I don’t like long books. How weird is that? I love reading and read a lot but when I’m presented with a long book (over 400 pages) I hesitate. I like to read a book within a couple of days so I don’t lose momentum. If I put a book down for a few days it is hard for me to reconnect with it; often I don’t even bother. Consequently I will wait until I know I’m going to have free time before starting a book so I can finish reading it within a couple of days. This means I generally start a book on a Friday night or Saturday so there is enough time for me to finish it before I start work again on Tuesday (I work part-time and don’t work on Mondays). While this approach works well with most fiction books it does have drawbacks when I’m reading non-fiction. Sometimes I read so quickly I lose the impact of the author’s insights. I don’t have time to think about and apply the author’s teaching because I have already moved onto to his next thought. To rectify this I do one of two things. I will read the book through quickly as per normal but then I will go back and reread those chapters which I need to think about more carefully. Alternatively I will make a disciplined attempt to read the book in sections over a longer period of time.
