The Wood From Eden book recommendations page

A permanent post collecting reader book recommendations

Feb 06, 2024

“Nascentes morimur finisque ab origine pendet” = “We die when we are born, our end is but the pendant of our beginning”. “Superata tellus sidera donat” = “overcoming Earth gives the stars” Bronze medal, Venice, around 1490, Wikimedia Commons

I recently discovered a ten year old book that I should have read when it was new. Then I discovered that at least two subscribers of this blog had found the book long before me. And why not? Common interests are what brings people here.

So I got the idea to arrange a permanent book recommendations page. The principle is simple: Everybody who has a book to recommend posts an answer to a category here below. Write as much or as little you like about a book - the title of the book is minimum. Post comments on every book as a reply to that book.

I think it can be kept that simple, for one reason: People who read this blog are highly self-selected. We are here because we share certain interests. Chances are we are more similar in our tastes for books than most people. A book recommendations page created by Wood From Eden readers should be interesting exactly for Wood From Eden readers. And, not the least, for the Wood From Eden writers.

The virtue of half-reading books

I have heard people complain that they get too many book tips. They ask for polite ways to decline book tips, because they already have a full to-read list and don't want to add anything more to it.

I couldn't agree less. Knowing about a book can never be something negative. I think that half-reading books, only reading the preface or a page in the middle, is always better than not looking at a book at all.

I guess the idea that it is a virtue to read a book from beginning to end stems from the time when books were hard to come by. Under such conditions, obtaining books and not reading them is kind of irrational. People simply had to read the books they could obtain, otherwise they wouldn't be reading books at all. Or maybe the idea that reading entire books is an ideal comes from the reading of novels, where the first ten pages (or the first hundred) can be pure labor just to enter the story.

Nowadays, when books are easy to come by, we have the privilege to pick and choose and read exactly what appears relevant. Entire books, half books, chapters, a page here and there. Like curious people have always done in libraries. Today everyone can have their own library. The big obstacle to overcome when creating one's own library is knowing about the books.

Let's clear that obstacle as much as possible through sharing what we know about books worth reading (or worth looking at).

And why stop at books? If someone has a film recommendation to share, please post it under a roughly appropriate category. Please just indicate that it is a film, to avoid unnecessary confusion.

For simplicity, the categories are more or less the same as those for the posts at Wood from Eden