655. That is how many books I have in my iBooks library, not counting a few paper ones. A little over a hundred of them have been read and kept around in case I ever need to return to them. Most are nonfiction, with only a very small amount of fiction.
But what can you do with five hundred books? How many months would it realistically take to read them? And more importantly, what useful things can you actually get out of them?
Over years of reading nonfiction I developed a set of criteria for filtering books and giving each of them exactly as much time as needed to get answers, enjoyment, or a broader perspective. Here is what I pay attention to:
Blurb and table of contents
The blurb is probably the first block of text you read as intended by the author. An ideal blurb is like a movie trailer: it is good when it motivates you to keep exploring.
The next step after the blurb is to analyze the table of contents. It often helps you understand what questions the book answers, how much theory and practice it contains, how long it is, and how it is structured.
If the table of contents includes a section called “References”, that is a sign of a serious book by an author who respects primary sources and did not just write it “from memory”.
What questions can the book answer?
Reading nonfiction “just because” does not make much sense. Fiction is far better suited for that. It is better to begin a nonfiction book by deciding what questions it might answer.
Nonfiction books often have very telling titles like “How to Get Everything Done” or “How to Get Your Life in Order”. And just as often they fail to answer even that one question, let alone any others.
You do not have to agree with the author about everything
It can even be more useful not to agree at all. That way you can enter into an imaginary dialogue with the author and either learn something new or, on the contrary, become more grounded in your own beliefs.
Most books that influenced me seemed controversial at first, and the ideas in them initially felt wrong.
Yes, you can stop reading
There is no point in forcing yourself to continue reading a book that has already exhausted itself. There is no point in reading cover to cover if you get no pleasure from it.
Sometimes one chapter is enough to grasp the main idea of a book.
Notes
If a book answered your questions or raised new ones, the best thing you can do is write notes on it. It does not matter whether you share them with someone or write them just for yourself. What matters is making the result of reading “alive” so that it can keep working for you.