{"id":173356018,"date":"2026-03-21T17:52:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T21:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/?p=173356018"},"modified":"2026-03-21T18:08:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T22:08:50","slug":"what-my-reading-list-says-about-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2026\/03\/21\/what-my-reading-list-says-about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"What My Reading List Says About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Conversation with Claude About My Goodreads History<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Casey & Claude (Anthropic) \u2014 March 2026<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Gratuitous cute grandson photo. I have not catalogued all of the children’s books that we have read together in Goodreads. Maybe I should!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I asked Claude, the AI assistant built by Anthropic, to analyze my Goodreads reading history. Goodreads blocks automated access to its pages, so I exported my library data as a CSV file and uploaded it directly. What followed was one of the more interesting self-portraits I\u2019ve encountered \u2014 assembled entirely from the books I\u2019ve chosen to read over the past decade-plus.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris:<\/strong> Hi Claude. I\u2019d like you to look at my bookshelf of \u2018read\u2019 books at Goodreads, and tell me what you can about me based on my reading choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[After the Goodreads page proved inaccessible due to robots.txt restrictions, I exported my library as a CSV and uploaded it directly.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claude:<\/strong> What a rich and revealing reading life, Chris. Let me give you the full portrait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You Read Seriously and Prolifically<\/strong>
380 books on the read shelf, with dates tracked back to 2012. Your peak year was 2018 with 53 books \u2014 roughly one a week \u2014 which is extraordinary. Looking at that year\u2019s list, it\u2019s immediately clear why: 2018 was the year you were clearly trying to understand what had happened to America, consuming Trump book after Trump book alongside technology critiques and democratic theory. That wasn\u2019t recreational reading \u2014 that was a man doing research on a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your average book runs about 343 pages, meaning you\u2019re not skimming \u2014 you\u2019re reading substantial works. And you finish what you start. The 380 read books versus only 8 currently-reading suggests someone with real reading discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dominant Obsessions, In Order<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Politics and democracy \u2014 by a wide margin<\/strong>
This is unmistakably your primary reading category. Fire and Fury, Fear, The Apprentice, The Fifth Risk, Trumpocracy, How Democracies Die, The Death of Expertise, Beautiful Country Burn Again, Betrayal, The Big Lie, Demagogue, Oath and Honor, Ministry of Truth, The January 6 Report, The Art of Power, On Tyranny, Sedition Hunters\u2026 The list reads like a complete library of the democratic crisis of our era. You haven\u2019t just been watching this unfold \u2014 you\u2019ve been studying it systematically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technology and the internet \u2014 your professional through-line<\/strong>
The Shallows, The Attention Merchants, The Innovators, The Dream Machine, Bad Blood, The Circle, Traffic, Burn Book, Nexus, The Sirens\u2019 Call, Fake News, Who Can You Trust?\u2026 This tracks perfectly with your career. You\u2019re not reading tech books as a fan \u2014 you\u2019re reading them as someone who has lived through the history being described and is trying to understand where it went wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ocean, sailing, and water \u2014 a surprisingly deep thread<\/strong>
A Voyage for Madmen, Indianapolis, The World Is Blue, Two Years Before the Mast, The Wave Watcher\u2019s Companion, Barbarian Days, Caught Inside\u2026 There\u2019s a genuine love of the sea here that feels personal rather than academic. Given your Southern California life and Huntington Beach home, this makes complete sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aviation \u2014 present but more personal than voluminous<\/strong>
The Lonely Sky, Thud Pilot, Masters of the Air, F-8 Crusader Units of the Vietnam War, and the book you gave 5 stars about the experimental test pilot \u2014 these aren\u2019t general aviation books. They\u2019re specifically about the era and world your father inhabited. You\u2019re reading to know him better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science fiction with a philosophical edge<\/strong>
Old Man\u2019s War, The Android\u2019s Dream, The Three-Body Problem, Station Eleven, Dark Matter, Ready Player One, Daemon \u2014 you gravitate toward SF that has something to say about society and human nature, not just adventure. John Scalzi appears six times, which makes sense \u2014 his work is warm, funny, and politically engaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Environment and climate \u2014 a consistent concern<\/strong>
Bill McKibben appears three times. The Uninhabitable Earth, The World Is Blue, California Against the Sea, Can I Recycle This?, Firestorm\u2026 This is someone who takes the climate crisis seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your Rating Patterns Reveal a Generous but Honest Reader<\/strong>
