Hello – My name is Chris – and I am a book (and other information) addict. For the record, that includes audiobooks, books, magazines, stuff on the web, etc. In any case – I just wanted to share my manifold solution to my personal problem

1st – Speed – work on the raw speed of reading. Not too long ago - I started working on my speed reading. I suggest as a starter – this: Memletics Speed Reading Course. It works if you stick with it. I can say with certainty that my raw reading speed has vastly improved after maybe 2 months.

2nd – Audible premium listener club. $19.99/ month for 2 audiobooks. You can get 2 $100 books if you find em’ and want em’. Listen to your audiobooks slightly sped up on your ipod. Listen to audiobooks whenever you cannot hold something and read (subway sometimes, walking, at the gym, etc.)

3rd – Safari nobookshelf deal. $39.99/ month for just about all technical books ever – unlimited reading. Since I was spending ~$100/ month on tech books – this was a big saver! Diversity, info on demand, searchability… nice!

4th – Amazon Marketplace. It is easy. Find a book at Amazon. Find the people selling the same book used at the bottom of the page much cheaper. For a recent example – I got this book listed at Amazon for !$169 – for around $36!!! What a deal!

5th - Cash4books.net! Take your used books, put in their ISBN #s. Put your books in a box – they pay shipping. Get $ in your paypal account (transfer to your bank account from their).

6th – Citeseer - Scientific Literature Digital Library. Amazing, phenomenal resource for free! Without this resource, I would NEVER have been able to do any of the machine learning work I have done in the past several years!

 So – technical books – the lions share is taken care of via Safari – but the ones that are not – buy em (especially finance related books, machine learning books, etc.) . Some you keep as reference, some you will not need to – so you sell em’!

Citeseer is the 1st stop for any and all ‘white paper’ style research – use it!!!

I will also say - optionally you might choose the IEEE Digital Library and even some other great resources like any of the MIT Press Journals…. All great reading resources. They are more ‘niche’ and i use those types of resources for very specific needs, but I would say the best raw, complete, totally researched and explored resources are the journals.

Put all of this stuff together – and you can intake mass amounts of super information and do it economically !

-Chris

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