There are a number of themes I've been circling with the current iteration of this newsletter: reading communities, book reviews, the future of bookstores, modes of engaging with books, my own reading practice.

One area I've been trying to figure out how to write about more concerns books and quality, judgment, ratings, canonicity — dancing around the constellation of things that make a book a good book; that identify a book as one of the best books.

From the start, trying to make a list of "best" books is fraught: best to whom? Best by what metrics? Best for a particular context, or best — as best we can decide, so far — for all time?

Antilibraries is in large part about reckoning with these questions, about exploring where specific books live in the matrix of might/should/could-readability, as well as about wrestling with the meta-level conundrums of curation and classification and value.

Just for fun this evening I browsed through my shelves and pulled out a number of books that caught my eye, with basically one fuzzy criterion:

What books seem rich in potential for learning and reading with others?

There's some obvious overlap here with what we're working on at Hyperlink — book clubs, peer-driven learning, space for exploring things together…

To that end, you may be interested in some of our events coming up this week, particularly the one exploring book club possibilities:

I want to share with you a favorite website, a fantastic resource for well-curated and out of the ordinary book reviews: The Complete Review

A selectively comprehensive, objectively opinionated survey of books old and new, trying to meet all your book review, preview, and information needs.

This week, building on my recent musings on the shapes of reading and readers — as well as some old notes — to explore a question: what might it look like to map the topography of your reading?

This starts with a thought experiment, an attempt to visualize your reading as a landscape, a map.

I have an island of books in the middle of my living room floor.

It measures approximately 4' x 4' x 2' and consists of 25 separate stacks spaced an inch or two apart.

Big books, medium books, pocket sized paperbacks — around 50 linear feet all told, which will only half fill the half dozen new bookshelves we've ordered.

Let’s talk about the many shapes that reading (and readers) can take.

I started this mini-essay by revisiting some old notes about strategies for dealing with the overwhelming infinitude of books, and the trade-offs of “breadth vs. depth” applied to a reading practice.

Prioritizing depth: reading everything there is to read in a focused niche (but: may lack context and variety). Prioritizing breadth: reading widely across many areas (but: may stay on the surface).

Hello antilibrarians!

I’m a bit beat from packing this weekend (many shelves = many boxes) so this week I want to ask for your book recommendations. It was also my birthday last week so I will treasure any replies you’d like to gift me :)

First, here’s a (partial) list of books I love:

What books would you read 100 times?

I’m re-sharing a prompt I posted on the Antilibraries forum last year — something I think sparks some very interesting questions, exploring what can happen when you take re-reading to the n-th degree…

I found the idea of “centireading” in an article a few years back — referring to the practice of reading the same book at least 100 times.

We’re preparing to move next month (not far, other side of the neighborhood!) and this weekend we’ve started the packing process by going through our bookshelves.

I did a quick count recently, and Jinjin and I have on the order of 900 books, substantial majority of which are mine.

Since this represents quite a few heavy boxes, I want to go through all these books before we move, and give away all that we decide we non longer want or need.

A few weeks back I was talking with my friend Adam and he brought up the idea of a “next ten books challenge” — making a list of the books you plan to read next, as a personal challenge and opportunity to think intentionally about your reading priorities.

He followed up with his list, so I put one together too! This kind of pre-planning my reading list isn’t something I ordinarily tend to do; I like making book lists, but I also like my reading on any given day to be guided by mood and serendipity.

I found this to be a fun and useful exercise, though, and I want to tell you a bit about why. First, my list…

Hello, antilibrarians!

This edition of the Analects is on the shorter side, because I mainly want to tell you about an event we're hosting soon on Hyperlink:

The Future of Textbooks

Sat. March 13 @ 2pm EST

Have you ever thought about how many books have existed?

Have you ever thought about how many books could exist? If this number is infinite, is it countably so? What would Borges say?

There are all kinds of “how many” questions it’s fun to ponder when it comes to books:

The past year has brought many areas of dramatic change. Today I want to talk about one: the ways we encounter books.

Of course this landscape — of book buying, borrowing, browsing, and reading in all its forms — has been changing for a long time. But lately this change has accelerated!

I used to go to bookstores all the time, just to browse. In the past year I think I've entered two, in a decidedly time limited and social distanced capacity.

Now, hardly a month goes by these days without discovering a new book app, reading startup, or online library experiment. A new virtual bookstore, book club, or publishing platform.

Hello Antilibrarians, happy Sunday :)

I want to share one reading practice I've found to be a lot of fun: couples book club AKA reading big books together with a loved one.

On the Antilibraries forum, we've talked about reading really big books. And we've jammed on ideas for experimental book clubs, where I mentioned the two-person book club. Let's explore how this most intimate of reading groups can work.

A few years back, my wife Jinjin and I started a tradition of reading big, long, classic books together. We haven't done this quite every year, but have gotten through several wonderful doorstops:

Hello, Antilibrarians!

Welcome to this renewed newsletter, Antilibraries Analects, freshly migrated to Buttondown, a great independent email platform, blessedly simple and text-centric.

A minor hypothesis: keeping this more minimal and conversational might help me make it more habitual. I'm just sending fun book finds to a few (hundred) friends; no biggie!

Reminder, this is the Antilibraries newsletter, where I share all sorts of fascinating books (+ links, questions, etc.) for bibliophilic omnivores like you. Aiming to send every Sunday! I've got a few things for you today: