“The best time to plant a tree is yesterday. The next best time is today”
Here are some tools to kickstart or augment your reading habit.
Free Books
- Gutenberg is an online library with over 60,000 free ebooks that you can read online or on your device
- The Libby app lets you access your local library’s ebooks and audiobooks
- Bookbub alerts you for to the surprisingly common flash sales that slash books down to $1.99 on popular sites like Amazon and Barnes N’ Noble. You can create a wishlist, specify preferred formats and booksellers.
The Morgan Housel Reading Strategy
Funnel wide, filter high. Link
Curated Book Lists
It would make sense to consider the source when someone recommends a book to you.
- Is that a person an expert in the topic?
- Do they read deeply and widely enough to have good taste?
- Do you agree with what they think is good or insightful?
- Do you like their writing? If so, you’ll probably like their influences.
- The meta factor –do they think about their book selection or actual reading process?
The following people check those boxes for me, so I’m sharing their recommendation lists.
- Patrick O’ Shaughnessy: The Best “Per Page” Books. Link
- Venkatesh Rao: Current and All-Time Reading list. Link
- Scott H. Young: Best Books by Topic. Link
- Shane Parrish: What Books Would You Recommend Someone Read to Improve their General Knowledge of the World? Link
List of lists: Bill Gates, Oprah, Carl Sagan, and many more
Tools
MS One Note: It has the ability to convert image to text. So if you take a picture of a page from a physical book you can have a digital copy. Great for saving highlights, taking notes, stashing blurbs without needing to transcribe by hand.
Instanovels: The New York Public Library is using the slow-drip IV of Instagram to deliver classic novels. Story here.
Reading Speed
Speed reading is widely debunked as the converted Scott Young explains here. I took a reading test and despite my perfectly average reading speed of 400 wpm that still means reading a book every 1 to 2 weeks is possible. Here’s a test and reading times for various classics based on your speed.