I found that I missed depth, thoughtfulness, and even the engagement of books. I had thought that I wouldn’t have time for them, and instead subscribed to some magazines that had some of what I was after: The Economist, New Yorker, and Atlantic. But eventually what really turned me around was getting a Kindle. I realized that the impediment to reading more books had been more convenience than anything. Being able to carry my library with me and read anywhere has ushered in a change. I read more, watch less TV, and read fewer blogs.

I’ve enjoyed reading some things that I’ve never done before, such as ancient Greek works (Odyssey and Iliad) or the huge Wheel of Time series. That’s an experience that just can’t compare to blogs or anything shorter — and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the 40-page test proposed above is ill-advised; is the only measure of a book how quickly it engages? Or should we also count how much it inspires, how well it enlightens, how accurately it informs, how well it tells a story? I’ll say that some WoT books certainly have their dry spells, but on the whole the series is great and I don’t regret reading it.

What I really miss is an email client which is capable of watching email threads: I don’t care about how many unread messages I have in mailing list folders, I would love to be able to mark a thread as interesting while scanning the headers, and then get a notification when answers to this thread are posted. The unread count could then also be replaced with a “count of unread messages in watched threads”.

Is there such a mail client around? I would switch on sight.

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2010/06/reading-habits.html

Thanks for the stimulating conversation.

:-Dustin

For me it’s a strategy of eliminating all the useless stuff first (not just reading material). Then back-filling whatever time remains with high quality info.

Printed “news” (e.g. newspapers, news magazines) is completely out.

Distractions like broadcast TV, sitcoms, tv news, tv sports are completely out.

I have a few authors and sites that I read regularly online. planet.ubuntu, slashdot, boingboing, some RSS feeds, a few of the ubuntu lists. I use sites like amazon to check for new releases of high quality books to round out the rest of my reading habit.

Cheers,
Randall

I’ve gone back and forth from subscribing to slashdot/phoronix and fmylife just for fun.

For reading news I use news.google.com

Books, I just read Contact for the first time, and that has somewhat started me on wanting to read more.

imagine that you are 109 now and you may not be around next year, what is important? what will you do/read for life?

in my case, i have been sticking to “1 book” for nearly 20 years, and treat ALL other reading sources as OPTIONAL :-)

Regards.