Who’s Ben Von Jagow Reading?

Have you seen the new season of Stranger Things?

Are you up to date on Heated Rivalry?

Did you watch that new Avatar movie?

No, no, and no.

People are often dumbfounded when they learn that I don’t have a TV, or an Xbox, or a subscription to any streaming service. I shake my head, and they look at me like I’m prehistoric, or Amish, or just plain weird.

“Well, what do you do with your free time?”

Unfortunately, there’s no way to say “I read” without sounding like a pretentious asshole. But it’s the truth.

I read in long jags – on metros, in waiting rooms, stretched out in bed – and I read in short spurts – during meals, at work, even while sitting on the toilet.

I read because some long-forgotten professor once delivered a lecture on the effects of compounding – how small, consistent actions can yield large results – and for whatever reason, the concept stuck with me.

Almost all of Microeconomics was washed away in a beer tsunami. Statistics for Business suffered the consequences of “the bucket system.” And football jostled loose what was left. The principle of compounding, though – that stuck with me like a scar.

In those days, I hadn’t yet known I wanted to be a writer, but I do remember holding on to that tidbit, safeguarding it as though it were something valuable. Years later, when I decided I wanted to start writing books, I researched the best way to do it. Everyone seemed to be saying different versions of the same thing:

In order to write, you must first learn to read.

So now I steal all the little moments I can in the day and fill them with reading. Over time, those moments compound, and I end up going through a great deal of books. And since I have the attention span of a sugar-coaxed iPad kid, I bounce around between them.

Here are a few of the books currently on my nightstand, coffee table, and in my backpack: