My 2017 reading challenge

Last year I decided that I wanted to read more. So I set myself a goal to read 53 books in one year. I failed (That’s a recurring theme).

During the challenge, that started the 31st of October 2016, I managed to read ~25 books. Here they are:

1. Intercom on Product Management Great book
2. Docker for Developers meh
3. Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think I need to read this again
4. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts Lot of insights
5. Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP Really well written
6. Digital Marketing For Dummies I don’t usually read marketing books, but this is good
7. La luna e i falò A Masterpiece
8. Alice in Wonderland A classic
9. Contagious: Why Things Catch On You need to read this!
10. Warren Buffett Style: Regola n.1 non perdere mai denaro What was I thinking? Awful
11. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Maybe I need to re-read this. I didn’t like it
12. The Time Machine Wow!
13. The War of the Worlds Slow, but good
14. Demystifying Public Speaking A good piece on the topic
15. The Digital Photography Book 1 Sometime you need to move on
16. Blockchain Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction in 25 Steps To understand what was it all about
17. The Principles of Successful Freelancing I had the idea to start freelancing
18. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC Book for Digital Photographers I like retouching photos
19. The Minimalist Photographer And also travel light
20. The Best of The Digital Photography Book Series Same as above
21. Travel and Street Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots And travel
22. Beyond Legacy Code A nice read
23. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests If you’re into testing, you should read this book
24. A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms: Level Up Your Core Programming Skills Very basic, but if you need an introduction, it’s perfect
25. The Little Black Book of Decision Making: Making Complex Decisions with Confidence in a Fast-Moving World I really loved this book: it’s packed with knowledge

So I’ve read less than half my goal but, jokes aside, I don’t consider it a failure. I’ve read more in 2017 than in the previous two years!

Tips to read more

Social media has taken a toll on everyone. I discovered myself more than I like to admit browsing endlessly streams of jokes, links, articles (I’ll just save it and read it later…yeah sure), tweets, photos and so on. But I also discovered that I could just stop. I trained myself to stop being a social media zombie and read instead.

Everyone imagines that to read you have to be sitting on your favorite couch, beside a fireplace, drinking hot chocolate while outside the snow falls covering the ground. How romantic. Yes, there are situations like this and they happen in the movies. We live in the harsh reality, we should be guerrilla readers.

The trick is: read everywhere, even if a single page or paragraph. In a queue? Read. Waiting for the doctor? Read. Stuck in traffic? Listen to an audiobook. To the dentist? Run! 😀

My friends know that I swear by Safari Books Online: the thing that I like the most is that it enables me to access and download all the books on my smartphone, so that I don’t need to bring with me yet another device (I’m looking at you, Kindle. It was nice, but you know that it never worked between us)

2018 edition

So have I stopped? Of course not. But only stupids don’t learn from their mistakes.

So for this year I’ve decided to start from January to December (so that I can track my results in Goodreads better). And since I don’t think that I’ll be able to read a book a week, I’ve decreased the target to 40 books. That’s a bit more than last year.

So, are you up to a challenge? Connect with me on Goodreads