I've finally decided to start "sorting myself out" because I'm young adult full of potential, and I'm embarrassed that I've done comparatively little with it. I've uninstalled my video games, deleted my porn, started eating healthier, picked up an exercising habit, and started keeping a journal. I'm already feeling much better than I used to, and the future is looking brighter than it was a month ago. I want to continue this line of self-improvement and start reading seriously; however, I have no idea where to start, how to track my progress, and how to catalogue my wish list. I could use some Veeky Forums-relevant advice by organizing my book collection and figuring out what to read first.
WARNING: lengthy, distilled autism incoming. Sorry, I'm at wit's end with this bullshit, so I'm reaching out for some advice, and I don't know how to explain it without a 3-post rant. I hope it reads well enough to follow. Skip to the fifth post for the tl;dr.
I’m a natural reader, and I used to read voraciously. It's in my blood to read, so I'm glad that I'm getting back into it after a long lapse. Over the years of browsing Veeky Forums, Veeky Forums, Veeky Forums, Reddit, and various other podcasts and forums, I’ve accumulated a vast and convoluted list of book recommendations from all over the place. There are so many books that I've wanted to read, so many books that I started and never finished, and so many charts that I've saved, that the sheer amount of choice is killing me. I know that I HAVE to stop worrying about “getting it right” and that I HAVE to stop worry about what I might miss, so I’ve made a commitment to just start reading: 1) Veeky Forums’s starter kit, 2) a few major-related textbooks, and 3) a good philosophy anthology.
End of story, right? Wrong. I don’t know what to do with my old book wish list. I can’t let it go out of my sense of autism, or maybe I should call it obsession or hoarding. Maybe I should just delete the list, but I’m afraid of forgetting to cover the works on it. And they're all choices that I value a lot, like Faulkner, Stirner, Engels, Girard, Lasch, Hayek, Deleuze, Hollecbecq, Morrison, Spengler, Rorty, Rawls, etc., that I just don't want to throw all the recommendations into the trash and start anew. And even if I work organically towards these books and rediscover them anyway, how am I going to keep track of them all, especially when I move out of college? I can’t keep kicking the can down the road, because I know it will bother me later.
Colton White
THE PROBLEM:
So how do we start organizing this giant mess? I figured that I might as well I tried organizing my books and my book wishlist by academic field/methodology. Formal sciences, natural sciences, cognitive sciences, social sciences, humanities, and languages... should work, right? Wrong. This proved to be an enormous hassle because there's no clean way to categorize history, since it can be either like humanities or like social science; there's no clean way to categorize study of the mind between social science and natural science; there's no clean way to categorize philosophy at all since outside your core Plato -> Aristotle -> Descartes -> Kant -> etc. track because philosophy has commentary about everything, etc. Also, trying to figure out why cultural anthropologies, social histories, etc., would be classified so differently from another was mind-bendingly annoying.
I then wondered whether I should start categorizing books by MATTER and not by SUBJECT, because then you can see various perspectives on how minds work and allow multiple disciplines to inform one another. Formal systems, natural world, cognition, individuals & societies, arts & humanities, and finally "the great ideas" for philosophy that is for it's own sake and not, let's say, a commentary on the mind or language. Brilliant, right? Except nobody organizes anything like that apparently, neither in academic booklists nor departments, so every organization attempt I make looks like it was written by an utter hack who couldn't decide when to get a solid grounding on anything (sounds like me), and no expert seems to think that it's a good idea for some reason.
AND THEN there's the whole idea of categorizing books by whether they're introductions to a field or if they cover breadth and depth within a field, since you don't want to start reading about groundbreaking or important yet tangential works in philosophy without a grounding in the basics first, etc., that makes organizing a book wishlist even more infuriating. Having some random book stacked next to a formative textbook or classic is annoying. Maybe that’s a sign that some of those books are unworthy anyway. Don't forget, I haven't even gotten started on organizing the various works of non-fiction that are just about "ideas" that can't be readily classified in any section, like The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, The Abolition of Britain by Peter Hitchens, or the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, and I don't even want to think about how that will happen.
Gabriel Barnes
Here's a protip to make you into a better person: stop being a fucking narcissist. Writing about yourself for 5 fucking posts isn't healthy.
