Catching Up on Some Reading
On January First this year, I wrote that I wanted to read at least 26 books this year, which is double what I read last year.
Thanks to the Fellows Program and an aggressive travel reading list, I'm well on my way to accomplishing that goal, with 23 so far. I read 10 books while travelling, and have updated my reading section to reflect nine of them. Barry Schwartz' Paradox of Choice was the tenth. I'm waiting to put together a more thorough post on Schwartz' book, as it has made me conscious of my desire to maximize the return on my choice of everything from MP3 player to pasta sauce. If awareness is the first step in overcoming this tendency to maximize, I'm on my way.
In any case, I powered through a lot of fiction in the past few weeks, which was good for me because it provides balance to all the business reading I tend to do.
All were worth reading, but my favorites stories were told in The Paradox of Choice, Terry Pratchett's Night Watch, and the sixth Harry Potter book.
You can get my take on the books I read, here:
- Dress Your Family in Courduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris
- The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
- Ugly Americans, by Ben Mezrich
- Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown
- Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby
- Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by JK Rowling
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
- Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett