Reading

Read More Books with GoodReads.com

Tuesday, December 17, 2019 • 4 min read

Reading books is one of life’s great rewards, but in today’s increasingly distractible environment, it can be challenging to find time for books. In this read-more-books series, I’ll share the tips and tricks I use to read at least 50 books a year without feeling like I’m reading that much at all.

My second tip: use Goodreads.com. Goodreads is a site dedicated to book lovers. At its most basic, Goodreads helps you find the perfect next book to read using predictive analytics from books you’ve already read and liked.

Once you set up your free account, you’re prompted to rate some books that you’ve read using the familiar Amazon-style star system. From there, recommendations of what to read next start appearing, both from the Goodreads recommendation engine and from book lists that include your top-rated books. Most books have a Goodreads reader ratings and book reviews to peruse, along with favorite quotes.

Goodreads has some useful features that make it a worthwhile companion to the bookworm:

1. To Be Read (TBR) List. Adding a book to read in the future is as simple as clicking the green “Want to Read” button included with every title in their 395 million book database. Having a nice selection of books you want to read next minimizes the hunt between books and keeps you reading.
2. Book Lists. There’s a good chance that a book that you liked will be included on one or more user-generated book lists that can point you to other similar books. For example, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals is included on the Best Non-fiction American History Books list, the Best Books to Become an Informed Voter list, a dozens more. A review of these lists can be a great resource for filling up your To-Be-Read list and keep you reading for years.
3. Annual Reading Challenge. Each year, more than four million readers set a pledge in Goodreads to read a certain number of books in the year. Your homepage provides feedback on whether you’re on track or not to meet your reading goal based on how many books you’ve marked as “read” in the system. I’ve always liked goals and goal accountability, so this is a motivating feature for me.
4. Kindle Integration. You can connect your Amazon Kindle with Goodreads to automatically when you start a new book, finish it, and your overall rating. Since the majority of books I read are on Kindle, this saves me time from having to update Goodreads with my reading activity.
5. Friends and Groups. If your book-loving friends have Goodreads accounts, you can share recommendations and join genre/niche groups to discuss books. You can even measure your book compatibility by comparing books you’ve read and rated with that of your friend (or anyone on Goodreads). I wish Goodreads could suggest new friends that match your tastes in books, kind of like e-harmony for book lovers.
6. Convenient Shopping. Goodreads makes it easy to buy books with convenient links to Amazon’s Kindle and regular bookstores. You can customize these links to take you to a variety of other bookstores and even public libraries.

There are a few downsides to Goodreads. First off, Amazon acquired Goodreads in 2013, so you can expect to see a lot of plugs for Amazon books within its pages. This also raises privacy concerns among readers. Do you really want Amazon to know everything you read, down to the sections you highlighted? Second, the book challenge can push readers to tackle shorter, easier books instead of more challenging books just to meet their reading goal. I’ve encountered that temptation myself. It also can be dispiriting to be continually reminded that you are tracking below your reading goal. Third, the book recommendation engine churns out a lot of the same widely-read books represented by its huge user base (Harry Potter, anyone?). You’ll have to scroll past many of the top choices to find lesser-known works. Finally, the performance of the web site itself is often slow and non-responsive, which is unusual for an Amazon entity.

For me, Goodreads is a useful system to keep me reading great books, especially with its tight Kindle integration. If you haven’t signed up yet, check it out. Find some great books to read next and set your reading goal for 2020.

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In Defense of Reading

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 • 6 min read

I have read 50 books so far this year, though it doesn’t feel like I’m really reading that much. I simply cut out the hours I might have scrolled through social media feeds or listened to half-baked podcasts, which freed up more time for reading books. I believe we are experiencing a golden age for reading with technologies like ebooks and digital audio, offering the ability to consume books wherever we are, whenever we want. More published works are available to us, most within seconds, than at any point in history.

Despite these riches, one in four adults in the U.S. won’t pick up a book this year. The typical adult reads just four books a year. Teenagers spend only 4.2 minutes per day reading during weekends and holidays (excluding homework-related reading). According to research by Common Sense Media, these same teenagers spend nine hours a day with digital technology, entertaining themselves with streaming video, listening to music, and playing games. With all that interactive entertainment, it seems the lowly book doesn’t stand a chance.

