Then, you can enter keywords like “time management” and “efficiency” on any book or reading website or app, and a lot of books you need will come out.
II. Author
The author is also an important factor in judging whether a book is worth reading. If it is a writer you are interested in, a writer who has heard of, or a writer who has written a good book, you can try it. For example, in the method of collecting authors introduced earlier, the author who you decide to collect is your criterion.
Whether to start reading a novel by an author you have never read is a matter that needs to be considered, because once you start reading, you will pay your most precious cost-time. Therefore, if you don’t know the authors and works, you can try the e-book website to see if the language style is in line with your taste. Other people’s evaluations are not as important as your own feelings.
If you don’t know the author, in addition to looking at the author introduction provided on the website, you can also search the Internet to see what other books he has written, what other achievements he has made, and what netizens say about him. If you only want to choose one of two books of the same kind, you can compare their authors before opening them.
For example, we see two books on the same subject of procrastination. One of the authors of “Psychology of Procrastination” is Jane Bock and Lenora Yuan, who are “PhDs in Psychology, senior psychology at the University of California Counselors. They created the first group therapy course for procrastinators among students in 1979. They have appeared in TV shows such as “Oprah Talk Show”, and also in the “New York Times”, “USA Today” and “Los Angeles”. The subject of interviews in publications such as The Times, People and Psychology Today. The author of the other book is a literary youth who loves creation and psychology, graduated from XX University and now lives in Beijing. From the author’s background, we can roughly judge that the first book is a collection of the results of years of research and practice by two professionals, and the second book may be compiled by young literary people without professional background based on existing research results. This will give you Provide a reference when selecting books.
For very powerful authors, publishers often spare no effort to introduce them, sometimes even more than the content of the introduction book. For example, the web page material of the book “The Best Farewell: Common Sense About Aging and Death” not only puts the author’s introduction at the top, but also exceeds the content introduction, because Artu Gwende is from the White House. The health policy consultant is the only doctor in the 2010 “World’s 100 Most Influential People” list of Time Magazine, but for Chinese readers, heIt is still very unfamiliar, and it is indeed worth introducing. The editor’s hard work was not in vain. After the strong marketing of this book and “List Revolution” and other books, now, for many people, Dr. Attu is already a familiar name, and it has basically become a book’s quality assurance.
For the author’s research, you can go deeper, which will help you find out what you need most in a pile of good books. For example, if you want to improve your marriage relationship, you need to find a book on the methodology of marriage.
There are many books about emotional marriage, and there are many famous books by well-known authors alone. Suppose you find two famous books of the same name, one is Roland Miller’s “Intimate Relationship”, the other is Christopher Meng’s “Intimate Relationship: Bridge to the Soul”, but through understanding of the author , You can know that these are two very different books.
Roland Miller is a professor of psychology at Sam Houston State University in the United States and has won the Outstanding Research Award from the American Psychological Association. This is a scholar who specializes in research. His works are also based on theory, drawing out a large framework for intimacy, and there is even a chapter devoted to his research methods. He analyzes the composition of intimacy, the psychological and sociological principles involved, and shows you one by one, the content is complex and the structure is tight. You know that his research is very comprehensive and reliable, but you are disappointed when you read it, because what you want is not a theoretical height and a comprehensive understanding, you just want a solution!
Look at another book, “Intimate Relationships: A Bridge to the Soul”. This is a book that can solve intimacy problems, and even the methodology of solving life problems. It is worth checking out frequently. Christopher Meng is a speaker and consultant with 30 years of experience in the field of personal and team coaching. In the book, he divides the intimacy into four stages: “moon halo”, “disillusionment”, “introspection” and “revelation”. The ultimate answer he got is: my partner is not the source of my happiness or misfortune. Yes. This is indeed an answer that is not easy to understand and not easy to do. What is needed is not only your understanding, but also your cultivation and experience-what’s going on? It sounds like it’s not easy to master.
Looking at his other works, he also wrote “Retrieving Your Gift of Life” and “Rediscovering Yourself: Class Notes of a Spiritual Tutor”. It can be seen that his writing is not focused on solving intimacy problems. What he wants to solve is the problem of self and life. Intimacy is only a “bridge to the soul”-look, it is a bridge, not a destination. In fact, his solution needs to be accompanied by experiential practice. If he is unable to cultivate, he cannot understand what he said, “The road to hell is paved with expectations” and “The problems in the relationship are just stories.” Of course it can’t be done, so his plan is still useless for you now.
Next we found John Gottman, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, known as the “Pope of Marriage”. He is a practical researcher and has been engaged in family relations research for forty years. He has conducted long-term observation and research on nearly 700 couples, and after listening to a couple’s five-minute conversation, he can predict whether they will divorce, and the accuracy rate of prediction is as high as 91%. If you are looking for methodology, his book should be the most appropriate choice. Sure enough, in his “Happy Marriage: How Men and Women Get Together for a Long Time”, he introduced seven rules of happy marriage, such as “Create your love map”, “Develop your praise and appreciation”, and “Let your spouse” “Affect you” and so on are all behavioral guidelines that can be done right away.
