May 6, 2025 • 35 mins
Why don't I read recently published books?
Today is a special episode where I am going over how I find new books, ways I actively try to avoid wasting my time & some little tricks & tips to get the most out of your reading.
Would love to hear your feedback and appreciate any support you wish to give :)
Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:11) Finding New Books
(00:14:05) Pre-Filtering
(00:23:20) Tips/Tricks
(00:34:09) Value 4 Value
(00:34:39) Join Live!
Connect with Mere Mortals:
Website: https://www.meremortalspodcasts.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/jjfq9eGReU
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/meremortalspods
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meremortalspodcasts/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@meremortalspodcasts
Value 4 Value Support:
Boostagram: https://www.meremortalspodcasts.com/support
Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/meremortalspodcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
Why don't I read recently published books?
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the mere mortals book reviews special episode here today. I am live as usual
on the 05/07/2025.
(00:20):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I review the hottest trending books of 2025.
Let's go.
Okay. No. None of that coming on today. Definitely none of that. And instead in this special episode,
I'm inspired to do what the title says here, which is going over how I choose books, techniques to find and pre filter enjoyable reads.
(00:41):
So this was actually inspired by a comment from a regular viewer, Carlos underscore AM. So thank you, Carlos.
And, yeah, essentially, I want to go over my method for the stage of before finding a book, how I go about, I guess, like, getting a list or something like this,
ways I actively try to avoid wasting my time on things which won't be useful, aren't useful if I have started them, and some little tricks and tips that I have to get the most out of your reading. So
(01:11):
let's jump into the first section here, finding new books.
You're on the mountain. There's
thousands of books in your library spread out of you. Hundreds of thousands if you're in your, Amazon,
wish list or something like this. How the hell do you go about finding a new book? Well, before
we do this, I think the most,
(01:31):
best way of doing this for myself is a rather informal recommendation
system.
And the most important thing for me is actually just having a list,
a list that on my phone that I write down, but you could probably have this in in paper or somewhere else, a wish list on on Amazon or something like this.
And,
the reason I do this is because every time I hear about a book that kind of piques my interest, I just quickly write it down.
(01:57):
The amount of times that I've thought, oh, yeah. That that sounds like something interesting. I'll I'll remember that. I'll look that up later. And then it's just gone is
too much to count, hence why I have a list on my phone.
And now this is not a commitment to reading.
It is purely just as a first step in this kind of informal
(02:19):
searching process for finding a new book to read or something that I would like to read. Currently, I have about 200 to 250
just written on my phone. Pretty simple enough. Just the name of the the book and the author, and she probably don't even need that. Just the name of the book would usually be enough,
that I kind of add and subtract from over time.
(02:39):
It's not like I said, it's very informal. So the stuff at the the top of the list is the more recent things that I've heard.
And I will sometimes go further down the list trying to find
perhaps ones that are just interesting or that I've been looking at for a while. The further down the list it goes, like, the more
likely it is that I won't ever get around to reading it
(03:02):
just because I've perused this list so many times and it's just never jumped out at me.
A good thing to look out for is if you accidentally write the same book down there twice. This happened before the beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch for me. So that's one that I'll I'll try and get to it at some point in the nearer future.
And all of this, I guess, is just a a way of
(03:23):
getting a a base set to to work from.
Now how do you actually find them, though? That's, you know, sure. It's nice to have the the list, but what what can you actually do, to to get them onto the list?
Well, the first one for me is recommendations
from people, and,
this is from people who know me, who know that I like to read.
(03:46):
So this is, you know, reviewers in the in the comments or commenters
of people in real life who recommend a book directly to me.
And,
you know, many of the times I've read stuff from the comments, which has just been an absolute blast. East of Eden comes to mind. I believe Johnny,
was the one who recommended that at some point, and it's not a surefire way.
(04:10):
Another recent book that I reviewed was the Tao Pu and the Tay of Piglet. You know, that was a bit rubbish.
There was some enjoyable aspects to it, but overall, I was like, you know, that
would my life,
have is my life significantly better for reading it? Not particularly.
It was interesting, though, and that this will touch upon
(04:32):
why maybe just not enjoyable is the best way of not sorting for exactly what you're looking for. Because you can be looking for other things which
are highly valuable to yourself, but aren't necessarily a enjoyable read.
So I tend to value this
system
more highly than others. If someone recommends me a book, it's more likely to get read in the near future
(04:55):
and
to stay higher up on my kind of informal recommendation list
just because it is suited to me. Someone has gone out of their way to recommend something. So that is one of the first ways. The next would just be hearing about a good book in general.
Once again, there's many different ways you can go about doing this. Sometimes I've just gone to the, you know, top 100 books of all time sort of list.
(05:20):
And
typically these will have been filtered by age. And so you will find if it's over all time, you're gonna get recommendations
from things that were, you know,
are just absolute gems from, like, two hundred years ago, for example, or how were super highly influential,
maybe not an enjoyable read, but even something like
(05:42):
The Prince by Machiavelli
is really, really interesting for the historical context of the book. The things that promotes in the book
are a completely different worldview that you're very unlikely to encounter in regular everyday people.
These are the type of things which I really look for and jump out at me.
If it's all in a more kind of modern context,
(06:05):
I quite enjoys,
I guess, resourcing books from
people who
I consume,
like media content from.
Mostly for me, this is from podcasts.
And so I typically will
take a recommendation if it's from someone
highly knowledgeable in a particular field and they recommend the book. A recent example of this would be Lynn Alden, and she's very good with financial stuff. And when she recommends a financial book, that's something that I'm like more likely to pay attention to.
(06:38):
And yet I won't read her very own book that she's written. Why is this? We'll talk about that very shortly.
One thing to be wary of, I've noticed, is when people
talk about books,
it's got to be them bringing them it up rather than being asked a direct question like, what's your favorite book of all time?
Because I've noticed this trend, which is that when you're asked, what's your favorite book of all time? Most people are not book reviewers like myself
(07:07):
or
that interested in the
I guess,
they they don't think about it as deeply perhaps as, as I do. Not trying to
be non humble here. It's it's more that,
when someone is asked that question, typically, they'll just try and think of any book that comes to mind. And usually, it's the one that they've read recently. And so if you ask someone like, you know, what's your favorite book of all time?
(07:32):
I would say about more than 50% of the time, they will just list a book that they've read within the last couple of months, which they enjoyed,
which kind of defeats the purpose of, you know, your favorite book of all time.
Because that question also implies, like, that someone is a pretty voracious reader, that they read a lot, that they think about the books,
(07:54):
and have, like, a
a rating system for themselves of what they enjoyed or didn't enjoy, what they got the most out of.
