I read daily, and browse bookstores often. At times you pick up a book in a store, or come across it online, look at it and think that it might be interesting, only to conclude it isn’t and leave it. Until you encounter it a next time, and think it interesting and again conclude it isn’t. Some of those might be interesting at a different point in time when my own interests have shifted to align with it better.

Others I’d better not read because they’re badly written, or there’s strong indications the content doesn’t live up to its backflap pitch. Better to spend my reading time on a different book.

For that group I want to break out of the repeated ‘oh this might be interesting…..oh it’s not’ cycle. I already keep notes about books I haven’t bought yet but might. It’s a sort of preselection stage before both my current reading stack and my anti-library. I now added a Won’t Read List, for books I haven’t bought for which I want to ensure my future self also won’t. You might say it’s type of critical ignoring. I do positive curation in my notes, but now adding negative curation too for those books I repeatedly encountered and rejected.

Through my feeds I follow the book notes and recommendations of other bloggers, and have found some fun and great books through them. For their negative recommendations I never had a use before, but now there’s a way to curate those for myself too.

The inaugural version of my personal ‘Won’t read list’ has two books. Maybe I’ll add it to the OPML book lists I share online.

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