Jayden Price
THE REFLECTION:
It’s probably for the better that I don’t return to this organizational challenge without some more wisdom and a dual-screen computer. But goddamn, is the general concept of this idea hard to let go! Why the fuck is the whole of human knowledge so fucking disorganized!? Wouldn't we be better off if we could make easier connections between fields that are attempting to study the same exact crap?! I still think it’s a good idea for a personal project in the future, but only if I can somehow find a way to organize everything with multiple tags to accommodate the different ways of organizing, like in a database, but I clearly don’t have those skills right now. If only there were a cross between Goodreads and Excel that didn’t require online functionality. Then I would be so happy!
Aaron Murphy
tl;dr;
As you can tell, I have an issue with trying to be too systematic with my book wishlist when I clearly don't have the chops to guide myself effectively yet. But I don't want to lose sight of what I could be covering or what I have missing as I get deeper into my self-improvement project. Plus, a good organization system helps to make deeper connections while learning.
I’ve decided to just start reading the Veeky Forums starter kit and compile the book recommendations into some shitty text file and leave it to a future self to deal with. But this is, for some reason, very unnerving because I KNOW I will read enough books now for this to become a problem in the future if I keep heading down this path.
What should I do, in addition to continue reading no matter what, Veeky Forums?
Christian Foster
This is true but OP your real problem sounds like you are too scared to read. That you won't be good enough. Reading is one of the easiest things you can possibly do. Why not make things easier and read a few old favourites before throwing yourself in at the deep end? Read an author's ouvre or randomly pick a book to read. Hell, do you even enjoy reading if it makes you feel this way? Will reading all these 'intelligent' books improve your life? Or are you clinging onto a pseud idea of 'being well-read' as well as your old list?
To reiterate, make a choice and read. You are overthinking this. You can't find anything in a book that you can't find outside talking to people.
Life would be a lot easier if I were a narcissist, I can tell you that for sure. And these posts aren't about me as much as they are about the idea that there's not much of a taxonomy of knowledge. While that might not bother you, it probably does bother a lot of people here who are bothered by the fact the way we typically divide knowledge into categories doesn't make any sense. I wouldn't write about the taxonomy in five posts if I could write about it in one, desu, but I don't know how to do it while remaining clear and comprehensive.
I promise you, I've made my choice to read, and I will read. I love reading, and I love trying to figure things out. I really don't see a purpose in life except doing all of those things right now, so that's what I've set my mind on doing. I've already started reading yesterday, beginning with both the novel 1984 and from an old philosophical essay anthology that I liked in the past, and I won't stop until they're finished cover to cover. From there on, I'll probably just finish the Veeky Forums starter kit and go through a few textbooks.
From a personal standpoint, I think I'm set to go by kicking the can down the road for a while. But the whole taxonomy thing still bothers me as a philosophical problem.
Bentley Long
I'm honestly not a narcissist, nor am I letting this get in the way of self-improvement. I just thought that nobody would get the problem of taxonomy unless I ranted about it, but I guess that was a terrible idea. It looks like this thread is quickly turning into a shitshow, so I'll just move on. If I can think of a better way to talk about it concisely and still spark a good discussion, then I'll make another thread.
Zachary Reyes
>voraciously
why do all pseuds love this particular word?
David Murphy
>accusing other people of being pseuds
Mason Campbell
stop procrastinating and start reading
Carter Powell
I already said that I was reading and I won't let this stop me from reading. This isn't a procrastination problem. I just wanted to talk about taxonomy.
Leo Ramirez
Be careful not to spend all your time planning, organizing and tracking; and therefore forgetting to actually read.
Angel Cox
How long did it take you to type up this autism? That's time you could have spent reading.
None of this matters. Just pick a book at random and read it, you sperg.
David Stewart
nobody cares, only you care, so do whatever the fuck you want. you sound like a boring tedious brainlet with OCD.
Owen Ortiz
If you try to be too organized an thorough you will never read anything newer than 300 BC. Read what you want and you will naturally fill in the blanks. Remember that life isn't a video game with completion achievements and stats.
Dylan Richardson
It probably took me about 20 minutes to type, since I type at 130 WPM, and 10 minutes to format so it wouldn't look like a total mess. I've been thinking about this all day when I wasn't reading, and I decided that I would talk about it. I'm allowed to take a break from reading at the end of the day, right user?
Enough people cared to start shitposting in this thread instead of letting it slide. You sound jaded.
