Clusters of books

Don't read books, read clusters of books.

Clusters give you an information edge. Reading a single book on a topic will give you an edge over most who don't read. Reading more than one will give you an edge over most of those who read (and don't go much further than one).

But it also transforms your experience by freeing you from the authors worldview. Read-only one book and you've only seen one perspective. You have to see the topic through the author's eyes. Read 5 books and now you can suddenly compose your own complex view of the topic. Clusters give you a unique world view.

Clusters compound the value of every individual book. A cluster lets you develop a unique set of models of how to think about something. The more models you have, the more you can combine them and create connections and links across pieces of knowledge.

Rather than impulsively buying the next book, choose the next mental tool you want to acquire. Choose your topic depending on how important is it for you to know about it, and how little you know about it. Then choose 5 books to read about it and start building that mental models armoury.

As an example here's my next cluster, about the world of Venture Capital:

• E-boys by Randall E. Stross
• The Business of Venture Capital by Mahendra Ramsinghani
• Venture Deals by Brad Feld
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer

Very to for the concept @spakhm whom I learnt this from. More here.