Dec 13 2022
Reading alpha
I’d like to read more niche and esoteric books. One of my low-conviction theories is that we overestimate the alpha in reading popular, supposedly life-changing or paradigm-shifting books because their ideas have already been incorporated into mainstream thinking. Even if you haven’t read the book before, you likely have exposure to the concepts by virtue of the book being popular.
The other half of this theory is that true alpha is in reading more “underground” books that no one has heard of. The way to develop novel insights and patterns of thinking is to consume information that no one else is consuming.
A rough proxy for this is number of ratings on Goodreads. Based on some quick scanning, I think 2,000 ratings is a reasonable threshold for a sufficiently niche book. So far in 2022, only I’ve only read one book that meets this threshold and it’s an indie fiction book.
In 2023, I’d like to up this number and see if there are any benefits. If you’d like to join me, here are some books I plan to read next year with fewer than 2,000 ratings on Goodreads:
- Money Games, Weijian Shan
- Aspiration, Agnes Callard
- René Girard's Mimetic Theory, Wolfgang Palaver
- The Pathless Path, Paul Millerd
- Speed & Scale, John Doerr
- Radical Markets, Eric Posner