The forgotten art of Reading

I've never been a big fan of reading. At least not in the last 30 years. Prior to that, I did read as we did not have TV or Internet or Smartphones or ... And the only available entertainment was Books.

While my elder daughter Freia did read a lot and still does, Reia hated books. And reading. And like me, we preferred the easier "Watching".

While my elder daughter Freia did read a lot and still does, Reia hated books. And reading. And like me, we preferred the easier "Watching".

Around 6 months ago, while going through my credit card statement, I found a charge for "Audible". I was surprised and checked with Freia and Reia if either of them had added Audible. Neither had. I went back and checked and we were paying Audible for over a year, helping make Mr. Bezos the world's richest person. It seemed like 1 of the 3 of us had mistakenly or assuming its Free, clicked on Audible and Amazon had made it easy by charging the attached Amazon credit card. And none of us even knew.

We always knew we had Audible credits. And had assumed it was free with Amazon Prime. Like Movies and Music. I went back and checked and found that while Freia and Reia had used some credits, we had lost around 6 credits, that had expired. I wrote to Amazon and they were nice enough to give me back the credits. And another interesting thing happened. Now that we were paying or rather we were always paying, but now knew we were paying our interest in Books increased. Exponentially.

I never in my wildest dreams thought Reia would love Books. And like most other things, anything I'm sure about, I'm surely Wrong. Not only did she start reading, or rather listening to books, she became a voracious listener. And started recommending books for me to listen. And I loved most of her recommendations.

I'm giving below 3 of her recommendations that I found to be awesome and must reads or listen.

- The Third Door
Alex Bunayan
The wild quest to uncover how the world's most successful people launched their careers.

- Delivering Happiness
Tony Hsieh
A path to profits, passion and purpose

- Super Pumped
Mike Isaac
The battle for Uber

What's interesting is that Reia tweeted about it. And the author responded. Thanks @reialobo and @Mikelsaac

And here are 3 of my favorites.

- The World Is Flat
Thomas L. Friedman
A brief history of the twenty-first century

-  iWoz
Steve Wozniak
How I Invented the Personal Computer

 - The Gray Rhino
Michele Wucker
How to recognize and act on the obvious dangers we ignore


I guess this is one of those times where a mistake turned out to be awesome. For Reia. And for me. And I strongly encourage you to keep the not so smart phone aside or use the smart phone and start reading or listening. It allows us to do the one function we were built for and yet don't do often enough.

THINK !