50 Book Challenge 2011 - Book 1

I have for the past few years been letting my reading slip.  Which I became disappointed about as it was my favourite pastime.  The modern world has too many distractions for me.  I've been watching far too much TV.  Many films, which I don't regret.  Worst of all was browsing online.  I wasted far too much time doing nothing on various sites.  I'd start off with a legitimate search/email check and still be there hours later, with nothing to show for it.

The spur for me to read more came  in September last year when I came across the ReadMore app for my phone.  http://readmoreapp.com/  It claimed to aid motivation to read.  I have to admit I was dubious.  But at £1.19 it was a small price to pay with a chance of taking me back to reading as many books as I feel I should be.  Well it worked a treat.  You input the title, author and number of pages and it adds the book to your 'stack'.  Once you start reading you can time your sessions (something I don't always do).  After a session you enter the current page.  It tells you how many pages you've read recently and when you can expect to finish the book reading 'so many' pages per day.  I found I constantly wanted to improve my amount read.  It's ensured I have read many times more books in the past four months than I did in the year previously.  The app has rekindled my urge to read.  For which I am most grateful.

At the beginning of January I was once again inspired.  This time by my friend Mindy, via a post on her blog.  http://ydnimyd.livejournal.com/73094.html

The challenge is to read 50 books during 2011.  Just to ensure you're not picking short ones it's also a joint target of 15,000 pages.  I think I can achieve this at my current rate.  So I'm in.  If you wish to see how I'm going I will be posting the books as I read them throughout the year.  Wish me luck!

Book 1 - Inner Skiing by Gallwey/Kriegel, 148 pages

Started January1st, finished January 4th.

As I'm off skiing soon this was a practical choice.  Not my favourite type of book.  I prefer to lose myself within the pages than take mental notes.

However it does seem that it will be very useful.  It is about the psychology of skiing and how to improve on the slopes by controlling that rather than the physical aspect.  As my biggest problem skiing is a lack of confidence I'm hoping reading this will help me.  It goes into a lot of detail about 'Self 1' and 'Self 2' which worried me at first.  As I read deeper though it, on the whole, made a lot of sense.  So much so that I downloaded the Kindle edition to my phone so I can dip into it whilst I'm away.

If you're a skiier I would definitely recommend this book.  The snowboarding element is a little sparse though.  This is a book about skiing with a chapter on trying out snowboarding after skiing.

If you're interested in blogs where people discuss what they've read I'd recommend Mindy's blog, link above.  Also http://www.lobablanca.com/

Total so far  Books - 1,  Pages - 148


Next - The Nautical Chart by Arturo Perez Reverte