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I used to be an avid reader but lately have fallen off. I could blame it on life and being busy but the truth of the matter is, I just wasn’t making the time. I mean scrolling through social media for hours (don’t judge me 😊) is definitely a time suck and most of that time can be used for something a little more productive. Sometimes to get myself back on track with things I make it a challenge. So this year I decided to challenge myself to read at least one book a month for a total of 12 this year. I even went as far as making a list of the 12 books I would read. The majority of my list was non-fiction. I also included a few money books because, we should ALWAYS be learning as much as we can about managing and growing our money.
As I write this post at the beginning of July, I am on my 9th book and have read 8 books year to date. Not all the books I’ve read so far were on my initial list. As I come across good ones, I tend to want to read them right away. Here is a list of the books I’ve read so far:
Money Books
Profit First– by Mike Michalowicz
Think and Grow Rich (The Entrepreneur and Small Business Edition)– by Napoleon Hill and Greg Habstritt
The Color of Money Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap– by Mehrsa Baradaran
History of the Black Dollar– by Angel Rich (currently reading)
Other Non-Fiction Books
Becoming– by Michelle Obama
Micromessaging- Why Great Leadership is Beyond Words– by Stephen Young
Eat That Frog– by Brian Tracy
Non-Obvious Mega Trends– by Rohit Bhargava
Mind on a Mission- The Power of Healing What Was and Stepping into What Could Be– by Jen Abans
When I read non-fiction books I like to highlight important passages and lessons, the problem is long after I’ve read it I may not exactly remember all of the passages. I recently came across a great way to capture and remember the highlights of the books I’ve read. (Watched a YouTube video from The Art of Improvement) Here’s a quick summary of the process:
- Highlight the passages
- Create an electronic document for each book with the name of the book and author and list the passages and lessons you’ve highlighted (be sure to include the page number)
- Now go back and edit it down to the most important highlights and or summarize in your words
- Now you have a summary document that you can read at any time. It is recommended that you read it everyday for a couple of weeks after you write it, to commit it to longer term memory.
- After a while you’ll have a collection of summaries that you can then organize in electronic folders by categories for easy reference.
What’s different about my reading list this year is that I don’t have one single book by James Patterson. I absolutely LOVE his women’s murder club series. I used to get his books as soon as they came out and would read it in about a day or two. I am so far behind on the series; I believe the last one I read was The 9th Judgement and his latest is 20th Victim. (Have you read any of his books?) I’m going to be making an update to my reading list 😊
I have always been adamant about having a physical copy of the book. Recently I discovered that I’m really starting to enjoy reading digitally. The digital version is so easy to read, highlight, carry around and enlarge the text when I need to. (my eyes sometimes play tricks on me)
What are some of your favorite books? How do you capture what you want to remember?
If you’re interested in any of the books I’ve mentioned above, just click on the book title and it will take you to where you can read more about it.