Tag: Books

Review: The War of Art

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The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^

I was gifted this book as I began my creative writing journey. This book is for artists, writers, creatives, entrepreneurs, or whomever is on a journey of finding purpose and building something that fuels their soul.

The creative journey is HARD and it is far too easily to procrastinate until you realize it’s been 10 years and you haven’t made any real progress on your actual goals.

If that resonates with you at all…read this book.

The book is broken down into three distinct sections:

  1. Resistance – Defining the Enemy
  2. Combatting Resistance – Turning Pro
  3. Beyond Resistance – The Higher Realm

Like many creatives, I’ve struggled with a wide variety of procrastination issues throughout my creative and entrepreneurial endeavors. All of my excuses and fears were called out in this book. Steven Pressfield also provides some tools on moving past your blocks to give yourself the space to being a consistent creative journey.

I bookmarked about 50% of the pages in this book.

Rating: A

A few of my many highlighted passages:

“Madonna employs ‘Madonna'”

“You must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important. And you must do what’s important first”

“The amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.”

“Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.”

Buy the book here: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^

Review: Dude, You’re Gonna Be a Dad!

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Dude, You’re Gonna Be a Dad! by John Pfeiffer
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^

If you’re reading this post you are either:

  1. Going to be a future parent and expecting a baby.
  2. Have someone in your life that is going to be a future parent and you want to buy them something useful
  3. Confused and unsure why you are here.

Either way, I’ll give you my review of the book, Dude You’re Gonna Be a Dad.

Grade: B+, I would recommend it

I am new to reading parenting books (haven’t even read What to Expect When You’re Expecting yet), but Dude You’re Gonna Be a Dad was a combination of entertaining, insightful, and quick. In a world where parenting books are typically focused on the person birthing the baby, this was a nice perspective change to see things that I might be feeling in my role as the future dad.

I felt that it actually had some good pieces of information related to the birthing process, what to expect from the person carrying the baby, some of the medical terms you will hear, and also some complications that might arise.

Disclaimer…Some parts of the book were:
– A bit outdated, written about 10 years ago
– A bit sexist, but there is also acknowledgement of changing stereotypes of gender roles and the expectations for the “dad”.
– Rude in the way it described certain women.

I think some of the word choices were very much done on purpose to appeal to the “man’s man” that might typically not pick up a book. So in some ways the sometimes sexist tone balanced with acknowledgement of changing roles is beneficial to get someone who might be set in their ways to see new ways of thinking and acting. If you’re willing to see past those you can still get good information from the book and definitely a few chuckles as well.

The book is broken down into a few different sections including the varying differences in the three trimesters, post-birth, and others about managing relationships, sex-life, family dynamics, and the future joys and difficulties of parenting.

Good, quick read.

Buy the book here: Dude, You’re Gonna Be a Dad! by John Pfeiffer
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^

I read 83 books in 2 years. Here are the results.

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I never planned to start reading books at such a pace. There were a few unplanned things that happened that helped get this going.

I lived in NYC (moved out in June) where you sit on a subway for 1-2 hours per day. Some people sit there on their phones playing Candy Crush.  I didn’t want to be idle and found myself finishing 1-2 books per week.

My brother bought me a Kindle. This gave instant access to thousands of books. They were either inexpensive, or free (public library’s have Kindle books). The Kindle let me use small pockets of time that we typically fill with pointless scrolling and staring. With the Kindle, I could read for the 5 minutes I stood in the grocery line (or 30 minutes at Trader Joe’s).

TINT had a book club where I read Gentleman in Moscow. This got me back into Fiction and History which I had previously put off as lacking value for my immediate life.

This is my reflection on the books I read:

I wanted to read Computer Science, Rocket Science, Neuroscience, Science Fiction – yes lots of science – Biographies, Self-improvement, History, and books on many other topics. 

So my journey with books began…

Top 5 Books

  • Gentleman in Moscow
  • Nexus Trilogy
  • Man’s Search for Meaning
  • My Life and Work – Henry Ford Biography
  • The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

Favorite Biographies

  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Elon Musk
  • Henry Ford
  • Warren Buffet

Favorite Self-Help Books

  • Chop Wood and Carry Water
  • Man’s Search for Meaning
  • Who Moved my Cheese
  • 4 Hour Work Week

Most Tedious Book to Read

  • Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness

Favorite New Genre

  • Science Fiction

Hardest Genre to Find Decent Books

  • Self-improvement

Surprisingly Decent Book

  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Most Unexpectedly Practical Book

  • My Life and Work – Autobiography of Henry Ford. This made me realize so much about Tesla’s potential.

Most Interesting Topic to Read About

  • Body Machine Interfaces- Combining computers into humans. We do it already with all types of technology, but there are more innovations to come.

Top Excerpts That Taught Me The Most

“It became, at least in retrospect, humorous as well as revealing of Leonardo’s unwillingness to fulfill commissions that bored him.” ~Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ~Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

“He had to admit that the biggest inhibitor to change lies within yourself, and that nothing gets better until you change.” Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Ken Blanchard.

“What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview.” Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance.

“What opened up the world for him, were the books themselves: picture books, adventure stories, novels, books on philosophy, and, most of all, anything about the physical world and men’s attempts to find out how it worked. He became a seeker of truth…supplement reading with the ‘living discourse of a wise, learned and well-qualified teacher.'” ~Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon.

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life – “But birds in the bush were expensive because interest rates were low. Fewer people wanted cash—the bird in the hand—at such low rates. So investors were paying unheard-of prices for those birds in the bush.”

“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”

My Life and Work by Henry Ford – “Almost any one can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.”

“No work with interest is ever hard.”

“Life is not a battle except with our own tendency to sag with the downpull of ‘getting settled.'”

“Time spent in fighting competition is wasted; it had better be spent in doing the work.”

“They listened to the 5 percent, the special customers who could say what they wanted, and forgot all about the 95 percent who just bought without making any fuss.”

———-

As I continue to read more books, I’ve learned more about my passions, hopes, and dreams. I am more motivated than ever to find ways to change my life in a way that will bring me closer to my passions. I’ve learned new topics that informed positive personal, professional, and investment decisions.

What other books should I be reading?

———-

Full List of Books Read

  • 1984
  • A Gentleman in Moscow (x2)
  • Abraham Lincoln: A Concise History of the Man Who Transformed the World
  • An American Life: Benjamin Franklin
  • Anti-Fragile
  • Apex (The Nexus Trilogy)
  • Beautiful Boy
  • Benito Mussolini: A Short History
  • Bitcoin for Dummies
  • Boomerang
  • Brave New World
  • Chop Wood and Carry Water
  • Congress and the shaping of the Middle East
  • Crux (The Nexus Trilogy)
  • Cryptoassets
  • Customer Success
  • David and Goliath
  • Dead on Arrival
  • Devil Take the Hindmost
  • Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
  • Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics
  • Flash Boys
  • George Washington: The American Presidents Series
  • How Money Got Free
  • Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
  • Inheritance
  • Leonardo da Vinci
  • Liar’s Poker
  • Life, the universe, and everything
  • Made to Stick
  • Making Humans Multi-Planetary (Elon Musk)
  • Man’s Search for Meaning
  • Manifesting Change
  • Moneyball
  • More than human
  • My Life and Work
  • Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future
  • Nexus (The Nexus Trilogy)
  • Only the Paranoid Survive
  • Origin
  • Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words
  • Physics of the Future
  • Quantum Reality
  • Robber Barons
  • Rose Water
  • Rules of Civility
  • Sentient Machines
  • Snowball: Warren Buffett
  • Soft Wired
  • Stress Test
  • TED TALKS: The Official Guide to Public Speaking
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • The Art of Invisibility
  • The Art of War
  • The Big Short
  • The Chip
  • The Destiny Forumula
  • The Fall of Heaven
  • The Fear Index
  • The Four Hour Workweek
  • The Future of the Mind
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
  • The Minimalist Mindset
  • The One
  • The Outliers
  • The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
  • The Third Door
  • The Tipping Point
  • The Undoing Project: A friendship that changed our minds
  • The Wizard of Menlo Park
  • Theodore Roosevelt: A Life From Beginning to End
  • Things I wish I’d known before we got married
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow
  • Vietnam War: A Short History
  • What the Dog Saw
  • When Breath Becomes Air
  • When to Jump
  • Who Moved My Cheese?
  • Will China Dominate the 21st Century?
  • Winston Churchill: A Short History
  • Zero to One