2023-02-27 On reading for fun and learning

Previous experiences with reading

I recall when I would be assigned to read at least 20 minutes per day. This was perhaps in around the 2nd to 4th grade of elementary school. I remember on very lazy days, I would inflate the hours I read per day. For example, when I had to read 40 minutes per day, I was probably only reading 27 minutes per day, and somehow that was running up to 40 minutes per day.

What changed

I recall in 2019, when I was preparing for my medical school interviews, I decided, well, because I have quite a lot of free time, because I finished my medical school applications so early, I might as well start getting into reading books again.

I actually decided to read up on some financial books, because I wanted to learn more about investing. But I wasn’t particularly interested in learning those get rich, quick type of books, but I wanted to instead find some thing that aligns more with my views on investing. This is when I had the opportunity to somehow stumble upon the book The Intelligent Investor. That book certainly was lengthy and detail, and I probably did not understand half of those accounting examples. Keep in mind that of course, I was reading this in our undergraduate biomedical library, surrounded by a bunch of students were probably studying their ass off for other things, and here I was just reading a financial book at times, taking a nap on such a thick book.

I think from there, my book reading, really went into a rabbit hole. by the end of my undergraduate year, I had managed to peruse at least 10 different financial book titles, all of which are basically related to stock market value investment.

I must say, that was life-changing, to be able to read and apply my knowledge, and now having lived up to 2023, I look back and think those books really changed a lot of the financial outcome/future for me.

In regards to the Classics novels, I think at first I decided I wanted to try to catch up on the books. I had not really paid attention to in high school AP English class. One of the first classics novels I reread was 1984 by George Orwell, and this remains to this date, my favorite Classics novel.

Up to probably around 2019, I feel I had run through my two year phase of reading books. I am not sure why exactly I took that hiatus from 2019 to 2023, but it happened.

Now

I was fortunate to get back into reading again. Not any of the financial books that I used to read, because I think my brain is just done with reading financial investment books, after I had read so much, and had actually already taken extrnsive notes on another word processing document.

Instead, I had managed to get back into reading, Classics novels, and the fantasy genre. At one point, my reading habit, probably became so out of hand, that a couple of my attending physicians noticed I had a new book almost every 2 to 3 days. Somehow, at this time of writing, I am still managing to keep up with the book reading. I seem to have way too many books in the line, and I hope I’ll never run out of books to read ever again.