Reading books: quality over quantity

Out of the 11 books in my this year’s reading list, I already read five books in the last few years and some just the last year:

1. What I learned by losing a million dollars.
2. The Psychology of Money.
3. Atomic Habits.
4. Style: the basics of clarity and grace.
5. The Customer Service Survival Kit.

I am going to re-read them all this year.

The year-end lists of books read by some people I follow are really long! And I only read a handful of books for the past two years (2019 and 2020). While I am cool with the amount of reading I do, I must admit, at some corner of my mind I had the nagging feeling of having to read more. Nevertheless, when I made a tentative list of eleven books to read in 2021, I included the above five books that I already read in the years past.

I felt validated last week when I read the blog post of my ex-colleague and an excellent human Jeremey, titled On Re-Reading and The Book Quantity Trap. I particularly liked this quote in Jeremey’s post:

A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

That validated my thoughts on reading and re-reading a few, but good books. And today’s meditation of The Daily Stoic emphasized the same point.

What if, when it came to your reading and learning, you prioritized quality over quantity?

What if you read the few great books deeply instead of briefly skimming all the new books? Your shelves might be emptier, but your brain and life would be better.

May 20th page of The Daily Stoic

Here’s to reading and re-reading a few but what I believe are great books!