I was never really much into reading. In high School the only book I think I actually read was Catcher in The Rye. I was fascinated by Holden Caulfield. These days anyone who knows me knows that I regularly read and refer to the book “12 Steps and 12 Traditions” by Bill Wilson, which of course is one of the 2 primary texts of AA and many other 12 step fellowships who have adopted AA’s literature as their own because the 12 steps are a proven method – not just for alcoholics, but for anyone who wants to improve any area of their lives. In the meantime each year I set up goals for myself at the beginning of the year. In 2008 one of the goals was to read more and by the end of 2008 I had not to my satisfaction accomplished this goal. So I repeated it for 2009. In 2009 I began to do it. I’ve read one book entirely. The Secret. Then I started reading a book called “The Committed Life.” I’m still reading it, but I dropped the habit. When I was reading The Secret, I was reading a chapter every night (just about). I had structured my days around it so that by 7pm no matter what I was doing I stopped and sat down to read. I need to do this again and that is one of the reasons for this post. Here’s my reading list. I want to read and write my reactions to what I am reading.

So here’s the list broken down into 3 sections; what I’ve read, currently reading, and plan to read:

The funny thing is most of these books are already sitting in my house on the shelf – my wife had them. No coincidences. The only ones I don’t own yet are Think and Grow Rich, and Language of The Heart.

I’ve got a lot of reading to do and a lot of writing to do! Please feel free to comment on this and share your own experience with these books or any other books you may have read or be reading that may be relevant here.

My goal as of today is to immediately jump back into that pattern where the basic schedule is to stop at 7pm each day, read one chapter (about an hour) and then get back into meditation. It’s fascinating how the things that happen from day to day don’t really change much, but when I am well balanced my reactions to the things that are happening are very different giving rise to a very different life experience in the wake of the exact same types of events.