Porcupine Books
Porcupine Stack
I confess: I am a complete, unabashed and irredeemable bibliophile.
It is the closest I come to addictive behaviour on the indulgence scale and is my favourite brand of retail therapy. I dislike borrowing books because I can’t interact with them – and I LIKE to converse with the books I read. As a result, the ones I really like tend to look, um, very well loved (or whatever the book equivalent of deshabille is). They are full of highlighter pen, scribbled remarks, cross-references, turned down pages and – most noticeably of all – neon sticky memo thingies poking out in all directions, endowing them with porcupine-esque characteristics.
(I suppose I could be more patriotic and call them Echidna Books, but it really doesn’t have the same ring to it). And no, I haven’t converted to Kindle or reading books on an iPad, though maybe it’s inevitable…
Anyway. These are my favourites of the piles that clutter the rooms of my house. I’ll not give you the summaries (but will link you to them if I can find them), just a short personal explanation as to why they’re on the list.
In terms of buying books, I tend to buy on-line. It’s cheaper and less hassle. Amazon is great for researching the book and reading reviews, but I tend to buy through either The Book Depository (works out the same price as amazon but because of the free international postage, you can order individually and they arrive faster), or AbeBooks, which is a brilliant international second hand book site, and great for stuff that’s out of print. Since Book Depository is now selling through them, I just tend to head there first.
On-line options:
Booko: Australian aggregator site that compares book prices across a large number of shops and on-line sources. Useful! And probably the best place to start.
The Book Depository: New books, free delivery worldwide
AbeBooks: Used books from all over the world (postage is often pricey)
Audible Books (US & UK sites)
Alibris: Used books, text books, rare and out-of-print books
Booktopia Bookshop: Australian bookstore
Fishpond: Australian site
There are also plenty of book summary sites should you want a more thorough content preview before deciding whether a more complete investment is worth your while. I tend to find them a bit dry and I miss hearing the author’s voice, but they’re useful as a top-line indication of what the book’s about:
Book Rapper – Produced by a friend of mine, Geoff McDonald. Great 6ish page summaries, interpretations and applications – all free
Derek Sivers – Very cool thinker, does interesting summaries on his blog site, also free
Get Abstract – Subscription based service with a huge ‘library’ of 4000+ books
Business Summaries – Subscription service, with free 1 month trial, also do mindmap and video formats
I have yet to master speed reading – I so get the value and efficiency of it, just have failed to persist enough with the training. In the meantime, I’m working on my Reading By Osmosis Project. The theory is that by leaving the books piled in strategic places near where I spend a lot of time (I’m keeping track of 3 piles of about 45 unread books in my peripheral vision as I type) I’ll just absorb the content without having to go through the effort of actually reading them. Or not in detail anyway. Just the gist…
Early results are not that promising, but all suggestions welcome…
