Books I bought this year because they made my PKM heart sing

I got back into reading this year and it’s been the best decision ever.

My growing bookshelves make me feel like I’ve entered a new stage in life, and one that makes my brain feel happy and fulfilled. Because of these frankly great vibes, I am more than happy to invest in books. I’m particularly happy to invest in books that make my PKM brain wake up and feel excited.

Here are 4 books I bought this year specifically because of that:

Timetables of History

This is the book that’s inspired this post.

This by all accounts is an incredibly famous book, but I’ve never heard of it before and I wish I had because I’d have bought it years ago!

It’s essentially a big table, years down one side, categories (science, arts, religion, history, daily life) along the top. The boxes describe key developments in those areas by year. It’s incredible.

This is essentially what I’m trying to do with my PKM journey. I want to know everything and then connect it all. This book takes care of the first part of that wish very nicely, giving me a top level overview of everything that happened. I can then choose to research certain parts of it in more depth. Then, I can connect what I’ve learned in Capacities. I spoke more about this here:

I genuinely feel so grateful to have found this book, sticking out of a random bookshelf in an unsuspecting bookshop in Alnwick. It’s given me a real boost to sit and learn throughout my Christmas break which is exactly the kind of activity to fuel me ahead of 2024 😍

Connections, James Burke

I heard about this book in a Twitter reply of all places but I’m grateful I did. It’s more science-y than I typically go for, but I’ve always been jealous of those who know a little about a lot, so this book will help me learn about new subject areas in an engaging way. This is because I know the idea of connection is core to its arguments, and that’s what’s interesting to me.

Plus, science and technology is a section in Timetables of history so I can connect it all together!

American Connections: The Founding Fathers. Networked, James Burke

All the words in that title are exciting to me

When I was buying Burke’s other book, this one was recommended. I instantly pressed buy because all of those words in the title are exciting to me!

It hasn’t arrived yet (after weeks) but I cannot wait to dig into this. It doesn’t have very good reviews, but I’m happy to review it myself and see what PKM threads it starts.

Anatomy of Britain

I went through a phase of researching the British aristocracy after watching the Crown and a few documentary clips on Youtube. One such clip was from an old documentary about the aristocracy, and there was one man who I found out had published a book discussing the connections between aristocratic families and British government in the late 60s/70s, showing whose fathers and sons held different offices at different times.

In the middle of this book is a family tree that you can open up to view in more depth. It got me thinking about family trees as another type of link in another type of graph, in comparison to links in a networked note-taking app.

So much of history seems to have been decided by strategic marriages and important families, that I can’t ignore the familial links that underpin some of what I’m interested in. Very fun to think about.

There we go, 4 books that are interesting to read, but more interesting to read as a PKM person.

Have you read any books that made your note-taking brain come alive? I’d genuinely love to know, please share!

I should probably stop buying books before we move house and have to move them all, but that just doesn’t seem like a realistic goal!