Judge books by their covers

The book cover of Makers by Cory Doctorow, featuring piles and piles of old computer paraphernalia.I recently started reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. It’s a freaking amazing book. It contains such awesome bits of technology, culture, and psychology. Like, this book seriously satisfies on all levels. Going to have to say it’s one of my favourite books so far. I’m definitely planning to check out more of Cory Doctorow’s stuff… once I get through a bunch of the other books I have to read.

A realization of…

  1. how valuable my time is
  2. how many amazing books there are out there
  3. that books are extremely cheap compared with the time spent reading them

…has prompted me to seriously reconsider how many books I have on my to-read list. That list grows at a rate of 3-4 per week, which is vastly unsustainable. I need to use more discretion in choosing books. I think I’m going to do a bit of triaging with the ones I currently possess:

  1. Must read!
  2. …?
  3. This does not enrich my life (discard).

I really don’t know what to put in slot #2. It’s like I tell people about humor: there are enough videos on youtube to keep you laughing out loud for the rest of your life, but those videos represent only a tiny fraction of the 15000 hours of video that are uploaded every minute (or whatever the astonishing rate is). Thus, there are videos that are worth watching, and videos that are not… and then, of course, some that you need to watch some of in order to find out. It’s a challenge, in this day and age, not to let quality get diluted by unquality. I personally believe YT should display the ratings bar under the thumbnail of each video, whereever it’s linked. Anything with green less than 2/3 is probably not worth watching (unless it’s controversial or whatnot).

So maybe there is no #2. I guess it can be:

  1. keep around to find out if it’s a gem

…but do I really have time to do that for all of the “maybes”?

Am I judging books by their covers? Yes and no. I’m not judging them purely on the visuals and the title. I am, however, suggesting that if you wait until you turn the last page of a book before judging if it was worth reading, you’re not going to be able to do that with as many books.

A portrait of Malcolm Ocean

I'm Malcolm Ocean.

I'm developing scalable solutions to fractal coordination challenges (between parts of people as well as between people) based on non-naive trust and intentionality. More about me.

Become more intentional
Check out Intend, a web-app that I built to help people spend their time in meaningful & intentional ways and be more playfully purposeful. Intend logo
Connect with me on Twitter!