You know, if someone asked me what's my favorite book of all time,
I do have an answer if they,
but I would want to ask in return, like, the most enjoyable read of book of all time, the one that was most impactful to me that changed my life the most, my life the most. All of these sorts of things can be
(08:21):
the, you know, the best book of all time,
but with a different context and and things like this. I I have in my head, you know, I can list off my favorite nonfiction versus fiction books of all time.
And so,
this is something I've I've noticed a lot. And so if someone brings it up just while talking about a topic,
that is much more highly valuable than being asked the direct question.
(08:46):
Because if you wanna see this in action
in the mere mortals conversations, I have no idea what number.
I think the guy's name was Frankie Lee. I asked him this, and he did this exactly. He just he just listed a book that was he'd read in the last, you know, like, week or two,
which is why I stopped asking that question when I was doing the, interviews or the conversations on the,
(09:06):
mere mortals,
conversations podcast.
You might be thinking, oh, other book channels. That would be a great place for recommendations because those are the people who rate them, who read a lot, and
that would be something that I would enjoy and that I could, find,
immensely valuable. And you would be wrong.
I find them generally useless, to be honest, and have really only learned YouTube techniques
(09:31):
in terms of thumbnails, in terms of
how to start a video of what you should be doing and applied almost zero of them, to be honest, because I don't really wanna play the YouTube game.
And
the main problem,
I find from other book review channels is that they either have a very niche genre like fantasy
(09:51):
or true crime or something like this,
which,
you know, they're gonna be just reviewing all of these types of books, and I have a bit more of
a widespread
taste,
or they are producing a lot of content. And so they reading, you know, 200 plus books a year.
You know what a lot of book review channels you'll find,
(10:13):
my my favorite book from August
2024
or something, and they've read eight or something like that. It's just like, Jesus Christ. You know, these people are just powering through these books. So,
obviously, they they enjoy doing it.
Perhaps some of that is for the content. I know there is
a,
(10:33):
like, bookstagram,
for example, you'll find people who set a target of reading 365
books a year, a k a a book a day, which is absolutely bonkers.
And, you know,
if you're focused on a goal based thing,
the
recommendations you're going to get from them, I find I just don't I I haven't connected with anything they've said the way they've talked about things.
(10:59):
There's nothing that's really jumped out at me as being going, Oh, wow. Yeah, that this, you know, person who reads a lot of books, they have a really, really good,
view on this particular thing or that particular thing.
The reason I'm doing this special episode, for example, is because I had a bit of a gap. I'm reading a rather large book at the moment.
(11:19):
Charles Mackay is I think it's popular delusions and the madness of crowds.
And
I was just like, I'm not going to be able to finish this
in in time for for this episode this week.
So I'll do this special episode.
And in the months coming, I'm not going to be releasing much. And one will be because I kind of need to stock up. I'm going to be traveling. I'll have less time for this.
(11:43):
I probably read around 40 ish books a year. So obviously, that's not enough for
content every single week.
And
I think this is a,
I wouldn't want to do a review on a channel, for example, of a book that I haven't fully read through.
And,
you know, maybe I have done that once or twice where it's I've read most of it and it's just tailed out or something. But
(12:07):
by and large,
I just haven't found, other book review channels to to be that great. And if you want some examples,
better than food,
I think his name's Jack Reads or something like this.
I read a there was a couple of, like, Spanish type ones I was getting into.
Honestly, a lot of them have a very similar
(12:28):
variation where it is a particular niche channel,
just doing book reviews. A slight exception to this rule
are kind of people who I admire
for other things. And then I find out that they've got a bit of a reading habit and
have, like, a book list of some sort.
People like Roosh V, Chris Williamson, Jace from Gypsy Tales, Eduardo Lima,
(12:51):
They typically
are not a book review channel, but they just have a little side section where they do this.
And so, you know, usually, these will be blogs or videos,
and I will selectively choose bits and pieces from them because
it's, you know, book reviewing is not their main thing, funnily enough.
And funnily enough, I won't even really
(13:13):
watch their videos
more than like a minute or two
just to get a general vibe of what it's about,
because I don't wanna taint my own interpretation
or ruin or affect it,
when I do this. So,
unless I know I won't read the book unless it's something where I'm like, yeah. I'll I'll see what they have to say about it, but it just doesn't interest me.
(13:35):
One, for example, has done a review of Treasure Island by, I think it's Robert Stevenson, someone like that.
And
I've yet to watch that review. And the reason for that is because I also want to read that book at some point, and I I don't want his interpretation
affecting mine.
So those are a couple of ways that I personally have
(13:56):
find books
and
will use this informal recommendation system to to go through,
to go through. And then we come to the next stage, which is, the pre filtering of these. So I've got a general kind of list, but, you know,
I don't really know much about the book. I don't know what it's particularly about, how long it is,
(14:18):
who the author is, how it's written, all of these sorts of things. So
what are some ways that I can try and filter and get rid of the the useless stuff,
which
occurs both before and during this process of having having lists? So Carlos
AM, as I mentioned, inspired this. So I wanna, talk about his his comment. He was saying, interesting. I usually research a lot before I spend my time with a book. And even then, I had to quit a couple of times. I would like to hear why you don't pick new books I've been recently disappointed upon. Then I said I'd get back to him in the next special episode, and I think I forgot or there were some others coming up. So first of all, apologies, Carlos. I'm getting to it now.
(14:58):
My bad. And, the companion to this episode right now would actually be the one titled Don't Read Everything, where I went over
times where I've had a book in my possession, which I thought had a bit of potential,
and then the reasons for why I didn't actually end up reading it with a lot of specific examples.
(15:19):
And this was due to, you know, the style of it, the length of the book, the structure,
how it was written, the topic it was on, things like this. So,
you know, getting into, I guess, pre filtering,
why do I have this general rule of of no new books?
It's for several reasons.
(15:40):
As I mentioned, time, I think, is a great filter. It will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you
that you
won't be able to do when it's a book that's recently published. And when I say recently published, I mean in like the last ten years,
if it to this day is relevant and it was written one hundred years ago or is of some interest,
(16:04):
I think that shows that it has some value.
Old books can have their own difficulties,
especially with language. So things like Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes or The Wealth of Nathan Nations by Adam Smith, for example,
or obscure references.
But there must be some reason why they have retained attention over such a long time period.
(16:27):
You can even get lucky
if it is a classic or has a classic label,
by simply just seeing that.
One time I was in the library and I was just perusing and I saw something that had a classic labeled It's like, oh, yeah. I pulled it out. It wasn't too big as well. So it was like, this is interesting. And that turned out to be, Lost Horizon by James Hilton, which is probably still in my top 10.
(16:50):
And that was, you know, just purely because
time had done the filtering for me.
If I had used a similar method and just picked out any book from the library, the chances of it being in my top 10 were would be significantly
significantly
less.
On the flip side of this, modern books tend to follow short term trends. I've noticed a lot. So
(17:15):
authors will write to what is hot at the current moment,
and incentives mean that they kind of need to pump out one to two books a year
to, I guess, you know, make money and things like this, which I think is the opposite of someone really honing their craft and being very careful in particular with their words.
(17:36):
The
economy of of,
the
economics is probably a better word of bookselling
is
so
hard,
from what I've from what I gather, I've never tried to sell a book
that you need to spend probably more of your time on the marketing of it rather than on the actual writing of it.
(17:59):
And so
a couple other things with the newness
science books become out of date rather quickly.
And so, you know, something like, some of Malcolm Gladwell
work hasn't aged well because he's written about a study
that, you know, Freakonomics did or something like this. And then it turns out, you know, I was just a biased study and and wasn't so great.
(18:22):
So,
we already live in the time period,
that we're in. So there's no kind of nostalgia of someone's writing about, you know, a classic of 2025
that people in fifty years will be like, damn, that's so reflective of the 2020, you know, the social media period or something like that.
We're already living in it. So it's not that amazing, exciting or something like this.
(18:45):
On the Converse side, if someone is writing a book
nowadays about the Wild West or about,
you know, eighteen hundreds England, well, they're
kind of making stuff up. They never actually lived through it. So you don't get that benefit of the historical,
I guess, accuracy or the feel of that time period because they're kind of trying to reconstruct it.
(19:09):
So look, are all new books
trash or anything like this? No, it's it's just purely for myself.
The percentage of new books that I've read
have been very disappointing in terms to the percentage of of good ends that I find in a much longer
(19:29):
time period. So, you know, things that are more than twenty years old, for example. So this is why I particularly do it.
The other problem is the
amount of books
in creation today
is vastly, vastly dwarfing,
anything that anyone could ever read, obviously. But also in comparison, you know, there was probably more books published in the last twenty
(19:53):
after the February than there has been across all of history,
especially if you're including ebooks in this as well.
So there's so much more stuff to sort through that
if you're looking for something and it's something new,
it's it's just a really, really hard I personally find. So typically, you know, ten plus years,
(20:15):
fifteen plus years is my general rule.
I'll bend this rule for certain topics if it's a history book. So if it's written about history and it was only published
in the last ten years, I'll read that.
Or if there is a really particular
niche topic I want to explore
(20:35):
and that is kind of currently
relevant or something that I think will be interesting,
you know, something along the lines of maybe
nuclear
would would be interesting. So typically it would be the history of nuclear
power or nuclear bombs or something like that. And then maybe the book would have a little
extra section right at the end about what's to come, something like that.
(21:00):
Usually, I guess you'll you'll notice that in the finding section, I didn't really talk about genre or topics.
And that I think that's because I can really enjoy
any and all.
It doesn't really matter
where it
what it's about.
But I don't usually fall into the series or worlds type of thing. So
(21:23):
it's very unlikely that I'll ever read
an eight part series.
When I was a child, I used to,
for sure. And I'd read the Delta request or the Artemis Fowls
or,
I've forgotten the spy name. Maybe once in the comments you might be able to remember as well.
And
Alex McNabb, I used to love his spy stuff, but nowadays
(21:47):
it's been rare
that I've really found something kind of going like I want to read eight books in the series.
And that's just because I
I don't know. My tastes just tend to vary. I don't like getting stuck into one thing. You'll notice I might have a trend. So for example,
recently,
a recent spate
(22:07):
of open source and financial type books has been taking my fancy.
But yeah, there's nothing that I generally won't read.
I'll I'll read stuff which is not typically intended for males or
a typical male thing, rom com, for example, or romance
books. You know, I'll read Thomas Hardy. Sure. That's, that's I find that interesting.
(22:29):
It's more certain styles I tend to avoid.
Critiques of politics or religion or sex or sexual morals
or critiques of a current time period,
even if it's like from a time period in the past.
Less interesting.
True crime revelry of serial killers, definitely
(22:50):
something that doesn't particularly the gruesomeness
is just a bit too morbid for me.
Experimental styles,
typically, I've found to be trash,
with the occasional gem. So, you know, for every Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sienna Nanios de Soderad,
there is 10
James Joyce's or Julio Cortazas,
(23:11):
which are just
absolute nonsense to me. So that's kind of my
little
section there on on the pre filtering them.
What are some things you can do to get the most out of them?
Well,
here's some just tips to get the most out of your reading. Number one is drop early. Drop a book if you're not enjoying it.
(23:31):
If it's
if you're like 20% of the way through and you're finding it a slog, if you're doing like like the old blinking, almost falling asleep while reading,
That's not a good sign.
And
just don't torture yourself.
There are more books that you are interested in, you know, 250
books. I said I've got on my on my list.
(23:53):
40 books a year. You know, that's what, six, six years of just reading right there.
And I'm continually adding to this list.
There's I'm not gonna be able to read everything that is mildly interesting to me. So
there is value in dropping something that you're not enjoying to go onto something that you do enjoy.
(24:18):
And a good backup, I would say, is to have
multiple books with you. So,
for example,
Lee Kuan Yew is
the
the history of kind of Singapore and how one man changed that country.
I do find that interesting. I've been meaning to look into him for a while. There's a couple of books on him. I'll probably grab two or three of them. And,
(24:40):
you know, one will be an autobiography. One will be someone writing about him, and I'll I'll maybe just test them out and see which one of them I prefer and then read that.
If you're
doing something where you're like, oh, I'm not sure if this I'll enjoy this. Have, like, a backup author who you almost always love. For me, that's John Steinbeck or Mark Twain.
(25:02):
And so if I'm reading something and I've got that beside me, well, you know, then I've got a Mark Twain book which I can jump over to
if, if I am noticing like, this one's starting to drag and I'm not really enjoying it.
All of this sounds very expensive,
buying multiple books and things like this, which is indeed correct, and why I almost extensively
use a library.
(25:24):
You know, I used to read
through everything that I started.
I've stopped largely doing that. One,
I believe maybe still does this, but probably is getting a bit better at it. I beg you not to do this. This is it's foolishness for whatever. You know, I get the
OCD nature of trying
(25:45):
to complete everything that you've started, but
there is no shame. There is no there's no it's not that there's no shame. There's no benefit to going through. And other than what being able to claim that you read something.
Sure. For very long ones, you might have to do a bit of slogging.
The Leo Tolstoy
is out there, you know, the war and pieces, you're gonna have to slug through a bit.
(26:09):
But there is
something to be said about not
torturing yourself continually
just for the aspect of saying that you've read a book. If your goal is to read three sixty five books a year,
it's it's a it's not a great goal to have personally, I would say not a great use of your time.
