I love books and reading, although I'm finding as I get older I'm much more willing to "bail out" of a book. I also find myself in multiple books. Quite honestly I think this is due to a decreasing attention span.

I think there are two types of reading. The first type is conversational or fun reading. It's like having a dialog with the author. The second is structured reading, where the goal is information transfer at the expense of readability. It's great when you can get a book that does both, but the trick is to be able to make yourself read the second type when the information is worth getting.

So the books I have open right now are "Expert F#", "Getting past Ok" (recommended by another HN'er). "Practical ML", and "When Genius Failed"

I'm also watching a series of college lectures on the history and evolution of spoken language -- very interesting!

I read 2-4 books a month. It's definitely worth it to me. Many times consulting is just being able to consume and process information that most people don't have time for. That means a lot of reading. So while everybody else is watching football or dancing with the stars, I'm either working on startup stuff or learning.