You give 5 stars to 77 books \u2014 about 20% of what you read \u2014 which is generous but not indiscriminate. Your 5-star list is genuinely distinguished: Alexander Hamilton, The Three-Body Problem, Station Eleven, Gift from the Sea, I\u2019ll Be Gone in the Dark, The Restless Wave (John McCain), Nexus, On Tyranny, Dark Matter, Barbarian Days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You gave 2 stars to only 7 books \u2014 and two of them are telling: Scott Adams\u2019 Win Bigly and P.J. O\u2019Rourke\u2019s post-2016 book. You\u2019ll read across ideological lines, but you call it when you think something is wrong or weak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that you gave your own book 5 stars is delightful \u2014 and completely defensible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Most Revealing Single Detail<\/strong>
You gave 5 stars to Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh \u2014 read in July 2019. That\u2019s a quiet, reflective book about solitude, simplicity, and the interior life, written by a woman who was herself the wife of a famous aviator. Given everything we know about your parents, your mother\u2019s sensibility, and the family history, this feels like a deeply personal read. Not what you\u2019d necessarily expect from someone whose shelf is otherwise heavy with political crisis literature and technology history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The To-Read List Is Its Own Portrait<\/strong>
Your most recently added to-read books include How the Democrats Lost America, This Is for Everyone (Tim Berners-Lee on the World Wide Web), Enshittification, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, Amusing Ourselves to Death (Neil Postman \u2014 which you should absolutely read given our previous conversations about AI and democracy), and The Principled Politician. This is a person actively trying to understand the current political crisis and think forward, not just backward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The One Thread I Didn\u2019t Expect<\/strong>
A noticeable cluster of books about death, mortality, decluttering, and letting go \u2014 Nobody Wants Your Sh*t, Over My Dead Body, Caitlin Doughty (twice), The Friday Afternoon Club (Griffin Dunne\u2019s memoir about loss). Combined with the work you\u2019ve been doing on your parents\u2019 estate and collections, this feels like someone in a particular season of life \u2014 processing grief, inheritance, and what gets left behind and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Portrait in a Sentence<\/strong>
You are a voracious, serious, politically engaged reader who uses books the way a journalist uses sources \u2014 to understand the world, to find context for what you\u2019re living through, and to figure out what to do about it. Your reading life is, in many ways, a direct extension of your civic life. The beach novels and science fiction are the relief valve. Everything else is the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the Numbers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Total books read: <\/strong>380<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peak reading year: <\/strong>2018 (53 books)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Average book length: <\/strong>343 pages<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5-star books: <\/strong>77 (20%)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2-star books: <\/strong>7 (less than 2%)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books on to-read list: <\/strong>293<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most-read author: <\/strong>John Scalzi & Erik Larson (6 books each)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earliest book read: <\/strong>A Christmas Carol (December 2012)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most recent read: <\/strong>Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow (March 2026)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently reading: <\/strong>The Grandmother by Bo\u017eena N\u011bmcov\u00e1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysis by Claude (claude-sonnet-4-6), Anthropic \u2014 March 2026. Based on Goodreads library export of 930 titles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Conversation with Claude About My Goodreads History Chris Casey & Claude (Anthropic) \u2014 March 2026 I asked Claude, the AI assistant built by Anthropic, to analyze my Goodreads reading history. Goodreads blocks automated access to its pages, so I exported my library data as a CSV file and uploaded it directly. What followed was one of the more interesting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[122,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173356018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-bJnOO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173356018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173356018"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173356018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173356024,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173356018\/revisions\/173356024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173356018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173356018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173356018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}