(26:29):
Now, this might sound hypocritical
because I regularly review books, which I will rate
in the zero to five range.
And
that rating system,
it's hard because it's kind of like trying to encompass everything.
So if you don't know, my rating system in general is from
(26:50):
zero to 10. I don't really give zeros. I don't give 10. So technically, I guess 0.5 to 9.5.
And
I
will find that there's things which are worth reading, which
are not great books or things that you don't enjoy
or that you disagree with.
But they might have a historical perspective to it. You could find value from it. It could be a textbook that's useful for your job. You know, there's plenty of different reasons why
(27:19):
it's worth reading something which you don't actually enjoy that much.
It's the needless torturing in the other section, which I was I was particularly talking about. So, for example,
I read Mein Kampf quite a few while,
jeez, probably a decade ago, if I had to guess, and I found it very instructive
(27:39):
on how to kill Jews. No. No. Okay. No. It's actually not instructive for that. I don't think he This was, when when Hitler was, in jail
and certainly not had any power to do any of the awful stuff,
that ended up happening,
on his orders.
No. It was very instructive because you got to see into the mind of a person
(27:59):
before
he got power and you can go, oh, okay. So if someone's displaying these types of traits or saying these types of things,
these these are the type of and then they get into power,
that's very worrisome. And you should be worried about someone displaying certain type of things like this.
Overall, that book, you know, what stood out to me, I just remember how poorly written it was. Just the
(28:24):
stent sentence structure,
the way that he
tried to communicate, I found awful. I was reading the English translation, not the German original. So, you know, maybe that had a bit of a impact to it.
But there's plenty of things like that where,
you know, I'd I'd estimate I still make the mistake of maybe 5%
(28:44):
of the time, 10% of the time of reading something which I probably should have dropped,
you know, partly for my OCD, partly for the channel.
It's not great. I shouldn't do it. I still do it a little bit. But getting that down to a manageable level is, I think, very,
a very useful
(29:05):
goal to aim for.
Taking notes whilst reading, I think, is is quite instructive as well. Bookmarking pages is is Juan's preferred style.
I don't really do that. Please don't deface a book. If you've got it from the library, the amount that with under underlining and scribbles on it is is,
depressing,
unless it's your own, of course. I have a notes app. I use Google Keep and just jot down thoughts and collect them together for these reviews. For example,
(29:33):
I used to keep a summary on a word document
for many, many years of the stuff that I was reading, probably from, like, 2013
to 2024.
I used to do this, and
some of that was rather extensive and it was essentially a book review. I could probably just go to some of those notes and just read them straight out, have to change up the
(29:57):
the intro and the ending, of course, but the meat of it would would still be very,
have a
a thematic
introspection
of
of, essentially, a review.
And
that was very helpful for me, and I greatly enjoyed doing it. Hence, why I also do this, book review channel because I was already kind of doing it in but in a physical form of well, not physical, typing form of, writing it out in a Word document.
(30:26):
I stopped doing that recently just because, you know, I realized these videos are and audios are essentially
doing that. And it was kind of pointless.
You know, I'm an outlier. I get a lot of enjoyment from doing these, from dissecting it, from
analyzing it, discussing it, getting my thoughts on it particularly out there.
(30:47):
So keep that caveat in mind, you know, for you at home, just the perhaps the the casual reader, not not as interesting and maybe not something that you really wanna do. But if you want to remember things from these books as well, it's highly in instructive for doing that. A couple of other just mini stuff here before we end off,
you know, find your limit per day of reading. Typically, for me, it's one hour in the evening at any given stretch. If I break it up and I read a little bit during the day as well, I could get that out to, like, two to three hours, but that's probably about as much as I'd ever want to spend a day reading.
(31:22):
I've already talked about having multiple books by your side, not just for
switching if one of them
to get rid of, but also just variety. You know, sometimes if you're reading a heavy book,
it's nice to jump over to a a lighter one or, you know, I would used to read a little bit heavier books during the day. And then in the evening, I would indulge in more of the, you know, like,
(31:45):
non fake, sorry, the fiction
and
take transportation into another world.
Accessibility of being able to read everywhere. A Kindle is great for this,
don't know where mine is around here somewhere,
which I'll be using whilst traveling.
But even, you know, just taking a book with you when you go into
a doctor's appointment and you're just sitting there doing nothing, having one in your car, having one on the lounge,
(32:12):
if you just place them in locations where you sit
and do nothing and you want to read more, that's a great way of doing it because you'll be able to just rack up an extra ten minutes and then maybe you're really enjoying it. And, you know, next thing you know, you've you've read for an hour. So
that's if you want to read more and kind of find yourself not doing that.
(32:32):
Find finding people to chat about that with, you know, not really for me doing a book club. I've tried it once or twice, but
you have to read what everyone else wants to read. So,
I'm like I said, I'm pretty particular with my my whole list here. So if it breaks a lot of these, like, I don't want to read a crappy book just to be able to talk about it at a book club.
(32:54):
But it is
fun if you meet someone who is a fellow book enjoyer and you can compare notes or talk about stuff that you enjoyed
or you didn't enjoy things like this.
I enjoyed hearing about that from other people. And then probably most importantly, it's just to have fun, you know,
whatever that takes for you to to do. So it could be picture books, ebooks, audiobooks, although that's not reading a book, I'll die on that hill.
(33:21):
Comics, poetry, you know, whatever floats your boat. I think
if you've gotten this far into how to choose books
sort of place, you probably enjoy reading and
already know
your style and the stuff that you enjoy. And probably the most important thing is just to not let anybody else dictate that your style is the wrong style to read or that, you know, if you enjoy poetry and only poetry and you feel you should be reading other stuff, you feel you should be tackling history books or
(33:52):
things like this. No, like there's no absolutely no reason for that.
You do you read the things and get the most enjoyment out of your reading. I think that's the that's the most important thing. So
we're going to end it here for today. Thank you very much everyone for joining in on this special episode.
And this is a value for value podcast.
I provide all this value upfront and just ask that you return it in some shape or form. Probably my main call out for today would just be give me some book recommendations. What are some of the things you think I would enjoy?
(34:22):
Listen down in the comments below or reach out via social media. That would be, yeah, the most important thing that you could do to provide some value back to this channel other than doing the other stuff. Liking, subscribing,
share amount word-of-mouth, sharing it with a friend, etcetera, etcetera.
I am doing this live. I've got one more live one,
(34:43):
Wednesday 11AM
Australian Eastern Standard Time.
And then I'm going to be traveling for about two months. So
maybe I'll be able to do one or two
just random reviews whilst I'm on the road, but it's gonna be very difficult with all the podcasting stuff and and things like this. I know one will be trying to fill in some of these gaps,
(35:04):
at least for the next couple of weeks,
after I'm I'm traveling. So, yeah, one more review coming up on the book I just mentioned, the
popular delusions and madness of crowds.
And, yeah, then we'll,
we'll hopefully
be
recommencing
a regular schedule probably sometime in August,
(35:25):
is is what I would say.
So, yeah, I hope you are having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world, and ciao for now. Cara now. Bye.
Why don't I read recently published books?
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the mere mortals book reviews special episode here today. I am live as usual
on the 05/07/2025.
(00:20):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I review the hottest trending books of 2025.
Let's go.
Okay. No. None of that coming on today. Definitely none of that. And instead in this special episode,
I'm inspired to do what the title says here, which is going over how I choose books, techniques to find and pre filter enjoyable reads.
(00:41):
So this was actually inspired by a comment from a regular viewer, Carlos underscore AM. So thank you, Carlos.
And, yeah, essentially, I want to go over my method for the stage of before finding a book, how I go about, I guess, like, getting a list or something like this,
ways I actively try to avoid wasting my time on things which won't be useful, aren't useful if I have started them, and some little tricks and tips that I have to get the most out of your reading. So
(01:11):
let's jump into the first section here, finding new books.
You're on the mountain. There's
thousands of books in your library spread out of you. Hundreds of thousands if you're in your, Amazon,
wish list or something like this. How the hell do you go about finding a new book? Well, before
we do this, I think the most,
(01:31):
best way of doing this for myself is a rather informal recommendation
system.
And the most important thing for me is actually just having a list,
a list that on my phone that I write down, but you could probably have this in in paper or somewhere else, a wish list on on Amazon or something like this.
And,
the reason I do this is because every time I hear about a book that kind of piques my interest, I just quickly write it down.
(01:57):
The amount of times that I've thought, oh, yeah. That that sounds like something interesting. I'll I'll remember that. I'll look that up later. And then it's just gone is
too much to count, hence why I have a list on my phone.
And now this is not a commitment to reading.
It is purely just as a first step in this kind of informal
(02:19):
searching process for finding a new book to read or something that I would like to read. Currently, I have about 200 to 250
just written on my phone. Pretty simple enough. Just the name of the the book and the author, and she probably don't even need that. Just the name of the book would usually be enough,
that I kind of add and subtract from over time.
(02:39):
It's not like I said, it's very informal. So the stuff at the the top of the list is the more recent things that I've heard.
And I will sometimes go further down the list trying to find
perhaps ones that are just interesting or that I've been looking at for a while. The further down the list it goes, like, the more
likely it is that I won't ever get around to reading it
(03:02):
just because I've perused this list so many times and it's just never jumped out at me.
A good thing to look out for is if you accidentally write the same book down there twice. This happened before the beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch for me. So that's one that I'll I'll try and get to it at some point in the nearer future.
And all of this, I guess, is just a a way of
(03:23):
getting a a base set to to work from.
Now how do you actually find them, though? That's, you know, sure. It's nice to have the the list, but what what can you actually do, to to get them onto the list?
Well, the first one for me is recommendations
from people, and,
this is from people who know me, who know that I like to read.
(03:46):
So this is, you know, reviewers in the in the comments or commenters
of people in real life who recommend a book directly to me.
And,
you know, many of the times I've read stuff from the comments, which has just been an absolute blast. East of Eden comes to mind. I believe Johnny,
was the one who recommended that at some point, and it's not a surefire way.
(04:10):
Another recent book that I reviewed was the Tao Pu and the Tay of Piglet. You know, that was a bit rubbish.
There was some enjoyable aspects to it, but overall, I was like, you know, that
would my life,
have is my life significantly better for reading it? Not particularly.
It was interesting, though, and that this will touch upon
(04:32):
why maybe just not enjoyable is the best way of not sorting for exactly what you're looking for. Because you can be looking for other things which
are highly valuable to yourself, but aren't necessarily a enjoyable read.
So I tend to value this
system
more highly than others. If someone recommends me a book, it's more likely to get read in the near future
(04:55):
and
to stay higher up on my kind of informal recommendation list
just because it is suited to me. Someone has gone out of their way to recommend something. So that is one of the first ways. The next would just be hearing about a good book in general.
Once again, there's many different ways you can go about doing this. Sometimes I've just gone to the, you know, top 100 books of all time sort of list.
(05:20):
And
typically these will have been filtered by age. And so you will find if it's over all time, you're gonna get recommendations
from things that were, you know,
are just absolute gems from, like, two hundred years ago, for example, or how were super highly influential,
maybe not an enjoyable read, but even something like
(05:42):
The Prince by Machiavelli
is really, really interesting for the historical context of the book. The things that promotes in the book
are a completely different worldview that you're very unlikely to encounter in regular everyday people.
These are the type of things which I really look for and jump out at me.
If it's all in a more kind of modern context,
(06:05):
I quite enjoys,
I guess, resourcing books from
people who
I consume,
like media content from.
Mostly for me, this is from podcasts.
And so I typically will
take a recommendation if it's from someone
highly knowledgeable in a particular field and they recommend the book. A recent example of this would be Lynn Alden, and she's very good with financial stuff. And when she recommends a financial book, that's something that I'm like more likely to pay attention to.
(06:38):
And yet I won't read her very own book that she's written. Why is this? We'll talk about that very shortly.
One thing to be wary of, I've noticed, is when people
talk about books,
it's got to be them bringing them it up rather than being asked a direct question like, what's your favorite book of all time?
Because I've noticed this trend, which is that when you're asked, what's your favorite book of all time? Most people are not book reviewers like myself
(07:07):
or
that interested in the
I guess,
they they don't think about it as deeply perhaps as, as I do. Not trying to
be non humble here. It's it's more that,
when someone is asked that question, typically, they'll just try and think of any book that comes to mind. And usually, it's the one that they've read recently. And so if you ask someone like, you know, what's your favorite book of all time?
(07:32):
I would say about more than 50% of the time, they will just list a book that they've read within the last couple of months, which they enjoyed,
which kind of defeats the purpose of, you know, your favorite book of all time.
Because that question also implies, like, that someone is a pretty voracious reader, that they read a lot, that they think about the books,
(07:54):
and have, like, a
a rating system for themselves of what they enjoyed or didn't enjoy, what they got the most out of.
You know, if someone asked me what's my favorite book of all time,
I do have an answer if they,
but I would want to ask in return, like, the most enjoyable read of book of all time, the one that was most impactful to me that changed my life the most, my life the most. All of these sorts of things can be
(08:21):
the, you know, the best book of all time,
but with a different context and and things like this. I I have in my head, you know, I can list off my favorite nonfiction versus fiction books of all time.
