Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsCream
...I always feel anxiety about if the book I am reading is a waste of time...
So how do you find the nice books which worth reading?
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Define "worth" and "waste of time".
Is reading Stephen King, John Katzenbach and other fiction books a "waste of time", since they don't broaden your horizon?
Does "worth reading" mean, you have to have an enigmatic life-changing experience?
Or is something "worth reading", just for being entertained?
If the latter is your point of view, I have a simple rule of thumb:
If I want to be entertained, it has to happen early in a book.
I found: If I'm not into the book after a few pages (actually, most of the times after the first paragraph already) I rarely am afterwards.
So I simply start reading and either go on or forget about the book after a few minutes.
I simply buy all the books that seem interesting and certainly fail in 2 out of 3. But even if I consider the price of 3 books for each one read, reading still is an extremely cheap hobby.
€ 30 for, let's say, 10 hours of reading.
Even if I include the price of the reader over 3 years, I end up with less than € 5 per hour. Probably even way less.
That's why I'm quite careless about my budget for books and usually buy maybe 10 every week on average. Still cheaper than going to a restaurant only once...
If, on the other hand, it's not only about being entertained, but gainings something from reading a book, I focus on reviews and recommendations.
Then my hitrate is way bigger than with fiction books.
Maybe in the range of 75%.
Mainly because I'm more patient.
If I want to gain some knowledge or insights from a book, I'm willing to "fight" through some pages or chapters.
I don't care about NYT (or in my case German Spiegel) rankings.
I don't mind, if the book I'm interested is new or had been sold originally 10 years ago and doesn't appear on any lists anymore.
And often I find the most recent books entangled in some strange type of trends: Ah, the next book about the 5 secrets to learn before you die. Oh no, wait, this time it's 7 secrets, entirely different story then...