I have always said “The more you know the less you need” and “You are what you know” and “Don’t reinvent the wheel”, and all of that is very true on the subject of reading. Why spend your life collecting hard to find answers when so many others have already done it. I’ve had a lot of my fellow mountain folk around here cringe at the thought of reading, saying with great stubbornness, “I learn by doing” or “I aint got time to read”, (it wasn’t uncommon when I was young, to not be able to find a pen, pencil and especially not blank paper in a lot of homes around here. I know because as an artist it came up a lot). What I then explain is that in a book lies answers from one or more lifetimes of experience and information on the subject they want to know more about. I can read one book about a subject and I get the ideas and lessons hard learned from possibly entire teams working for years with unlimited resources. Many times it is one person collecting all of the knowledge of all of the top experts in a subject. So in one ten dollar book, you save yourself from expensive and often dangerous trial and error, only to spend years figuring out what was already said on page 3. The point is to go to the top and start there. See what has set the standard, see what has already been done, see what kind of competition or complications are awaiting your idea. There is another thing I have always said about all of us. We only stand on the shoulders of what others accomplished before us, but somehow we egotistically we forget that for self appreciation, or in youth we simply cant think that deeply ( On The Shoulders ). Who does it best, who inspires you most, etc. find success and copy exactly what they are doing, read what they read, know what they know, and you cant help but do well also. Find out all of the others mistakes in a few cheap books and save yourself years or decades of time and disappointment, probably a small fortune, and many of your relationships. So do this for me son if you can…”Be a simple kind of man, or something you love and understand” … now onto the next step of this important lesson ( Youtube and Google )