And so,
this is something I've I've noticed a lot. And so if someone brings it up just while talking about a topic,
that is much more highly valuable than being asked the direct question.
(08:46):
Because if you wanna see this in action
in the mere mortals conversations, I have no idea what number.
I think the guy's name was Frankie Lee. I asked him this, and he did this exactly. He just he just listed a book that was he'd read in the last, you know, like, week or two,
which is why I stopped asking that question when I was doing the, interviews or the conversations on the,
(09:06):
mere mortals,
conversations podcast.
You might be thinking, oh, other book channels. That would be a great place for recommendations because those are the people who rate them, who read a lot, and
that would be something that I would enjoy and that I could, find,
immensely valuable. And you would be wrong.
I find them generally useless, to be honest, and have really only learned YouTube techniques
(09:31):
in terms of thumbnails, in terms of
how to start a video of what you should be doing and applied almost zero of them, to be honest, because I don't really wanna play the YouTube game.
And
the main problem,
I find from other book review channels is that they either have a very niche genre like fantasy
(09:51):
or true crime or something like this,
which,
you know, they're gonna be just reviewing all of these types of books, and I have a bit more of
a widespread
taste,
or they are producing a lot of content. And so they reading, you know, 200 plus books a year.
You know what a lot of book review channels you'll find,
(10:13):
my my favorite book from August
2024
or something, and they've read eight or something like that. It's just like, Jesus Christ. You know, these people are just powering through these books. So,
obviously, they they enjoy doing it.
Perhaps some of that is for the content. I know there is
a,
(10:33):
like, bookstagram,
for example, you'll find people who set a target of reading 365
books a year, a k a a book a day, which is absolutely bonkers.
And, you know,
if you're focused on a goal based thing,
the
recommendations you're going to get from them, I find I just don't I I haven't connected with anything they've said the way they've talked about things.
(10:59):
There's nothing that's really jumped out at me as being going, Oh, wow. Yeah, that this, you know, person who reads a lot of books, they have a really, really good,
view on this particular thing or that particular thing.
The reason I'm doing this special episode, for example, is because I had a bit of a gap. I'm reading a rather large book at the moment.
(11:19):
Charles Mackay is I think it's popular delusions and the madness of crowds.
And
I was just like, I'm not going to be able to finish this
in in time for for this episode this week.
So I'll do this special episode.
And in the months coming, I'm not going to be releasing much. And one will be because I kind of need to stock up. I'm going to be traveling. I'll have less time for this.
(11:43):
I probably read around 40 ish books a year. So obviously, that's not enough for
content every single week.
And
I think this is a,
I wouldn't want to do a review on a channel, for example, of a book that I haven't fully read through.
And,
you know, maybe I have done that once or twice where it's I've read most of it and it's just tailed out or something. But
(12:07):
by and large,
I just haven't found, other book review channels to to be that great. And if you want some examples,
better than food,
I think his name's Jack Reads or something like this.
I read a there was a couple of, like, Spanish type ones I was getting into.
Honestly, a lot of them have a very similar
(12:28):
variation where it is a particular niche channel,
just doing book reviews. A slight exception to this rule
are kind of people who I admire
for other things. And then I find out that they've got a bit of a reading habit and
have, like, a book list of some sort.
People like Roosh V, Chris Williamson, Jace from Gypsy Tales, Eduardo Lima,
(12:51):
They typically
are not a book review channel, but they just have a little side section where they do this.
And so, you know, usually, these will be blogs or videos,
and I will selectively choose bits and pieces from them because
it's, you know, book reviewing is not their main thing, funnily enough.
And funnily enough, I won't even really
(13:13):
watch their videos
more than like a minute or two
just to get a general vibe of what it's about,
because I don't wanna taint my own interpretation
or ruin or affect it,
when I do this. So,
unless I know I won't read the book unless it's something where I'm like, yeah. I'll I'll see what they have to say about it, but it just doesn't interest me.
(13:35):
One, for example, has done a review of Treasure Island by, I think it's Robert Stevenson, someone like that.
And
I've yet to watch that review. And the reason for that is because I also want to read that book at some point, and I I don't want his interpretation
affecting mine.
So those are a couple of ways that I personally have
(13:56):
find books
and
will use this informal recommendation system to to go through,
to go through. And then we come to the next stage, which is, the pre filtering of these. So I've got a general kind of list, but, you know,
I don't really know much about the book. I don't know what it's particularly about, how long it is,
(14:18):
who the author is, how it's written, all of these sorts of things. So
what are some ways that I can try and filter and get rid of the the useless stuff,
which
occurs both before and during this process of having having lists? So Carlos
AM, as I mentioned, inspired this. So I wanna, talk about his his comment. He was saying, interesting. I usually research a lot before I spend my time with a book. And even then, I had to quit a couple of times. I would like to hear why you don't pick new books I've been recently disappointed upon. Then I said I'd get back to him in the next special episode, and I think I forgot or there were some others coming up. So first of all, apologies, Carlos. I'm getting to it now.
(14:58):
My bad. And, the companion to this episode right now would actually be the one titled Don't Read Everything, where I went over
times where I've had a book in my possession, which I thought had a bit of potential,
and then the reasons for why I didn't actually end up reading it with a lot of specific examples.
(15:19):
And this was due to, you know, the style of it, the length of the book, the structure,
how it was written, the topic it was on, things like this. So,
you know, getting into, I guess, pre filtering,
why do I have this general rule of of no new books?
It's for several reasons.
(15:40):
As I mentioned, time, I think, is a great filter. It will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you
that you
won't be able to do when it's a book that's recently published. And when I say recently published, I mean in like the last ten years,
if it to this day is relevant and it was written one hundred years ago or is of some interest,
(16:04):
I think that shows that it has some value.
Old books can have their own difficulties,
especially with language. So things like Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes or The Wealth of Nathan Nations by Adam Smith, for example,
or obscure references.
But there must be some reason why they have retained attention over such a long time period.
(16:27):
You can even get lucky
if it is a classic or has a classic label,
by simply just seeing that.
One time I was in the library and I was just perusing and I saw something that had a classic labeled It's like, oh, yeah. I pulled it out. It wasn't too big as well. So it was like, this is interesting. And that turned out to be, Lost Horizon by James Hilton, which is probably still in my top 10.
(16:50):
And that was, you know, just purely because
time had done the filtering for me.
If I had used a similar method and just picked out any book from the library, the chances of it being in my top 10 were would be significantly
significantly
less.
On the flip side of this, modern books tend to follow short term trends. I've noticed a lot. So
(17:15):
authors will write to what is hot at the current moment,
and incentives mean that they kind of need to pump out one to two books a year
to, I guess, you know, make money and things like this, which I think is the opposite of someone really honing their craft and being very careful in particular with their words.
(17:36):
The
economy of of,
the
economics is probably a better word of bookselling
is
so
hard,
from what I've from what I gather, I've never tried to sell a book
that you need to spend probably more of your time on the marketing of it rather than on the actual writing of it.
(17:59):
And so
a couple other things with the newness
science books become out of date rather quickly.
And so, you know, something like, some of Malcolm Gladwell
work hasn't aged well because he's written about a study
that, you know, Freakonomics did or something like this. And then it turns out, you know, I was just a biased study and and wasn't so great.
(18:22):
So,
we already live in the time period,
that we're in. So there's no kind of nostalgia of someone's writing about, you know, a classic of 2025
that people in fifty years will be like, damn, that's so reflective of the 2020, you know, the social media period or something like that.
We're already living in it. So it's not that amazing, exciting or something like this.
(18:45):
On the Converse side, if someone is writing a book
nowadays about the Wild West or about,
you know, eighteen hundreds England, well, they're
kind of making stuff up. They never actually lived through it. So you don't get that benefit of the historical,
I guess, accuracy or the feel of that time period because they're kind of trying to reconstruct it.
(19:09):
So look, are all new books
trash or anything like this? No, it's it's just purely for myself.
The percentage of new books that I've read
have been very disappointing in terms to the percentage of of good ends that I find in a much longer
(19:29):
time period. So, you know, things that are more than twenty years old, for example. So this is why I particularly do it.
The other problem is the
amount of books
in creation today
is vastly, vastly dwarfing,
anything that anyone could ever read, obviously. But also in comparison, you know, there was probably more books published in the last twenty
(19:53):
after the February than there has been across all of history,
especially if you're including ebooks in this as well.
So there's so much more stuff to sort through that
if you're looking for something and it's something new,
it's it's just a really, really hard I personally find. So typically, you know, ten plus years,
(20:15):
fifteen plus years is my general rule.
I'll bend this rule for certain topics if it's a history book. So if it's written about history and it was only published
in the last ten years, I'll read that.
Or if there is a really particular
niche topic I want to explore
(20:35):
and that is kind of currently
relevant or something that I think will be interesting,
you know, something along the lines of maybe
nuclear
would would be interesting. So typically it would be the history of nuclear
power or nuclear bombs or something like that. And then maybe the book would have a little
extra section right at the end about what's to come, something like that.
(21:00):
Usually, I guess you'll you'll notice that in the finding section, I didn't really talk about genre or topics.
And that I think that's because I can really enjoy
any and all.
It doesn't really matter
where it
what it's about.
But I don't usually fall into the series or worlds type of thing. So
(21:23):
it's very unlikely that I'll ever read
an eight part series.
When I was a child, I used to,
for sure. And I'd read the Delta request or the Artemis Fowls
or,
I've forgotten the spy name. Maybe once in the comments you might be able to remember as well.
And
Alex McNabb, I used to love his spy stuff, but nowadays
(21:47):
it's been rare
that I've really found something kind of going like I want to read eight books in the series.
And that's just because I
I don't know. My tastes just tend to vary. I don't like getting stuck into one thing. You'll notice I might have a trend. So for example,
recently,
a recent spate
(22:07):
of open source and financial type books has been taking my fancy.
But yeah, there's nothing that I generally won't read.
I'll I'll read stuff which is not typically intended for males or
a typical male thing, rom com, for example, or romance
books. You know, I'll read Thomas Hardy. Sure. That's, that's I find that interesting.
(22:29):
It's more certain styles I tend to avoid.
Critiques of politics or religion or sex or sexual morals
or critiques of a current time period,
even if it's like from a time period in the past.
Less interesting.
True crime revelry of serial killers, definitely
(22:50):
something that doesn't particularly the gruesomeness
is just a bit too morbid for me.
Experimental styles,
typically, I've found to be trash,
with the occasional gem. So, you know, for every Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sienna Nanios de Soderad,
there is 10
James Joyce's or Julio Cortazas,
(23:11):
which are just
absolute nonsense to me. So that's kind of my
little
section there on on the pre filtering them.
What are some things you can do to get the most out of them?
Well,
here's some just tips to get the most out of your reading. Number one is drop early. Drop a book if you're not enjoying it.
(23:31):
If it's
if you're like 20% of the way through and you're finding it a slog, if you're doing like like the old blinking, almost falling asleep while reading,
That's not a good sign.
And
just don't torture yourself.
There are more books that you are interested in, you know, 250
books. I said I've got on my on my list.
(23:53):
40 books a year. You know, that's what, six, six years of just reading right there.
And I'm continually adding to this list.
There's I'm not gonna be able to read everything that is mildly interesting to me. So
there is value in dropping something that you're not enjoying to go onto something that you do enjoy.
(24:18):
And a good backup, I would say, is to have
multiple books with you. So,
for example,
Lee Kuan Yew is
the
the history of kind of Singapore and how one man changed that country.
I do find that interesting. I've been meaning to look into him for a while. There's a couple of books on him. I'll probably grab two or three of them. And,
(24:40):
you know, one will be an autobiography. One will be someone writing about him, and I'll I'll maybe just test them out and see which one of them I prefer and then read that.
If you're
doing something where you're like, oh, I'm not sure if this I'll enjoy this. Have, like, a backup author who you almost always love. For me, that's John Steinbeck or Mark Twain.
(25:02):
And so if I'm reading something and I've got that beside me, well, you know, then I've got a Mark Twain book which I can jump over to
if, if I am noticing like, this one's starting to drag and I'm not really enjoying it.
All of this sounds very expensive,
buying multiple books and things like this, which is indeed correct, and why I almost extensively
use a library.
(25:24):
You know, I used to read
through everything that I started.
I've stopped largely doing that. One,
I believe maybe still does this, but probably is getting a bit better at it. I beg you not to do this. This is it's foolishness for whatever. You know, I get the
OCD nature of trying
(25:45):
to complete everything that you've started, but
there is no shame. There is no there's no it's not that there's no shame. There's no benefit to going through. And other than what being able to claim that you read something.
Sure. For very long ones, you might have to do a bit of slogging.
The Leo Tolstoy
is out there, you know, the war and pieces, you're gonna have to slug through a bit.
(26:09):
But there is
something to be said about not
torturing yourself continually
just for the aspect of saying that you've read a book. If your goal is to read three sixty five books a year,
it's it's a it's not a great goal to have personally, I would say not a great use of your time.
(26:29):
Now, this might sound hypocritical
because I regularly review books, which I will rate
in the zero to five range.
And
that rating system,
it's hard because it's kind of like trying to encompass everything.
So if you don't know, my rating system in general is from
(26:50):
zero to 10. I don't really give zeros. I don't give 10. So technically, I guess 0.5 to 9.5.
