At all times, I am reading at least one fiction book and one nonfiction book. The nonfiction subjects vary: science, history, philosophy, psychology, and writing. There’s so much I want to learn about the world and so little time to do it. The nonfiction books I read often inspire and influence the fiction I write, though really I’m just hoping to learn something new from each book I read, and I learned a lot from those I read this past year. Continue reading
I tend to consume most of my non-fiction content through podcasts, which I like because non-fiction authors are often guests, and they summarize their books in their own words in about an hour. That allows me to learn more in less time. Then when I hear an author or subject I am especially interested in, I can delve deeper by reading their full book. That was the case with many of the non-fiction books I read in 2017. Continue reading
I love podcasts. I’ve learned more from free podcasts than I did from a $200,000 college education. There’s a podcast for literally every topic under the sun. Actually, there’s about twelve for every topic under the sun. A podcast can be broad or extremely specific. It’s basically radio on-demand. You listen to exactly what you want, exactly when you want to. And it’s completely free–except for the Audible and Stamps.com commercials that sponsor just about every podcast, though you can skip over them, anyway. While there are some podcasts I listen to for pure entertainment value, I listen to many more podcasts to learn. Continue reading
T.Z. Barry 