During January, I will be posting (tentatively) one post every day as part of the #bloganuary challenge
Today’s Prompt: What book is next on your reading list?

I’m still working on a book I started last year and did not finish. Not because it’s a bad book, it’s actually pretty interesting, but because I was not in the mood and also because I was struggling to build up the reading habit again. I grew up as an avid reader. I used to read books regardless of whether I had to read them for school or not, but last year was an odd and unproductive year when it comes to books. I read a few technical books, but those don’t count  🤪, I read a bunch of articles as well, but, also don’t count.

And I guess I was, in the back of my head, guilt-tripping myself for not reading as much as I thought I should. And I guess this is just one of the wonders (sarcasm alert) of Capitalism: you need to be productive even in your leisure time.  🤷‍♀️

And while I hate this idea, I still set reading goals for 2022 (oh, the hypocrisy).

That said, I usually don’t do lists. I finish one book and I just go through my Kindle library to see what I wanna read next.

I know most people who read a lot go through the “I buy more books than I can read” situation. That was always true for me but after the digital book era, this has increased exponentially because I don’t need to worry if I have enough shelf space available.

Also, to make things even worse better I found out about a service called Bookbub where you can subscribe, you add your favourite genres and they send you a daily email with all the book bargains for that day on Amazon, Google Books, etc. I got books for as cheap as $0.10.

The downside of it is that my kindle sometimes looks like Netflix and I spend a lot of time scrolling up and down until I find a book I wanna read. The bright side is that I leave the space available in my bookcase for books I get as gifts from my friends 🧡 💛

BUT, funny enough I actually have two books lined up to read next.

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

This is directly related to my post from two days ago, Science is real.

Synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist and science historian, Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. Using sensory data that flow in through the senses, the brain naturally looks for and finds patterns - and then infuses those patterns with meaning, forming beliefs. Once beliefs are formed, our brains subconsciously seek out confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop.

In The Believing Brain, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not our belief matches reality.

And The Dispossessed (which I got for Christmas from a dear friend)

The Dispossessed tells the story of Shevek, a physicist from the anarchist society of Anarres who returns to Urras, the planet from where his ancestors departed about 200 years ago, in order to ‘unbuild walls’ (8) that have kept the twin planets apart both in ideological and practical terms, with only sparse and slow communication between them.

We’ll see how it goes. Writing book reviews is really not my thing, so don’t expect that here  😆 But I’m really excited to read these two books.