Books
I love reading.
I have very fond memories of me as a kid, reading at night in my bed before going to sleep. I even remember some of the first books I read, like Il Fantasma di Sherlock Holmes, by Kathryn Lasky (original version: Double Trouble Squared) or La Quercia dell'Impiccato, by E.W. Hildick (original version: The Memory Tap).
I remember when I discovered the series of Libro Game "Street Warriors" by Joe Dever.
Libro Game (or Gamebook) allow the reader to participate in the story by making decisions and branching the narrative along various paths, through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages (more on this on Wikipedia).
Given how much I liked reading (or playing?) gamebooks, it's no surprise that I love videogames (or maybe is the other way around...).
My Want to Read list gets longer every day and I buy way more books than I can read.
I recently discovered a Japanese word that describes this behavior: "Tsundoku", which - according to Wikipedia - means "to pile up" (tsun) "things to read" (doku). I pile books up alright.
My Want to Read list achieves 2 purposes:
keep track of the books that caught my curiosity and I would like to read at some point in the future, and
delay the purchase of books that I was going to buy (inopportunely) there and then, helping me to save some money in the short term.
For some reason, adding the book to my Want to Read list mitigates my desire to purchase such book. I guess this too is a form of Tsundoku: after all, I am still piling up things to read. I just I do it virtually.
Anyway, in 2016 I started keeping track of the books I read and of my favourite books.
My rating system is fairly straightforward:
5 stars for the books that are well written and easy to read and understand, that are full of information that I did not know before reading them and that offer new and enriching points of view.
I reserve this rating for the books that I think everyone should read at least once.
4 stars for the books that are full of informative content but (like a 5 star book) but are not as fluid and easy to read.
A great example to understand this distinction is "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. In my list this is a 4 stars book. It is a very well known book and a seminal work, full of new and enriching concepts. However, the writing style makes it heavy and difficult to read. For this reason, I gave it 4 stars.
In contrast, "The Art of Thinking Clearly" by Rolf Dobelli is a 5 stars book. I read it recently and it contains the same concepts as "Thinking Fast and Slow" but they are presented with a smooth and to the point writing style, that lets readers breeze through it. For this reason, I gave it 5 stars.
I reserve this rating to the books that are definitely worth reading , even if they do not offer the best reading experience.
3 stars books are borderline - you can read them if you have no 4 or 5 star book left to read.
These are books that that might have been well written or might present some interesting concepts, but nothing "mind blowing".
I It's possibly a good refresh of things I already knew or Since I mostly read non-fiction, if a book does not contain a new concept or a different way of thinking about things, it's not worth reading.
A great example of this is "For the Win" by Werbach, Kevin.
I reserve this rating to the books that are definitely worth reading , even if they do not offer the best reading experience.
2 stars:
1 star:
