Reading
I do not consider myself a reading person. I can only list two books I’ve read in the last couple of years. The first is the Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler, and the other is What If from the man behind the much-quoted XKCD, Randall Munroe.
The Passionate Programmer is a quite interesting reading. It resonates with my own experiences and has a quite peculiar view on the topic. I also saw Chad speaking at the 2014 Craft Conference, and his session was both witty and gave me a good food for thought.
What If, the other book, was less inspiring but a humorous analysis of non-everyday problems by an engineer. I read that in a few days, it’s a book that is hard to put down if you are interested in the topic.
While I mostly neglect books, I just got an email from Pocket, a handy tool to read blog posts at a later time, that I am among the top 5% of their users. That’s something, and according to their statistics, in the course of 2015 I read more than 800.000 words. They put it equal to 18 books, in just one year. I reckon their figure on the word count is realistic, as I read almost everything I put into Pocket (that’s why I put a post there in the first place).
As I follow a dozen or so blogs with an RSS reader, of which I actually read around 6-7 actively, I expect the numbers will increase in 2016. There are many interesting writers out there whose content worth the time; and I find an ever increasing number of blogs to follow which I never heard of before.
Short blog posts make up for long books, and they bring on more diverse ideas. I enjoy the style and the topics of writers who I follow; also I can learn much about the craft.
Chances are, I am indeed a reading person.