Got your summer reading plan yet? This is a great time to think about it.

I was somewhat effective during Lent limiting my on-line reading and getting back to a more disciplined hard copy, but I have collapsed since Easter into a previous bad habit I really want to break.

As long as I habitually check Google News, Huffpost, The New York Times, articles forwarded by friends and family, Facebook, Twitter, and such I get a steady diet of controversial and up to the minute re-hashes of all the events happening in our world. I say “all the events” because I can no longer pretend a lot of it is really “news.” I also get plenty of opinion and analysis. And some of it is really good.

But as a result I read fewer books than I used to a few years back. And that loss means I am often letting others determine my subject matter. Continue reading →