The Struggle to Read…Books

Posted by Rich Crowley in books, Personal Improvement

I used to read a lot. As a young person, I read novels, biographies, historical stuff. Nothing that would put me in the league of intellectuals but a mix of escapism content and substance. However, as I took stock of my habits the end of this past year, I realized it has been a long time since I’ve read much in the way of books.  I read a handful each year, but not more than that.  Some years less.  Perhaps I am just another data point in the universe of short-burst communications that internet technologies have spawned since I am a twitter user (mostly a follower), blog reader and consumer of online content from various other sources.

Since I still believe a good book is a worthy thing, and that some ideas can’t be crammed into 140 characters, or a blog post, one of my goals for the year is to read more books. Alas, in an effort to focus my attention on good ones, I’ve subscribed to a book extract service in order to give me a bit more context about what’s out there before plunging right in. If the 15-minute precis of a book looks good, I’ll go all-in. If not, I’ll at least have perhaps learned the few nuggets that were worth getting without making the entire time-investment to read the whole thing.

Stay tuned – I’ll post my thoughts on what I learn from these abstracts.