April 24, 2026
One of my favorite things is reading. I think my Reading/TV ratio is something like 50 or 100 to one…for every 50 hours reading, I watch one hour of TV. And that is almost always either a series we’re binging or a movie we have selected.
So here, an update from a devoted user.
I tally all my book reading. Over the past 13 years, I consistently average around two and a half books per month…8400 pages. This does not include magazines, newspapers, various articles and research which engages me.
Newspapers: Wall Street Journal because I find them the most balanced in all areas (probably Center-Right in editorial) and the emphasis on Finance is obvious for me. Also, the Daytona Beach News Journal because they cover all the daily mayhem that is local life in Florida. I mean, who else covers the health inspections of local restaurants plus which beach bar has the best vibe?
To me, that’s more important information than Fox or CNN or whomever.
Magazines:
Subscription to Foreign Affairs (diplomacy, not, you know, who got caught last week in a hotel room). Thoughtful articles from all sides of the aisle on international events and their importance. I get the physical version.
Ereader versus paper? I do both. Rarely audio.
Subscription to Road and Track because cars are my personal illness and I can’t get enough of it. Delivered to the house.
Movie and TV Series Reviews
I used to go to Rotten Tomatoes but after becoming aware of the very real bias (political, etc.) show by their professional reviewers, I’ve shut that off. I now go to my AI source, Claude Opus 4.7 and ask Claude for recommendations. They inevitably hit the mark.
Book Reviews
I am a long-time member of Goodreads (goodreads.com) but I confess I have mostly stopped reading reviews as a way of seeking out books I want to read. The reviews are inevitably sincere, but they are misted over by the personal likes/dislikes of the reviewers, so it becomes hit and miss. If I do go there to check, I read the one- and two-star reviews because I want to know what people did not like about the book. See if I can relate to that.
An aside. People struggle with when to quit a book they don’t like. It’s a personal choice, but I think if you’re 50 pages in and it’s not happening, let it go. I honestly tell you I’ve let books go after I’m 90% finished. Sometimes, the irritations accumulate and I gotta go. Whether or not I finish the book, the time spent has been spent. I think I choose to stiff-arm the author rather than finish and continue my irritations with it. Strange coming from a writer, I know.
Ereaders
OK, so this is another illness I suffer from. I pretty much own them all. Rakuten Kobo is my favorite (I own three in various sizes), I’d put Kindle next. Not so much all the others, which I own but are not my go-to’s…Nook, Samsung Tablets. For Michael, its Kindle exclusively. Honestly, the reason I have so many is first, I just can’t bear to part with a working machine and second, I do need various sizes from time to time, depending on the bike, or in the beach chair, and so forth.
What Books to Read
Pretty clear that mysteries, science fiction, history and the classics are most of it. Too many years down the turnpike now to have to read financial books or self-help…I’m beyond help. The last dozen I’ve read:
| Dark Fire | CJ Sansom | Mystery |
| Judgement at Tokyo | Gary Bass | History |
| The Last Chronicle of Barset | Anthony Trollope | Novel |
| The Anti Man | Dean Koontz | Sci Fi |
| Alexandria Link | Steve Berry | Novel |
| Enzo Ferrari | Brock Yates | Biography |
| The Andromeda Evolution | Daniel Wilson | Sci Fi |
| The Way We Live Now | Anthony Trollope | Novel |
| Eye of the Needle | Ken Follett | Novel |
| Diary of a Dead Man on Leave | David Downing | Novel |
| Pale Criminal | David Kerr | Novel |
| German Requiem | David Kerr | Novel |
| 1929 | Andrew Sorkin | History |
Book Pet Peeves
At the top of the list…length. It’s become a real waste of the reader’s time. Moby Dick is considered to be the great American novel. Call it 640 pages. Stephen King is a serial offender. Books routinely run over 1000 pages…better than Moby Dick? Needs an editor. Big time.
But mystery novels that could easily be written in 250 or so pages, now run to 500 or 600 pages…a lot of blather and filler and needless and unnecessary stuff.
Agatha Christie’s mysteries have sold 2 billion copies. They typically run 200-250 pages. Plunk, the body. Plunk, the 3-5 potential perps, plunk plunk plunk…I accuse you, Reverand Plink! Done. Satisfying, the puzzle.
Could keep going. But I have this feeling that the publishing houses want a lot of book because if you’re going to put $35.95 on the jacket, it has got to be, well, heavy in the hand. Plus, they probably tell the authors they “owe it to their readers” because they’ve waited two years since the last book.
Next, unsympathetic lead characters. I just almost read Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. The premise is a graduate student majoring in magic at Cambridge traveling to Hell to seek her dead professor-advisor so he can approve her final thesis and get her into a good career. I anticipated enjoying the trip to Hell and all the interesting things one would find. Instead, I got 500 pages of obsessing about getting her degree. I’m sorry, that’s just not interesting enough to fill 500 pages. So, I deep-sixed it after 300.
Next…stupid endings. Authors can get all wound up and then, the final scene takes an agonizingly long time. Like when the good guy/gal is being chased by the bad people while trying to get the file that will blow up the crime lord. They are chased for 80 pages; they are fired at 160 times by professional assassins, and all 160 bullets miss. I have to confess, there are times I’d like to see one of the bullets not miss and so, put me out of my reader-agony.
This is a near-cousin to the movies that 10 minutes before the end, put a gun in someone’s hand which in its use, wraps everything up. That is so bad.
Finally, awkward, futile, cranky, poorly conceived plots. You start out interestingly enough, but after 100 pages or so, the author is clearly lost in the forest, nettles and brambles pulling and tugging at his sleeve. So, he creates sub-plot upon sub-plot, no doubt encouraged to do so because it helps with the heavy in the hand issue. But after a while, he tires, and he puts a gun in someone’s hand to get his lead character, and himself out of the jam he was in. That goes on a lot.
And finally, just this thought. When I was a kid, science fiction outsold fantasy by probably ten to one. Today, a quick look at the bookshelves indicates that they have reversed. No doubt, there is a real social message there, but that’s for another time.
Reading is a blessing. You travel out of your own existence into other places, times and minds. You learn, you experience. It’s wonderful for the mind, and somehow, it’s still fun to put a book marker in a book. Whenever we travel, I bring a set back. My last, a Samurai set from Japan.
Hai!
Thoughts, questions, or reflections? I’d love to hear them. You can reach me anytime at anthony@workingprofit.com
