Imo, 99.9% books aren't worth reading. If a book's value can be captured within its cliff notes, then it should have been a long form blog to begin with.
Of the 0.1% worth reading, a majority are hard to actually finish. IE. Textbooks. Informative but doesn't become more than the sum of its parts.
This leaves the ones that can be read, and are worth reading. The absolute best. These books have a few common traits.
1. Literary value akin to music. The sheer joy of the act of reading. Pure entertaintment.
2. Philosophy. Everything is philosophy. But good philosophy is felt through a book before it is even stated.
3. Anecdotes that hit beyond standard tropes. Unique anecdotes either in scale, investment or anomalous structure that carry you to the philosophical conclusion.
4. Compression and focus : what not to write and how express it. Often, this is the biggest shortcoming of almost good books written a compilation of great ideas.
I have consistently found these 4 to be the best way to evaluate the value of a book for me. Everything else is secondary.
99.9% is about right, though for most people it's all but certainly generous to the books.
There are ~40 -- 150 million books published in total.[1]
Your reading lifetime is roughly 4000 weeks.[2] Figure how many books you read per week, and you've got a sense of how what you might be able to read fits into the total.
Using the lower bound of 40 million books:
- 4000 / 40 million is 0.01%. Which would put 99.99% of all books being not worth reading. Note that most people don't read a book a week.
- Tyler Cowan's 5 books a day works out to 140,000 in our 4,000 week lifetime, or 0.35%. That leaves 99.65% of all books not worth reading. I suspect this is an ambitious pace.
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Notes:
1. US Library of Congress catalogues about 40 million individual titles. Google estimated some years back that about 140 million books had ever been published.
2. 4,000 weeks is 76 years, 7 months, and 28 days. If you begin reading seriously at about age 10, that gets you to age 85. Give or take.
Maybe a cliche around here but the book that popped into my mind when reading your list is Godel, Escher, Bach. Maybe not part 4 but the first three.
This book has a very specific thesis but the way it’s introduced is artful and perhaps even literary. The revelations sort of sneak up on you, planted as seeds and tended quietly
The closest has been the book I'm reading (and should have finished by now) - "Why the west rules for now". No book drives the 'geography is destiny' point home as well as this book. It is one of the rare textbooks that is a delight to read. Lastly, the anecdotes highlight the 'history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes' adage in a uniquely convincing manner. It is one of the few books I see recommended on both center-left (r/askhistorians) and center-right (IDW) platforms.
Catch-22 is another such delightful book without a single fault. It is a cliché now, but it must have been a revelation to see a book capture such a fundamental idea so perfectly through anecdotes. No wonder the title of book became a phrase to represent the phenomenon itself.
Somewhat disappointingly for hipsters, most English language classics are classics for a reason. There are plenty of discerning readers out there, so good books with moderate resources eventually reach a level of deserved critical acclaim. That being said, there is still a lot of underappreciated foreign-language literature yet to be fully appreciated.
Yup. This is why posts like “I read 100 books last year and this is how I did it” are just dumb. Took me years to understand this. When it comes to books, quality over quantity is the way to go
This leaves the ones that can be read, and are worth reading. The absolute best. These books have a few common traits.
1. Literary value akin to music. The sheer joy of the act of reading. Pure entertaintment.
2. Philosophy. Everything is philosophy. But good philosophy is felt through a book before it is even stated.
3. Anecdotes that hit beyond standard tropes. Unique anecdotes either in scale, investment or anomalous structure that carry you to the philosophical conclusion.
4. Compression and focus : what not to write and how express it. Often, this is the biggest shortcoming of almost good books written a compilation of great ideas.
I have consistently found these 4 to be the best way to evaluate the value of a book for me. Everything else is secondary.