You are encountering a problem, which is that there is much more to read than you have time to read it, and the only way truly to know for yourself whether a specific book, or part of a book, is worth reading, is to read it. You can ask people what to read, but their interests do not perfectly match yours. You can read a summary, but summarizers are unreliable. You can sample the text (e.g. jump into the middle and start reading), but this may fail to enlighten you for a variety of reasons.
It’s a problem and there are only partial solutions. The problem is reproduced in science. You want to make a great, important discovery. But by hypothesis, you do not already know what there is to discover, for otherwise it would not be a discovery. So what do you do? The typical scientist picks an area of research, and pursues it, hoping to make a great discovery. The vast majority of them, through no fault of their own, pick wrong—as we can expect from the nature of the problem.
You are encountering a problem, which is that there is much more to read than you have time to read it, and the only way truly to know for yourself whether a specific book, or part of a book, is worth reading, is to read it. You can ask people what to read, but their interests do not perfectly match yours. You can read a summary, but summarizers are unreliable. You can sample the text (e.g. jump into the middle and start reading), but this may fail to enlighten you for a variety of reasons.
It’s a problem and there are only partial solutions. The problem is reproduced in science. You want to make a great, important discovery. But by hypothesis, you do not already know what there is to discover, for otherwise it would not be a discovery. So what do you do? The typical scientist picks an area of research, and pursues it, hoping to make a great discovery. The vast majority of them, through no fault of their own, pick wrong—as we can expect from the nature of the problem.