A year of Reading

A while ago, I outlined a system that I implemented to ensure that I a) read more books and b) read a variety of books. In short, I have books grouped in 5 lists: Recreational, Classical Reading, Technical Reading, Business Reading, and Religious reading. At any given time, I have 3 books I'm reading: a Recreational or Classical reading book, a Technical or Business book, and a Religious book. I read the first category of books on Monday's, Friday's, and Saturday's, while I read the second list on Tuesday through Thursday. The Religious books are left for Sunday.

And this system has worked very well for 2011, the first full year I've tried it. In that span of time, I've read 10 Recreational books, 5 Classical books, 3 Technical books and 5 Business books for a total of 23 books. The books, in chronological order of my reading them are:

• Gulliver's Travels (Classical)
• jQuery in Action (Technical)
• Warrior Heir (Recreational)
• Pride and Prejudice (Classical)
• Web Marketing for Dummies (Business)
• Wizard Heir (Recreational)
• Arguing with Idiots (Recreational)
• Oliver Twist (Classical)
• More Eric Meyer on CSS (Business)
• 4 Hour Work Week (Business)
• Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft (Recreational)
• Latitude (Recreational)
• Time Machine (Recreational)
• Fahrenheit 451 (Recreational)
• Frankenstein (Recreational)
• Jane Eyre (Classical)
• Silverlight 4 in Easy Steps (Technical)
• ADO.NET 2.0 Core Reference (Technical)
• Dragon Heir (Recreational)
• Strength Finder 2.0 (Business)
• The Scarlet Letter (Classical)
• Hackers and Painters (Business)
• Atlas Shrugged (Recreational)

There was a span in the middle of the year where I read a lot of Recreational books. This was during June and July, when I read 8 books for our library reading program. At our library during the summer, library patrons can receive a free book for every 4 books they read from the library. My wife ended up reading 4 books a week during this time period (for a total of 36 books!). Sadly, in that 2 month time span, she read more books then I did in the entire year.

I doubt I will be able to surpass her next year, but my goal is simply to read at least 25 books next year. And with that goal set, I better get to work.