Book Club - Why Reading Good Books is so Important

Books I’ve read in 2020

Awareness by Anthony De Mello
The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason
Mastery by Robert Green
War of Art by Stephen Pressfield
God's Debris by Scott Adams
Island by Aldous Huxley

Next on my Bookclub list:

Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
48 Laws of Power by Robert Green

Why I Read

A good book has the power to change your life. The messages and ideas passed from writer to reader can completely transform a way of thinking or mindset.

A great fiction book allows us to dive into a new world, seeing through the eyes of the characters. Experiencing their feelings and emotions. When engrossed in a novel its like you enter a whole new reality.

It is crucial to spend your valuable reading time on something that interests or inspires you.

Reading offers us a much better source of knowledge than most information we receive these days. Books have usually been fact-checked and ideas more deeply explained, and theories explored more thoroughly.

Reading as a Way to Get Useful Information

Thanks to technology, we are overwhelmed daily by the amount of information we receive. Whether it's a grabby news headline or a 15-second video on Instagram, it can be hard to get true, useful information.

Our attention spans are a lot shorter nowadays, so we are turning away from books, listening to Audiobooks gives us a way to get valuable knowledge while we are doing other tasks. Listen to them and improve our intelligence on your daily commute, at work, or while your workout.

Let's say on average you read about a book a month, or 10 a year. If you start this from the age of 20 and continue till the age of 80. You would have read around 600 books in your adult life. That's a lot of learning.

How to Find Good Books to Read

If you find books you love, you can learn to love to read. Reading doesn’t have to be boring.

You don’t have to get stuck on a book for months. Keep reading until you find a book that captures your attention and forces you to read it.

If you don’t like a book, don’t stop reading books altogether, just put that book down and choose a new one. You can have all the books in the world, at your fingertips on a Kindle, or in your ears with Audiobooks.

To get into better reading habits, choose books from people interest you, or topics that you enjoy in life, then as your habits improve, expand your reading tastes.

Find books written or suggested by people you admire for more inspiration.

Best Place to Get Books

Audiobooks - For any audiobooks, you want to go to AudioBooks.com, they offer a one-month free membership to test their service, this includes two free books! They have 10’s of 000’s of book titles on here.

Ebooks - If you have a kindle or e-reader, you will need to download e-books from the web. You can buy them on the Amazon store and download them straight on to your kindle.

Amazon.com - If you still prefer to buy real paper books, then buying them off Amazon is usually the best way to go. They have most books you would want to read and if you're in the US you can probably get same-day delivery with Prime. There are other online book retailers, but they can’t really compete with Amazon.

Book Stores - If you need a book on the spot then check out a local bookstore, this can be perfect for killing time at an airport while you wait for a flight. There is something warming about going into a nice book store and browsing the aisles.

Libraries - If you need to hire a book, or want more academic-based literature, then check out the library closest to you.

Listening to Audiobooks or Podcasts

Perfect for being more productive with your time. You can multi-task your daily activities while learning about space, or listening to an action thriller or some historic fiction. You can even get a good laugh from comedians podcasts to get through your Monday.

Work commute is one of the major causes of stress in people's daily life and one of the causes of unnecessary unhappiness. To make yours less dull and frustrating, expand your mind and learn something.

If you’re lucky you can work with headphones on and listen to them all day, get paid to listen to audiobooks or podcasts?!

I love listening to them while I work out, it's like working your body and mind at the same time, plus its good for distraction when the workout gets hard.

How I Read

I have always been an avid reader. I would read and re-read The Harry Potter series, The Cherub series, and Tomorrow When the War Began novels when I was a child.

In my teenage years I limited my reading, it wasn’t that ‘cool’ to read. Plus, I didn’t really enjoy schoolwork so why would I want to read?

At college, I tried to read a little more but I was always too distracted. It was the same story, I did limited classwork, so anytime I felt that I should be reading, could be spent looking at my neglected university work.

Ever since leaving university, I have had a new attitude towards books, Naval Ravikant’s appearance on the JRE helped to shift my perspective.

I separated reading from a chore, or something I felt like I had to do. To something that I really look forward to doing. I used to be attached to only reading real books, not reading off a screen, but I actually prefer a Kindle now, the screens are easy to read off at night or in the sun. They are water-resistant. They are easier to hold than books and you can highlight points that you want to remember or re-read and download them as a notes file.

I now also try to read multiple books at a time, if I start to get bored with one of them, I will just switch to another. That's another reason why I love my kindle so much. You can literally store more books than you could read in a lifetime on it.

What I Read

I pick books based on recommendations or opinions from people I admire. Recent books I’ve read have come from suggestions on The Tim Ferris Podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, Naval Ravikant, and Aubrey Marcus Podcast.

I try to read one non-fiction, or informative book when I have reading time during the day. Then I read a fiction book just before bed. When I’m working, working out, or in the car, I like to have an Audiobook or Podcast on.

This means I can be reading or listening to 3 books at a time, maximizing my learning. I tried to keep it as all nonfiction, or self-improvement books, or 2:1 ratio of nonfiction to fiction.

The books I choose are usually on topics like history, science, humans, psychology, self-development, and thought experiments.

CHECK OUT ALL OF OUR BOOK CLUB REVIEWS HERE: