In 2020, I started a system for my personal reading. I took five books to become my current reading list, put them next to the bed, and stashed the rest out sight.
Each of the five books satisfied a category:
- Non-Fiction
- Fiction
- Spirituality
- Self Help
- Art
When I wrote the first draft of this post, the books on deck were:
- Mythologies, Roland Barthes
- Farewell My Lovely, Raymond Chandler
- Collected Writings of Epicurus
- Zen of Seeing by Fredrick Franck
- Jazz, Henri Matisse
The only book I haven’t completed is Epicurus.
In a world where there is so much information, it is important to simplify what is immediately available. Once resolved, you are free to just read within the preselected menu. If I lose interest in a book, I can either throw it off out of the favored circle (as I did with Epicurus) which frees you up to read other books within the category (I’ve read quite a few wisdom texts over the past couple months. Alternately, I can let a book marinate while I dive into other topics. If so, at least I’m avoiding other books within the same genre, which makes it easier to return to the lagging book.
This system makes it evident if I’ve been heavily pursuing one category over the others. I may or may not counteract against such a trend, but either way, it is good to be clear what is top of one’s mental interests.
This system has turned out to be a well rounded way to wrangle all the good books around me – unread, re-read, library loans, and newly purchased. I’d recommend giving it a shot if your “to read” pile has become intimidatingly tall.