Day 14 : What I’m reading right now
It’s day 14 of my digital declutter and I’ve been reading a lot of books.
Since deciding to take a month off from “optional” tech in my life I’ve had a lot more time to read. But what I realized when thinking about this post is that I’ve actually been reading a lot more than usual already this year. When did it start? Oh since around about the beginning of March.
I guess living through COVID lockdown in New York city will do that to a person.
Reading List
I thought I’d share some of my reading highlights past, present, and future in case you’re looking for a new volume to pick up off the physical (or virtual) shelf.
Recent Highlights
Titles I’ve finished this year since the beginning of the pandemic include:
- Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Pivot, Jenny Blake
- Your Brain at Work, David Rock
- When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron
- The Bonjour Effect, Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau
- Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse*
- Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda*
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Leo Tolstoy
* this was my second time reading both Siddhartha and Journey to Ixtlan
Current Status
Right now I’m in the middle of three different books. The first is Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport which is of course the book that inspired my month-long digital declutter and this blog post series.
The second is Manifesto for a Moral Revolution by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen on the ideas of social enterprise and mission-driven capitalism.
And the last is the autobiographical novel L’Enfant Noir by Camara Laye which I have been slowly but surely struggling my way through the original French version over the last 6 months. I originally read the English translation soon after graduating college around the time I took my first trip to Guinea, West Africa.
Up Next
So what’s up next?
Well — besides it probably taking me another 6 months to finish L’Enfant Noir, on my short list to pick up next are Quiet Leadership by David Rock, The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (2nd book in The Three-Body Problem trilogy) which I’m not sure how I’ve waited this long given how much I enjoyed the first book, and The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten which a good friend gifted to me a year ago and I just haven’t made it around to reading it yet.
Conclusion
Going into this month I was hoping that a break from digital media would help me get back into the routine of reading regularly but it turns out the pandemic has already done that for me.
I’m hoping to continue this literary momentum in the future as things start to open up again and optional tech starts to creep back into my everyday life — it already has a little as I couldn’t help but finish the remaining few episodes of The Last Dance over the weekend.
WHAT TIME IS IT!? — GAME TIME!
