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Hi All,

What are your reading habits?

How do you select what type of book you read?

How many 'fun' books do you read that have nothing to do with your development compared to devleopment/learning books? Even if you enjoy reading development books by 'fun' I mean for the same reason we watch the latest fictional action movie.

The reason I ask is since buying a Kindle it has been filled with development books and about half way into my usual reading time last night.... I finished them all. It wasn't a big list and I do have a huge 'wish list' on Amazon but I had a look at the books my wife bought and opted for a 'fun' book instead.

Gareth

maura's picture
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I split my reading time roughly in half, a business book here, a fiction book there...

In terms of recent fiction, I liked The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and the rest of that series. 

There are a couple of fiction books that I've gone back and re-read multiple times, just because they are so rich and deep, and I get something new out of them each time:  Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and the entire Dune series.

Next on my Kindle is The Hunger Games series. 

EDIT: The Hunger Games was pretty good.  Ironically enough there are some plot similarities with this and one of the later Dune books.  All in all, a quick read, and good enough for me to stack up the rest of the trilogy for later.

tiomikel's picture
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When I look at my habits, I realize that I have a ton of business/organizational non-fiction type books that I dip in and out of. It's fun and natural and my inclination to read the One Minute Manager or Leadership without Easy Answers or Getting things Done.

However, when it comes to fiction and pleasure, I realized I am more inclined to read those things when it is part of a "project" with others.

For example, CJ Box is a popular author among my colleagues so we are all passing his books around and talking about them. My boss loves Robert Crais (Elvis Cole series) and Lee Child (Jack Reacher series) so when he's done with one he passes it on to me. And for a few months I've been part of a book club here at work and we read Kindred by Octavia Butler, Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and Elegance of the Hedgehog by Barbery.

It reminds me of the David Allen line: "Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life" I have been more successful with my natural disposition at work because I love my work and there are scheduled routines and people to meet with. Whereas Life has little structure and I need to apply some business principles (like turning something into a project or game) in order to ensure I'm attending to those things.

Michael