Beware of reading lists
I’m an avid reader—it’s the hobby I spend the most time on. As my hobby developed, I started keeping two lists: a to-read list and a read list. The former to track books I want to read, the latter to record what I have read. Both sound helpful, but are they? The short answer: only if you’re careful.
To-read lists are useful tools. There are so many books worth reading and only so much mental capacity to remember them. I love it when someone recommends a book to me or when I stumble upon a title during a random internet search. I hated it when I forgot about those finds, so I put them on a list—a to-read list.
Before I knew it, the to-read list evoked a sense of pressure in me. I felt a constant urge to finish a book and move on to the next. Obviously, this cycle would never end, as my curiosity fills up the list much faster than I can deplete it. Like Sisyphus, I was pushing a boulder up the hill, only to have it tumble down again as soon as I reached the top. Worse, I was never fully immersed in my current book, but always thinking about the next one. It prevented me from savoring what I was reading. The goal isn’t to get the boulder to the top of the hill. It’s to enjoy the act of getting it there1.
Memory is a fallible thing, and I cannot remember all that I’ve read over the years. The read list turned out to be a wonderful tool for this purpose. Why did I track my reading? Because reflecting on it brings back memories and emotions, as well as sparks novel ideas. As I wrote earlier, I read to be transformed, and that process takes time; sometimes it only happens in retrospect.
You can tell a lot about a person by their reading. Keeping track of what I’ve read made it easier to share, for instance, by publishing it on my site. At a glance, visitors can make an accurate guess about what interests me and whether that aligns with themselves.
However, the read list is not without its dangers either. As the (in)famous Goodhart’s Law states:
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
In this case: track the number of books you’ve read, and it will influence your behavior.
Before I knew it, I was trying to beat last year’s reading goal. I succeeded. But at what cost? I finished books I didn’t enjoy for them to count toward my goal; I favored shorter books over longer ones, missing out on incredible stories such as my current read, Midnight’s Children. The read list, not passion, directed my reading.
How I employed the to-read and read lists nearly killed my reading hobby. They turned a source of immense joy into yet another mechanistic act of optimization, where the destination outweighed the journey. After I realized how much this opposed my reading intentions, I decided something had to change.
Nowadays, I keep a minimalistic to-read list with a realistic limit2, transforming it into an “up-next” list. When I encounter a promising title, I weigh it against what’s on the list: if it’s more interesting, it takes a spot; otherwise, it disappears into the abyss that is my long-term memory. Books that genuinely spark my interest have a way of resurfacing anyway. It turned out to be an effective filter.
To fix my issues with the read list, I’ve stopped numbering the books and no longer keep yearly reading goals. Getting rid of the metrics removed my tendency to read to improve the numbers. Once again, I could read for the sake of reading, which turned out to be incredibly liberating.
Is my current strategy perfect? No, I’m continually making adjustments. It’s a constant battle to prevent the to-read list from spiraling back into the endless checklist that it was. To make things worse, I cannot enter a bookstore without buying something, growing my stash of unread books and thus my to-read list.
Despite these struggles, changing how I employ reading lists has rekindled my passion for reading. Reading lists are valuable if you remain aware of their effects on your reading behavior. Be careful. Use them intentionally.
I align with Albert Camus’ take on the Myth of Sisyphus and recommend reading his work.↩
A limit of 5–10 works well for me, but yours may be different.↩