Hunter Young
ok look, slow down, understand that you have something of a perfectionist complex and that you'll never be able to read or understand absolutely every facet of human knowledge and literature that's ever been published; it's an unrealistic goal and not worth mulling over.
now, as to what to focus on, ask yourself what's the one subject or area that has the most pull? what do you feel in your heart? when i first started reading i wasn't so much interested in any particular field but mostly how to sort out my own issues and understand myself, so i started with a lot of existential psychology writers like kierkegaard, fromm, rollo may and ancient wisdom literature like the gita and the gnostic teachings of christ. this stuff soothed my torn heart but i soon realised that i was using reading as an excuse not to take action in the world. make sure you're not making this mistake. those other things you mentioned are great starts, but for me travelling and fearlessly hitting on a group of women and getting rejected did more for my self-esteem than any nietzsche book could have.
also, while i was interested in history and politics and science and most of those other fields you mentioned, it again stemmed from my lack of confidence and insecurity. i wasn't reading for myself, i was reading so i could beat people in debates and show off my knowledge; how smart and cultured i was. so, naturally, when i came to read marx i quickly became bored, frustrated and turned-off. it just wasn't speaking to my heart because i had no authentic interest in it.
sorry this post is a bit disjointed but what i'm trying to say is build knowledge and interests organically by reading what you want to read, not what you perceive as being a bunch of books that will make you well-read and FINALLY earn the respect of Veeky Forums bros. confront your problems face on and never use reading as a coping mechanism. ok??
Adam Morris
If this is a troll, it's a good one.
OP, I used to have the exact same autistic problem as you but I quickly realized that worrying about all this is totally and utterly useless.
There are two possibilities here:
1) Your library is small enough that you can just run through it at a glance when looking for the next thing to read (let's say 200 to 300 books max) and you don't need to think about taxonomy at all
2) Your library is too large for that
If it's 1), problem is solved. If it's 2) you need to accept that you will never read that many books, nor would you need to. It will not happen, even if you spend your life reading. Delete books left and right. If a book in your collection is even slightly boring or irrelevant, bin it immediately. You will not have time for it. It will not be read, ever.
Anything other action, including typing out your life story, is wholly delusional. The other poster was right. It's narcissistic behavior. Stop that and spend that time reading or doing literally anything else.
Samuel Lopez
Good advice from all. This is literally the only time I've ever typed up a monstrosity like this, and I promise that I won't do it again. Thanks for those who shared their experiences and opinions, it was very helpful for understanding the scope of the problem that I was dealing with and re-adjusting my expectations for the future.
I'll delete anything that isn't either interesting or canon, which is probably like a good 75% of the list, and just continue on with reading. If it ever comes up again, I'll just find a way to tag things based off of subject, matter, and level. And of course, I'll just keep on reading. Thank you.
Let the thread slide please.
Easton Cruz
this helped me, thanks user
Kayden Barnes
>. If a book in your collection is even slightly boring or irrelevant, bin it immediately. You will not have time for it. It will not be read, ever.
A lot of posters here should do this. I'm amazed at the amount of crap i see in the bookshelf threads.
Carson Nelson
>advocating trashing books What are you, some kind of Nazi?
Chase Martin
you could sell/trade them for books youll actually read
Christopher Reed
lmao honestly wtf is this pretentious bullshit just fucking read and more importantly, fucking chill. if you're on Veeky Forums wasting your time with this bullshit, you have no chance in hell of ever finishing all the books you want to. better yet, delete all the books and get one that tells you how to get a girlfriend because you have wayyyyy too much time on your hands lmao gg
James Jenkins
Listen to this guy. Think about how you grew knowledge in other areas of your life: you didn't learn about music from a chart, you naturally filled out the blanks by listening to artists inspired by or related by guys you already liked. I tried to itemize and distill all aspects of life into data points and spreadsheets like you did but it does nothing but put you in a permanent state of stress.
Tyler Russell
I've had a girlfriend for 2 years and counting.
Robert Powell
how is this even a question? as always, start with the greeks
Benjamin Edwards
OP, don't let the negativity in this thread discourage you. While you should NEVER rant like that again, you did touch upon a lot of interesting ideas about how the social sciences are all inbred like Arabs and tangled like vines, and how we could be better off if we could reorganize academic studies to be more inclusive of outside methodology and thought. Just make sure to set the problem aside and KEEP ON READING because, and I mean the best when I say this, you're not knowledgeable enough solve it yet.
