Bill Gates on reading

I love reading and I love hearing about or reading about people and reading. Lately I've been curious about successful people who are readers. Today I'm sharing Bill Gates on reading. Enjoy!

Bill Gates and his tote bag of reading material--it makes me happy that this tech giant loves good, old fashioned regular books, not e-readers. This whole video is great--from an interview with Charlie Rose--but if you only want the bookish parts, skip ahead to 6:18 to start with Gates talking about Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks which Gates bought at auction. Or, skip ahead to 7:51 to learn about Gates's reading bag. I guess Gates is a speed reader. I can speed read, but I really prefer to slow read--there's an entire book club in Notting Hill, London, England dedicated to slow reading and I hope someday to join them!


In this video, Bill Gates suggests books from his summer 2015 reading:

Links to the books Bill discusses in this video:

• On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Bliss
• Should We Eat Meat? by Vaclav Smil
• How to Lie With Statistics by Darrel Huff
• What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
• Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things that Happened by Allie Brosh
• The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins

All of these appeal to me, but I really would like to read Hyperbole and a Half as well as The Magic of Reality. I'll definitely be putting them on my library list--although I linked these books to Amazon, I encourage you to check out your local library. Libraries add huge value to communities but they can't survive without patrons. Plus, if you are good about returning your books, videos, and other items on time, it can also be a money saver.


You can find the books section of Gates Notes HERE.

HERE's an interesting article about Gates and his reading habits and an annual "vacation" of sorts. The article says Gates reads up to 15 hours per DAY during his vacation-like retreat! Although other aspects of the retreat sound miserable to me, the tremendous amount of reading sounds AMAZING!

THIS article isn't solely about Gates, but it does start off with a quote from his dad about Gates's childhood reading habits.

***Please note, many links in this post are to Amazon Affiliate listings. 

I may earn a teeny commission if you make a purchase through these links. 

I wholeheartedly appreciate every penny generated through these links, 

but mostly I just want to spread the book love. Thank you.