And
I
will find that there's things which are worth reading, which
are not great books or things that you don't enjoy
or that you disagree with.
But they might have a historical perspective to it. You could find value from it. It could be a textbook that's useful for your job. You know, there's plenty of different reasons why
(27:19):
it's worth reading something which you don't actually enjoy that much.
It's the needless torturing in the other section, which I was I was particularly talking about. So, for example,
I read Mein Kampf quite a few while,
jeez, probably a decade ago, if I had to guess, and I found it very instructive
(27:39):
on how to kill Jews. No. No. Okay. No. It's actually not instructive for that. I don't think he This was, when when Hitler was, in jail
and certainly not had any power to do any of the awful stuff,
that ended up happening,
on his orders.
No. It was very instructive because you got to see into the mind of a person
(27:59):
before
he got power and you can go, oh, okay. So if someone's displaying these types of traits or saying these types of things,
these these are the type of and then they get into power,
that's very worrisome. And you should be worried about someone displaying certain type of things like this.
Overall, that book, you know, what stood out to me, I just remember how poorly written it was. Just the
(28:24):
stent sentence structure,
the way that he
tried to communicate, I found awful. I was reading the English translation, not the German original. So, you know, maybe that had a bit of a impact to it.
But there's plenty of things like that where,
you know, I'd I'd estimate I still make the mistake of maybe 5%
(28:44):
of the time, 10% of the time of reading something which I probably should have dropped,
you know, partly for my OCD, partly for the channel.
It's not great. I shouldn't do it. I still do it a little bit. But getting that down to a manageable level is, I think, very,
a very useful
(29:05):
goal to aim for.
Taking notes whilst reading, I think, is is quite instructive as well. Bookmarking pages is is Juan's preferred style.
I don't really do that. Please don't deface a book. If you've got it from the library, the amount that with under underlining and scribbles on it is is,
depressing,
unless it's your own, of course. I have a notes app. I use Google Keep and just jot down thoughts and collect them together for these reviews. For example,
(29:33):
I used to keep a summary on a word document
for many, many years of the stuff that I was reading, probably from, like, 2013
to 2024.
I used to do this, and
some of that was rather extensive and it was essentially a book review. I could probably just go to some of those notes and just read them straight out, have to change up the
(29:57):
the intro and the ending, of course, but the meat of it would would still be very,
have a
a thematic
introspection
of
of, essentially, a review.
And
that was very helpful for me, and I greatly enjoyed doing it. Hence, why I also do this, book review channel because I was already kind of doing it in but in a physical form of well, not physical, typing form of, writing it out in a Word document.
(30:26):
I stopped doing that recently just because, you know, I realized these videos are and audios are essentially
doing that. And it was kind of pointless.
You know, I'm an outlier. I get a lot of enjoyment from doing these, from dissecting it, from
analyzing it, discussing it, getting my thoughts on it particularly out there.
(30:47):
So keep that caveat in mind, you know, for you at home, just the perhaps the the casual reader, not not as interesting and maybe not something that you really wanna do. But if you want to remember things from these books as well, it's highly in instructive for doing that. A couple of other just mini stuff here before we end off,
you know, find your limit per day of reading. Typically, for me, it's one hour in the evening at any given stretch. If I break it up and I read a little bit during the day as well, I could get that out to, like, two to three hours, but that's probably about as much as I'd ever want to spend a day reading.
(31:22):
I've already talked about having multiple books by your side, not just for
switching if one of them
to get rid of, but also just variety. You know, sometimes if you're reading a heavy book,
it's nice to jump over to a a lighter one or, you know, I would used to read a little bit heavier books during the day. And then in the evening, I would indulge in more of the, you know, like,
(31:45):
non fake, sorry, the fiction
and
take transportation into another world.
Accessibility of being able to read everywhere. A Kindle is great for this,
don't know where mine is around here somewhere,
which I'll be using whilst traveling.
But even, you know, just taking a book with you when you go into
a doctor's appointment and you're just sitting there doing nothing, having one in your car, having one on the lounge,
(32:12):
if you just place them in locations where you sit
and do nothing and you want to read more, that's a great way of doing it because you'll be able to just rack up an extra ten minutes and then maybe you're really enjoying it. And, you know, next thing you know, you've you've read for an hour. So
that's if you want to read more and kind of find yourself not doing that.
(32:32):
Find finding people to chat about that with, you know, not really for me doing a book club. I've tried it once or twice, but
you have to read what everyone else wants to read. So,
I'm like I said, I'm pretty particular with my my whole list here. So if it breaks a lot of these, like, I don't want to read a crappy book just to be able to talk about it at a book club.
(32:54):
But it is
fun if you meet someone who is a fellow book enjoyer and you can compare notes or talk about stuff that you enjoyed
or you didn't enjoy things like this.
I enjoyed hearing about that from other people. And then probably most importantly, it's just to have fun, you know,
whatever that takes for you to to do. So it could be picture books, ebooks, audiobooks, although that's not reading a book, I'll die on that hill.
(33:21):
Comics, poetry, you know, whatever floats your boat. I think
if you've gotten this far into how to choose books
sort of place, you probably enjoy reading and
already know
your style and the stuff that you enjoy. And probably the most important thing is just to not let anybody else dictate that your style is the wrong style to read or that, you know, if you enjoy poetry and only poetry and you feel you should be reading other stuff, you feel you should be tackling history books or
(33:52):
things like this. No, like there's no absolutely no reason for that.
You do you read the things and get the most enjoyment out of your reading. I think that's the that's the most important thing. So
we're going to end it here for today. Thank you very much everyone for joining in on this special episode.
And this is a value for value podcast.
I provide all this value upfront and just ask that you return it in some shape or form. Probably my main call out for today would just be give me some book recommendations. What are some of the things you think I would enjoy?
(34:22):
Listen down in the comments below or reach out via social media. That would be, yeah, the most important thing that you could do to provide some value back to this channel other than doing the other stuff. Liking, subscribing,
share amount word-of-mouth, sharing it with a friend, etcetera, etcetera.
I am doing this live. I've got one more live one,
(34:43):
Wednesday 11AM
Australian Eastern Standard Time.
And then I'm going to be traveling for about two months. So
maybe I'll be able to do one or two
just random reviews whilst I'm on the road, but it's gonna be very difficult with all the podcasting stuff and and things like this. I know one will be trying to fill in some of these gaps,
(35:04):
at least for the next couple of weeks,
after I'm I'm traveling. So, yeah, one more review coming up on the book I just mentioned, the
popular delusions and madness of crowds.
And, yeah, then we'll,
we'll hopefully
be
recommencing
a regular schedule probably sometime in August,
(35:25):
is is what I would say.
So, yeah, I hope you are having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world, and ciao for now. Cara now. Bye.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.