If I were to organize my book collection and try to read them all in sequence, what sequence would it be? Would it be from easiest to hardest? Fiction first, then non-fiction? The way I think about reading these days is thematically. I often use fiction to find themes that are worthy of exploration or might be of value. One way of doing this is to cross-reference different books with similar themes, similar to a kind of research project?
I have three books on my shelf that could qualify under a single "theme", namely health and illness. Two are fiction, two non-fiction. The two non-fiction are Michel Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic, and Aledander & Selesnick's The History of Psychiatry. The two fiction books are Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, and Albert Camus' The Plague. I can think of a lot of themes that can arise from reading these books together. But themes always arise from questions. For instance, what is the relationship between "physical" and "mental" disease? How did the idea of the body as "ill" emerge and evolve into the idea of mind as "ill"? What does the metaphor of illness entail? Can the mind's (and spirit's) illness be reduced to a spatial body, or does it have its own special categories? How can we observe mental illness, and when did it ever become something to be observed? These books also make me think about the birth of the idea of health. They also make me wonder, at what point did the concept of wellness shift from something that is spiritual to something that can be cured using drugs and other chemicals? Perhaps there is no straightforward answers to these questions and they may reflect trends in the way that histories might experience health.
Thematically arranging books can help ensure focus as well as a more connected reading experience. It avoids the pitfalls of too much idiosyncrasy in reading. I believe that it's a good approach to start the reading adventure.
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