It has been nearly two years since I took some time away from technology to pursue academia. While my primary discipline is history, I teach and enjoy literature. What books should I read? This is one of the hardest decisions to make, at least for me. Last week on the FORMA podcast, Andrew Kern and Matt Bianco spent about an hour exploring this topic and it is very informative. One of the topics they discuss is about deep reading books. This is one of the things that has let me down the most with graduate school. I have no time to deep read any books. I get a taste and hope someday to go back and read many of them, but no deep reading. Deep reading takes time. You have to read a book multiple times. If possible, you have to read a book in what they call “community” in another word, with others. You have to take a rake and scrape at the pages and discuss them with others. You have to read what others have said about a book. It takes time and effort to read a book, which is why the decision on what to read is so vitally important.