As a kid I used to read a lot. Well, a lot by children’s standards. I mostly read Fantasy books. Ahh, the good ol’ days of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. My favourite book is still The Legend of Huma (a Dragonlance series book) and it probably won’t be dethroned anytime soon.

Over my teenage years I stopped reading completely and up until about a year ago I honestly believed that the casual reading I did as I surfed to the ends of the web and back provided the mental nutrition that my brain desired.

Last fall I had a revelation. It’s nothing incredible, and pretty common sense, but it didn’t quite hit me until then. I realized that people that I see as “smart” aren’t just born that way. They read! Beyond more than a simple correlation, there’s some degree of causation between reading books and being smart. There’s a tendency to want to write those people off as simply being book smart. But with all of that added knowledge, those people can make better decisions, and more clearly define their views.

Over the last year I decided I should start reading books again but it was sort of an on-and-off relationship. I started off by finishing off Chronicles of Narnia before watching the movie, then I finally read The Da Vinci Code, both of which I had bought about a year before I even read them. Da Vinci Code was indeed as good as people had hyped it to be, and subsequently made me not enjoy the movie. I then moved on to some books that my dad had bought me for either Christmas or a birthday, which were iCon (an autobiography of Steve Jobs of Apple fame) and The Power of Focus. iCon was an incredible read and should be read by anyone into either Apple or business.

When I was in Japan back in November I picked up The Tipping Point and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. The former being an interesting talk about fads and popularity while the latter was a nice, feel-good story.

Most recently I just finished reading the David Suzuki autobiography (which my mom had it signed for me…sweet) and I’ve finally started chipping away at all the books I ordered over the Christmas break. I tried to balance it by getting about half fiction and half non-fiction.

Going along with my worldview that life is like a video game (more specifically an RPG), I feel that reading books is like upgrading your skills. It doesn’t help being a high level if your skills suck.

Up next is The Long Tail, a book about niche markets.

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