Do you love books? Which ones are worth re-reading?
In this day and age, the amount of book recommendations you can come by in the form of summer reading lists, blog posts and tweets is unprecedented. Yet, as Schopenhauer once said, it would be ideal to buy books if the time to read them were included in the purchase. That’s not the case. So the amount of books I would like to read (and may have already ordered as an impulse buy) and the time I have to read them simply doesn’t align. In addition, I was dissatisfied with my ability to retain what I had read.
In one of the best podcasts ever, Naval Ravikant shared the idea that you don’t want to read all the books in the world, but the same 100 books over and over again. Very much in the spirit of Heraclitus: “You cannot step in the same river twice” as both the river and the person will have changed. In this spirit, re-reading helps me with three things:
- Re-reading books helps me to better understand the author, her central themes and ideas and cross-reference it to other works. I also have a chance to refine my notes (OneNote).
- Instead of seeing or asking: “What have you been reading lately?” and opening myself up to a near infinite list of recommendations, I ask: “What books are you re-reading and why?” That makes for a much deeper and thoughtful conversation.
- It also makes gifting books easier. Economist and blogger Tyler Cowen shared the idea that gifting people books is a difficult endeavor. Not only will people relate certain passages directly to themselves, you also have the obligation to gift a book that is better than what they have on their reading list already. That’s tough. Instead, I like gifting books that I re-read: “This means a lot to me and I hope you will enjoy it, too”.
My questions to you: Which books are you re-reading and why? Do you have a system that helps you retain what you read?
Business lead & Art Director
5 年I really liked my air conditioner's instructions, and I'm gonna read it again this weekend.
Evondos, Vitacam
5 年This is a very good question Benjamin Lampe! I find that many business books have only one main point and the the bulk of the book is just filler - so it's only necessary to read once to get the point. Two that I needed to re-read are "The hard thing about hard things" by Ben Horowitz and "Confessions of an advertising man" by David Ogilvy. It's no coincidence that these are essentially memoirs.
Chief Marketing Officer | GE HealthCare | Digital Health & AI
5 年Benjamin Lampe...here are my recommendations for this summer (and an exhaustive crowd sourced list as well). Thanks for pulling this list together: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/simonrost_embraceai-keeponlearning-learneveryday-activity-6565100565422972928-GBNL
White Lotus S03E05-enthusiast | PR Director & Creative Leadership at Kid
5 年"The Boat" by Nam Le is an all-time favorite that I keep coming back to.?
Communications Director at Microsoft
5 年This was a thought provoking post. I realised I've never re-read a 'business book', but have read most Asimov and Douglas Adams books multiple times. Similar to the insights you give here, every time - at different times of your life - something different jumped out at me.?