Photo By Patrick Feller
Why I Find Good Books to Read
Today I am going to start a new “resource” page. One of the things I want to put on here are the books I have read that have been really good; both fiction and non-fiction.
I am a fairly big reader. I shoot for reading 52 books per year or on average one per week. I am on pace to read about 60-70 this year.
I have many reasons for reading.
1. My writing skills are average. I want to learn to write better by reading really great authors. There are reasons that many of the books I read are classics; great stories, characters, beautiful descriptions…I hope by exposing my neurons to the prose of these writers that it will rub off on me one day.
I am always amazed to hear about writers who didn’t go to college and become English majors, or they dropped out of school. Authors like; Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Harper Lee, Jack London, Leo Tolstoy, and William Faulkner. They all had a love of writing and worked hard at it. If they didn’t learn the trade from school they must have learned it from reading other great works and consciously or subconsciously picked up on what made a piece wonderful.
I did not like school when I was young. Now that I am over 50 I love learning. I purchased the English grammar book I used back in high school and I am working my way through it again. The books is “Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition.” I found a used copy for $.99 at Half Priced Books LINK
I also found a free website for grammar lessons that I use daily LINK
Here’s one I use daily for vocabulary words LINK
But really I learn the most from reading these great books.
A lot of the books that I read are read on my Kindle (actually my daughter’s). One of my favorite features on it is the ability to highlight a word and look it up in the dictionary and immediately see the definition. So much easier than having a dictionary by you and having to take the time to look it up.
2. Not all of the books I read are classic literature. The majority are non-fiction books that I read to learn about something. I can never read just one book at a time. I usually have three to five books going at once. For example I am currently reading “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoyevsky, “Options Trading for the Conservative Investor” by Thomsett, “Psycho-Cybernetics by Maltz, “Gentleman’s Guide to Grooming and Style” by Roetzel and the book of Jeremiah in the bible. Not all of the books I read are great, but I do try to read books that others have recommended. It is difficult to retain all of the knowledge from every book I read. What I try to do is write down a few key important facts and write them down in a journal that I keep. A lot of books could be summarized in a few pages and these are the books that I speed-read and note the key points.
3. I have a fetish for lists. Last year I watched all top 100 greatest movies of all time and the top 100 funniest movies from the American Film Institute LINK and for the last several years I have been working my way through lists of the best books ever written. I suppose it is a sense of accomplishment to complete a list, but it is also fun to watch Jeopardy and know the answer because you’ve read the book they mention. I have many lists from various sources on best books to read. A lot of them have the same books on them. These are the books I have been reading.
4. Life has a lot of stress. Reading, for me, is a way to escape that stress and unlike drugs and alcohol, it is not harmful to me. I can spend hours reading and that whole time I can be absorbed into the world of the book and totally forget the project that is due in a month or the person in my life that is giving me a lot of grief. Lots of people pay big money to doctors, psychiatrists, yoga retreats…to reduce stress when just spending some time with a good book would do it better for free.
5. Ever have those nights when you just can’t fall asleep? Or on occasion you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t fall back asleep? Well, since reading when I go to bed I have had zero days when I couldn’t fall asleep. I have a rule where if I wake up in the middle of the night and toss and turn for more than 20 minutes, I flip on the flight and start reading. It may take 30-60 minutes to return to dreamland but my sleep is better and the time spent reading wasn’t wasted.
So as the Fall of 2013 begins, I will add a new resources page with a list of books I recommend reading. I won’t do a detailed review of the books and I won’t list books I’ve read that weren’t a benefit to me, as they might be to someone else. The list will be a work in progress. So check it periodically.
Let me know if you have a favorite book that you recommend to others in the comments.
Thank you for reading!
Great links