What’s In Your Blogroll?

Book, Pages, Heart, Love

A few weeks ago Fred Wilson wrote a list of recommended books for entrepreneurs and surprisingly enough none of them were about business. In fact, most of his short list included classical fiction by Ayn Rand and Shakespeare.

I’ve always felt that studying sociology taught me more about business than any of my lectures in business school and I’m glad to see that someone like Fred shares my reasoning. Fred puts it perfectly when he says;

The point of this list is that there is way more insight to be gained from stories than from business books. And these are some amazing stories.

In fact, I’d like to think that the same principle applies for websites and blogs too. Specifically, there is more applicable insight and lessons to be learned from sites that have little if nothing to do with business than business sites themselves.

Although my RSS reader is full of sites that are about blogging practices, media news, industry trends, and career advice I find that some of the most interesting and “mind-expanding” reads come from elsewhere. Blogs about art, society, science, and general observations on life. Reading about topics that I’m more intimately familiar with, although useful, simply isn’t as stimulating. This is also why, although I enjoy the community and conversation of many of my Gen-Y peers, I simply cannot get too thrilled about blogs and posts that are only directed to my generation — limiting myself to the views and opinions of my age group would limit my understanding of the big picture.

I believe that the utility of reading isn’t to reinforce our existing knowledge or beliefs but to expand our knowledge and conception of all that is going on around us.

Some of my favorite online reads that do this well include:

Kevin Kelly’s Life Stream

Noah Brier

Gaping Void by Hugh Macleod

Self Vs. Self by Hazel Dooney

Seed Magazine

Good Magazine

So what do you read? I’d love to expand my list and share more with anyone else who visits