Book-Review

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

One book that a number of my friends suggested that I read is:

Now I Know: The Revealing Stories Behind the World’s Most Interesting Facts - by Dan Lewis

I wasn’t sure what to make of this book as it just seemed to be a large collection of facts that Dan thought were interesting. Given I love trivia, I thought I’d try it.

Dan started an email list called “Now I know” back in 2010 with a handful of subscribers and grew that to over a hundred thousand. These are basically the topics that ended up being some of the most interesting.

2018-07-13

I have to admit to being a bit of a fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, so I was really looking forward to reading or listening (via Audible) to his book Astrophysics for People in  Hurry.

It’s always a bit of a tall order to try to cover something like Astrophysics in a short book. The title reminded of silly book titles like “Applied Multivariate Analysis and Calculus for non-Mathematicians”.

But I loved this book.

2018-07-06