Lately, I've been really interested in reading more than two books at the same time. Actually, I have 2 other books that I've started in the past but haven't been able to finish them. This might sound like a bad habit but the subjects that I usually read are either wordy business books and/or technical books that can span to as much as 1,000 pages. I wish sometimes that I can limit and be less tempted to look at all the books for a particular subject, but that tends to be my weakness at this point. Currently, I have over 25 books sitting in my online wish list, and 5-6 unread books sitting in my shelf (including the books I've started in the past).
My rule of thumb is to keep a variety of subjects and I usually separate them by business (finance, etc.) and technical (programming) books. This helps ensures that I don't get bored too fast and to mix things up a little bit. I'm always open to new suggestions and/or genre but I tend to stick to those since I enjoy them more than anything. Another personal favorite of mine are self-help and fitness books but I do read plenty of info on these through my RSS feeds already. There's really no point on accumulating any more books on them (I already have 4 lengthy ones).
I thought in the beginning that my fascination for books is weird until I started researching, and found out that a lot of people share the same passion. Ever since I finish college (back when we were forced to read textbooks), I got into habit of wanting to read. I always have believe that strength comes from vast knowledge but I've never really devoted so much time into getting into it. One of my many dreams in life believe it or not is to have a massive collection of books sitting in a huge book shelves. Take note of the plural form because I would like to have some sort of a mini library. Anyways, my goal right now is to read at least one book a month. One technique that I've acquired through reading many books is to read one chapter at a time. What this means is to make it an absolute goal to finish the entire chapter before calling it quits for the day. I find that this helps keep everything on track and gets the next reading session right on track. If you think about it, its hard enough to keep track of the little details-let alone start in the middle of the page and wonder what's what. This really helps, trust me.
- Dennis