Mimetic Reading

There's a limiting way of choosing what to read that's pretty common. It's hard to put into words precisely.

It has to do with expectations. If you choose what to read with too clear an idea of what question the book is answering for you, you might be limiting yourself.

A certain class of 'business' book caters to this. Their titles answer very specific questions. Much of the time, your time is better served reading the wikipedia article for the 'rules' one of these books is imparting. Most of the text in all business books is fluff surrounding rules. If you only read business books, you might be limiting yourself.

The truth is, most of the great things you'll learn are things you don't know how to put into words yet. They're unknown unknowns. How can you get to unknown unknowns by reading a book answering a question that you already know to ask?

In my opinion, many books with titles that address specific questions exist because people don't have a good strategy for choosing what books to read. In the absence of a good idea of what book to read, a book title that answers a specific question you want answered is a reasonable choice. It's the 'textbook approach' we were fed in school taken to its logical conclusion.

By the way, I should make clear that I'm not saying that you should never pick books this way. Just that if you only pick books this way, you're missing out.

You're missing out on mimetic reading.

I wouldn't be the first to claim that a great deal of human development happens via mimesis. By looking at the manner of people we admire and mimicking them, we learn.

And I don't think it's controversial to say that we're really efficient at doing this. There's a common saying: "you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with." Most people I know have an intuitive understanding of why this might be the case.

Just by spending time with people, even without a specific goal of what to learn from them, we pick things up. At first small things, like physical idiosyncrasies. But eventually larger things, like conceptions of our place in society and the magnitude and scope of our goals.

I contend that this is just as true for books as it is for people.

If you spend a lot of time with a great writer by reading her books, surely she'll start to rub off on you. In good ways and bad. If you read a great biography from start to finish, you'll be more like the biographed person by the end of it.

This suggests an obvious way to choose books. Look for people that inspire you. Don't worry about why they inspire you. Read their words or their stories and let mimetic reading do its magic.

And, you can get this from some business books! Those written by great business leaders fit the bill perfectly. But be wary of those whose authors you don't know.