Excerpt from "Love is the Killer App" Considering how much knowledge is out there to dine on, what do you eat? When your'e a student in college, the answer is simple: You anchor your diet around assigned textbooks, your augment your books through additional research, you take notes during your professor's lectures, and you pass a test to prove you did all of the above. But you're no longer in college. You can do whatever you want. Do you go for variety or do you catch as catch can? Do you try an even mixture--magazines, books, television, and radio? I say there is no option. I've looked at all the possibilities, and for the student of business, books are the answer. Books should be your diet's staple because they are the complete thought-meal, containing hypotheses, data, research, and conclusions, combined in a thorough attempt to transfer knowledge. If they're good, they contain that essential value prop, the meta-idea, or that statement of fact that gives the reader a unique perspective.... Magazine articles are between-meal snacks. They are Ideas Lite....The news media--electronic or print--are the equivalent of candy or soda: fun to eat, but hardly appropriate to live on.... Books give you knowledge. The news gives you awareness. The latter is a measurement of today. Knowledge is a measure of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Awareness is finite. Knowledge is forever.... Here's another 80/20 rule: spend 80 percent of your time on books, and 20 percent on articles and newspapers. And by books, I don't mean just any book. I mean hardcovers. A paperback is meant to be read. A hardcover is made to be studied. There's a huge difference. I don't read a book just to say I've finished it. I read it so that when I'm done, the inside covers are filled with enough notes that I can use this book for as long as I need to. True, hardcovers are more expensive. But I'm talking about your career. If you can afford to party, or to buy new techno-gadgets, or to eat at fancy restaurants, you can afford a few hardcover books. And if that extra cost makes it a barrier-to-entry for your peers, remember that there are barriers to entry in any competitive field. Not only is this one you can easily overcome, but by removing those barriers you give yourself a chance to shine. The books you read today will fuel your earning power tomorrow. Simply put, hardcover books are the bomb. They are fun to hold, They become personal the first time you mark them up, the first time you bend back the binding. There's something wonderful about the sound of rustling pages. There's something exciting about writing down the ideas that interest you. Soon your book becomes more than just pages between covers. It becomes your ticket to success. Congratulations! You have just achieved traction as a student.