I’ve been thinking about books and the benefit of reading after attending a recent talk here on Vashon Island with Nancy Pearl, a former Seattle librarian, the author of Book Lust, and a lifelong proponent of reading. Nancy reads a lot, and the two hundred people who came out on a Sunday night for the event clearly share her passion for books. Looking around, I pegged the average age of the audience at around 60. During the talk, I noted a shared sense of handwringing about the demise of the book with young people. An audience member asked about whether young adults would eventually turn to books after growing up on a diet of digital entertainment.

“I hope so,” Nancy said after a pause. “But I’m not sure.” This younger generation has grown up on the immediate gratification of video games and the endless quick bites of scrolling social media. Books require a sustained mental focus, and that may be lacking without constant exercise. Will they ever come around to books?

A recent conversation with my seventeen year old son confirmed something I had long suspected. He holds a low regard for reading despite being raised by two constant readers and surrounded by books throughout our sprawling farmhouse. “You old people don’t get it,” he replied after I pressed him to explain. He lumps books and broadcast television in the same useless basket of low transfer technologies. This hurts as I write this from my little book-lined study, though I can see his point about television.

I’m hopeful he will come around to the lure of reading in his twenties or thirties. I’m chalking it up to a natural rebelliousness inherent in being a teenager. Perhaps if he were raised in a home without readers or books, he’d be carrying around a battered copy of Infinite Jest to the dismay and consternation of his non-reading parents.

This vague worry about the demise of the book has put me on the defensive though. I have a deep-rooted belief about the importance and necessity of books, but I never tried to articulate precisely why I believe this. Might my assumptions be misplaced?

After a little reflection, most all the benefit I receive from reading falls in one of these four categories:

Entertainment. Whether it’s walking alongside Gandalf in the Shire or crouched down next to Jack Reacher behind a boulder with gun-toting bad guys nearby, reading provides an unmatched entertainment. MRI scans of the brain show when people read about an experience, they display stimulation within the same neurological regions as when they go through that experience themselves. Talk about the ultimate virtual reality! When the page disappears, and your imagination takes over, even the largest screen can’t match the power of the experience.

Health. A less well-known benefit of reading is its positive impact on your health. Reading certainly provides access to knowledge on how to live a more healthy life. Did you know that reading can help with depression, stress, and is considered an essential brain training exercise that reduces the chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life? Further, a Yale study of adults over the age of 50 showed that readers outlived non-readers by almost two years.

Learning. A near-universal trait of highly successful people is a constant quest for self-improvement and learning. Like most U.S. Presidents, Harry S. Truman was a voracious reader in his youth, reading some 4,000 books spanning every subject from his town library: “Believe it or not I read ’em all… Maybe I was a damn fool, but it served me well when my terrible trial came.” For me, the main benefit from reading hasn’t come from textbooks, but from specialized knowledge about subjects I taught myself through books. For example, Books taught me how to cure chronic back pain, sail a sloop, build elaborate financial models, lead a team, write a software program, build a garden, and cook delicious meals for my family. I will admit that the internet has become a fantastic resource for learning, and in some cases, it is better than staid old books. For example, fixing my lawnmower via free YouTube videos or learning the craft of storytelling with a Neil Gaiman MasterClass. But for in-depth, immersive learning of a new subject, I still prefer reading.

Wisdom. Perhaps the greatest gift of reading is wisdom and developing a deeper understanding of the meaning of life itself. Anne Lamott sums it up so well: “What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” How else can we step inside the head of another person, even someone long dead, and see and feel the world as they saw it? Ceridwen Dovey believes that reading “is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks.” People have felt this way about reading for millennia. King Ramses II of Egypt had a special chamber for his books; above the door were the words “House of Healing for the Soul.”

Considering these benefits, it seems crazy not to dedicate time every day to read. At average adult reading speeds and typical book lengths, you could finish 25 books in a year with just 30 minutes of reading a day. Between your commute, bedtime, and all those little periods of dead time during the day when you reach for your phone, pick up a book instead. Before long, you’ll develop a daily reading habit that will make this feel natural, and over time you will reap the amazing benefits of reading.

As we look forward to the new year, set a goal to read more books, and then set aside time every day to read. Your future self will thank you!

