A friend and colleague of mine, Shawna, sent me a facebook post asking about my favorite books and how I choose the books that I read. I thought this sounded like a tough assignment, and as I looked into it, I became more and more aware of just how tough it would be to pick my favorite books. This sent me into a two day thought spiral trying to figure out how to best answer her question. My first reaction was to hide under the covers and hope that the question went away. However, the questions continued to haunt my thoughts. At the same time, I was also reading a book by Stanislas Dahaene called Reading and the Brain which looked at how reading actually works in the human brain. I wanted a way to relate the information that I was learning in this book, not for any altruistic reason like teaching others this great information that I am learning, but to more firmly establish what I learned in my own mind. Somehow, these two ideas came together and I came to the conclusion that I should start a blog about books.

This is that blog.

My goal with this blog is not to review books, although that may happen from time to time, but to examine ideas contained in books and my thoughts on those ideas. This blog will also discuss topics such as reading, story telling, various forms of media¹, ideas I learn from books, my opinions on those ideas, how books affect my worldview, and anything else that I can even tangentially relate to books.

While I see this blog as mostly a metacognitive² exercise for myself (because who is going to want to actually read about someone talking about books in this day in age), I invite you to comment on this blog. Suggestions, questions, alternate viewpoints are all welcome. Remember to be polite because you just should.

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¹Media includes books, ebooks, audiobooks, movies/TV shows made from books, books made from movies/TV shows. I may even go retro and discuss clay tablets, scrolls, papyrus, or whatever else information may have been embedded into in the past.

²Metacognitive – thinking about thinking