[Glass Joe]

I read a lot of books too, and also listen to a lot of audio programs in my car. It's just a habit now.

I mostly read/listen to non-fiction. And like others, I don't own a TV anymore, but instead just watch movies and TV shows on DVD on my laptop (usually only one or two DVDs a week).

And I agree that theory should be balanced with practice. Knowledge should go hand-in-hand with application. Otherwise, you can get stuck in reading so much about a topic, only to realize later on that you don't even like doing the stuff you read so much about. For instance, I remember reading all these books about investing and fundamental and technical analysis, but learned later on that I didn't want to do that as a full-time job.

Regarding advice on reading and retention:

- Learn how to preview a book. Before reading any (non-fiction) book, read the front and back, the table of contents, and flip through the chapters to get an idea of the overall structure of the book and a feel for the author's writing style. Also try to read Amazon.com and other reviews too if available. I've found that previewing books helps with retention a lot, and also gives you a better idea of what to expect. It also saves time, because you find out if the book isn't what you are looking for sooner rather than later.

- Follow your intuition. Don't read anything because you think you should read it. Don't read anything because the author wrote one good book, so you think you should force yourself to read everything else that person wrote. If the topic doesn't interest you at the moment, you shouldn't force yourself to read it. Wait to see if you become interested again down the road. I also used to keep a "reading queue" on my computer for a while (similar to a Netflix queue), but now I just read based on feel. Sure, keeping a queue is probably a more disciplined approach and you might get through books faster by sticking to a plan. However, and this might totally be a placebo effect, I think I retain a lot more when I read "by feel" rather than by sticking to a game plan. And I enjoy this approach a lot more. I think most people would naturally retain a lot more when they read what they actually want to read, rather than what they think they should read.

- Learn to outline and summarize. If you really need to retain what you are reading. Outline the book and write chapter summaries as you are reading through the book. Try to pretend you are explaining the book to someone else. You aren't writing a book report, you are just writing notes to yourself, so don't worry about spelling or even if it is comprehensible. Just start out as briefly as possible, and then expand when think it's necessary. Not vice versa. Don't try to be as detailed as possible at first. Because if you do that, you will likely just end up re-writing the book with similar words rather than summarizing it, and that's a waste of time.

- Trust your memory. I used to worry about not retaining all the stuff that I read too. But then I realized that my forgetfulness and my supposed lack of retention, was really a feature and not a bug of my conscious mind. It's weird, but I find that when I need to remember something about a topic I read about a long time ago, I'll remember it then and there, or I'll at least remember where to look it up. It will just show up in my mind when I need it. But if I try right now to remember all the chapters of a particular book I read, just to see if I can do it, I usually can't remember all that much. It only surfaces when I seem to really need it. Not when I try to pretend that I need it. Of course no memory is perfect, so there is probably a lot of stuff that I'm losing that I don't even realize I'm losing. But then again, I'm not even sure if that's a feature too. I mean, I don't know if what I'm losing is even anything I need to remember.

- Trim down your library periodically. Sell, give away, or throw away any books that you don't like or are of no use to you any more. This may sound obvious, but it's easy to forget to purge from time to time. If you don't do this, your library will become unmanageable and you won't know where to find stuff. Sure, you can organize *all* your books, grouping together the books you like with the ones you don't like. But why waste your time organizing books that you don't even like or don't even think are useful anymore?