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If you're interested in what you can do to lower your taxes by starting a business, this one is a good read. Real estate, side businesses, stocks, bonds and other investments are described in a dry, but useful detail. The most useful suggestions for me were some of the elaboration about real estate tax savings as well as differences between tax advisors, CPA and wealth advisors.
Even though this is Sandersons first book, it hits many of the same chords. The magic system isn't as well developed as in his following works, leading to revelation moments which had me scratching my head a little. The story itself was a bit long for how little happened. The overall story ended up leaving me wishing some of the mysteries were revealed sooner, giving more time for elaboration.
Diverse crowds make better decisions on aggregate than individuals or groups of similar experts on most topics. That's the main takeaway of the book illustrated through a number of examples. I like the idea, but some of the ideas focused on ended up not holding my interest for the time discussed.
The conclusion of the Mistborn series was also the most slow of all of them. A satisfying ending for sure, but somewhat repetitive in the path there.
This short story set in the same world as Villains was surprisingly good for such a brief read. While I enjoyed the long-form dive more, it helps empathize more with some of the struggles facing other characters in the world.
As good as the advice in this book is, it's hard to consider it groundbreaking. Part of that could be due to the prominence of these ideas in culture today. The 4 agreements are quite simple:
1. Be your word (treat agreements as unbreakable)
2. Don't take anything personally (it's not about you)
3. Don't make assumptions (expectations without an agreement are assumptions)
4. Always do your best
This is a short take on these ideas and why with just these 4 rules you can live a happier, more productive, more fulfilled life. In my past job, we did quite a number of personal development/self-help talks and exercises. The idea of agreements/expectations was a big one, so those two on this list felt directly out of that. “Don't take anything personally” reminds me of stoicism, and “always do your best” is good advice for a 1st grader on up.
While not revolutionary, these are good reminders and inspiration for sure.
Nyxia feels like a combination of Enders Game and Avatar - but wit a more young adult appeal. As far as first books in a series go, I was left curious about the universe created and looking for more to read to find out what happens next.
After the ambiguous ending to the TV show for The Walking Dead, I couldn't help but want to see what would happen next. Sure, the TV show is different from the comic, I get that, but still there's so many similarities that I immediately started reading through the comic to see what might happen.
The Compendium #1 covers the first 48 issues of the comic - up until after the prison arc. Everything happens so fast compared to the show, that it took some getting used to. This was the first comic I've read, but I can say it was addictive from the start. Even re-reading parts I'd watched in the show and determining the small differences between the comic was a lot of fun.
What drives people to do great work? That's the basic question asked in this book and investigated through various examples at companies that have tried various approaches.
Your Money or Your Life is very much a financial independence classic. This focuses more your life than your money – showing the strong thread that money has on your time, your relationships and your options in life. One area that stands out to me is the idea of understanding the value of your time as it relates to money. When you buy lunch out, or even grab a latte, how many minutes/hours of your time are you paying for that experience – and is it worth it? Knowing that you're spending on what brings you the most happiness for the buck is how you drive your expenses down while driving your happiness-per-dollar up.
Not as amazing as the first one, but tackling more interesting problems. If you listen to the Freakanomics podcast, most of this will be familiar.
A combination of 12 mini books, each in the form as a months goals. Somewhat a condensed version of Getting Things Done, relationship advice, family, friendship, religion and time. One interesting insight by Gretchen was the comment that Agnostics/Athiests read biographies to identify with people for a similar reason that Catholics read the bible. Some good insights and many good reminders on how to be happy.
When I learned that Steve Jobs re-read this book each year and the autiobook is read by Ben Kingsley, I knew I had to check it out. It proved to be more religious than I expected, relying on faith to explain much. Reading this helps to understand how Jobs could persue alternative medicine when diagnosed with cancer.
For a middle part in a bigger story, this one needed to evolve on the world and set things up for the end. It does a good job of both, while being a fun story. Up until this point, the Knights of Crystallia are mostly an unknown. This one shows the good and the bad of this society.
