#25 – Reading

Wow, post #25.

Like many of you, I read to my children when they were young (perhaps as much for myself as for them). For our youngest, our son, I read to him until he was sixteen years old, and only stopped then because he was staying up later than I was doing his homework.

My reading comprehension skills have always been limited, which impacted school work for 17 years, but also professional training- including flight training- throughout my years in the work force. My way of compensating was to slow down the reading pace. And reading didn’t become a passion for me until later in life. In fact the desire for learning new things accelerated as I got older, especially after 40. I suspect many of you experienced the same thing.

It’s one of the main reasons I started this blog.

I’ve always been lukewarm on fiction, although when starting to read a good fiction, I enjoyed it very much. Tom Clancy comes to mind. But I’d much rather read to learn. Favorite topics include behind-the-scenes stories from World War II through the Cold War and military or diplomatic intelligence. James Hornfischer was always an excellent read (I just learned that he passed away this Summer at the age of 55). For some reason I’ve always been fascinated with reading about the submarine community, although there was never a desire to become part of that community (getting through Nuclear Power School with my reading comprehension skills would have equaled disaster). Retirement planning and investment “stuff” are also favorite topics, although interest in getting into stock/securities details is limited.

The desire to learn more also gets fed well by TV streaming services. I could care less about regular TV and prime time shows, but there’s no shortage of documentaries to be found on YouTube and other streaming services. For whatever reason, I love watching documentaries on music groups from the 60s and 70s.

Podcasts have become a favorite venue. As mentioned in earlier posts, my son got me into Spotify, which I use more for podcasts than music. But I’ve found it difficult to find good quality podcasts that are more content and less trivial dialogue. Mentioned in an earlier post: Sound Retirement Planning by Jason Parker is a quality blog. But the search continues.

I got an Amazon Kindle last Thanksgiving and that’s opened up a whole new reading world. Took a little bit of getting used to, and I’m still learning the features. Love the “Sample a Book” feature. Question now is, do we continue to buy real books and make our kids deal with a ton of them when we pass on, or convert to virtual books. Think I pretty much answered that question with the way I asked it.

Magazines. So far just the Economist and Naval Institute Proceedings. Economist tends to be a little left of center politically, but when it comes to learning about new subjects, it’s tough to beat.

I could go on about reading, etc., but I’m more interested in learning of some good reads from you all. As always, very much appreciate your thoughts!

2 thoughts on “#25 – Reading

  1. Loved Hornfischer too. Some of my favorites are Erik Larson, Nathaniel Philbrick, Rick Atkinson, ADM McRaven, and Brian Kilmeade. The 8th Air Force Musuem in Savannah has lots of interesting podcasts. I haven’t purchased a hard copy book, paper, etc. in quite a while.

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