Very Short Introductions
I am a voracious reader (Sharmin would say that I read like a donkey) and I am always looking for an opportunity to pick up a new book in the area that interests me, which is almost anything. Most of the time I am reading several books at once, and if a book is voluminous it can take me a long time to finish it. These days I am busy with my work, and I don't have enough spare time to go into many subjects' fine details. However, I still like learning about it in more than just superficial way.
A couple of years ago I discovered Very Short Introduction series of books by Oxford University Press. These are slim volumes of about hundred to hundred and fifty pages each, and they are geared towards general public in their style. Some of them, however, deal with fairly technical fields of knowledge, and even the accessible style can preclude non-experts from fully understanding the subject matter. Overall they are very well written, and I've been devouring them for some time. I've gone through 25 of them so far. My personal goal is to go through all of them one day.