Books to read if you have time

Suppose you are sick at home and do not have the energy or the willpower for any projects. You can still read. I asked some of my students to tell what they read now. More from me.

Student recommendations

Let us start with what was recommended by my students, in their own words.

Oliver: One of my favorite articles to read and reread is “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System.”

Hamilton: Thanks very much, Lev! Can’t Hurt Me is a very interesting book by David Goggins about using challenges to transform yourself.

There were many more examples, but these are typical…

Why should we read books?

While I love to know that you read, I would recommend a more systematic approach:

1. To acquire skills. If you want to acquire a new skill, you will probably want to read about it. This is the most useful reading, even though you will not be inclined to share it. If you read a book on AI or investment, this would probably be the case.
2. For the soul. I would recommend reading books that deal with psychology, philosophy, and spirituality. These books are often a pure delight to read. If you take a book like Albert Camus’s novel The Plague, you will get all of these in a form that is exciting and fun to read.
3. Escapism. Science fiction, fantasy or historical novels are a great way to explore alternative universes and gather metaphors. These books are typically read by teenagers, but when a more mature audience reads them we discover a different level of depth. For example, anything by Isaac Asimov will work.
4. Books that push the right buttons.  Romantic books for example. I am not reading this sort of literature, so…
5. Curiosity. Many scientists write books that make their subjects more approachable for the general public. A classic example is Stephen Hawking’s “Brief Answers To The Great Questions”
6. Enjoy the writing. We read classics because we enjoy the talent of the writer and learn from it. There is no better reason I can think of to read Dickens.

Of cause, there may be other reasons to read. We may need to read to impress someone. Maybe we stumble upon a book, we simply cannot stop reading. Like Wool by Hugh Howey. I just propose to address reading systematically.

How to select a book to read

We do not have time to read a lot of books, so we will probably read books that are highly recommended or correspond to a very narrow search. This is a pity. A lot of bad books will catch our attention and a lot of great books will not be noticed.

Please read my books. Seriously. You love reading my posts, you may enjoy reading my books. Most readers are highly satisfied by reading them.

This brings me to the next idea.  Read many short articles. If you like a short article, maybe you will love books by the same author.

Alternatively, look for the books recommended by your role models. There are lots of such recommendations in BusinessInsider or similar blogs. Do not necessarily look for the best books of the last year. The most profound experiences are usually generated by classics.

For example, Warren Buffet in one of the articles recommended reading “The Intelligent Investor” by his mentor Benjamin Graham. After reading the book I lost any urge to speculate, which is a good thing.

Books or articles?

If you want to stumble upon new ideas, you may prefer articles. For a profound understanding, you should probably read books. It takes a couple of days to finish a book. If you read faster, you generate more leads and process the materials deeper, but you should probably take a couple of days per book.  Otherwise, you cannot process the book sufficiently in-depth. The worst way to use your time is reading a book and remembering nothing from it. That’s why I rarely read books.

Articles are fast and easy to read. I read about 200 articles per day if I decide to spend my time on articles.  However, I do not remember that much from these articles. If some idea catches my eye, I research it, and then the relevant articles start to link with each other and generate something deeper. When I see a unique idea or a repeating pattern I am not sufficiently familiar with, I will research it.

Being somewhat an obsessive person, I can take an almost arbitrary subject and spend 30 min every day reading about it for a couple of weeks. Surprisingly there are very few subjects that cannot capture the imagination for a couple of weeks. A country, a historical event, some statistics I was not aware of may pivot me into weeks of bizarre research. This is a bit crazy but highly recommended as experience.

Read because you want to, not because you have to

When I was a student, especially in high school, I had to read books. I did not like what I read. Also, it was not entirely clear for me why I read these books. So I did my best to avoid reading the recommended literature.

Later I read the same books not because I had to, but because they answered some deeper needs.  And the result was very different. I discovered things I entirely missed previously.

When we read books we need to read, we follow the main plot-line.  It is a bit simple. Revisiting the same books, I notice small details. Linguistic and conceptual jewels as short as a couple of words. I would not notice them if I was not looking for them.

While reading because we want to we are more interested, more open to notice stuff we would miss otherwise. There is a physiological explanation for this phenomenon I do not want to discuss now. Suffice to say that a lack of interest reduces our ability to deal with information.

Books do not make you smarter

Seriously. Smart people read good books, not the other way. Smart people read books because they are curious. If you simply read a tone of books without this curiosity, you are not likely to learn.

There are different and perhaps better ways to spend your time than reading books, so do not read books until you want to. You can read articles instead. If you decide to spend the time required to read a good book, make it matter.