What follows is another attempt to bang out a quick and simple post. As you long time readers know, I typically start my writing process by saying “it’ll be a short post, just 500 words or so that’ll I’ll write this afternoon “. Then I spend the next few days writing thousands of words and falling down various rabbit holes. Let’s see if we can curtail the meandering, yeah? Ok, here goes!
I love books; here’s how my habits break down and what I’ve found to be an interesting read as of late. Maybe you’ll like some of them too! Just checked my library app, I’ve checked out like 60 books this year. Going over the titles, I’ve read about 40 so far. The other 20 I ditched after the first few sections when stuff got repetitive, which seems to be a popular method of filling out a book in non-fiction books which cover a moderately simple topic.
Is this a retirement update you ask, demonstrating how I’ve shifted my allotment of time since leaving work? After all, reading is my number one favorite activity, and you may think I’ve focused my more abundant free time on what I enjoy. Nope. This reading pace is typical for me, even in my preFIRE’d working days. I just freaking love books. If anything, I’ve noticed that if I try to read more it starts to feel like a job. And I did this whole FIRE thing to get away from that. So I guess I’ll be sticking to this pace. The nice thing is that I no longer am edging out other activities to get some reads in.
I try to read one non-fiction book for every two fiction books, and am usually reading at least 3 books at the same time (gigity gigity). I’m pretty consistent with this, and it helps me to keep learning stuff. I think there’s a lot of broad lessons to be learned from fiction about life, philosophy, cats, etc. But non-fiction makes me feel like I’m making myself better. After all, it’s all about feels around here. 😉 For awhile I was going straight 50/50 fiction/non-fiction, but that got to be tedious. I like learning things, but I sure as hell don’t want to embark on some death march to knowledge. That ain’t fun.
Both fiction and non-fiction tend to be all over the place. About the only consistent thing I read that sticks to one genre is science fiction. Because sci-fi is awesome! Like so many things in the world, I find I have to partake in my favorite genre in moderation. If I read too much sci-fi, all the aliens and space stuff starts to blend together. This year, so far my favorite sci-fi was Snow Crash, followed closely by The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Got to love both of those authors.
Non-fiction is even more all over the place. I just read Infidel, which was an amazing memoir about this woman who went from escaping civil war in Somalia to becoming a member of Dutch Parliament. That one sentence doesn’t do the book justice at all, but if I don’t stop there I’ll just end up writing an entire post on how damn good Infidel was. Anywho-back to being all over the place non-fiction wise; I also re-read the 7 Principles of Making Marriage Work(been doing the exercises with my wife-they’re fun!), and I’ve also been making my way through The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game: Volume 1: Big Game. I guess if there’s one thread that runs through my non-fic reading it’s that I read what I can use practically, or use to interpret the world. Which is a pretty big thread that essentially cover all books, except for….well shit, I’m pretty sure that covers everything.
Another thread that runs through many of my non-fic books is finance. Now let’s make this post applicable! (sorta?) Here’s the FIRE books I’ve read this year, along with a short summary:
Early Retirement Extreme: Figuring out how to do everything yourself build more resilience into your life while reducing your operating costs. Also a lot of big words. I read this years ago early into my FIRE journey, and reread it to see if I got anything else out of it. Not really-still a good book, still kinda dense.
Set for Life: Did not like the writing style, though I can’t put my finger on why. Did like the message though, which is specifically aimed at younger FIcurious people early in their careers. He talks about the standard FIRE stuff-increase savings rate beyond societal norm/invest difference-but then hits on two other points which I haven’t thought much about:
- Once you have a decent emergency fund, deliberately shift to a higher risk career with much higher rewards. Like sales, entrepreneurship, or questing for mjolnir.
- House hack.
The book provides mounds of reasoning why these two are important if you want to get to FI super quick. Kind of wish I did at least one of these. Made me open to the idea of doing a house hack if ever the situation arises where it wouldn’t suck.
Taking Stock: You’re going to die. Maybe don’t worry about money so much? Yeah, that’s basically it. Good book, well written, and came at a perfect time for me.
The Psychology of Money: No, not a FIRE book, but after every FIRE influencer went gaga for this book when it came out it may as well be. I was hoping it wouldn’t live up to the hype so I could feel all superior about my sophisticated reading and finance tastes. Sadly, it was really good. This may be a book I end up buying just to revisit regurarly and give to people. ☹
Hey, barely over 1000 words!! We’ll count that as an improvement. Let’s wrap this thing up. Long story short I like books, and this year I read a bunch. Also I summarized and commentated on some FI books, that was a fun part, wasn’t it?
You just read a post about me reading! That’s either meta, sad, or something else entirely……..
Do you like reading? What are your reading habits? Got any good book recommendations? If so, please leave them in the comments below. Like a shark that can’t stop swimming, I’m always on the hunt for my next literary prey.
