After clearing various areas of my home of half-read books, I have to wonder if my reading habits aren’t getting the better of me. I also have to wonder what will get me informed quicker. Which is more efficient? Reading only one book at a time? Reading multiple books at any given time, picking which one based on my mood?
I sometimes wonder if my reading habits are bad. Currently, I have started, but not finished the following books:
- The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
- I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi
- Apartment Therapy by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan
- Real World Haskell by multiple authors
- Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt
- I just started The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang
I can imagine arguments for both sides of this debate on reading focus. If I dedicated myself to reading only one book, I could finish it shortly. I read fiction books one at a time. Sometimes I’ll read a whole series at a time in rapid succession.
With non-fiction, having multiple books “open” keeps me from getting bored. If I can skip back and forth I can exercise different parts of my brain because the subject matter varies greatly. I’m also more likely to ‘stall’ on a book, such as Real World Haskell and Apartment Therapy.
If I treat non-fiction like my fiction selection and “queue” books for reading, I think that would prove to be an incentive to finish one book before starting the next.
Habit Change
I figured I need to cultivate a new habit if I’m going to do something about the problems with my reading habits. I can think of a few ways to “solve” my problem:
- Picking a book from the above list and finishing it.
- Put the others away on a shelf until I finish the first book.
- Finish the books by order of how much I’ve already read in them. (I have bookmarks)
- Writing down a queue of books and sticking to it for non-fiction
I think with such a shift in habits, I should be able to knock of most of the “queue” by the end of my vacation, and be more informed because of it. I will update my progress In an update thread.
One Comment
I enjoyed this post. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I also start reading too many books and feel like I spread myself too thin. Sometimes I will neglect a book on my list for a while, and when I pick it up again, I feel like I’ve forgotten what came before it. Even still, I think what you say about exercising different parts of your brain is the most interesting to me. Maybe that’s why I make it a point to keep 2-3 books in the queue. 1 can get boring, but more than 3, and I feel like I’m not getting everything I can out of the books.
I’m interested in your update thread, I’ll follow it.