How many books can you read in your life?
This is an interesting calculation. I used to select and read books without worrying too much as to whether they were best in class or not. Good cover? Tick. right subject? Tick. Blurb on the jacket good? Tick and buy. Not much science in that.
That was until it was pointed out to me that you can only read a finite number of books in your life. Follow the simple calculation: number of years you expect to live x number of books you read in a year. For most people, that is going to be in the hundreds, not the thousands. I now invest a lot more time on my precious choices and bail out early if I’m not impressed. So with all the brouhaha around billions of books being available via Google Books, I’m more interested in knowing which ones are any good. So I really like Amigo Reader from Ebooks Corporation (disclosure: I’m a Director of the company), a great new way to crowd-source people’s opinions on which ones I should be spending my time on.