🧲 A Surprisingly Polarizing Genre

In this week's P.O. Box:

I’ve had fun sifting through all of your book recommendations and comments from the form I shared two weeks ago.

Not only did it give me a ton of good ideas for the book club, but it also helped crystallize a few things for me and what I want to get out of this.

I’ll share some of the most frequently asked questions/comments so you can see where my head is at going forward…

🧘 “Don’t Do A Bunch Of Self Help Books”

It was fascinating to see how polarized the responses were when it comes to the health/wellness/self-improvement genre.

Some people seemed legitimately concerned that I’d be recommending we read exclusively Tim Ferris books or something lol.

On the flip side, multiple people said they really appreciate when I hit on the wellness stuff and many suggested we read books from this genre.

I asked for both fiction and non-fiction books for a reason. I enjoy reading both and especially like the change of pace. I know some people like going cover-to-cover, but I’ve personally enjoyed ping-ponging between a couple of books at a time depending on my mood.

I think my plan will be to have one fiction and one non-fiction selection for each month.

I’m also going to do my best to make sure the word counts aren’t unwieldy so the goal is still manageable and we don’t get stuck reading Infinite Jest for two years straight.

🤝 “Don’t Hesitate To Switch Books If Something Isn’t Compelling”

I appreciated this comment. My hope is to avoid this dynamic by heavily vetting what I suggest, but sometimes you just need to cut your losses if you aren’t enjoying it.

And since your tastes might differ than mine, feel free to abandon ship if you’re not feeling it.

The worst thing that can happen is that you stop reading altogether because you didn’t find yourself wanting to pick up a book you previously “committed” to.

🧚 “I Don’t Read Fiction”

In a perfect world, I’d curate a selection of books that everyone loves, but that’s obviously impossible.

My main goal here is to find books that I want to read with your guys’ input so we find some natural overlap.

If you don’t like a specific selection, sit it out! Read a different book! I’m the only one on the hook for reading them all.

This exercise is much more about habit building for me than becoming an expert book curator.

💻️ “Discord Channel?”

Yes, good call. For those of you in the Deposit Kingdom Discord, I created a channel for anyone who wants to discuss the reading selections:

I don’t want to make the convo Discord-exclusive, though, so if you have thoughts on the books we are reading, don’t hesitate to reply to these emails and I’ll include snippets of the best stuff in future editions.

💾 Library Hack ft. Paul

I’m going to do my best to get these selections out in advance so people have time track them down at the library and wherever else.

On that note, I did want to pass along this sharp hack from Paul on how to decrease wait times for books on hold:

📈 Most recommended/suggested

There wasn’t a ton of overlap, tbh. Multiple people recommended Erik Larson books, specifically The Devil In The White City.

A bunch of you suggested some stuff I’ve already read. I won’t be doubling up on these, but I enjoyed all of these to varying degrees:

Die With Zero, Thinking Fast & Slow, The Wager, Atomic Habits, Killers Of The Flower Moon, The Biggest Bluff, Running With The Buffaloes, Born Standing Up, The Four Hour Workweek, Project Hail Mary, Ender’s Game, The Three Body Problem

The form isn’t closed or anything, btw, so feel free to fill it out again if inspiration strikes.

🐶 “Let’s read ‘Skin To Fur’ by Adam Leviitan”

No, we won’t be reading Adam Levitan’s seminal eBook as one of our selections.

Too highbrow.

📆 “So What Will Be Our Books For February?”