The 1 year reading challenge

Simple - commit to a number of books for the year, depending on your schedule it could be as few as one a month or if you have the time maybe as many as one a week? But the point is to commit and do it on a regular basis.

I'm going for 25 books, average length of 300 pages, more non-fiction since that is more likely to be consistent with the intent of self improvement. First title: Irresistible by Adam Alter.

Oh yeah, as a twist for myself: No forum activity until I finish it for that period. Since it's roughly every two weeks I will only be on here or the subreddit once I finish it, and I start the next book at the end of the month.

 

First book done so I'm back. There's a lot of interesting info in this book, a different look at goals and also how gamification can work either way. I'm looking at Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll as a possibility for the next title, and definitely one on my list.

I noticed I concentrate at work a lot better when doing this. I'd urge people to seriously consider that it has a different effect on your mind if you push through continuously rather than if you put it down for a long time, when you've pretty much lost the train of thought of the book already.

Also I realized since I work standard M-F schedule and am forced to look at a screen during the day, I might as well make the weekend a time when I'm free from that so I didn't use the screen for anything other than minimal necessities like calls, GPS nav etc. I wasn't craving the forum this morning, which I think is a significant difference. Although being attached to the support is a way to use the addictive tendency to overcome the particular addiction and in that sense could be considered a healthy habit, as I said in my journal I'm looking to detach from digital dependency itself.

 

Restart as of mid July '19:

Finished: Hope After Stroke for Caregivers and Survivors

Starting: My Stroke of Insight

Think I'll use this post in this thread to keep an updated list and link to it in my sig, journal and maybe some of the other reading recommendation threads.

To be read: (If you've read any of these thoughts welcome)

• Mind in Motion - Barbara Tversky
• The Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton
• Educated - Tara Westover
  
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power - By Shoshana Zuboff
  
• Team Human - Douglas Rushkoff
  
• Theories of Communication - Eric and Marshall McLuhan
• The Bias of Communication 2nd Edition - Harold Innis
• Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas - Natasha Dow Schüll
• Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert World of the Digital Sell - Mara Einstein
• Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life - Suhas Kshirsagar
• The Glass Cage - Nicholas Carr
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma - Bessel van der Kolk MD
• Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI - John Brockman (Editor)

Read:

• Hope After Stroke for Caregivers and Survivors
  
• Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness - Pete Earley *
  
• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life - Richard Hofstadter *
  
• Irresistible - Adam Alter *
  
• The Way of the Bodhisattva - Shantideva
  
• Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears - Pema Chodron
• Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection - Ethan Zuckerman
  
• You Are Not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier
• Who Owns The Future? - Jaron Lanier
• Ten Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now - - Jaron Lanier
• Program or Be Programmed - Douglas Rushkoff
• Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age - Sherry Turkle
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains - Nicholas Carr
• Too Big To Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now that the Facts aren't the Facts, Experts are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room - David Weinberger
  
• Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle - Chris Hedges
  
• Daring Greatly - Brene Brown

* Read as a part of the challenge

Fiction:

• Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
• Singularity Sky - Charles Stross
• The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

​

 

Adding Team Human to the list, here's a little quote for people who may be interested in the technological roots of this and other addictions running on a tech platform, from The Shallows by Nicholas Carr:

 

Feeling like I need a spiritual boost so I'm going to do one while staying on the forum, so it won't count towards the 25 and instead of not coming on until it's done I will just read full chapter or section between forum visits. Title is Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves From Old Habits and Fears by Pema Chodron

 

Excellent! Each person can set their own parameters and choose their own books depending on how much time they have, I realize people may be busy with work or school although I know when I was in school there was certainly other things that may be more interesting than the required texts - we're giving ourselves that gift by taking the time to read those.

 

I was thinking about re-reading actually, for me a lot has been half read, but that doesn't mean it's not good enough but just that my attention span was shoddy back then - and frankly my mind may not have been in a place where I could fully appreciate all the content even if I recognized it is valuable information back then. I am not inclined to make those one of the 25 for my year but I certainly do want to refer back to some of the good ones. Fortunately some of it is in eBook format so it doesn't take up space.

 

Okay I'm 300 pages into Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, not used to history but definitely very interesting.. Wanted to stick with my resolution to not be on the forum until at least this far along but it's a bit longer. It's pretty interesting, amazing how much of this attitude we still see today and though I don't have the background in history the author certainly points out a lot of examples. Frankly I think of the line from Idiocracy "there's that f@g talk we talked about" when "Not Sure" tried to be reasonable with "Dr. Lexus." Of course, the difference is that was satire, this is history!

"Self-help was discipline in character. The self-help literature told how to marshal the resources of the will. "

"Eighty years after Beecher’s characterization of genius [in 1844], an article appeared in the American Magazine under the title, “Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men.” The writer identified brilliance in business with mercurial temperament, neuroticism, and irresponsibility; his experience as an entrepreneur with men of this type had been disastrous. “Even fine material, carelessly put together, will not make a fine shoe,” he remarked. “But if material which is of just average quality is fashioned with special care and attention, it will result in a quite superior article.”

There are plenty more examples and quotes. I have to wonder how much this attitude influences recovery culture and by extension, rebooting. I'm glad to see evidence on this forum that not everyone feels this way, though.

 

Maybe interest and enjoyment can help your appetite? I don't know what you like but maybe something like a good novella would be a way to get started. I know PMO is not a thing that helps our attention span (like anyone sits through a full length movie before fapping) so it's something we do need to cultivate, but just the great books the best movies are based on are alone worth it I bet.

 

Nice list, sounds like there's a story there with the job though - and I also noticed your mention of the circumstances around you quitting Facebook I think it was. I noticed you don't have a Journal link set up, I'd be interested in read up more there.