As any regular visitor to this blog site will know, I do a fair amount of reading. Further, I like to provide my take on the books I read and share with you a bit about the plots, the message, and what I found valuable or notable. In a typical week I am usually working my way through 2 or 3 books in parallel. One is likely a work of fiction that I like to read because these tales of adventure help to calm me and serve to take me away to other lands and times. The others are typically books that I read as part of my devotional times. Recently, I found myself reading 5 books in parallel. I was asked by my daughter how I keep everything straight. Well, one thing that I do is to keep a notebook with me as I read. Here I make notes on the characters and key plot points if I am reading a work of fiction. If I am reading a devotional, I make notes of important scripture verses or items that I found interesting, important, or convicting.
As I tend to be a bit of a list-driven worker and like to keep track of progress, I also have a portion of the white board in my office set aside. Here I list all of the books in my reading queue, how many pages each book has, how many pages I have read, and other numbers such as the total number of pages of these books, how many pages I have left to read, and the fraction of each book completed. The photograph accompanying today's post is what a typical snapshot of my whiteboard looks like. I get satisfaction out of watching the numbers change, erasing titles that I have finished and prepared as a blog, and adding new titles that I have acquired.
