What I read in April 2020

I wish I had read more this month! I think the COVID-19 pandemic has changed my reading habits. I’ve been way too much news articles and updates about. Ugh!

  1. Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, 288p – A fun book about productivity techniques. It has lots of nice ideas on how to focus and achieve goals. One of the main messages is to choose the highlight of the day. It is valuable advice because the highlight can be something as ambitious as “finish that final report” or as simple as “enjoy a cup of tea after work”. It has lots of ideas to experiment with our habits and routines, not all of them will work for everybody. It is a lighthearted book about productivity with no pressure on being highly productive all the time. It’s more about doing what we enjoy 🙂
  1. The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz, 352p – Time travel, feminism, 90’s riot grrl punk rock scene, murder, abortion rights, geology, wormholes. Yes, all this together to form an exciting story of people wanting to make the world a better place. Lots of imagination and interesting historic facts that creates various alternate histories realities. A great read with lots of historical references related to the 1800’s social movements! I had to stop and do some Wikipedia research here and there. Fascinating!

My Reader Goals 2020

My Reader Goals 2020

I set up an ambitious goal last year: to read 52 books. It’s about a book per week. I made it in the end but I gotta say that reading the Saga graphic novel series helped a lot in terms of numbers!

I ended up reading 57 books in 2019, which was awesome!

Anyway, for 2020 I’m repeating the same goal: 52 books. I don’t want to be too ambitious because I know the amount of time available I have to read and I know it’s not getting any better in 2020.

I will work with the time I have available and I already have 33 books loaded into my Kindle. That means, I already own these books. It’s a virtual pile of books.

A partial glimpse at the “book pile” waiting for me in 2020

My reader goals for 2020 will be simple:

  1. Read the books I already own. These will be my priority.
  2. Read selected books from the Ottawa Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club (I will pick which books I want to invest in).
  3. Continue with series that I know I enjoy (The Expanse, for example).
  4. And pick some books about technology that’s been on radar lately.

List of Books I already own (#1 priority):

  1. The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less eBook: Christine Carter Phd
  2. Sword of Destiny: Andrzej Sapkowski, David A French
  3. Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by B.J. Fogg
  4. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  5. Letters from an Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  6. Blood of Elves (Witcher, #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski
  7. Time of Contempt (The Witcher, #4) by Andrzej Sapkowski
  8. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich
  9. The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara
  10. Heart of Steel (Iron Seas, #2) by Meljean Brook
  11. The Pride of Lions (Highlands, #1) by Marsha Canham
  12. The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
  13. A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2) by Becky Chambers
  14. Nemesis Games (The Expanse, #5) by James S.A. Corey
  15. Extend Your Mind: Praxis Volume 2 by Tiago Forte
  16. Dragons of Winter Night by Margaret Weis s
  17. The Secret Lives of Introverts: Inside Our Hidden World by Jenn Granneman
  18. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
  19. The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
  20. The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
  21. The Ghost Brigades (Old Man’s War, #2) by John Scalzi
  22. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
  23. Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
  24. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
  25. Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
  26. Kenobi by John Jackson Miller
  27. The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, #1) by John Scalzi
  28. Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity by Felicia Day
  29. How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil
  30. Dopamine by Mikhail Voloshin
  31. Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) by Tamsyn Muir
  32. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening by Joseph Goldstein
  33. LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer, Emerson Brooking

Books I want to buy and read in 2020:

(mostly related to technology/digital information)

  1. Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff
  2. Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton
  3. A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind by David J. Helfand
  4. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil
  5. LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer, Emerson T. Brooking

#2020

Reading matter(s) of the month: July, 2016

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So let’s see what filled my musings this month. We are at the 31st week of 2016 and I’ve finished reading 3 non-fiction books all related to organization. This was a month dedicated to reviewing my projects and GTD system. I decided to implement my actions using Todoist, and I’m loving it! I also took some days off to rest and be with my family so I didn’t spend too much time reading. So here goes my list:

The “Read” list of July, 2016:


  1. Packing Light: The Normal Person’s Guide to Carry-On-Only Travel
    by Fred Perrotta: I started reading the Packsmith blog which brings packing tips from Tortuga Backpacks. The book is a collection of articles on how to pack carry-on’s and it is filled with great advice. You can choose to be an extreme minimal carry-on traveler or a more normal one. I enjoyed the hacks!
  2. Your Digital Life: Everything you need to know to get your life organised and put technology to work for you by Carl Pullein: In my quest for a better GTD system I started testing Todoist (and soon became a premium subscriber) and then searched for info on how to implement GTD with it. I stumbled upon this amazing You Tube channel by Carl Pullein with valuable videos about GTD, Evernote and Todoist. Then I discovered he had published this book and I immediately started reading it. I loved it! It helped me set up my system and I am still getting so much value from it!
  3. Casa Organizada: A arte da organização para transformar a casa e a rotina de quem não tem tempo by Thais Godinho: This is a book about home organization by a Brazilian author. She has a huge site about organization (Vida Organizada) and is a reference in the subject. It is relatively short and has some nice tips and methods to plan and manage our house chores, cleaning checklists, meal planning and space organization.

The added “To-Read” list of July, 2016:

  1. Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics: Toward a Union of Love and Knowledge by Vic Mansfield, Dalai Lama XIV: I got this recommendation from Dr. Shini Somara, who is host of the Crash Course Physics
  2. The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey: Another subject that got my attention this month is financial plans.
  3. Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez: One more about finances because it is always good to have a second opinion.
  4. Les Fourmis by Bernard Werber: a French sci-fi book that I want to delve into this year.

The “I am still reading and haven’t finished yet” pile of July, 2016:

  1. The Complete Persepolis (Persepolis) by Marjane Satrapi, Mattias Ripa
  2. Rhapsody: Child of Blood (Symphony of Ages #1) by Elizabeth Haydon

See you next month! Happy reading!

What did you think? If you liked this post, please recommend it!

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Reading matter(s) of the month: June, 2016

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Time for the wrap-up of the month! We are at the 26th week of 2016 and I’ve finished reading 3 books: 1 non-fiction and 2 fiction. So here goes my list:

The “Read” list of June, 2016:


  1. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert: I really liked it! It’s a very upbeat reading with a positive message: whatever you do, just keep doing it!
  2. Old Man’s War (Old Man’s War #1) by John Scalzi: That was my favorite book of the month. The world building, the characters, the pace of the story: all perfect. It has a great beginning and ends beautifully. It has humor, war, politics, action and even romance. It is the type of book that is hard to put down.
  3. Les Catilinaires by Amélie Nothomb: I have finally finished this one! I started reading it in April but then abandoned it because, well, reading in French in not easy, so I turned myself to easier tasks. Now I’m done! It started off well with a mysterious neighbor, a house in the woods and then it starts to get weird. I didn’t enjoy the ending. It seemed, meaningless.

The “To-Read” pile of June, 2016:


  1. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell: I’d like to know how we think without thinking. And why.
  2. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton: this seems to be a questioning book. I have recently watched a TEDTalk with the author and this title called my attention.
  3. The Time Traders (Time Traders/Ross Murdock, #1) by Andre Norton: this July’s pick of the Bookclub Sword and Laser. Science fiction first published in 1958 and written by the first woman inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

And what is next?

I have a plan again for this month! I plan to read in July:

  1. The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life byThomas M. Sterner
  2. The Time Traders (Time Traders/Ross Murdock, #1) by Andre Norton:
  3. Contact by Carl Sagan

See you next month! Happy reading!

What did you think? If you liked this post, please recommend it!

Follow me on Twitter | Medium | Instagram |Noisy Deadlines
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