A case for buying books mindlessly:
Over the past 3 years, I have accumulated a lot of books in my kindle, with topics ranging from evolution to psychology to history to zen buddhism. Each of those books, I would argue were bought by judging the cover. The books I’ve read in past year have been due to guilt of accumulating them but not reading them to completion. But lately I’ve been reading 2-3 books at once, each driven by my curiosity, not guilt, or not that silly “I need to read 52 books this year” goal. I got curious about why John carmack has this demigod status amongst some of the best programmers I know, and suddenly remembered I have “Masters of doom” lying around in my kindle. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun reading a book.
Maybe this is a case for “curiosity driven” book reading, rather than the mindless ali abdal type.