One hundred books read I have
Says my reading list by Amazon on my LinkedIn page, but I would not rate that as a trustworthy source. Actually, it is not true either. Some books I have put aside and I might still finish them in the near future. My library holds many more books then this list, it is just that I started sharing what I read more recently. Anobii takes a much more open approach to sharing what one reads compared to Amazonen/LinkedIn, so I recommended that, if you want to take the open road on reading. Being open about what I read has brought me numerous interesting conversations, which is what it is all about.
This ‘one hunderd mark’ is not meant as a Tom Peters’style milestone. Book-omnivorism runs like an epidemic in the family. Mamma used to tell me that reading books will make you smart. As I do really do stupid things on a somewhat regular basis, I am living proof that books do not make you smarter. They can rather make you wonder more.
The problem with books is that there are way too many of them. The books I read come in a few rough categories: the ancient world (more Roman then Greek), philosophy (rather, the life of philosophers), business (an extreme wide category, reaching from books about strategy, to marketing, to social networks) and science. The most interesting books are those that do not match any category.
Books can be interesting just by themselves, but I find them even more interesting when they become part of a bigger puzzle. Who was the first one to write about the printing and the digital revolution? Did Gladwell not mention Evert Rogers, when discussing about ‘what ideas spread’ (Kotler did)? Erasmus read Plato? So did Popper. Did Spinoza actually meet Rembrandt? Was it Thomas Paine to first describe “the wisdom of the idiot” and is that were “wisdom of the crowd” came from?
BTW: I know the title of this blogpost is yoda style. Just a reminder to not take these scriblings too seriously. Back to books now, finishing up on Peter Drucker (who, it appears, stems from a Dutch family…of book printers).