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Who Wrote it? (Questions I ask Before I Read a Book)

All of these questions are key. And they all have their start with the author…. As a reader, I’m always asking this of any book that makes its way to my attention spectrum: Who wrote this? Are they a professional? Have they practiced this idea in other mediums? Where do they work? Have they experienced some failures on the way to getting where they are?

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School Libraries and the Most Important Thing a Kid Can Do to Improve Their Life

I recently came across an instance (and since then, a few more instances) of a school district announcing plans to change their school librarians' focus away from books/reading and changing them into "Innovation Specialists." Uhhhhhh. What?! ...This trainwreck of an idea is still unfolding....

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What I Learned From the Seven Most Important Books I’ve Ever Read

When we read certain books at certain times in our lives they smack us right in the face. Had I read some of these books a few years earlier or later, they would have objectively been just as good, but perhaps they wouldn’t have had the impact on me that they did then.

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How I Retain What I Read

I read mostly non-fiction. Over the years I’ve tried reading and retaining on my iPad (which mostly sits and gets dusty these days). I’ve listened to audiobooks, which I enjoy very much, but audiobook retention seems to be a hopeless case as well. These non-500 year old technologies are great for serial reading, but less great for actually remembering and referencing the content.

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I Went to Amazon’s Physical Bookstore And…

In most respects, it was everything a bookstore should and could be. As a book publisher, I took the whole experiment as a personal challenge to improve the quality and veracity of books that people want to read. Here were my biggest nine impressions after spending an hour at the newest bookstore in Chicago.

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