2010 Reading

One of my goals this year is to read more books.

I mean, don’t get me wrong… I read a lot of books (a LOT of books!) but I know I’ve sort of slacked off in the last year or two and should have polished off twice as many as I actually managed to complete. I developed a bad habit of buying every book that seemed like it might be good, added it to a stack, started reading 2 or 3 of them at a time and then I’d abandon them for the next set of cool books I bought and didn’t end up going back to finish most of them.

To better help me keep track of my progress, I created a new Shelfari account (see the bookshelf style widget that appears below each post in the blog) and I will only add books to the shelf if I’ve read them or am in the process of reading them. As of today’s 2010 relaunch of the shelf, I have several books on the list. Lest you think it’s impossible that I polished off six books on the very day I started, I wanted to provide an explanation.

1. 100-Whats of Creativity
Hey, it’s MY book. I could hardly leave it off the list, right? Plus, it’s one of the books intended to be referred to as-needed. It’s a constant resource for my own brainstorming and idea generation efforts. I heartily recommend (even if I do say so myself!)

2. Napoleon Hill’s Positive Action Plan
This is a book with 365 daily doses of positive attitude and ideas for self-improvement. I’ve been reading one entry per day and repeating the process for the last four years. It’s my positive attitude ritual. I read an entry every morning while brushing my teeth. Refreshing my mind and I freshen my breath.

3. Warrior of the Light
This is another one of those “daily dose” books I’ve found. While not exactly broken down into 365 entries, I read a random page every evening before going to sleep. It’s by Paulo Coelho and reminds me of bit of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Very instrospective passages that make me think strategically about my actions and attitude. This will be the second or third year I’ve spread out it’s reading over 12 months.

4. Think and Grow Rich
I actually started listening to the unabridged audio version during my daily commute at the end of last year. The final CD wasn’t completed until January, and I thought it an appropriate bridge into 2010, so I’m counting it as a book read for this year (yes, audio books will qualify as books I’ve “read” in 2010 — why wouldn’t they?)

5. What Would Google Do
No explanation really required on this one — it’s the first official book to be read in the new year.

6. You, Inc.
Ditto… except it will be the first full audio book in the new year.

When all is said and done, I hope to average about two or three books per month in 2010. If you’re intrigued by any of the books I recommend, I hope you’ll purchase it through one the blog links or embedded widgets. I’m a member of Amazon and other affiliate programs and they’ll toss me a few cents if you buy a copy — hey, somebody has to help pay for all these damn books!!! 😉