I mentioned in a previous review about how much I enjoyed The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. I couldn’t wait for the sequel to come out and so I eagerly read The Rosie Effect: A Novel as soon as it was released.
The first book introduced us to Don Tillman, working on genetics at a local university and trying to help Rosie find her father. All along, he’s trying to find a wife using scientific principles.
2018-09-28
You would have to be hiding under a rock to have missed the current low-carb ways of eating, and particularly the ketogenic thinking about food. Central to much of this thinking though is cutting carbs in general. The hard part about this for most people, is cutting the primary source of carbs and that’s sugar.
If ever there was a leader of the fight against sugar, it’s Gary Taubes. His book The Case Against Sugar is very significant.
2018-09-21
Using Audible to listen to books has allowed me recently to get through a lot of books that I would never have had time to get through. I’m determined to get through some classics as well. Self-improvement books don’t come more classic than Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People so I listened to that too.
I know several people who say that, in the 1990’s, attending one of the seminars associated with this book, changed their lives. I can understand how that’s possible in some situations.
2018-09-07
Another fairly famous business book that I’ve read lately is Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by V Chan Kim and Renee Maubo. Apparently over a million copies of this has been sold.
I really liked the basic premise of this book. It describes how most companies keep looking at what their existing customers want, and often that’s in what they call a red ocean ie: where all the sharks are fighting and tearing things apart.
2018-08-31
I’ve been listening to a lot of audio books lately and one that caught my eye was Mistakes were made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.
One of the mistakes that we all can make (and I’ve done it so many times myself) is to make a decision, find out it’s wrong, but to then hang on to it for way too long.
It was fascinating (and probably a little depressing) how often I could recognize aspects of myself while reading this book.
2018-08-24
Over the last few months, I’ve also been reading a number of branding-related books. One that caught my eye was Introduction To Personal Branding: Ten Steps Toward A New Professional You by Mel Carson.
Part of the reason I looked into it was that Mel was an evangelist at Microsoft and as most would know, I spend a lot of time dealing with Microsoft in various ways.
It was also interesting as it’s a low cost book that Mel has published using CreateSpace and I’d often wondered about using that so I thought I’d check the outcome of that as well. Finally, it’s a short book. Listening to it on Audible would probably only take an hour or two.
2018-08-17
I’ve been going through a number of fairly famous books or ones that have spawned their own industry. One of those was Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and it’s all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life by Richard Carlson.
This one intrigued me as there are now so many follow up versions. There’s a “for teens”, “for men”, “at work”, etc. etc. etc. along with ancillary items like workbooks. So I presumed there must have been something to it.
2018-08-10
I don’t tend to read all that many books on US politics but I had heard interesting things about A Higher Loyalty - Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey.
I was especially interested to hear this one on Audible, given the author was also the narrator. I really wanted to hear him explain his view on the situation.
Generally, I’d avoid a book like this because I was assuming it would just be a self-apologetic or self-aggrandizing account of recent events. What I found though was very, very different.
2018-08-03
When I first heard that Satya Nadella had a book out, I was somewhat surprised as at the time, he had just taken over running Microsoft. Usually you don’t see books from CEOs until they’ve been in the role for quite a while and have become philosophical about things.
But given the impact I could see he would have, I was fascinated to read his book Hit Refresh.
It was actually quite a bit more than I expected. I really enjoyed the tales of his life and how it led up to his current role.
2018-07-27
Another book I’ve read recently while sitting on a few planes is Blockchain - by Samuel Rees.
I’ve seen some big claims in the titles of books but this one had me intrigued:
The Ultimate Beginner Through Advanced Guide on Everything You Need to Know About Investing in Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum and the Future of Finance
That’s quite a claim. I was really hoping this book would provide a great amount of detail given it’s ‘beginner through advanced’ guide claim.
2018-07-20
