My Reading Habits (A review of 2015)

2015-reading.txt

Greatest Hits of 2015:
Nonviolent Communication
The Three Body Problem
Cloud Atlas
The E-myth Revisited
Cryptonomicon
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
The Martian
True Names
The Wizard of Earthsea

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Hi All,

I've been trying to do a better job as captain of my bookshelf.

Reading for me is a venture in spending time to make joy. 

I hope to get something out of it too; whether it be broadened horizons, a sense of excitement about the universe, or a way I can do something specific better or govern my life more effectively.


Last year's data:

Last October, all 149 books still on my shelf went into a spreadsheet*. I had read 75, just over 50%.


This year's data*:

Total books read this year: 31
Total books Cancelled this year: 2  

Books I will probably mail you: 83 **

Total books on the shelf: 180
Total books given away: 8 

Breakdown (not mutually exclusive categories):
Total library books read: 22
Total paper books read: 11
Total audiobooks read: 20


* here is a link to all my reading data. LMK if you have recommendations. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hJ87liMK0tnz_W32wIlmMbCyShr4EkT-7Zc89AQSELQ/edit?usp=sharing
** See the spreadsheet tab "Paper Books". I'll mail it if the column "Read it?" has "yes".

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Book rules (patterns I follow to have a joyful book queue):
1. Always take a recommendation.
2. Read all award winning science fiction (I have lists of each award for all award years).


Rules for next year (see analysis):
1. Add a book to your "cancelled books" list when you no longer are excited to read it. Stop reading it.
2. If the audiobook is over 12 hours, almost always read the paper version ( >50% time savings, NOT hyperbole).
3. Take notes on nonfiction books. If you find yourself having no notes to take, abandon the book.
4. In the nonfiction category, there needs to be some guidance. For example "Read Pulitzer Prize Winning Nonfiction."  I am researching what guidance to use.

Some analysis:

Rule 1:
I only owned 9 of the 31 books consumed this year. I read ONE of the 74 unread books on my shelf last October.  Therefore I am implementing a new class of book called "cancelled books". The idea is to preserve the data but to stop burdening my conscience with books that just aren't screaming at me to be read.  I can even leave them on the shelf, because the psychological effect of 'cancelling' the book should be enough to unburden me.

Unsolved problem:
Additionally, I only did 10 print books last year.  It may be that I don't have enough time to read print books or that I am tired and audiobooks are more available to my lifestyle. Or maybe audiobooks were just a new thing and I binged. I can't tell yet. "Rule 2" is designed to push me the other direction.

Rule 2:
I did some research about reading rates.  Average readers will read 300 WPM (words per minute).  An audiobook is read at 120-150 WPM.  If you read a 20 hour audiobook, then you could have read it in print in 10 hours.  For the record, most audiobooks I have read are about 11 hours, 20 hours, or 40 hours. I don't know why those increments, maybe just random chance.

I made one observation about my behavior to create this rule: "I am likely to spend parts of the day better used on other things finishing a book when I am getting deeply immersed into the plot". This drove me to create a rule: "Do not read audiobooks longer than ~12 hours". This reduces this "high immersion" period to a maximum of about 6 hours for audiobooks, 15 hours for print. Way better than 35 hours --  "Cloud Atlas", my all time second favorite book (displacing Blood Meridian), took me 40 hours to read in an audiobook. A whole week of work and I was deadly immersed in it!  If I had done this with the paper copy, I would have 20 hours of my work days that week back. (a keen reader will note that I do not intend readjust my priorities, I instead intend to curb it with these rules so I can get back to work faster).

Rule 3:
Finally, I read 8 nonfiction books this year and cancelled 2 of those reads.  I wish I had cancelled more nonfiction books instead of finishing them.  I reflected on a book I loved "The Information" which I read in February. There's a big problem!  My free recall of the book's contents is very low. I can't remember offhand many of the details. I decided to institute a note-taking system when reading nonfiction. When I hear something that I think is great, I write it down in a little notebook. I do this in outline format following the organization of the book.

This system worked excellently, and it had an unintended consequence. I started reading a nonfiction book last week and after 4 chapters, I had no notes... uh oh -- nothing worth remembering.  Sorry Nate Silver -- your predictive analysis is still best-in-class. But your book was too nonspecific.

Thus came this rule. If you are taking notes and you don't have anything worth writing down, cancel the read. I hope this helps me cancel less interesting/helpful nonfiction faster.

Also, this is about giving myself permission to cancel a book. I am not a book canceller by nature. I must finish what I set out to do, even if it takes forever.

Rule 4:
When reading popular nonfiction, I find that the book is either a venerated classic, or usually not very helpful.  Because of this effect, I am going to dial back my nonfiction reading, instead focusing only on venerated classics. I find myself very happy with my fiction selection, probably because I am not the one making the selection. I have been reading almost only winners of the top 3 science fiction awards (and their sequels, etc).  I need to repeat this strategy in nonfiction.