Reading on a jet plane: what executives are reading for fun.

• Author: Bjorklund, Todd
• Position: Executive Living - Executives discuss their reading habits

READING IS ONE OF THE GREAT JOYS of life, but in the life of a busy executive, time for pleasure reading is hard to find. When each of the four executives interviewed for this column was asked how he or she found time to read, unvaryingly the first response was "in the airport" or "on an airplane." But these executives love reading and make time for it when they can.

Shelli Gardner, co-founder and CEO, Stampin'Up

Gardner says that she never has time to read for extended periods, so she chooses books that give her "snippets of knowledge," where she can steal a chapter here and there. "Everywhere I go," she says, "I have a book or a project or both." She always has a few books going, usually in three genres: business, self-help and spiritual. Currently her business book is Less Is More, by Jason Jennings; her self-help books are Massage for Busy People by Dawn Groves (as she says, "I love massages, but who has time?") and The Check Book: 200 Ways to Balance Your Life, by Bret Nicholaus and Paul Lowrie; and her spiritual book is Christ and the New Covenant, by Jeffrey R. Holland. Her goal in reading is to improve herself on many different levels, and so her choices are usually nonfiction; however, once a year or so, on vacation, she reads fiction -- most recently Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice.

Patrick Byrne, CEO, Overstock.com

Byrne agrees that there is little time for reading, "But," he says, "it's like exercise. It's easy to neglect, but that is shortsighted -- it's better for life." This former professor of philosophy and economics is used to toting books wherever he goes, and he is always engaged in two or three at any time. Most often Byrne chooses history, political science or biography, because he "looks for the principles that govern things; the world turns on underlying principles that you have to learn to identify." Currently Byrne is reading A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin, a work on Middle Eastern history, and A Conflict of Visions, by the political theorist Thomas Sowell. Byrne chose Fromkin's book because he has spent time in the Middle East and wants to deepen his understanding of current trends, and he is re-reading Sowell's book because he will lecture on it in the near future. He reads fiction too, but he chooses works that have stood the test of time -- "There are reasons...