“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them”
– Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
Challenge 18: read a book a week
While I write a lot, I never seen to get much reading done. This year I’ve only read a handful of books. For whatever reason I usually end up reading blogs, articles, and forum posts. This month I’m going to change this. For the next 30 days I am going to try to read a book a week. This might sound simple and boring, but I actually think that it is pretty important. It will help me to form a good habit and eliminate a lot of my wasted time.
For several months now I’ve typically skipped out on reading in favor of doing something else. I’ve tried to rationalize this by telling myself that I read enough for work, but it’s an issue that has been plaguing me for some time now. Rather than letting it continue I am going to take action.
To complete my goal I am going to give myself an hour a day to read and I am going to try to ween myself off of a lot of time wasters, like Reddit, so that I can focus more on getting through some books.
Lastly, I’ve decided to use this time to perform another little experiment. I am going to avoid looking up the plots and concepts within the books I bought until after I finish them. All too often I’ll jump on Wikipedia and find out what happens in a story before actually reading through it. This kills the mystery and reduces the joy of reading.
The book’s that I am going to read for this challenge are:
- The Taming of the Shrew (I bought this awhile ago and have yet to start it).
- The Colorado Kid (I like Stephen King and have no idea what this book is about, so I’m hoping it’s good).
- Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (I found this one in a box with some of my stuff and never remember buying it. It should be pretty good).
- How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday (I planned on reading this earlier, but got sidetracked).
That’s my short list of books. I’ll update my progress throughout the month as I knock each title out.