Happy Birthday, Patrick O'Brian!

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 • 8 min read

Patrick O’Brian, the author of the Aubrey-Maturin seafaring novels, would have been 104 years old today. Mr. O’Brian passed away in 2000 but left behind a treasure of twenty meticulously researched historical sea novels set in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The books center on the friendship and adventures of its two main characters: Jack Aubrey, a British naval officer, and Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon, naturalist, and part-time intelligence agent.

As a sailor, I appreciate the technical portions of driving a tall ship on the open sea. I'll admit, even with many years of sailing experience, I don't fully understand all the jargon that describes the maneuvering of these massive ships from 300 years ago, but I do get the gist of it. I delight in sailing along with Captain Aubrey from my comfortable armchair, plowing through hurricanes and typhoons, avoiding icebergs, clawing off a lee shore in a tempest, even fleeing an erupting volcano in the middle of the ocean.

It's not always foul weather and danger: I revel in the many lovely passages depicting beautiful weather, trade winds pulling the ship along at 12 knots over an easy rolling sea that brings smiles to the officers and crew alike. And of course, there are the gruesome depictions of sea battles, frigates gliding along through thick smoke, cannons blasting huge iron balls through the hulls and rigging of their enemy, spars shattering, men dying instantly in bloody rivers on the deck, or later on the archaic operating table in the ship’s cockpit.

I discovered this series shortly after O’Brian’s death and began to devour them one after another, immersing myself into a life at sea aboard a frigate in the 18th century.

O’Brian engages all five senses in these novels: the sounds of the ship creaking at sea and the shriek of wind through the rigging, the taste of intricately described meals with wonderfully strange names (Solomongundy or Spotted Dog anyone?), the smell of gunpowder and the stench of men crammed in close quarters below deck, the feel of the backstay burning your hand as you slide down from the crows nest, and of course the incredible sights of a beautiful blue ocean, tropical islands and the incredible view from the lookout of tall ships under a full press of sail.

I don’t often reread books, especially a whole series of books, but I’m about to finish my third reading of this set, more than 5,000 pages all told, and will almost certainly reread them. You might say that I am continually reading these books since there seems always to be a volume resting on my nightstand. The books have become such comfort over the years that I read them alongside other books, in between books, and in the middle of the night should insomnia strike. Before long, I’ll be a world away, sailing along on a topgallant breeze, with whatever troubles that had awoken me soon put astern at a 10-knot clip.

I love these books so much that I own them in four different formats: on my Kindle, two different hardbound sets, and the audiobooks, narrated by the wonderful late Patrick Tull, whose incredible voice has now become indistinguishable from the voice in my head as I read these myself, and whose performances can make even the longest commute exhilarating. I also keep a set on our trawler, MV Indiscretion. There’s no better place to read O’Brian than on the hook in some secluded bay, the rocking of the boat in perfect cadence with the rolling of a frigate becalmed in the aqua blue of the Mediterranean.

Why such fondness, you ask? Beyond the seafaring and nostalgia for a simpler time, it’s the two polar opposite characters of Aubrey and Maturin, and their enduring friendship that draws me to these books again and again.

Jack Aubrey is larger in life in many ways; his knowledge and experience in commanding a tall ship with all that goes with sailing such a complex vessel in usually hostile territory, with hundreds of souls to lead; his innate sense of battle strategy, somehow always sniffing out the wiles of his enemy and often winning engagements, and lucrative prize money, even when he is outmatched and outgunned; his ability to work out the position of his ship based on the position of stars and a startlingly difficult set of trigonometry equations. And yet it's Jack's glaring weaknesses that, to me, make him a more believable character. As talented as he is at sea, he is equally disastrous on land, easily swindled of his money by crooks, often to calamitous ends. His fondness for women and multi-year voyages away from his wife back home in England conspire to get him in hot water across several hemispheres of the globe. Barring the running of a ship and the fighting of the enemy at sea, Jack is often hopelessly inept, and finds himself being saved time and again by his dear friend Stephen Maturin. It's these shortcomings on land, coupled with his general good nature and cheer, make “Lucky” Jack Aubrey a memorable and lovable character.

