What’s On My Nightstand
via stephmcg
I read constantly. If I was to sum up why in three words, I’d say:
- Information
- Inspiration
- Ideas
I’ve gotten a lot more studious about my reading over the last couple years. I make diligent use of my highlighter and write notes in the margins, and flag useful pages so I can reference them quickly. I’ve also been writing summaries for each book to make sure I have a thorough understanding of the subject – this is a great tool to find certain concepts and quotes that I may want to locate later on. Plus everything is saved online so I always have access to my notes.
As structured as I am with my reading, I still tend to get backed up here and there. As of today, I’ve got about 356 articles bookmarked on Delicious that I haven’t been able to get to yet. I also read about 50 different blogs.
In the meantime I’ve been accumulating a number of unread books on my nightstand. Here’s what next in my literary queue:
The ones I’ve got next to my bed are basically a mix of evolutionary biology/psychology, sports and marketing.
You can’t see the name on the really skinny one on top – it’s called “Zig Ziglar’s Little Book of Big Quotes.” I usually carry it in my book bag. It has lots of inspirational, pithy quotes like,
“Positive thinking won’t let you do anything but it will you do everything better than negative thinking will”
and
“The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.”
Right now I’m finishing up “Bringing Down The House” (which is what the movie “21″ was based on) and getting started on “Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business” by Jon Steel. I try to alternate what I read since I believe there’s a lot we can learn from other industries, subjects and even fiction.
Thanks Libby Ander ( @libbyander ) for the original idea for this post.
What’s on your nightstand? Share some pics!
Further reading:
Ryan Holiday – Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level”
Nice post – and thanks for the shout out. Very curious to hear what you think of The Perfect Pitch. Honestly, it has been the most helpful book that I’ve read in years as far as work goes. Other good ones: John Grant’s Innovation Manifesto, Made to Stick & Eating the Big Fish.
But I’m with you – often it’s the books outside of advertising/planning/business that have the most influence in my planning. I read Tom Wolfe’s ‘I Am Charlotte Simmons’ while working on Miller new products and it changed the way I approached the whole project. Tom Perrota and Chuck Klosterman always make me see things differently. Even Sedaris and Burroughs make me a better writer and a better story-teller.
Love the idea that you summarize the books you read – perhaps you could post some of these or send out an end of the year list? Would definitely get into that.
Hi Libby – thanks for the comment! I’m JUST starting into Perfect Pitch. I didn’t know you had read it so I’m looking forward to discussing it with you. I’ve got the other three books on my reading list, including works by Sedaris, Wolfe and Burroughs, although I’m not familiar with Perrota or Klosterman.
I like your idea of sharing the book summaries. I’ll have to think about how to do it properly.