Too Many Books to Choose From: Finding Your Next Read
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Every reader knows the feeling. You finish a book you loved, turn to the shelf, and nothing on it seems quite right, even though it's full. This post is about that small, oddly tiring moment, and about a gentler way through it.
For: the particular tiredness of having too many books to choose from
The Quote
'So many books, so little time.'
Frank Zappa
The Poem
Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas.
This is such a lovely light piece about the way we can lose ourselves between the pages of a book.
'such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter'
Read Notes on the Art of Poetry
The Book
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Told entirely through letters, unhurried, funny, quietly devastating in places. It's the kind of book that makes you want to write to someone properly again, and it belongs on a porch or a train more than anywhere else.
The Reflection
There's a particular kind of tiredness that comes from having too many choices rather than too few. A shelf of unread books or the endless choices available in a bookshop or even worse, online, can be rather overwhelming.
I don't think the answer is to be more disciplined, have a stricter list, or a better system. Sometimes the answer is simply handing the decision to someone (or something) else for a while. Taking the choosing out of your own hands, just for once, and trusting that whatever arrives will be enough.
I have done this myself in various ways and have never failed to be pleasantly surprised by what has crossed my path.
The Question to Sit With
When did you last let a book choose you, instead of the other way round?
Somewhere to Try It
I built The Literary Compass after finishing one book and not being able to decide what to start next. It wasn't a lack of books, quite the opposite. So I sat down and asked myself what I would love to find online that could give me some guidance, other than just asking AI, which is always a bit soulless.
You spin it, and it points you somewhere, one quote, one book, one small thing to notice today, decided for you rather than by you.
There's also a finder, where you can answer three short questions or ten longer ones to point you towards your next read.
And if you like browsing lists of curated books to see what jumps out at you, there's a growing set of Ten Books collections: ten books that feel like autumn, ten for rainy afternoons, ten set entirely in bookshops, and more.
Have a look, and let me know what you'd like to see there next.
A Gentle Pause
If your mind is too busy to settle on a book at all, this literary meditation is a quieter place to start, a few minutes of words and stillness before you choose.
Words for the Wall
Erasmus's When I Have a Little Money I Buy Books is the honest answer to how the shelf got so full in the first place. And if Dylan Thomas has caught you, his Do Not Go Gentle is in the shop as an illustrated print.
If you'd like a literary prescription like this one in your inbox each week, you can sign up here, and you'll get my free Literary First Aid Kit as a welcome.
The book links are affiliate links, through Amazon and Bookshop.org, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.