Man in mid twenties discovers value of reading

I came to reading properly in my mid-twenties, which is later than I'd like to admit. Almost entirely non-fiction. I don't have anything against novels, I just keep picking up the other stuff first.

Most of what I read falls into one of two buckets. The first is filling in gaps, topics I feel like I missed growing up or never properly understood. History, politics, how money works, how systems work. The kind of thing where you realise one day that you've got strong opinions built on a pretty thin foundation, and you want to fix that.

The second is going deeper on things I already know a bit about. I'll read something that cracks open an idea and then I want three more books on it. Self-help, psychology, how people make decisions. I know self-help has a reputation, but the good ones genuinely change how you operate.

What keeps it interesting

I love anything that challenges what I think I already know. A good political conspiracy, a historical event told from an angle I hadn't considered, anything that makes me go "hang on, really?" That's the stuff that sticks.

Politics in general, actually. Not in a party-lines way, more the mechanics of it. How power moves, why certain decisions get made, what the incentives are behind the scenes. Once you start reading about that, everything else starts making more sense too.

The most useful thing I'd pass on: read the things that make you slightly uncomfortable. If every book confirms what you already believe, you're not really reading, you're just agreeing with yourself at a slower pace.