Are You Reading More Than Business Books?

About every quarter, I start mapping out books I want to read in the upcoming months. The process protects me from reading too much in any one genre.

Here’s what my list looked like last month that I’m working on now:

Biography
Leonardo da Vinci
The Power Broker
The Education of a Coach

Fiction
A Man in Full
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Alice Network
The Remains of the Day

Narrative Nonfiction
Billion Dollar Whale
Barrons of the Sea

Business
The Founder’s Dilemmas
Ready, Fire, Aim

Of the nearly 120 books I read in 2018, I read way too many business books. I’m trying to cut back on business titles because we can learn much by reading outside our fields of expertise. Consider the following opinion from podcaster Patrick O’Shaughnessy:

“Consistent with my belief that it is more productive to read around one’s field than inone’s field, there are no investing books on this list.”

The list O’Shaughnessy is referring to his favorite books mentioned in an old newsletter.

Accordingly, my method for reducing business book consumption is to plan out what I’ll be reading–it’s working.