Book criteria
I have become much better at determining if I should buy a book or not, I think. Yes, a bookstore is a portal of portals, but realistically, some books have enough friction to prevent you from going through them. I found some books on Ernst/alchemy that felt aligned with what I want to learn, but after reading 2 pages, I can tell that there’s little attention to prose; it’s thick and long and I don’t have months of open time. Either make it a short essay to convey the idea, or give me a long book with careful prose. A long technical book only appeals to a specialist, and right now I’m a generalist.