11 Comments
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Dylan Oxley's avatar

Thanks for sharing! I almost exclusively buy used these days because the books themselves tell stories in their physical wear and handwritten notes.

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stepfanie tyler's avatar

love finding hidden treasures smooshed between old pages 🥹

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jami's avatar

i went to a book fair in february and bought 17 books in one go. never have i lost so much money in a single day and not regretted it.

i didn't realize the amount of books i was buying when i bought them, i just collected everything i liked. my pocket maybe empty but my brain was loving it

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stepfanie tyler's avatar

I'd be a goner at a book fair 😂

Have you ever checked out thrift stores? I get books for around $1-$2 each on half-off days... probably why it's so addicting

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jami's avatar

i stay away from thrift stores unless i have company. otherwise i might end up selling my house for "one more book, its cheap"

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Ricardo Garcia's avatar

Love this. Thank you for sharing this Steph

I also find this intersections of topics very exciting as well!

Any recommendations on some books that have created some aha moments for you?

I recently stumbled on a book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned which is a very cool essay about innovation and human nature around this written by a couple of machine learning engineers. Really recommend it if you are into that 🙂

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stepfanie tyler's avatar

Thanks, Ricardo. I'm actually working on getting a big reading list together (hoping it'll be ready by next week), but one book that shifted my perspective and opened the rest of these doors was definitely "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss.

It turned me on to physics, cosmology and the "theory of everything", which made me dig deeper into systems thinking—and ultimately what lead me to this obsession with "the pleasure of finding things out", as Richard Feynman says :)

I haven't heard of the one you mentioned—I'll be sure to check that out, ty!

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Ricardo Garcia's avatar

Awesome. Thank you for the books :)

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kurtis's avatar

I've got a rather weathered book sitting on my bedside that I've been avoiding. the years by annie ernaux. a friend lent it to me, and this helped me realise that there's nothing daunting about it at all, but rather a window of opportunity just waiting for when I'm ready. thank you

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stepfanie tyler's avatar

ooh i love that! it's been a fun reframe for me to see books as "windows of opportunities" rather than something you have to "get through"

i also stopped forcing myself to finish books that weren't serving me... idk why we think we have to? if something isn't fun to read after i've given it its fair shot, i just put it down and move on to something else

i hope "the years" serves you well :)

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Jay's avatar

If you haven’t read Walter Benjamin’s “Unpacking My Library”, I’d recommend giving it a go

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