I used to read a lot of books. Now…not so much (as John Stewart might say.)<\/p>\n
There was a time when I’d have several books on the go at any one time. There were usually a couple by my bed. I’d often have a non-fiction tome underway out in the living room. Something more upbeat might be in my book bag and I’d often have some kind of a thriller, or a mystery, sitting around ready to go.<\/p>\n
But either I’m getting older (OK, I am getting older) and less able to multi-task, or I’m getting older and doing more multi-tasking. Does that make sense? Either way, I’m reading less books.<\/p>\n
And that worries me. Reading books is exercise for the brain. Sure, I spend a lot of time on-line and I read on-line articles and research stuff on the web. I do a lot of reading but its not the same as sitting down with a book, and getting lost in it.<\/p>\n
What I do read a lot of are book reviews. I recommend them highly, especially if you’re like me and don’t have (and don’t expect to have) the time to read the books themselves. A well-written review goes a long way to delivering the king of intellectual pleasure that makes books so attractive.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago, Martin Levin, the books editor at the Globe and Mail<\/em>, had an interesting column about a new book that’s come out, called “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.<\/a>” It seems to be part of a trend towards larger lists that are supposed to help us time-challenged people focus our attempts to improve our lives. Similar titles are aimed at albums <\/a>and movies<\/a>.<\/p>\n I haven’t got a copy of this book, but I might, just to have it nearby. I know there’s no way I’ll ever get through all those books, but I’d like to think that I might. But even someone as well-read as Martin had only read about 450 or so of the books on the list.<\/p>\n An interesting tangent that flows from this conversation is wondering whether my not reading as many books as I used to equates to getting less information? <\/p>\n I’d say no. I’m inundated with information these days. It flows in through the Web, podcasts, phone calls, e-mail, meetings (so many meetings!) advertising, radio, television…eek!<\/p>\n But does more information equal “more knowledge?” (doubtful) Or more “Peace of Mind?” (ditto) Or “More clutter?” (bingo!)<\/p>\n What I need to create is my own “information grid.” I’d like to list the various ways I get information each day, what I do with it, and how I use it, or pass it along. I struggle with the nagging feeling that the amount coming in is swamping the amount that is going out, or being used. There’s too much noise in my day.<\/p>\n To put it another way, my inbox is getting really overloaded and I need a way to get some balance into my information flow.<\/p>\n I’m going to work on this idea and update you as I go along.<\/p>\n In the meantime, what’s your information flowchart look like? Maybe you’ve already got a handle on this problem. If you do, please let the rest of us in on your secret.<\/p>\n I used to read a lot of books. Now…not so much (as John Stewart might say.) There was a time when I’d have several books on the go at any one time. There were usually a couple by my bed. I’d often have a non-fiction tome underway out in the living room. Something more upbeat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p88Hib-9O","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}