To me, when learning things, I still consider books an important go-to resource. When I was at school, I would use my pocket money for some typical child things – copies of the Beano, 7" singles, sweets, but I also, especially when a bit older, but still very much a child, bought books specifically to teach me things. At early teenage, that was mainly computing, mathematics, astronomy and electronics, though somtimes I managed to pick up some books on what would become my main academic interest of physics.
As I became a physics student, as an undergraduate, I continued to get my own copies of books when I could afford to and/or found intereting things in second hand shops. As time has gone on, I have carried on getting hold of books through second hand shops or websites, buying them new, getting given them by retiring colleagues, and from closing-down sections of University libraries who gave staff first refusal before dumping them.
As of today, there are somewhere between 200 and 300 books that I can reach for when I am sitting at my desk working, and I realise that some of them I may never feel the need to pick up and open ever again. That's not because there's nothing in the books of use or interest to me, but rather that unless I make there effort, then one day that I don't pick up a given book, followed by another, can lead to all my remaining days without making use of them. Of course, it doesn't really matter, and I needn't let the rest of my life be dictated by what books I happen to have to hand right now, but ... I have a plan.
If I choose one book per month then I should be able to cover the collection, more or less, by the time I retire, depending when I do that, and what "retirement" means for projects like working through these books. By "working through" I mean that I will devote as much time as I can manage in each month to reading the book, and seeing what value I can get out of it. That might be anywhere from reminding myself of something I used to know as an undergraduate, or maybe half-learned but didn't understand once, to triggering a research project leading to an original result and a publication, to an interesting anecdote, to running a final year BSc project on the topic.
I slightly fear for my ability to strike the right balance of finding enough time to get something useful from each book without it taking up time for other things, but I'm hoping that there will be net benefit of serendipitous finds and general intellectual enrichment that will make it worthwhile. If not, why do I even have all these books?
So, it's 1st September today, so I should pick a book for September 2024. This is going to be a hard part of the project. I will do that quickly, and edit this post with the result, If you can see from the enlarged version of tha attached image anything that you want me to pick, please comment and I may well start with that.
edit: So I've had a request on X to start with Ashcroft and Mermin's Solid State Physics, and so it begins
I'd be interested in your live reading of Solid State Physics.
— Panagiota Papakonstantinou (@PPapakonNucl) September 1, 2024
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