"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. About the convergence of ability, intellect, experience, time in history, and place that produce the "outliers" of exceptional achievement in society.
I love the chapter "The 10,000 Hour Rule". We tend to think that a lot of high-achievers gained success over night, but that's generally not true. Gladwell maintains that about 10,000 hours of experience is needed for competence in any field. He offers as examples Bill Gates' ditching of classes and theft of computer time (time-sharing at his high school) and The Beetles grueling stint playing several hours a night back-to-back in Hamburg nightclubs.
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I'm reading more because of the easy access to books and the lower prices vs. print. But, when will we have a widespread system of being able to borrow electronic books? I suppose I should just go to the library, but on the other hand, perhaps $10 is a reasonable cost for the convenience. I have heard of some pilot programs of libraries that are lending-out electronic books. Not sure of the mechanism.
I've decided that in the future I will not buy print technical books any more, unless they are not available in electronic form. I've been buying "dual" books now for some time (at least in my core work areas - Ruby on Rails and Objective-C/iPhone programming.) , because I want them up on one of my 4 monitors when I program. But now I think I can ditch the paper versions.
I downloaded the .epubs for all my Pragmatic books, and for the most part they display nicely on the iPad. I can sit on the sofa and browse as well as I could with the paper book, so time to start reclaiming the shelf space!
. Here in Michigan, if you're familiar with the Mackinaw Bridge, a windy day, one of those Yugo's flew up and over right into the waters below. Gone forever. 
