How did I finish 30+ books this year?
This year of 2021 has been quite a productive year for me in terms of book reading compared to the last 3 years, I set a target of 30 books a year and currently, I am on book number 33 having finished 32 of them.
Can take a list of books I read this year using this link
So How did I achieve this, I did a few simple things this year to achieve my target.
AudioBooks:
This was the year of the ear for me. I explored the podcast format and to be quite honest I am hooked on to it. While listening to podcasts and doing some search I found some classical Tamil language books by Amarar Kalki on Kadhai osai, I like the narration a lot and finished close to 11 books on their audiobook platform. The best part of it is they're free to everyone who can listen. I listened to mine on spotify podcasts.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3fowPfEP04JssaRflE0YXe?si=9eded3fd83d5477aI finished the main works of Kalki i.e. Parthiban Kanavu, Sivagamiyin Sabatham(4 books), and Ponniyin selvan (5 books) this year. I also found some other audiobooks on youtube and this helped me add another 3 books making the audiobook tally to 14 this year.
Finishing books:
I made it a point to not read through books if the book didn’t live up to the promise in the introduction or on the cover. These books have not been counted in my challenge but this help me gain perspective on what I want and choose my books wisely. I realized that pushing through a book is never helpful for the sake of finishing if there is no pleasure to it.
E-Books
I have maintained a lifestyle of not wanting to accumulate luggage if I needed to move swift over the past 4 years and as a result, I didn't buy a lot of paper books. I do have a kindle which is an old model and didn't have a backlight which means that I cant read close to bedtime. So I switched to reading books on iPad and this changed my reading habit for me. I have read a couple of books on my kindle and the rest on iPad
Books I will re-read
From the 30+ books that I have read this year, there are some books that I am sure I will re-read sometime in the future and consider them as timeless jewels. I would like to talk about the impression of those books on me and the key message that I took away from the books
- Atomic Habits — by James Clear
This is a wonderful book that I read in the middle of the year. It helps in explaining what are habits and how can we develop habits that can help in improving ourselves in any process. I also saw some of the accompanying podcasts and videos on youtube regarding this material. The key takeaway is to make small 1% improvements on a regular basis to compound the growth over a period of time.
- Psychology of Money — by Morgan Housel
The psychology of money talks about the relationship between money and us, the people that handle the money. A classical book that examines multiple dimensions and behaviors that can improve or wreck our financial stability.
The Phoenix Project is a multi-dimensional book, It is a story about an IT department in chaos. The story goes through a manager who gets promoted to handle multiple problems and how he uses the principle of DevOps to get it back on track and go on to make a loss-making company a force to reckon with. The other viewpoint that we can gain from the book is that of technology management and how it is similar to manufacturing management. A wonderful book to read as special since it talks about programming processes from an interesting perspective
- Ikigai — by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia
This book is a guide to self-introspection on whether what we are doing is something we enjoy and how to bring things under our control. A good philosophy to read, understand and interpret.
- Masala Lab — By Krish Ashok
Any person who loves cooking will love this book. There are again two perspectives that I thought the book was presenting one for nerds of chemistry understanding cooking, flavor with chemical names and reactions, The other is the presentation of best practices when cooking certain items, with basic high school chemistry the book becomes more understandable and can offer insights that can improve cooking style and flavor.
