What 300 Shelfies Teach Us
300 collections, a milestone, yet a tiny fraction of all home libraries out there. We ran the analysis anyway, five things showed up.
On reading, thinking, and the journey of expanding knowledge
The Books You Can Name
You did not pick your last book out of all the books there are. You picked it from the few you had heard of — and you had less to do with building that list than you think.
Stuck Picking
The unread pile you keep adding to isn't a reading list. It's a to-do list — and that's why you keep getting stuck between books.
Reading in Company
For most of history, reading was a social activity. Let's bring it back.
The Rereading Dilemma
Most readers barely reread. The small number who do it seriously describe a fundamentally different activity from first-reading — and they may be the only ones doing it right.
The Law of the Unlikely Pair
Aby Warburg organized his library by a principle he called the law of the good neighbor — the book you are looking for is rarely the one you need.
Darwin's Reading Notebooks
The naturalist kept a list of every book he read from 1838 until 1860. Most people know Darwin the theorist; almost nobody knows Darwin the reader.
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