Holiday has a good rule of thumb that I am going to try:

The rule I like is ‘one hundred pages minus your age.’ Say you’re 30 years old—if a book hasn’t captivated you by page 70, stop reading it. So as you age, you have less time to endure crap.
-Ryan Holiday

Life is too short to read bad books so if you pick up a bad one put it down. However, you might want to give it a try later again. Similarly to how books will have different impacts on different people, books can also hit you differently at different points in life. So don't be afraid to give a book a second try, you might be at the right point in life for it to speak to you!

Conclusion

In the end, there is no right or wrong way to pick what books to read. I would encourage you all to read more books, if you enjoy reading this blog I am sure you will get a lot out of reading more books. Hopefully, some of my tips can help improve your hit rate and help you read more good books. Life becomes much richer when we read good books. Summer is the perfect time to enjoy a good book in the sun!