For each of the past 3 or 4 years, I've put "Read 10 books" on my Trello Board list of Life Goals. And for each of the past 3 or 4 years, I've failed spectacularly to reach 10 books. It's an arbitrary number that I think I just stole from a random Goodreads challenge. I even cheated a bit last year by adding three sailing textbooks to my list and ended up with 7 as the final total.  It's not through lack of trying either - I've got so many unread books in my living room I'm this close to picking up a pair of spectacles and calling myself a librarian. I blame my self-diagnosed ADHD for not being able to complete any of the books I start, in addition to defaulting to reading articles on my phone instead. Also, playing Jelly Splash on my 20 min train ride instead of reading hasn't helped.

Never one to lament the past, I've given myself a swift kick in the ass in 2018 to reach my 10 book goal. So far I've been a book-reading-machine. I can't tell you why or how, but I'm enjoying my newfound obsessiveness. What has helped has been trading book titles with my boss and making sure each new recommendation is good as the last.  We've had a few great conversations about what we've read, and it made me realize I used to love casually discussing book content. And by casually discussing, I mean surface-level 8th grade book report style thoughts. When you read a book, what do you do with the information that has resulted in new wrinkles in your brain?

I did what any modern human does, and asked Google. I searched for "8th Grade Book Report Template" and surprise surprise, the Internet did not disappoint. Quite a few options with varying degrees of questions asked in the report. There's a lot of creative teachers out there: 

I'd like to think I pick some pretty great books to read (but of course I'm bias). Things that are funny (I've read every comedian novel out there), startup stuff, stuff that's useful, helpful, good stories, young adult, and culturally relevant are my usual go-tos. I really love using Goodreads, but writing up a sentence or two about a book I just spent X amount of time devouring in the review section isn't really satisfying. I'd like to expand on this and do 8th grade style book reports about the books I read and hope that you, dear reader, either pick up a book on my recommendation and we can chat about it, or maybe you've already read something I just finished, and we can have great middle-school level conversation. There's such value in digging into a good book, and feeling the sense of accomplishment when its finished. This goes for both fun fictional stories as well as non-fiction.

So... What books have you read recently that you recommend to make sure I reach my goal this year?