My relationship with books (April 2018)

I created this set of questions about my relationship with books to be answered by me and any others who were interested in reading any books with me this year.

My responses as follows:-

1. What is your relationship with books?

   Books have been an important part of my life since my earliest memories.

   I always have more books that I can possibly ever read.

   Lots of my personal memories are tied to books.

   I need to get my books out of boxes and onto shelves so that I can see them and browse to read whatever takes my fancy at a point in time.

   Those boxes are like a geological excavation seeing the subjects that I was interested in over the years.

   I am a recovering hoarder and I will always find it a challenge getting rid of books or giving them away. Easier with fiction books!

   I even did the Immunity To Change MOOC that revealed some deep things about me and books including books being part of my personal identity.

   I am getting better at not buying books that I will not have time to read.

   I am getting more intentional about reading books as one of my responses to wanting to work more deeply.
   
   

2. Physical or ebooks?

   I have in recent years transitioned almost totally to ebooks. This has reduced my book purchasing as I am less impulsive online.

   As mentioned above, I have a large collection of physical books that are all boxed up and hard to access to browse.

   I still buy physical books where colour photos are an important part of the content of the book e.g. cooking, travel, art and so on.

   I do need to find a better way to "show" my ebooks. This is not helped by having a Kindle library and an iBooks library. DRM is a challenge to have all my ebooks in one place. I use Calibre to manage my ebooks.

   A large majority of my books are phsical and will remain so probably for the rest of my life.
   
   

3. Fiction or Non-Fiction?

   A large majority of my books are non-fiction and will remain so probably for the rest of my life.

   I went for many years not reading any fiction until I realised I was missing a good opportunity for personal development by not reading fiction. I addressed this by joining a physical book club many years ago.

   I am not a science fiction lover with minimal exceptions. My fiction taste is the same as my TV/film watching preference - real-life drama.

   Non-fiction is mainly business and personal development-related. I also read a lot of Christian leadership and other Christian subject books.

   Recently heard this podcast which includes Tim O'Reilly talking about the benefits of reading fiction:

   
   

4. How and where do you buy your books?

   Physical books from my local Waterstones book shop in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK.

   Ebooks from Amazon UK.

   I am "naughty" and often browse in physical bookshops and take photos of book covers for considering buying in ebook format later.

   Given the specialist nature of my book (and music and film etc) buying, internet shopping sites have helped me rapidly get what I want when I know what specifically I am looking for given that physical shops have limited shelf space. As I move all my content buying to electronic content. I do miss the browsing nature of my physical shopping.

   I usually find it hard to pass a book shop of any description without going in to have a look. This includes second hand bookshops.

   I have a backburner interest in old books that first covered business and management subjects eg the first book on gantt charts for project management.
   
   

5. Favourite physical book shop(s)?

   
   
   Waterstones in Bradford which is housed within the old Wool Exchange building. It is an amazing building and space with a cafe. I do not go there as often as I should.

   I was a big fan of the Borders chain that closed down many years ago. Its range of product was amazing including books, newspapers, magazines, DVDs and so on. I could get lost for hours in there ....
   
   

6. How do you decide to read what you will read?

   Via any of my input content streams so this includes mentions in articles, podcasts, reviews, seeing in passing, browsing physical shelves and online, recommendations from anyone anywhere, books of the year lists, mentions in church etc sermons, references in other books.
   
   

7. Your experience of book clubs - physical and/or virtual?

   First experience was back in 1999 when I finally took the plunge to join one. This was physical and met monthly in an upstairs room in an amazing cafe with comfy sofas, great coffee and even tastier cakes (£5/session including a coffee and a slice of cake, a bargain!). I joined to make me accountable to read a fiction book each month. We took it in turns to pick a selection of books and we discussed as a group which one we would read from that list next time. This was a good way of picking books as there was a choice and usually we had a good range to choose from. I was sad when that ended through lack of interest from others.
   
   My next experience was in a club that met in a pub. I was in that one from 2011 until the end of 2016. We had some epic discussions in that group and often heated - a good thing. I left that group ultimatelt as I was not enjoying the books that were selected for us to read. The process was that each person would write down a book title and put the slip of paper into a container and the 1st book picked out blind was the one we would read next time round. This meant that we were totally at the mercy of the books that people put in. We read so much science fiction latterly that I hated it. Worth noting that we would score the books out of 10 with 5 for story and 5 for writing style.
   
    
   
   In Q1 2017, I read “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown as part of Tara Newman’s virtual book club hosted within her The Bold Leadership Collective group on Facebook. Along with others in that club, I posted daily thoughts on the chapters in that Facebook group. Mine were streams of consciousness-type notes. This blog post is a collation of all those posts.
   Google Books entry
   Greg’s Talks at Google talk
   
   
   
   In Q2 2017, I read "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield as part of Tara Newman’s The Bold Leadership Revolution virtual book club as above. This blog post is a collated set of my notes that were posted originally in Tara's Facebook group.
   Google Books entry
   
   Tara was an amazing host with lots of posts and she ran regular Facebook Live calls to take questions and encourage us to take action and cheer us all on.
   
   
   
   
   
   In Q2/3 2017, I facilitated a 12-week book club reading and applying “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life”, Bill Burnett, Dave Evans. This was a book I stumbled over while doing my 1st WOL circle in Q1 2017. I ran the club like a WOL circle, issued a set of questions each week based on the content of the book and we reviewed our outputs in a weekly Zoom call and all content was published in a dedicated Slack team. My notes can be found hereSelected text
   
   
   
   
   
   In Q3/4 2017, I facilitated a 10 week book club reading and applying "Show Your Work: The Payoffs and How-To’s of Working Out Loud” by Jane Bozarth. This formed the majority of my 2nd WOL circle goal. I ran this in Slack with no Zoom calls but simply posting my book notes and responses. See collated set of those notes here. Whilst 15 people signed up, only one other person posted their thoughts on that book. This was Nicole in the States who went on to lead a WOL circle and I helped her recruit for that one and we managed to recruit a second circle as part of that process. I recommend this book highly for those who want to get lots of encouragement and ideas in how to work out loud.
   Google Books entry
   
   I am a fan of book clubs but the choice of books is critical and the more engagement from members the better.
   
   

8. Favourite book(s) and why?
   
   Non-fiction: I will restrict myself to two!
   
    
   
   "The Challenge Of Change In Organizations: Helping Employees Thrive In The New Frontier", Nancy J. Barger, Linda K. Kirby. (info). An amazingly helpful book on change using the metaphor of the early pioneers settling in various places from the east to the west coast of the USA. It runs through the various Myers-Briggs personality types and the different ways these types process change and how change should be led and managed.
   
   "Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow": Peter Wagner. As a member of a church leadership team of a Christian church for 25 years, I recommend this book to Christians seeking their roles of service in a local church. An amazingly helpful and practical book. It includes a questionnaire that helps people identify their spiritual gifts (talents etc). In summary, I label this book as helping getting the right people in the right roles for the right reasons.
   Google Books entry
   
   Fiction: again two!
   
    
   
   "The Circle", David Eggers. A story about a young woman starting her career in a Google-Facebook-Apple-type company and exploring how the future of work and society may pan out over time. We had probably the most heated discussions ever when we discussed this book due to our different perceptions of the role of technology in our lives. I am keen to see the film and will probably show it at the film club that I lead.
   Google Books entry
   
   "Inferno", Dan Brown. Loved this book as two of my favourite parts of the world are the setting for the book - Venice and Florence. Istanbul is the 3rd major setting. Enjoyed the fast-placed plot and the sense of place and the storyline about population control, Again, this triggered lots of discussion at the book club when we discussed this.
   Google Books entry
   
   

9. If you have set yourself any reading goals for 2018, what were they and why have you set them?
   
   

   For the first time ever, I did produce a reading plan for 2018 which was documented in this blog post. I loved the questions that a fellow learner asked me about the plan that I answered at the end of that post. The main reasons for planning to read these books was to go deeper into specific subjects and to get back into the habit of reading books deeply and not simply skimming articles and other content on the web. I am always on the lookout for others to join me in reading books to have accountability partners to encourage me to keep reading a book to completion.
   
   

10. Where do you read?
    Mainly either in a swivel arm chair in our TV room or in a static arm chair in our dining/family room.
    Ideally, I should find myself a local cafe, pub or hotel with a comfy arm chair to lose myself in and to further avoid distractions.
    I am trying to get into a routine of reading including starting and for how long.
    
    

11. What is your personal best practice for learning from books e.g. taking notes etc.?

    In the past I have taken copious notes. Now I still take notes but they are less copious. I try to take notes in such a way that they help me recall the broad thrust and key learning points in the book.
    Early days back reading but I have started using highlights on my iPad (as an ereader) to then go back through after I have read the book to take notes on my laptop. I am torn between note taking from the iPad chapter by chapter or at the very end of the book. I suspect for the Book Club on Workplace, I will try to do notes per chapter that can then be posted on Workplace and then collated as a blog post at the end of the book.
    
    

12. What resources would you recommend to others related to any of the above?

    I love this Harvard Business Review article "Why Businesspeople Should Join Book Clubs".
    
    I have yet to consider applying it but this Michael Hyatt article "How to Make Your Non-Fiction Reading More Productive" is worth a read.
    
    Although aimed at women, "The Brilliant Woman’s Guide To A Very Modern Book Club (Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015)" is a good read on all sorts of book club-related subjects. Also see the Women's Prize for Fiction web site.
    
    I love podcasts and The Richard & Judy podcast series is a good one to listen to for ideas of fiction books to read. The format of interviewing the author about their book and how they wrote the book certainly holds my attention and often highlights great books to read.