Jordan’s Book Selection Framework

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“Hey Jordan, is that a Zoom background or are those books real?” 

They’re real and they’re wonderful, I respond.

This was the first time I realized bookshelves should be drilled in the wall…I did not have a book on that

Just last week, Manu Kumar from my Write of Passage cohort asked me, “How do you choose your books, is there some kind of process you follow?”

Suddenly I realized, wait a minute, I hear this question all the time - I can write about it! For some reason, I’ve never considered sharing my books or how I think about acquiring them. 

I do have a framework, but if an indecisive Bob Ross was asked to describe my ‘framework’, he’d say it was a series of deliberate accidents.

In truth, I choose books on a spectrum. On one hand, I select books with the meticulous detail of an accountant charged with doing the President’s taxes. And on the other hand, I choose them with the borderline panic of a child who was given permission by his Mother to buy a toy at the local store and, unable to pick something in the 11th hour, just grabs something, anything, to put in the cart at the last second to cash in on Mom’s generosity. It’s a happy medium.

Most of the time though, I purchase them after going down rabbit holes of curiosity and wanting to follow where that curiosity takes me.

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Jordan’s Book Selection Framework

Brought to you by readers like you

There are two ways that I stumble upon books, both sponsored by Curiosity™:

1. Rabbit holes of my own making (aka curiosity inspired from internal sources)

This type of rabbit hole, which I’ll call an internal rabbit hole, is driven by my own intrinsic interests. This is usually a topic I’m already deeply interested in or where I’ve identified a gap in my knowledge of a subject.

For example, I’ve always loved investing in the stock market and I’ve always valued being able to provide for my family without worrying about money (life is too short to worry about money, but also too short to shoot yourself in the foot for not understanding it). Some of the first books I bought were about saving & investing: I wanted to learn more about the stock market and to ensure that I, to the best of my ability, knew what I was doing. 

Here are some examples of those investing books:

Some Kindle action sneaking in there

The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach

This is an infamous book in my family. My Dad once made me read it around age 13 to understand money at an early age. My brother, age 7, was also instructed to read it - only for him to burst into tears exclaiming, “but I don’t know what a 401k is!”

Now that I’m a little older and I have more context around the concepts, this is a solid, short book to teach you the basics about saving and investing money. The basic idea is to pay yourself first. Before any money goes out the door, automatically shave some off the top to go into your savings or investing accounts. If you do this, you make it easy on yourself and you don’t need much discipline to save money because it’s all done automatically.

Here’s a summary.

The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins

Talks about living below your means, living a simple life without buying and consuming too much stuff, and then investing the rest in index mutual funds (primarily the Vanguard Total Market Index Fund - VTSAX). This is a great book and much more specific to investing compared to the Automatic Millionaire. It has simple, but easy to understand basics about the stock market, but it also tells you why understanding money is important. 

I always thought of people who give investing advice as dry, Ebenezer Scrooge like characters but often they always have an underlying life giving motivation for wanting to invest their money. Collins was writing letters about wealth building to his daughter. He also is a world traveler and values squeezing every ounce out of life. Check out “Travels with “Esperando un Camino”

Most of Collins’s material is free on his blog, but the book is easier to follow. Check it out!

Here’s a summary.

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley

Easy to understand concept: Save your money and live below your means. The average, everyday person next door very well might be a millionaire and you wouldn’t even know it. You don’t need to look rich, show off how rich you are, or prove yourself to others. 

Here’s a summary.

One day I might have to write more about what I know about investing and how I invest, but for now, if you want to learn more about investing - these are great starting points!

But there is another rabbit hole…

2. External rabbit holes (aka curiosity inspired from external sources)

This type of rabbit hole is driven by recent ideas or topics shared by others. I’ve devoured tons of articles, essays, YouTube videos, podcasts, and tweets over the last decade. This content often references books or authors or other supplemental topics. I let myself go down these rabbit holes and happily get lost in them.

Below are some examples:

It took me more pictures than I would like to admit to somewhat align these

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

I picked up a copy of this classic after listening to a few episodes of The Thomas Jefferson Hour and hearing about Thomas Jefferson’s love of books. I don’t have the exact episode linked here (my memory fails me!), but there are many episodes in which the humanities scholar who portrays Jefferson, Clay Jenkinson, dives into books that Jefferson either read or was inspired by (or offers suggestions of his own).

Here’s a summary.

Self Renewal by John Gardner

I learned about this book in a Twitter thread from my friend Sam. He writes, “Self-renewal is the capacity to respond to change. It's about creating conditions that enable people, organizations, and society to maintain their vitality. Capable of adapting to whatever comes our way. Continuing to question, explore, innovate, and build.” Some part of me deeply resonated with what Sam was talking about, primarily because I want to ensure that I can build a nourishing life through which I can renew myself and those around me, continuously. I picked up a copy pretty quickly. Sam also has a great blog and a post on this very book.

