Tidy those tomes, and more book tips
I thought I’d follow up last week’s column on tips on how to read more with five more ways to get your read on: 5. Go Dewey Decimal. How do you organize your books? By colour? Shape? Random piles? There’s a reason every library is organized in the Dewey Decimal system. It makes sense. The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is the most widely used classification system in the world used at libraries in more than 140 countries. All books fall into categories around psychology and religion and science and art and everything. What’s the benefit? You make connections. You see where your big gaps are. (I couldn’t believe I only had three books in all of religion until I realized I only had two books in all of science! Who is Jesus? What is a tree? Don’t ask me!) I spent one Saturday putting my books in order of the Dewey Decimal system and, in addition to scratching a deep organizational itch, I now find books faster, feel like my reading is more purposeful, and am more engaged in what I read, because I can sort of feel how it snaps into my brain. What tools do you need to do it? Just two! I bookmarked classify.oclc.org to look up Dewey Decimal numbers for any books that don’t have a DDC code on the inside jacket and I use the Decimator app to look up what that number means. Oh, and I use a pencil to write the number and category inside the jacket. So three things with the pencil. That’s key.
4. Listen to my podcast 3 Books. A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies … and the man who never reads lives only one. Yes, I stole that quote from Game of Thrones. But that quote begs a great followup question: Which thousand lives will you live? The average lifespan is about 1,000 months long (Really!). So it’s important to find the right books. That’s why I started a podcast called 3 Books with Neil Pasricha. Over the next 15 years, I’ll be releasing a new podcast every full moon and new moon on an epic quest to find and read the 1,000 most formative books in the world. How? I will ask 333 of the most inspiring people I can find what three books most shaped their lives. I will read the books, then interview each person and discuss the big themes related to their chosen books. Authors David Sedaris and Judy Blume, Chris Anderson of TED, and the world’s greatest Uber driver are among the 22 guests I’ve interviewed so far.
3. Don’t read on a device that does other things. When I interviewed bestselling author Seth Godin, he told me research shows that we don’t read best on devices where we have the ability to multi-task. If we can be interrupted, alerted or notified, we will be. This is not good for diving deep into new worlds. Only printed books let you be the full director of the show, after all. No voice replaces your mental voice, no formatting or display screen affects the artistic intentions of the writer. So what do I suggest? Real books. Real pages. On dead trees. 2. Find your Sarah. My favourite bookseller of all-time is Sarah Ramsey of Another Story Bookshop in Roncesvalles. I walk in, I start blabbering, I start confessing, I share what I’m struggling with, and she hmms and hahs and sizes me up as we wander around the store talking for half an hour. A good book after my divorce, a good book before my trip to Australia, a good book as I struggle with my kids. And then I walk out with an armload of books that completely fit my emotional state, where I want or need to grow, and those that resonate with me on a deeper level. If you believe humans are the best algorithm (like I do), then walking into your local independent bookstore, sizing up the staff picks wall to see who’s similar to you and then asking them for personal picks is a great way to speed you up. 1. Triple your churn rate. I realized that for years I’d thought of my bookshelf as a fixed and somewhat artistic object: There it is, sitting by the flower vases. Now I think of it as a dynamic organism. Always moving. Always changing. In a given week, I probably add about five books to the shelf and get rid of three or four. Books come in through free lending libraries in our neighbourhood, a fantastic used bookstore, local indie and chain stores and, of course, online outlets. Books go out when we pass them to friends, sell them to the used bookstore or drop them off at the lending library. This dynamism means I’m always walking over to the shelf, never just walking by it. As a result, I read more.
Neil Pasricha is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Awesome and The Happiness Equation. He researches, writes and speaks about living intentionally. Read his articles at www.neil.blog/newsletter. Follow him on Twitter: @NeilPasricha