There is also a book “The Five Languages of Love”. The author Gary Chapman is a marriage and family expert. He organizes marriage seminars across the United States and provides marriage counseling for married people. He also wrote ” Books such as “How to Make Marriage Grow”, “The Covenant of the Soul”, “The Words of Single Love”. In this book, the five languages of love he proposed are “affirmative words”, “exquisite moments”, “gifts”, “acts of service” and “physical contact”. They are all very practical and operable solutions. A down-to-earth methodology.
This is how to use the author’s qualifications and characteristics to finally select the book that best meets your needs.
3. Content introduction
The introduction printed on the back cover or on the mouth is the author or editor’s summary and summary of a book, and it should be the most official version. If you buy a book online, you can see a detailed introduction.
A good introduction to the content can roughly summarize the content of the book and show the essence and highlights. As an editor, I always put a lot of effort into the content introduction. This kind of brief introduction is of great reference value. If you are interested in the subject matter and content, you can read it first and try it. For example, the writer Gao Yanan’s novel “Where Are the Years Quiet?” written by Gao Yanan on the back cover: “This book can effectively relieve menstrual irregularities, prenatal anxiety, postpartum depression, early menopause, etc. The physical discomfort caused by gynecological diseases also has analgesic and bactericidal effects on straight men’s cancer.” The style of this book is realistic, hard-hearted, and full of humor. The stories of a few “middle-aged girls” and a group of “scumbags”, “excellent boys” and “greasy boys” are the living reality around us! Reading such a book, how can it be so cool.
Previous book content introductions are full of words like “best”, “most complete”, “best” and “first”.It can fully reflect the system of a book. Looking at the catalog can understand the structure of the book and the logical structure of the author. You can quickly discover whether the book is a systematic and complete discussion by the author or a random collection of scattered works. If a book devoted to discussing a certain topic is not based on a complete and rigorous system, but merely a compilation of articles on this topic over a period of time, then this is probably not a book worth reading. It’s better to find the author’s article on the Internet and read it.
Some serious authors and responsible editors, even if they just gather columns in newspapers and periodicals, will definitely reorganize, add and delete according to the characteristics of the book. The workload is huge and new ideas are needed. The quality and weight of the book sorted in this way and the original scattered works are completely different. For example, when my friend and writer Huang Tongtong compiled and published her column “Old Chinese Medicine Huang” in “Southern Metropolis Daily”, it took several months to overthrow all the styles and stories, which is almost equivalent to using A pile of materials re-created a book, this book is “I can’t help but fall in love with this world” published by Beijing United Publishing Company, which has appeared on various lists after publication.
Later, she wrote a lot of articles about fashion and consumption in the public account “Miss Lan and Miss Huang”. After careful revision, she compiled and published “I Will Rebuild My Life with My Hands”. The content is based on lifestyle. Lord, but it never stops here. It runs through her outlook on money, consumption, and life, which is more in-depth and powerful than reading an article on the official account. This gives book buyers a reason to buy this book, and it will not only make people question like some books composed of articles on official accounts: “What is the difference between reading a book and watching an official account?” The eyes of consumers are Discerning, everyone knows whether you made this book with your heart.
5. Preface
Next, read the preface at the front of the book, including the self-preface and the preface written by others, the epilogue and the postscript at the back of the book, from the author’s intention to write the book, the process of writing the book, and why he thinks he can write this book and write Whoever shows it, you can judge whether this book is right for you.
Mr. Li Yinhe’s new book “We Are All Motes in the Universe”, the first paragraph of the self-preface “The Realm of Transformation” deeply attracted me: “At the age of 66, my self-feeling has entered the realm of life, showing For the comfort and neutrality of material life, the refreshing and warmth of interpersonal relationships, the peace and joy of spiritual life. There is no desire, no desire, freedom. “This is a realm that makes people yearn for! Of course, books written in this state must be read. There is a book called “Corrosion: Mankind’s Longest War”, which talks about the relationship between rust and mankind.
If it wasn’t for the preface that moved me, I might not have read such a special book. In addition to the recommendations of various celebrities and the author’s recommendations to Chinese readers, the book’s preface is titled “A Sailing Ship with Thorough Rust”. The author bought a 30-year-old sailing ship, but found that it had been rusted. Scattered, rust this thing broke into his life in this way. The following preface, “The Devil Who Destroyed America,” was written as a thrilling one, which made people curious and turned down involuntarily. All of these materials will appear as the basic materials of a book in a regular online store. If you study it carefully, it is easy to judge the quality of a book and whether it is suitable for you. In the past, you can read the front and back of the book in a bookstore, which is more intuitive, but now many books are wrapped in plastic, but they are not necessarily visible. Therefore, the content written on the front cover, back cover, and girdle is more important. Fortunately, we still have the Internet. A search on the Internet revealed everything.
How to find the book you want? Again: Look more, when you become an experienced reader, you will find that finding the right book is a breeze.
This article is from WeChat official account:Xinminshuo iHuman (ID: xinminshuo) , author: wheat wheat