I read a lot of fiction as a kid, but somewhere in the midst of high school I lost all motivation to read for fun. For that dark period in my history, I only “read” my textbooks and assigned books from English (although I “chose” to read Planet of the Apes, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird for assignments). This continued through University, where I “read” textbooks immediately preceding the exam.

So it has only been recently that I have resurrected reading, focused primarily on non-fiction. It was so important that I made it my New Year’s resolution at one point. My old hobby of reading (books) has been greatly helped by the fact that I spent time travelling the last few years. Sitting around in airports is an ideal environment for me to read since I am to cheap to pay for internet access.

Unfortunately for me, I have internet access all too frequently, so I haven’t been able to read consistently. This hasn’t stopped me from buying books however. I like browsing Chapters or Indigo in person; the environment is appealing and there are a lot of interesting books, but I try not to buy a new book until I have consumed any books in my queue (which leads me to believe that I should keep a list of books-to-buy on my wiki). This however, as you can see in the stack of books I still need to read on the right, has not prevented me from accumulating a growing backlog.

The problem is that while I have willpower preventing me from buying $20 softcovers at 20% off, I feel that I must buy bargain books that I find interesting. Partially, I’m worried about supply (clones of me may buy all the copies of the books I’m interested in), but I also know that the prices has pretty much reached its basement, so I’m not going to save any more money.

And so, I have a mountain of books on my desk that I am slowly making my way through; I keep a book in my bag to read in case I am waiting (or stuck in traffic), and I’m working on another while I wait for Warcraft games. What I really need, I think, is something like Bill Gates’ Think Week in which I take a week off and just read. Sounds like a vacation.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: reading