I updated my booklist which I link at the top of my blog.  Please let me tell you a little about it.

Generating the Page

Organizing the Books

I use GoodReads to organize my books.  James Currier, proprietor of MedPedia, invests in GoodReads.  It lets me add books quickly and easily, plus I easily export the book list. I prefer it to Shelfari or LibraryThing.

Creating the HTML

I exported my book list along with which shelves (categories/tags) each book occupies on GoodReads.  I hacked up a short Python script that reorganizes the list by shelf and puts the shelves in order.  The script generates HTML which I can paste into that page.

Linking and covers

I grab the images from Amazon using some great hacks I learned about recently: how to abuse Amazon product images.  Nat Gertler does a great job clarifying all of the great things you can do using Amazon’s huge dynamic image generation system. It’s okay for me to use these images since I link you to the Amazon site.  I refer to the Amazon pages using my Amazon Associates Referral Program Account.  If you click on one of the lists and then buy something from Amazon, I get a few pennies.

The Shelves

currently-reading

Under this heading, I list the books that I, of course, currently read on a daily or weekly basis.  Most of them I downloaded to my Kindle.  I agree with myself more and more every day: the Kindle is nearly perfect.

to-read

Many people recommend different books to me.  I love to hear about books that people love.  If you want to recommend to me one of your favorite books, please tell me so that I can add it to this queue.

maybe-will-read

Sometimes I hear some second-hand recommendations of a book or an off-hand remark about the quality of a book.  Or I might want to read one of an author’s less critically-acclaimed books.  I might want to remember that book for later, in case I have extra time, so I add it to this list.  For example, I loved The Scarlet Letter, so I might also enjoy The House of Seven Gables, but I have other priorities.

unfinished

Sometimes I start a book, read a few chapters or get half-way through, and then never pick it up again.  This happened more often in high school; most of the books here come from there.  Now, I will often not finish a book when I start a book owned by someone else then fly to another city soon after.  Fooled by Randomness I will finish once I can sit down for a couple of hours in a Borders or Barnes & Noble.

favorites

I have a few favorite books that I am very happy to have been fortunate to come across.  Most have impacted me in a deep way or have given me knowledge that changed the way I acted in the world.  They make me who I am today.  The list will change with time, though, I think.  For example, I forget now but why did I put The Giver here?

worthwhile

I loathe 5-star rating systems.  I really have just 3 categories.  My favorite books.  Books which are worth the time it takes to read them, and books which are not worth the time it takes to read them.  This can happen if the book is inordinately long or, more often, barren of content.

Any book on this list, every book really, I recommend that you read.

not-worthwhile

Every book on this list, I suggest you pass on, unless you read all of my favorites and worthwhile books.

Some of these books show up here because other books describe the same ideas more succinctly or in more interesting ways.  Or more cheaply.  For example, pretty much every essay in Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters he already posts for free on his website.

Actually, looking over this list, I see that I heavily bias it toward (non-scifi) fiction and poetry.  This probably reflects more my distaste (or at least the distaste I had in high school) for fiction.  Maybe I would understand and appreciate more if I read these books today.  Probably.

At the same time, perhaps my bias will help you identify the “greatest” classic fiction books.  I really did enjoy some greatly, and put them onto my worthwhile list: The Grapes of Wrath, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Metamorphosis, and The Chocolate War.

avoid

At the bottom of the list are books which I wish I could erase from my memory.  Never buy these books, never look at them, never gift them to a friend.  These books sucked life from my veins.  Let me explain why I put the current 4 there:

The Magic of Thinking Big:  The book vapidly repeats the same tired aphorisms throughout its several hundred pages.  It should be 1 page long or printed on the back of a cereal box.  Summary: think big visions and you will try hard to achieve them.  I hoped, at the least, for some fun anecdotes.  No such luck.  Instead, expect some general, detail-poor descriptions of general scenarios which are often either so ridiculous or common place I sincerely doubt any are based on real events. No, read How to Win Friends and Influence People instead.

Vagabonding: This books is so forgettable.  It says nothing.  It is so forgettable, and I’m not exaggerating, that I forgot to cross it off my list of books to read.  Six months later, I bought the book from Amazon again, read through 3 chapters in agonizing pain with a slight feeling of deja vu, before finally realizing that I had already bought and “read” the book before.  I tried to salvage the situation by perhaps trying to read more carefully and figuring out the meat of the content of the book only to suffer through an agonizing 3 hours skimming over jumbles of bad puns and base allusions.  Avoid this book and find one with real details and advice, real meat, like the 4-Hour Workweek.

Go Green, Live Rich: So awfully terrible that Amazon had to give it away as a promotion on the Kindle.  I knew after 10 pages that it was terrible, but I finished anyway for some reason.  At least 60% of the book simply repeats the same thought: you should “go green”.  You should go green.  Tip #2.  You should go green.  Tip #3.  You should go green. Tip #4…..  It makes me want to tear the eyes out of the author.  This pain would be salvaged if the author picked just a handful of actually useful tips.  But he doesn’t.  He goes on for hundreds of pages with useless garbage.  Let me give you an example of a tip (one of the more “profitable” ones mind you): spend hundreds of dollars and who knows how many hours evaluating your home for tiny amounts of heat loss, then buy things to repair that yourself saving you a net dozens of dollars a year.  Or, lower your thermostat by a few degrees and shiver with fear of anticipation every time you step up to your front door so that you can save $15 a month.  The only impactful tip is to get rid of your car which is impractical for most families or working people.  No, read something else, anything else.

Good to Great: Actually, a lot of people thing this is a great book.  It’s not.  Jim Collins pretends to be very scientific with this book (also in Built to Last), but he’s not.  The methodologies are so riddled with selection bias, his sample size is so small, his comparison companies are so different.  It’s amazing this became popular.  He could come to any conclusion by simple manipulations of the data.  More likely, he and his team saw what they wanted to see.  I don’t necessarily disagree with the conclusions, but this book offers no substantive evidence of any kind toward these theories.  I recommend Stocks for the Long Run instead of this pseudo-science.