During my interview for my current job, I said that one of my goals is to give management a shot later in my career (whether I’ll end up liking it, I’m not sure, but I think I’d be good at it and want to invest in learning how). I mentioned that I’m looking for books to read to help prepare me for the challenge. My boss responded, “If I gave you books, would you read them?”

My boss reads a lot, and has a ton of books. Since starting at my job, I’ve slowly been borrowing books from him. I’m not a great reader; I think I’m pretty slow at it, and I find it generally uncomfortable compared to staring at a screen. But, when I do force myself to read, I find that I do learn a lot. Not every book is worth reading but so far I’ve gone through nearly 7 books of his (in the last year) and I liked 6 of them, and 2 of them I think I will continue to reference for a long time.

Not only am I learning, but I like that reading my boss’s books keeps me in more frequent communication with him than I otherwise would be. When I finished the 4th book, I decided to start sending him emails with what I learned and whether I liked each book. I’m going to continue doing this, but now I figure I may as well put the reviews in blog posts as well. Seems kind of obvious in hindsight…