A few years ago I decided to do some off-screen reading. I needed to clear my eyes from the screen in the evening or trying to create some me-time in the weekends or holidays. Secondly I have always been intrigued by classical writers or what some would call the *must haves of literature*. In this category we have Orwell, Kafka, Dickens, Joyce but also Goethe, Tolstoj, Dostojevski or Voltaire. Even Mein Kampf from Hitler or Das Kapital from Marx were on the wish-list (listed below).

Reality

An then reality came along. First of all I noticed that I was reading a lot of blogs in my off work hours that are on-screen. I also needed (wanted) to read more about work related information that I could not (was not allowed to) do during daytime hours. So I started reading the Duncan & Frank vSphere Clustering Deepdive books or Mastering vSphere from Scott Lowe. I honestly believe that if you are not reading these kind of books or religiously follow up on all these blogs that you are not doing your customers any service!

Secondly and even more important: I’m a very bad reader. I never manage to finish books or even read a few hours straight. This has a lot to do with having ADHD which makes me losing my attention over every squirrel that passes my eyes/ears. Heck even a slightly too long blogpost never gets finished. So I had to change my reading behaviour. Here are my 2 main tips;

1. reading e-books: I only buy new books on Amazon Kindle so that I can switch devices. I have trained myself now to notice when I loose my attention and switching from laptop to tablet to phone and back sometimes helps me reading even throughout a cross-atlantic flight.
2. noise cancelling headphones: my ability to hyper-focus has increased exponentially since I have my Bose QC15 noise cancelling headphones. Sometimes even a door that opens or a car that stops in front of the house is enough to get me distracted. With these type of headphones you are completely sealed from the external world. Yes, even from my chicken farm that is called family 😉

The book of the Month

All this merely as an introduction to my new series of “Book of the Month” where I want to share one of my recent accomplishments. Who got me to reading it, what did I learn from it or why should you read it. For now there are 3 main categories of books I am reading:

• Technical books on Virtualization and Storage
• new styles of Marketing and Business
• ADHD related books

I will try to make it a good mix of the three. I also HIGHLY ENCOURAGE everyone of you to give me tips for my next books to read. Put it in the comments and tell me why I should read it. If you are a writer/publisher yourself, I will not hold you back from sending me one (preferably as an e-book off course).

The list

Here is the original list of books I wanted to start with back in 2010. The ones with an asterisk are in my possession. I must say that since I made that list I have realised that some of them would actually be almost unreadable. And on the other hand some more modern writers have been added (Khaled Hosseini, Umberto Eco, Carlos Ruiz Zafón). 

1. Austin J. – Pride and Prejudice
2. Balzac H. – Lost Illusions
3. Beecher-Stowe – Uncle Tom’s cabin (*)
4. Bronte C. – Jane Eyre
5. Cervantes – Don Quichote de La Mancha (*)
6. Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales
7. Conscience – De Leeuw van Vlaanderen
8. Defoe D. – Robinson Crusoe
9. Dickens C. – Oliver Twist
10. Dickens C. – Big Expectations (*)
11. Dostojevski – Crime and Punishment
12. Dumas – The Three Musketeers (*)
13. Flaubert – Sentimental Education
14. Flaubert – Madame De Bovary
15. Goethe – The suffering of young Werther
16. Gogol – Dead Souls
17. Graves – Me, Claudius
18. Hitler – Mein Kampf
19. Homerus – Ilias & Odyssee
20. Israel – The Republic
21. Joyce – Ulysses (*)
22. Lewis – The Monk
23. Marx – Das Kapital
24. Melville – Moby Dick
25. More – Utopia
26. Multatuli – Max Havelaar
27. Orwell – 1984 (*)
28. Orwell – Animal Farm (*)
29. Reve -De avonden
30. Scott – Ivanhoe
31. Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
32. Stevenson – Treasure Island
33. Stoker B. – Dracula
34. Swift – Gullivers’ Travels
35. Tolstoj – Anna Karenina
36. Tolstoj – War and Peace (*)
37. Twain – The adventures of Tom Sawyer
38. Voltaire – Candide
39. Wilde – The portrait of Dorian Gray