There was a sale on Audible the other day for books from the Great Courses. I bought one before and returned it because I got a little overwhelmed because it was dozens of hours long.
I bought six books of time without intending to finish them entirely. I’ll treat them kind of like buying a podcast a season at a time. I’ll listen to them one chapter at a time and I won’t start one if I no I won’t be able to really finish it. Similar to how you wouldn’t walk out of a lecture a quarter of the way through and expect to come back to the same point a few days later.
Then when I finish a chapter I’ll try to do some active recall. It’ll be a constant source of inspiration for the morning creativity routine. You’re looking at an example that right now.
One of the books I got is How Great Science Fiction Works. So far it’s explaining what science fiction is in the first place. Frankenstein was one of the first science fiction books. Not all monster books are science fiction books and many of them to that point and even today or still in the fantasy genre or horror. The gist is that science fiction has to be somewhat plausible if you took the current state of technology and stretched it forward.
While looking up the title in my Audible library I saw that it comes with a 220 page PDF. Now I’m kind of wishing I bought more of these books. Six is probably a good start.