I've never considered myself to have a good memory. I'll remember places, directions and programming concepts, but can't remember a phone number of the name of someone I just met. This look into the competitive memory circuit around the world helped me put an image in my head of not just what's possible, but how people actually go about remembering 10,000 digits of pi. While I don't plan to exercise this muscle to the extent of people in this book, I do want to try using some of these concepts to put a few names to faces.
A philosophy book told through first person is extremely interesting to me – especially a travel memoir. Many of the conversations hit on specific points that I was nodding in agreement at. Specifically many of the ones that included frustration when getting points across to others, or taking pride in upkeep and finding a way to enjoy it. The only reason I'd rate it lower was due to the long periods of time between enlightening moments.
I'm a sucker for dystopian stories. I had a feeling the movie version wasn't going to be as dark as the book, but this made me appreciate how true to the book it was.
When I grew up, my parents would occasionally go to Gurdjieff group meetings. We weren't a religious family, so that was the closest we came. Although I was hanging out with the kids rather than participating, I always wondered what was going on and meant to read about the concept somewhere down the line. I decided to finally check it out, and this seemed like an approachable guide.
To put the entire idea into a few sentences it would be something like this: We have control over our emotions and being. The Wikipedia article says it more abstractly: ‘Gurdjieff claimed that people cannot perceive reality in their current states because they do not possess consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic “waking sleep.”'. It reminded me a lot of the This is Water essay which focuses on a similar idea. This very introductory guide surely only touches on the basics, but many of the principles I could see influencing my parents, and my development growing up as well.
Although the book is a good introduction to The Work, it only touches skin deep.
I've always been fascinated by Tibet – especially pre-takeover by China in the 1950s. Seven Years is an exploration into that coupled with a book on war (escaping it), travel, mountaineering and making friends along the way. It's quickly become one of my favorite books. While Heinrich the man is obviously shown in the best light in this book, it's hard to forget his background. He was a Nazi and husband who ran away from both to climb mountains in the Himalayas. Seven Years is in many ways the “Eat, Prey, Love” of the 50s – both with characters dashing off to adventures. In Harrer's case, he ate whatever he could find (or be given), pray to not be caught and dragged back to internment in India and fall in love with Tibet. In many ways Tibet is the main character and the cause for all good and bad within his time there.
Ok, this is pretty much Harry Potter. In an alternate history, Librarians secretly rule the world, dishing out misinformation and shaping the world. Upon reaching his 13th birthday, Alcatraz Smedry is met with an interesting gift – a bag of sand – which draws him into this world of lies, odd abilities and glasses that have special powers.
A fun, short read meant for kids, but still a lot of fun. I love the idea that the main good guys all have special powers that all seem to be awful at first glance. Alcatraz's ability is that he can accidentally cause things break things. Not good when you're burning down your foster parents house, but rather useful when you break the gun that someone is point at you. His grandfathers ability is to arrive late has similarly useful applications, but listing too many would spoil things. It's fun to see how Sanderson takes these “useless” powers and makes them useful.
When an author or book gets as much attention (good or bad) as a Neil Strauss, you can bet I'll check it out. This follow up to his previous tales of picking up women focuses on the troubles of building a relationship. I say relationship loosely, because much of this book is discovering what doesn't work. As a guy in a relationship, it's hard not to find at least some takeaways in the sea of bad decisions made here. Even some insights into where motivations come from which were unexpected. I don't know that I'd recommend this though, except to someone looking to test their own boundaries on whats normal.
The full title for this one is “Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration”. Hearing the title and knowing it was written by Ed Catmull, one of the cofounders of Pixar, was enough to draw me in. As someone who works in technology, but also leans towards ways of managing projects, this one hit on a long list of points that were relavant to working at Code School. Although on a completely different level, the way Pixar puts out pictures each year with multiple teams and different departments is similar to Code Schools monthly course structure. Page after page I saw problems that were familiar to me, and how they solved them at Pixar.
The movie preview for this story drew me into to check it out before release. With a lot of recent young adult novels in a similar world being made into movies (Hunger Games, Enders Game), this one looked like it could be another hit.
The book though seemed like a copy of too many other stories – namely the above two. Without storyline spoilers though, the feel from the book is similar, but the connection to the characters was limited. I'm undecided if I'll listen to the other two books in the series.