Some books deserve "Cliffs notes" treatment, being a relatively simple thesis padded out into a book. This especially true of a lot of the self-help and business literature. I won't hesitate to look for summaries of books which I think contain valuable ideas but which I suspect are mostly padding.
Another heuristic in that form: in my experience, books written by journalists often have about as much substance as one long-form article. There are exceptions. Stanley Karnow's Vietnam was the most informative history book I've ever read; but then again, he was an old-school reporter.
A large element of instrumental rationality consists of filtering, prioritizing, and focusing. It's true for tasks, for emails, for blogs, and for the multitude of other inputs that many of us are drowning in these days[1]. Doing everything, reading everything, commenting on everything is simply not an option - it would take infinite time. We could simply limit time and do what happens to catch our attention in that limited time, but that's clearly not optimal. Spending some time prioritizing rather than executing will always improve results if items can be prioritized and vary widely in benefit. So maximizing the results we get from our finite time requires, for a variety of domains:
I have some thoughts, and am looking for more advice on how to do this for non-fiction reading. I've stopped buying books that catch my attention, because I have an inpile of about 3-4 shelves of unread books that have been unread for years. Instead, I put them on my Amazon Wishlists, which as a result have swelled to a total of 254 books - obviously un-manageable, and growing much faster than I read.
One obvious question to ask when optimizing is: what is the goal of reading? Let me suggest a few possibilities:
(2) seems like the biggest win - surely any program of rational reading has to start with learning to read efficiently. Relatedly, Nick points out that if there are any books (or articles/blogs) on how to pick books well, that would be an obvious start too. I haven't done either of these, which means that my reading has been extremely inefficient and my process has been deeply irrational, which is what often happens when one doesn't consciously optimize. Please comment with recommendations in these areas.
I would most like to hear from anyone who has used a system for consciously choosing which books to read, and am also interested in any thoughts y'all have on the topic. Nonfiction reading used to be fun and mind-opening, but now it is an area of stress in my life. I never know what I should be reading, when I read something I worry it isn't the most useful thing, and when a great book gets recommended to me, I have no idea if I'll read it, which is sad. I'd like to know that books are going into some trusted system and that I'm then reading the right ones. I can figure out my own goals, and how relevant a book seems to be to them, but the quality evaluation - what are truly the best of the hundreds of great books that apply to my goals - is an important missing step. And starting with reading book summaries seems like it would tremendously improve reading effectiveness.
Finally, one of the neat things about Rational Reading is that it has so much in common with optimizing anything. Filter, prioritize, balance, optimize execution, execute, and refine - these are general instrumental rationality skills. Those not yet ready to apply these skills to other areas of their life may want to consider beginning with reading as their practice, honing skills there, and then applying them to more intimidating areas (task management, email, goals, etc.) Relatedly, in my case, making sure that my reading supports my personal goals is a way to ensure that I am making some progress on those goals even if I fail to work on them in other ways.
[1] I can imagine a reader who is not drowning in inputs feeling superior because of it, but I must sadly inform you that this is not rational either. If you read a book every two weeks, and your social network suggests a book that sounds fun every two weeks, it is true that your reading is "balanced" and you are likely to feel unstressed about it, which is great. But it also means that you can't be reading anything like the best possible books, because you are drawing from a tiny pool of suggestions from a few people, rather than the vast ocean of material that exists. Yes your social network is a filter, but it's not a great one, so if that's your only filter, I highly doubt you're reading anything like the best & most useful books you could be reading.
[2] For example, Cosmos has written useful summaries of a number of books which he sent to the NY rationalists, but has not yet gone the last mile & made them available online. I am nagging him to fix this, if you know him then you should too :).