Here’s a summary.

Peak by Anders Ericsson

I was fascinated by human performance in 2016 and wanted to learn more about expertise and human performance so I could learn more about what’s really possible for humans to accomplish. I looked up some podcasts on the subject and stumbled upon this book from Ericsson’s visit on this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast.

Here’s a summary.

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As I follow either rabbit hole, I slowly accrue more and more book recommendations. I allow myself to follow my curiosity on the surface level enough to gain a high level knowledge of a subject and then I find books to fill remaining gaps at depth. 

So what do I do with all these recommendations?

I put these babies on wish lists!

Whenever I find a book I like or would be interested in, I add it to one of my Amazon wish lists. Whether I will buy it from Amazon or not doesn’t matter, I just use it as a repository.

I’ve learned from experience not to buy any books unless they marinate on a wish list for a few days. This is because before I had any wish lists or way to flag a book I was interested in, I would often go ahead and buy it. I still believe the UPS driver at my old apartment put my address and picture on the office wall with a huge red ‘X’ over it because the poor guy had to walk up 3 flights of steps to deliver large quantities of books at once.

Wish lists have been a huge key as to why my ‘library’ is not as large as it could be. Nowadays when I add something to a wish list, it ticks off the same dopamine portion of my brain that loved clicking ‘buy’, it just settles in a wish list instead (sometimes if I’m really quiet I can hear the UPS driver whispering ‘Thank you!’).

I have a very loose structure to my wish lists and while I won’t mention all the categories (there’s 17 of them), here are a few of my favorites:

Immediately Relevant Books: 

My default list. It is not specific to any subject and is not ordered in any particular way. This list is full of books that are immediately relevant to what I most want to learn and the season of life I find myself in right now. If I find a book that will be my next read (that I don’t already own) or I believe it could have an immediate impact on my life, it goes on this list.

Fiction:

My book collection is severely lacking in the fiction department. I’m working on building that out more over time. Any fiction goes on this list. Probably because my own fiction reading experience is lacking, I don’t have any separate lists for classics, mysteries, etc, it’s just one big Fiction bucket.

Writing:

I’m getting more and more into writing recently. I’m currently in my second run through of Write of Passage and find myself cranking out essays with a warm cup of Joe while it’s still dark before work. I want to get better at writing, so naturally, anything related to the craft of writing or advice from famous authors goes here.

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Not every book makes it onto my wish lists. I have a process to filter what books make it through and it goes like this:

1. My intuition says, “DUDE, we gotta look into this, it looks promising!”

2. I ask myself: will this book be beneficial to what I’m working on or my enjoyment of life?

3. Read up the general summary of the book (no plot spoilers, just general overviews to build the hype!)

4. Read some of the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads

5. Depending on my interest level, read up on the author or watch a video or two about the scenario or situation surrounding the book

Basically, I do some diligence to confirm the little intuitive feeling in my body was right! If the book makes it through those paces, I add it to one of my wish lists.

On ‘Panic’ Buying

Before I paint you a picture that I’m some sort of disciplined book buying robot that always and methodically filters everything in perfect fashion before buying and making David Goggins look like a couch potato:

I still sometimes buy books on a whim.

Uh oh, the choppy waters of ‘panic’ buying

I jokingly refer to this as 'panic' buying because it's the feeling of c'mon Jordan, we gotta buy this now or else we'll never learn it/be able to enjoy the story ever again! Quick, buy it when your consciousness isn't looking!

Although I never truly ‘panic’ buy something random (I don’t pick something from an algorithm, I always pick something from my own pre-screened wish list), often I’ll throw an extra book or two in my Amazon shopping cart from my ‘Immediately Relevant Books’ list when I have to place an order for something unrelated. My deliberately formed wish list becomes the Mother that grants the unconscious kid in me permission to throw something in the cart at the last possible second!

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This is Jordan’s Book Selection Framework.

I have more than I can ever read and probably shouldn’t buy so many, but I really do enjoy them.

Maybe in the future, I’ll allow myself to walk around bookshops and grab something with zero thought and see what serendipity brings me. For now, one of my simple pleasures is to finish a book and walk to my shelf without a thought about what to read next. Then, I pick the book that feels right to me based on that moment of my life. I often screen books on the way in, but I’m completely spontaneous when I actually pick what to read.

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How do you choose books? Has it changed over time?

Leave a comment or DM me, would love to hear from you!

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Thanks for reading! Say hello on X!

Big thank you to

Alexandra Allen

,

Miche Priest

,

Steven Foster

,

Danny Oak

, Diana Dimco, Ash Sharma, and Manu Kumar from Write of Passage for your feedback on this piece.