Introductory Book
Unread Bookshelf
On The Books We Meant To Read
A small booklet to help get back into reading those books we meant to have read.
By Pascal Laliberté, creator of ReadWith.
I’ve accumulated books in paper, on Kindle, on Audible, PDFs, Ebooks, Audio books
I never seem to have time to read my books
To read this book, I’ll need to change my ways
Every book was a bit of a promise you made with yourself. “Maybe one day soon, I’ll read this one.” And now your to-read list is too long, you’re wondering if you should commit, but you default to putting off every one of those reading projects.
Contents
A short ebook, in PDF (just 20 pages) and EPUB format, containing these 15 essays:
- Make Guilt Compete With New Decisions
- A Minimum of Effort
- Seek the Pleasure of Insight
- Read, Read Yourself
- What Are You So Convinced Of?
- One Hundred Ways, Find The Three
- “Like” and Other Connectors
- Learning Arc
- No Progress Without a Struggle
- More Connections, On Purpose
- When the Books Are Wrong
- A Shelf Full of Books
- Maybe Too Few Books? (Tsundoku) — Read sample essay
- Intense, But Only For a Time
- Will Future-You Make The List?
What readers are saying
Practical, grounded, and genuinely motivating. No fluff, just a clear take on what reading can look like and why it matters. It made me want to read more right away.
This book hit home for me. We’ve always kept books at the center of our home. Dozens of shelves, giving books away to friends. It’s never just been about reading, it’s about building a life around learning. Pascal understands why that matters. I'm rethinking the books I haven’t read yet. Instead of feeling like unfinished tasks, they now feel like future conversations I haven’t had yet.
As an avid reader, maintaining awareness and self-reflection around my reading habits is not always easy. Expectations, guilt, sunken cost, and past decisions are shaping, if not my actual reading list, the way I feel about it. This book will definitely turn the spotlight towards where it matters, so you can continue reading out of love, while minimizing all the rest. It's a very short read, so definitely give it a go.
It was well written! I don't read a lot of online books, but I read this.
The absolute meta-book to shift your mindset and dominate your unread books. A must-read for anyone who has ever bought more books than they could read.
Clearly, this book is for you if Tsundoku has quietly become your default mode.
Maybe there’s a future where you’ll have gotten into a reading habit. Gotten it into your routine.
Or maybe you’ll make an intense push. Maybe soon.
The thing is: buying a book and reading a book, those aren’t the same actions. You purchased the book for the aspirational goal, and it’s okay to have a different “purchase” for reading it. By “purchase” here, I mean that it will cost you in time. Not only in time (to read your books), but in change. A good book changes you. You need to be ready for a change. You need to be ready to make some progress. We’re talking about non-fiction books here mostly.
Imagine a Future When…
- You’ve read two books that have changed your situation just enough.
- You’ve taken a good look at your current status, and decided, it’s now time to sit and down and make the effort.
- You picked up just enough from those books to change your trajectory.
- Your story has changed.
About the author…
Hi! I’m Pascal Laliberté
I’ve written this book for some of my friends, and I thought you might be in a similar situation. Too many books, not enough time to read them all.
But there’s no need for bookshelf guilt. Learning brings its own pleasure, especially reading with others.
And so, with the book, I’ve made available some of my own reading notes, sharing about my own experience with reading books, books that have impacted my career and my progress as a person, as a creative person especially. Look for a link right inside the ebook. You’ll be taken to my reading notes, made available inside ReadWith, the novel way to read books in groups.
I hope you’ll consider this short booklet, as the next book you’ll read, on your journey to read more (and better) books.
–
Pascal