Stephen Maturin is Jack Aubrey’s friend, onboard physician, intelligence agent for the British Government, and in most ways the complete opposite to the commander. O’Brian uses Stephen to help the reader understand the intricate workings of a ship, for Stephen never entirely adapts to life at sea, and his confusion during various operations provides an opportunity for the author to teach us as well, usually in a humorous way. This passage from The Hundred Days cuts right to Stephen’s challenges at sea in two beautiful sentences:

A little before the evening gun Preserved Killick, Captain Aubrey’s steward, an ill-faced, ill-tempered, meagre, atrabilious, shrewish man who kept his officer’s uniform, equipment and silver in a state of exact, old-maidish order come wind or high water, and who did the same for Aubrey’s close friend and companion, Dr. Stephen Maturin, or even more so, since in the Doctor’s case Killick added a fretful nursemaid quality to his service, as though Maturin were ‘not quite exactly’ a fully intelligent being, approached Stephen’s cabin. It is true that in the community of mariners the ‘not quite exactly’ opinion was widely held; for although Stephen could now tell the difference between starboard and larboard, it still called for some reflexion: and it marked the limit of his powers.

Maturin has his share of faults beyond his obliviousness to maritime rules and customs: he’s an off and on opium and cocaine addict, quick to temper and generally shrewish when interrupted from his studies, ill-dressed and wearing clothes often stained by blood, human and otherwise, and by most accounts, a small, not very handsome man.

Stephen’s genius shines brightly through these novels. As an intelligence agent with an extreme sense of morality and outrage against the French, he finds himself frequently involved in treacherous spy missions that put him in perilous danger with only his sharp wits to extricate himself. He is also an amateur naturalist and brings to the pages a wonder at seeing such a variety of wildlife around and about the ship and the remote anchorages they visit. O’Brian’s lengthy descriptions of the birds, insects (especially beetles), whales, and all sorts of flora and fauna thrust the reader into the midst of Maturin’s obsessive personality. These passages comfort me like a warm blanket, and I often look about when I’m on a walk with a new sense of interest in the wildlife around me. Stephen is also the ship’s surgeon, and the descriptions of operations in the bowels of the ship, lights swinging this way and that, can’t help but transport me back 300 years to the dark ages of medicine, making me thankful for the modern age.

Beyond the beautiful settings and adventures afloat, the books showcase a unique friendship these two men share, and the equal footing they hold throughout the stories. I can’t think of another book or series of books where a pair of characters, particularly ones as different from each other as Aubrey and Maturin, provide such a balance in the storytelling. On long voyages, they play music together in the ship’s great cabin, Jack on the violin, Stephen on the cello, often playing off the other improvisationally. I suspect this serves as a theme for their relationship throughout the series; each of them switching off in the lead role in some caper, only to reverse roles and allow the other to shine as the story unfolds.

They quarrel like brothers, and over the course of twenty volumes, have their share of falling out, but always find a way to strengthen their friendship and be stronger together, and with most all of their adventures, success is only achieved when they pull together. It may very well be this enduring friendship that I love so much about these books. Every one must yearn for such a perfect friend in their life if only to find it in the pages of a novel.

So, today I celebrate Patrick O’Brian’s birthday and thank him for the gifts he has bestowed on all of us. As I conclude my third time through these books, I will start yet again from the beginning. I cannot not read them. The idea of saying goodbye to these two dear friends is too much to bear at this stage of my life. And with the vast body of work here across twenty volumes, and my memory not being what it once was, starting over remains a new experience, accompanied by a comfortable “deja vu” feeling with every delightful page.

If you haven’t had a chance to meet Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, there’s not a moment to lose. Trust me. You are in for an extended treat.

A Golden Age for Reading Books

Wednesday, December 20, 2017 • 5 min read

While reading books might be waning in today’s mobile phone obsessed, Facebook generation, the tools and technology for reading and remembering books have never been better. I’d call it a Golden Age for those lucky souls willing to invest the time to read.

This is difficult for me to admit, coming from a long history of reading real books. I have a personal library of more than 2,000 books that line the shelves of a small reading place that I consider a sanctuary.

But for the past ten years I’ve read more and more books electronically on my Kindle than I have in paper format. Other than cookbooks or art books, all my reading is now digital. And that isn’t quite true either, since I use the marvelous Paprika app to house all my recipes, with an iPad in the kitchen as I cook. If I find a recipe I like in one of my books, I can’t use it properly until I successfully track it down online to import into my cooking system.

