Heather

I read this book after seeing the movie. It is definitely more journalistic rather than non-fiction, but excellent writing. I am so impressed with the author's investigative journalism. She told a story that needed to be told. What amazing women these are! I also hold a degree in mathematics and got so excited reading about their love for their work and the “behind the scenes” work that gave them purpose.

It took me a long time to finish this but I finally did! I really enjoy biographies in general and this is a pretty good one. I felt like the author did a good job of capturing Julia's era especially with regard to her manner of speaking and lack of political correctness. I have grandparents from her time and can notice a lot of similarities although they are the opposite side of the political spectrum. Some of the book felt repetitive as the author reused a lot of similar language and tropes throughout.

Overall it was enjoyable and I would recommend this book to any biography lovers or at-home chefs.

I've read FI blogs and books for awhile and this was a decent nuts & bolts overview. I felt that the second half was more useful and interesting as Tanja offers specific advice on increasing income, decreasing spending, taxes, and optimizing investment. Chapters 8 & 9 were the most valuable to me.

I was deeply unimpressed with this book. It reads like it was written by a ranting boomer who has managed to figure out how to write a blog, which it pretty much is. I looked at Bonner's blog and could not get through a single article without a gag or eye roll. There were a few parts that I enjoyed which made me keep reading, but mostly out of sheer desperation to make the read worthwhile. Those parts included his advice on growing a business (i.e. “the fastest way to make money is to make money slowly. You can try to make it fast forever and never get anywhere. But try to make it slowly... and you'll probably end up with at least something eventually.”). Sound advice, but that grammar though... :(

The author has very strong opinions and assumes a tone that feels extremely disparaging and preachy to younger generations or anyone who disagrees with him. I would consider myself novice investor, but I know the basics well enough to tell when his data is inaccurate. His examples unflaggingly assume worst-case scenarios and when the most disastrous case is your baseline it's easy to make Bonner's examples seem credible. He seems to believe that the only way to make money is by starting a business, working 12 hour days, making your wife stay home (oh yeah he's sexist too), and retaining long-term control of said business by forcing all your children to work in the family business. I would skip this book entirely and find another one that better written and less doomsday.

The chapters were pretty long but on the whole it was well-organized and thoroughly researched. Not exactly light reading. Often it felt dense and informational so could also be directed more at a scholarly audience. Even so, the story of Elizabeth I is fascinating and I felt it was worth the read.

In 2019 my husband and I spent a year vagabonding through 17 countries. Since we did our vagabonding before I found this book it was a beautiful experience to revisit many of revelations I had during our year of travel. Potts eloquently captures so many experiences that I recognize and which are now integrated into my worldview. I loved the quote from other vagabonders and writers throughout to illustrate his points. He also does a good job of summarizing references to websites and blogs that would help the modern vagabonder.

Now I need to get going on my next adventure.

Read the chapter titles, that's all you need

There is good advice in this book but I felt that the endless anecdotes illustrating each point were long and not terribly useful. I would've liked more concise examples. In any case the points are valid and worth considering for anyone. Carnegie seems to espouse an ego-driven view of people that people are rules by their sense of self-importance and worth. It seems shallow, but I think he's pretty much right.

Really nice read. I loved the character development and description of relationships as they evolved. Cool foreshadowing in the chapter intros too. I will be finishing this series.

I liked this one better than Mistborn but I cannot get into Brandon Sanderson. I find his stuff too cinematic and overly dramatic. He creates this massive buildup and really anticlimatic endings. It might make a decent B movie but was fairly disappointing as a novel.

Super good information. The methods on self-learning were encouraging and inspiring to me. I have a lot of self-directed projects that I'd like to do so this book was like candy. I'd recommend it to anyone who is really excited about learning new stuff rather than just getting an education to get the piece of paper at the end.

A good read for anyone wanting to understand more about the history of the markets. The tl;dr is “buy and hold index funds”. As a young, relatively conservative investor I tend to agree. I liked the latter part of the book which got more into technical subjects and dissected things like the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Modern Portfolio Theory. The author clearly supports an index approach and works for Wealthfront so his conclusion is foregone before the book even starts, but he does have a lot of data to support his position. I appreciated his clear writing style and judicious use of graphs. I felt that some of his “jokes” were kind of off-color, however, as most of them had to do with sex or sexism. They were out of place and unnecessary in a book on finances and off-putting.

Quick and solid read. A lot of these ideas weren't new to me, but I did take a lot of notes throughout. It's clear that Bogle is heavily in favor of index fund investing. I thought A Random Walk Down Wall Street laid out a more evidence-based case for this, but for a quick common-sense read this is a good one. Bogle's discussion of the impact of speculation on the market was very interesting. As a younger investor I see a clear trend towards growth stocks instead of value (dividend-paying) stocks and I think it's yet to be seen whether this will stick around in my lifetime. This discussion made me consider reversion to the mean and whether I should add more dividends to my portfolio.

A lot of people I know have read this book or have strong opinions (in both directions) on Jordan Peterson. I tried to take the information as it was presented without reading through the lens of “what so-and-so would think of this”, but sometimes that was difficult.

On the whole I enjoyed it. I thought Peterson had some valuable observations about culture, history, psychology, spirituality, all sorts of things. I didn't feel that most of his opinions were revolutionary to me - I have already heard most of his ideas in different forms. In that respect this was not a life-changing book.

Peterson is a good writer. I found myself highlighting and saving quotes all the way through, not because I agreed with everything he said, but because he captured an old idea in a poignant or clever way. A lot of this book is clearly his opinion, and it comes across as such. He isn't afraid to say what he thinks, sometimes caustically, which is refreshing.

Peterson put a lot of his own personal history into this book. If you care to know who he is, and how he came to be that way, you can find out by reading 12 Rules for Life. He has endured some tragedies, lost friends to suicide, intently studied the dark parts of history (Soviet Russia, the Holocaust etc.), and come out fairly whole. Despite heavy references to Christianity, God, and the Bible I would categorize this as a staunchly secular book.

He proposes a worldview that is moral and emotional, not at all austere or intellectual as many modern philosophers tend to do, but without the accoutrements of religious tradition or mysticism. It is an attractive modern worldview for modern times, but personally I am left unsatisfied. It would take a much longer review and a much closer reading of 12 Rules to pinpoint the source of my dissatisfaction. Perhaps it is something in me that craves the mystical and transcendent explanations for life, despite their caprices and inconsistencies.

12 Rules was a worthwhile read and provides fodder for many excellent campfire conversations down the road.

I started my Stegner reading with Crossing to Safety and picked this one up recently. While I felt that the conclusion was not quite as satisfying, I was captivated by Stegner's intense realism. He creates characters so realistic one can hardly believe that they aren't real people (although I'm well aware he draws upon real life for many of his characters). I love his uncanny descriptions of human perception and use of analogy. The novel is truly one of the best I've read.

Really excellent read. Great examples, anecdotes, and also research-based. One of my favorite books of the year.

I think I had over-inflated expectations of this book which results in my mediocre review. The principles in the book are solid, but fairly simplistic. If you like military culture then this book is a good choice for you, but it didn't hit home for me. I have immense respect for people who put their lives on the line, and the authors of the book are clearly skilled leaders in their field. Their stories about their mission in Iraq were interesting to read but I felt that the transfer of principles to business were a bit shallow. Most of the chapters were in the format 1) Tell exciting war stories 2) Expound upon a leadership principle 3) Tell a story about a business scenario 4) Conclude “look the principle works”.