Up: [[My Personal Canon]] Created: 2025-07-03 Six weeks ago, Janet, a friend in LYT, shared her reflections on a fascinating Substack post titled [How to curate your personal canon](https://thedigitalmeadow.substack.com/p/how-to-curate-your-personal-canon). I didn’t reply to Janet’s post at the time, nor did I subscribe to Bea’s *the digital meadow* Substack, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about either. ### What’s in a Personal Canon? I was overwhelmed by the scope of Bea’s definition of a canon. She’s referring to books, essays, films, music, ideas, quotes, stories, conversations, Youtube videos, podcasts, even the creators themselves (writers, artists, directors) *that have shaped how you think and see the world…(it) reflects your intellectual and creative foundation, the influences that have formed your worldview, guided your thinking, or left a permanent mark on you.* A quick scan of some of the online personal canons Bea mentions adds even more complexity. - [Brendan Schlagel](https://www.brendanschlagel.com/canon/) includes words, and has categories for science and technology, fantasy and magic, creating and making, sci-fi and futurism, weirdness and wonder, economics and value, media and design, life and learning, and community and curiosity. - [Shigekuni](https://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2017/05/04/my-personal-canon/) includes poetry. - [Bensonian](https://bensonian.wordpress.com/personal-canon-and-life-author/) includes plays. - [The Solute](https://www.the-solute.com/my-personal-canon-2023-edition/) makes a distinction between movies and television, and also includes video games and comics. - [Fanda Classiclit](https://klasikfanda.blogspot.com/2017/05/my-personal-canon-books-i-love-made.html?m=1) has a separate category for book series. ### Vault as Canon Whew. I agree with Malaika’s response to Janet that she wants her *vault to distill my canon and then host it — for years to come.* That has always been my desire too. But, also like Malaika, I do see the value in keeping the concept of a personal canon front of mind so as to focus more clearly on signal rather than noise in our vaults. ### Benefits to Having a Personal Canon Bea gives a number of benefits to having a personal canon. It allows us to - take back control from the algorithms and the external voices that tell us what we ‘should’ be reading, viewing, and talking about. - take meaningful next steps if we notice there are certain ways of thinking or kinds of sources that are missing from our canon. - continue to clarify and refine what is most important to us ### A Tangible, Practical Benefit I have a library of over a thousand books, the majority of them print, not digital. This is just the most recent of the libraries I’ve owned in my lifetime. There was the two thousand volume educational library that I donated to a faculty of education when I retired; the eight hundred books I gave to public libraries in my current and former communities; the untold hundreds put on yard sale tables, and tucked into free library boxes. I don’t drink, smoke, have a super expensive car, or travel extensively. My vice is and always has been books. I purchase them new and keep them pristine. When I moved to my current home six years ago, I had downsized my library to a couple of hundred books. They easily fit on the bookshelves I had built into my reading nook. There was even room to spare for displaying pottery and glass art objects. Today, those shelves are crammed, as are the three additional cabinets I’ve had to purchase to house my collection. In this small house, there is literally nowhere else that I can put books, unless I take to stacking them on the floor and — see earlier reference to pristine — that is *not* an option. All of the books I currently own are either important from my past or, more often, relevant to new interests that have developed since I moved here. Yet I want and need to downsize. At first, this was just to make room for new purchases. More recently, I’ve been feeling that all of these external voices are clutter, a distraction and procrastination from doing the hard work of discerning what **I** think, feel, value, and have to say. So I’m gradually reading or rereading my way through my predominantly non-fiction collection, making notes and then, if I’m never going to reread the book, letting it go. But, since I want to be notemaking (connecting) rather than notetaking (copying), this is a slow process. ### Canon and Canon-Adjacent Become the Criteria In the last few days, thinking of Janet’s and Bea’s writing about personal canon has made a big difference. For now, I’m limiting my definition of canon to books. All of the other media can come later. My goal is to downsize my library to canon and canon-adjacent, the latter being those books that are important to me for my current interests and that I may want to reference or reread. As my disposal of previous libraries indicates, I don’t have a problem downsizing my collection. As much as I love books, I’m quite capable of giving them away. But it’s thanks to having clear criteria for my collection — canon and canon-adjacent — that I’m now making decisions more easily. And it’s thanks to Malaika’s comment about our vaults distilling our personal canons that I can more quickly note make, or decide not to. ### What’s Next I’m going to start writing in my vault, and sharing in Profound Journey, the books that are in my canon and why. I will also be making [[Book Marks]], which are not what you think, about all canon, canon-adjacent, and books from my life that rated a four or five out of five for me.