I’m refining my reading habits. I’ve been dipping into too many books without finishing. I need some structure and some discipline to get the most out of what I read.

Here’s the current lineup of books* that I have been in and out of recently on my iPad mini:

• The Shape Of Design by Frank Chimero
• Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
• The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
• Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
• Insanely Simple by Ken Segall
• Manage Your Day-to-Day edited by Jocelyn K. Glei
• Story Wars by Jonah Sachs
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I’ve downloaded samples of these books to see if I’m interested enough to purchase them:

• Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
• Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett
• Why Does The World Exist? by Jim Holt
• Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
• The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose

This is a tantalizing but overwhelming list of intriguing books.

I’m going to use my lunch break for reading time. At night, it’s hard to always work reading time around my family life. My aim is to save what time I can get at night for lighter reading, like fiction, or for wisdom literature, like the works of the Stoics. An “idea book” often gets my brain too engaged, and I don’t wait to stay up late chewing on possibilities when I ought to be sleeping.

I plan to start at the top of the list above and focus on one book at a time until either I finish the book or I decide I’ve gotten all I want out of it. I will highlight key passages for later reference, and, if the book’s impact merits it, I will post what I learn from it.

*The book links are mostly to Amazon’s Kindle store, but I have most of these in my iBooks library instead. I prefer the look and interface of iBooks to Kindle, but I linked to Amazon since it’s the more common format.