Anonymous Potato left a comment on my previous post:
“You must write a piece about how you choose your books.”
I thought it was a great idea. Having read about 70 books last year and on track for about a 100 this year, I have a certain method to the madness of choosing what I read.
Everything I read falls into four broad buckets, with examples listed for each.
- Flavors of the month: These are the popular books in the bestsellers lists that I can’t seem to avoid because they come up so often in daily cultural discourse. This is especially true of the tech industry in the Bay Area.
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Educated by Tara Westover
- “Chick lit“: I don’t like the term chick lit but I also don’t have a better one. I love reading books by women for women.
- I’m Fine and Neither Are You by Camille Pagan
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
- Classics: The best books are the ones that have stood the test of time. If a book is still relevant, then to me it is still worth reading.
- The Trial by Franz Kafka
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- Themes of interest: There are topics that I feel drawn to at different points in time. When I joined VMware, I read dense technical books written about my product. A year after my MBA when I felt my “business” skills getting rusty, I read a lot of economics and finance. When questionable things were happening in India politically, I started to read about Indian politics and history. As I question my existence in the lockdown, I’ve started delving more into philosophy. Whenever I need a break from life, I read fantasy. No theme is ever fully complete, but I like to sprinkle in books from my themes of interest each month.
- Mastering VMware vSphere 6.7
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
- The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity by Amartya Sen
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
Another important consideration for me is to read as many Indian authors as I can across these categories. Not only are they extremely good, I also like to stay in touch with my culture this way.
I usually only seek books recommendations from people I know and trust. These suggestions also typically fall into one of these buckets. In general, there isn’t much I won’t read, although I don’t enjoy horror, science fiction, self-help, sports, and religion.
The mix of what I read each month varies based on everything going on in my life. If I’m stressed, chick lit is an easy read. When I’m having a quiet period at work, dense classics are nice to wade through.
There isn’t a science to this. The main thing is to read books you enjoy reading, while pushing out of your comfort zone every now and then. I find that working out is a good analogy. You only get results when you’re in pain and want to quit. The same applies to a book that is hard to read but you know is good for you.