I want to want to read. Generally I enjoy reading. But for some reason reading, as in actual books, is a chore for me. I regularly drain my RSS content. Although I recently had to trim that down since it was getting out of control. I can read all sorts of things I find online. But for some reason I just can’t sit down with a book lately. Maybe it’s the content that I choose. Maybe I’m reading books I want to like and don’t up liking them. Maybe I’m over anticipating them and they’re not living up to expectations. Whatever is causing this, the results don’t seem to be any better when I add pressure. This is a long-winded (surprised?) way of saying that I missed my March objective of reading 8 books.
Here’s my quick follow up in the order that I read them, you can find out what I said about them at the beginning of the month in my preview post:
1. Tech and the City (Completed) – It was good enough. It wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read but it was a good read, interesting enough and pretty quick. My favorite quote from this book that I came across, “…you can’t build a successful company if you are easily pleased: you have to aim at being the best”. It resonates with me because I hope it applies to me.
2. Awesome Supervisory Skills (Completed) – This was a quick read. Much of this didn’t apply to me since I’m not a manager of people. I was hoping there would be some tidbits that would help me along as I (try to) manage product lines. There wasn’t too much that fit well into this, but there were a few quotes that I really liked.
“Once you’re really good at something, you stop doing it and start managing other people to do it. But what made you awesome at your initial job isn’t necessarily what will make you an awesome manager.”
This has always seemed so obvious to me, especially from the outside, that I hope I’m aware of it as I begin to be defined by this as well.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
This is one of my new favorites.
“Authenticity is magnetic. It makes everyone lean in closer.”
I will use this somewhere and undoubtedly forget the source.
“Don’t spend time doing things others are perfectly capable of doing. Focus on doing the things only you can do.”
3. Read This Before Our Next Meeting (Completed) – Another quick (re)read. I remembered this being more useful than I thought it was this time. Mostly this book just reaffirmed how I feel about corporate culture. Many people are afraid to decline a meeting for fear that the act of declining is on par with saying that their time is more important than everyone else’s. That’s not what it means, it means you’re more aware of how your time is best spent. Often I violate this too, but I’m getting better and hopefully it’ll be contagious.
4. Cutting the Game (Completed) – This ended up being shorter than I expected. Half the book was an actual transcript that I chose not to read. It was painfully obvious that this guy was not a writer. The book confirmed to me that this might be an interesting topic, but it was incredibly hard for me to read. Had it not been for some misguided confidence that I’d be able to complete this challenge I might not have bothered finished. Also I was stuck on a plane.
5. I Wear the Black Hat (In Progress) – This was the most disappointing book of all. It was not bad though, my expectations were just far too high. It has an interesting perspective and entertaining arguments. It just couldn’t live up to what I was looking for and that made some parts of it slower for me than I would have liked. As of April 12th I still had two chapters to go and hadn’t touched it in two weeks.
That’s it, I didn’t get to any of the others. My excitement for getting to these waned as I struggled through some of the books before. As I write this my excitement is back, but I won’t fall for that again. I may get to these at some point but I don’t feel like I have to.
It seems that my success is in physical challenges so it’s good that at least two of the next three are also, quite possibly all three. As I get back into a regular blogging schedule I’ll continue to update my progress on those as well.
One side note, a tangent if you will, I love the Kindle. I love that it let’s me highlight words right on my device and then syncs online when I’m back on wifi. All of the things I’ve ever highlighted on my Kindle are aggregated together in one place so that I can refer back to them at any point as long as I’m connected to the internet. Great feature. Great great feature.
for more profundity or pithy humor follow me on twitter – @bicb
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