Well, if you haven’t noticed in my book section of my blog, I list nothing for what I’m currently reading.
That’s because I decided not to read any tech books for 2012.
It seems in the past few years, I’ve been locked down on reading and studying. Not enough doing. It was like I was stuck in this endless cycle of going from one tech book to another. And walking around with this ever growing reading list of books I should read. Like somehow reading a large tomb of books will somehow magically transform me into a better developer. It’s not enough to read. It’s also important to do and to practice.
So for 2012, I’ve decided to stop reading tech books for awhile. I’ll still be reading other things, it’ll be refreshing to not be so absorbed in technical literature. And I’ll be focusing on building.
Update ( March 11, 2012 )
Today I stumbled across this Jef Claes blog post off of Hacker News. And I think it best describes what I was trying to convey in yesterday’s blog post. It’s nice to know there are others out there feeling the same way.
I can agree with that; I once spent all my time reading this book called Overcoming Writer’s Block (And Other Problems of the Pen), but no time writing.
As for reading ever-growing lists of books, I do. But they’re novels, so not the same situation as yours. I’m currently reading Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (it’s a classic). But I’m trying to restrict the amount of additional books, just to give myself a chance to get through the amount of books already on my list.
After Lolita, I plan to read The Picture Of Dorian Grey, which I started reading already.