My younger self would be aghast to hear me say this, but my Kindle is a far better book than any on my shelves. Here’s why:

• Instant access to an immense library of available titles. Almost all books published in the past five years are available on Kindle, including thousands (millions?) more available through self-publishing created in this new world of digital publishing (no publisher needed).
• The reading experience is better. My aging eyes appreciate the larger fonts and backlit screen of the Kindle Paperwhite. I find it hard to read normal books now.
• I can fit a thousand books in my bag. I can read from a Kindle or my iPhone or my IPad, really whatever device I have in hand, and it knows my place in the book.
• I can read in microbursts from my iPhone with the mobile Kindle App. The ability to crack open the app on my phone at the exact place I last left off is very convenient to fill those times in waiting rooms I’d otherwise be checking Twitter or Facebook.
• I can even listen to an audio version of the book on my commute and it still knows my place when I get home and open my Kindle.

There is one lesser known benefit of Kindle e-books. With a finger, you can highlight sections of the book that are memorable to you, that you’d like to be able to find again quickly. You can even see the passages of the book you’re reading that others also highlighted (I think there’s a way to see what other famous people highlighted in the book you’re reading too, but I think that’s creepy). In “real” books, these highlights can be found if you’re brave enough to mark up a book to begin with, by flipping haphazardly through the pages until flashes of yellow or pen scribbles catches your eye. I once searched in vain for a scribble in a massive poetry anthology that I knew I marked, but could not find. With a Kindle, these highlights are more readily available as a nested menu option from within the book itself.

But there’s hidden power in this simple digital highlight feature. Did you know that you can access a special Amazon web page housing all the highlights and notes from your Kindle library? And that with a couple of clicks, you can email yourself the sections of every book you’ve highlighted, complete with MLA style reference header and locations within the book?

Think about that: the text from every highlight you’ve applied from every book you’ve read, all available digitally.

Over my life of reading, I have haphazardly captured quotes that were meaningful to me. Some in books with yellow highlighting, more important ones I would transcribe into a notebook or journal and sometimes commit it to memory. I can still rattle off passages from Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Melville which is amazing to me because it was 30 years ago that these words were planted in my mind. In later years, I would capture these in Day One, my daily journal app. More times than not, when I read something beautiful, I would simply appreciate it in the moment, savoring it like a sip of fine wine, recognizing that any attempt to save it for later was impractical.

With a Kindle, highlighting is so easy, but only really important passages got the finger swipe from me because - why bother? It’s all just digital ether and I’ll never take the time to review these like I would in a hardbound book on my shelves. How wrong I was.

I took the time recently to email myself the highlights I’ve captured in books over the past ten years. I use Ulysses for most of my writing and thought it would be nice to have these quotes in my writing tool as reference. It was dead simple to import all my highlights, usually a “sheet” for each book. With a few clicks I applied tags to each quote; things like Strategy, Love, Meaning of Life, Family, etc. I then scoured my digital journals and files for any stored quotes and brought them in too. The whole process took a few hours because I had long lost highlights from a decade of reading.

And now I have a way to see the most precious highlights of everything I’ve read over the past ten years that I can quickly filter down to just those dealing with leadership. Or mortality. Or forecasting. Oh my. As a writer this is an incredible gift, allowing connections and new breakthroughs in thinking and writing that just wouldn’t be possible with this external brain I’ve created. And now I have a logical place to capture quotes I read from books I haven’t read that still move me - straight into Ulysses with a quick tag for later reference when I’m writing and need some inspiration on the topic I’m tackling.

If my younger self understood the power of these current digital reading tools housed in a humble Kindle Paperwhite, I’d like to think I would have changed my tune before now.

Sanctuary

Friday, July 14, 2017 • 1 min read

Batman has his cave; Ironman has his lab; but for me, this place and my books provide such a great comfort - a salve from the trials of life and the boost of energy I need to keep pushing forward. I’ve read so many great books here, and dreamed up hundreds of plans, some limited few of which came to be. The dreaming was the best part. Everyone needs their special place to think and dream; I am so grateful that mine is here in my own home, among my dear bookish friends.