What I'm Reading

Unlike my lovely and amazing wife, who usually reads just one book at a time and recently finished War & Peace, I am usually in the middle of half a dozen books at any given time. For me to "finish" a book is a relatively rare occurrence, at least in the sense of "reading all the words." Finishing usually means I haven't picked it up in a month or so, whether the neglect is deliberate or not.

My reading philosophy goes something like this: if I can put the book down, I do. That's because the list of books I want to read is always huge, so I try not to waste too much time with books that don't keep my attention and enthusiasm. I try to focus on reading books that are really worth my time, books I care about. And yeah, that means I don't finish most of the books I start.

And now, just for fun, here's a list of the books I'm currently reading. Whether I'll get to the last page or not on any of them is anyone's guess, but at the moment, I'm really enjoying them all. Several are related to my thesis research, but fortunately I'm really enjoying those too.

Black Swans, Taleb
Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research, Boje
Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch, Spinney
The Defense Procurement Mess, Gregory
The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks
Skunkworks, Rich
Faster, Better, Cheaper, McCurdy
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (an anthology, edited by Mann)
Accelerando, Stross
The Ball and the Cross, Chesterton

Oh, and I just finished Persepolis, by Satrapi, which was a quick read 'cause it's a graphic novel.

At some point, maybe I'll have comments about some of these, or at least links to more info about them, but for now, you'll have to be content with just the list.