No new books

no new books, no new books, no, no new

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” - Haruki Murakami

I love that quote. But who the hell reads books these days? It’s hard to say, but plenty of people sure do publish them.

Did you know that four million books will be published this year alone? That’s insane. Now here’s the four million dollar question — which ones will be worth reading?

I don’t pretend to know. And I wouldn’t put my faith in the almighty New York Times Best Sellers list either (which is a pay to play scam).

It’s a fools errand to try to decipher the gold from the junk. So what’s the solution? Is there one? Or should we just throw in the towel and stop reading books altogether?

It’s tempting to hang up our cleats and step away from the book reading game once and for all. I mean, we’ve got endless sources of ideas to binge on with news articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, and Tiktoks flooding our senses like Hurricane Idalia. So is there a compelling case for books? Especially old ones?

New ideas are contained in old books. So in order to have ideas most people aren’t having, we have to read books most people aren’t reading.

That’s why I’m creating a new personal rule that is worth considering if interesting ideas are important to you: Don’t read books published after Y2K.

Unless you are OK with having the same ideas and thinking the same thoughts as the mindless masses. If so, then go right on ahead and keep reading whatever is being shilled as the latest best seller.

But if that repulses you as much as it does me, then why not let Father Time determine what we read instead of The New York Times?

Time is the ultimate sifter of interesting ideas. If something was written five hundred years ago and is still read today, chances are good that it will be read five hundred years from now (the lindy effect).

But for a book published today, who’s to say it will be read tomorrow? Or next year? Much less a decade from now?

That’s why my current reading lineup contains books published in the years: 1987, 1936 and 0065 AD (not a typo).

And guess what? The ideas buried within those old crinkly pages are still just as relevant, if not more so, now.

But here’s the best part — there’s a nonzero possibility that I’m the only person in the world who’s reading those three old books right now. Which gives me a nonzero opportunity to have ideas nobody else is having.

Our ancestors already did the filtering for us. So why not trust them?

That’s why I now refuse to read any books published in this millennium. Sure, I may miss out on the next Atomic Habits or Harry Potter series, but I’ll be just fine sitting down with my beaten and battered, coffee stain covered, copies of Letters from a Stoic and Brave New World.

I think what Drake meant to rap was:

No new books, no new books, no new books, no, no new.

Still here with my day one authors so you hear me say…

No new books, no new books, no new books, no, no new.

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

PS - I’d love to hear why I’m completely off base in the comments below.