We've been floating the idea of giving everyone on the team Wednesdays off, fully paid, to read non-technical material while they're benched. We haven't done it yet because I pay rent and am worried that maybe we aren't good enough at sales to generate that much surplus... but deep down, I think it'll make a smarter team and that'll pay for itself.
And the only reason that it's non-technical material is that it's just assumed that people are reading every other day, and we thought a break into psychology/fiction/whatever would keep the brain well-oiled.
Speaking of, I found interesting (and thinking about it some more, I am not even sure why I find that interesting...) that you seem to be exclusively talking about technical books in this posts, yet "tech book" is only directly mentioned once, towards the end.
Probably because my audience is probably 90% software engineers, and many of them have more experience and technical skill than me. I only really dare to advise people in the first 1-3 years of their tech journey on actual tech topics.
And the only reason that it's non-technical material is that it's just assumed that people are reading every other day, and we thought a break into psychology/fiction/whatever would keep the brain well-oiled.