By popular demand, here is a list of the most recent books I have read…
One of the more popular questions that I get via email and then for those that I work with or know, I get a lot of questions about, “Hey what have you read lately that’s good?” “What have you listened to that’s good?” I thought I’d do a video on what I have read this, let’s just say, the last 60 days. What I did is I went back and I looked at the audio books and the books that I’ve bought in the last 60 days and I’m going to show you every book I bought and I’ll give you my quick commentary on it and then try to get through this pretty quick. I get this question more than any other question so I thought this might make for an interesting video so that’s what I’ve decided to do today.
The first book that, and I’ll put them in order that I bought them. I doubt that there’s any relevance to that so this book has .. I’ve read both of his other books by Ryan Holiday. This book is good. I like it. I think it’s a book worth reading. I made it about 30 percent of the way through and I got distracted and decided to move on to another book. I haven’t finished this one yet. I will get back to it some day but thus far it’s a good book, I just, for what ever reason, can’t get excited about picking it up and continuing.
This book right here I listened to on audio book. Of all the books I’m about to show you this is probably my second or third favorite. It’s in the top 3. Really good book. I finished this, of course, because it was so good and in the first couple chapters it was a little intimidating I feel like. I actually listened to this one on audio book. I had to slow it down. I was like, “Man this is going to be a hard read to get through this one. I really have to think.” Then I was able to speed it back up after a while. I felt like after I got through the first 2 chapters it became easier. I really liked this book a lot. Great book.
This one here, The Outsiders, great reviews. I’d heard I should read it. I got really bored with it pretty fast. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good book. I think it is a good book it just wasn’t resonating with me. They’re talking about bigger companies, bigger CEOs. It just wasn’t resonating. A theme that you’re about to see of what I’m reading is I’m trying to start reading less business books. For example, that wasn’t really a business book. This is not per se a business book but it is. I guess it is but it’s not a traditional productivity, marketing type business book.
This one is a business book but as I move through the rest of the books, you’ll see that I’m trying to read stuff other than business books. I historically have predominantly just read business marketing, personal improvement, productivity type books. Every once in a great while an autobiography but really I read more business books. Now I’m trying to read more … I’ve always read dissenting opinions but now I’m trying to read a lot more dissenting opinion stuff. Things that I may or may not agree with. Different ways to think about things. I’m trying to read stuff, which I’ve also done this quite a bit in other industries, completely different kinds of businesses. I’m trying to expand what I read.
The other thing I’ve never done is read for fun. It’s always been a business type book. You’ll see that I’ve read several books here recently that have nothing to do with business. It’s a change for me and kind of interesting and I’ve enjoyed those books. Along my concept of, if the book isn’t resonating, put it down, I put this one down fairly quick. I skipped around a little bit and then I said, “Ah, it’s not for me right now” so I never finished this one.
This is one of my favorite books along with Antifragile. I really, really liked this book. Great book, Sapiens. You don’t have to agree with it all but I again recommend reading things you agree with and things you don’t agree with. This book, even if you don’t agree, is a good read in my opinion.
This is a different book. I stumbled across this one, I have no idea how. I actually enjoyed it. It’s more of a story based book by the guy that does Dilbert. I enjoyed this book. I read that one. That ones is called God’s Debris. Just to reiterate, Sapiens and Antifragile are probably the two books I read so far that are my favorite other than this one.
This one was really good and I don’t read books like this so it was called Ready Player One. I’ve recommended it now to several people that have all read it and said they really liked it. I, again, just don’t read books like this. I always read business marketing stuff and I really liked it.
That then inspired me, I’ve been trying to expand my horizons, so that inspired me to read The Martian which I finished that whole book and I really liked it. I’ve been told by some people that guys tend to like this book more than girls.
This one is one, it’s got some stuff in it that you may be a little concerned about letting your kids read it, but this is a book that you could get kids to read right here. It’s about video games. In Academy I was asked my opinion on this book. To be able to answer that I had to read it. I rather enjoyed this book. I got through it super fast. In fact, I plan to go back and read it again. It’s a really simple concept. I think it’s a book worth reading. It’s not my favorite book but a book I like and I’m going to read it again because I think there’s some good ideas in it. I’m going to take a couple of the ideas from it and implement it in my business. A lot of what I read in this book I felt like I already know, already learned, already read elsewhere. Not taking away from the book in any way. It’s a really solid book. Really solid book. I recommend it. I think you should read it.
Because I thought that book was good, I decided to read his other book which is called The Pumpkin Plan. Pretty good. I made it about 70 percent of the way through and put it down. Not because the book’s not really good. I would recommend reading this book as well just because, again, I feel like I’ve read other books that have similar concepts and were doing a lot of these things. I’ll go back and finish this book in time but I just wanted to move on because I felt like I already had heard a lot of this stuff. Again, I read a lot and I’ve been reading for some time. Not to take away from the book, I think it’s worth reading, I just chose to move on somewhere around 60 to 70 percent of the way into this book.
This book here, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I’ve had this on my reading list for 5 years. I feel like I continually hear all these really interesting people say, “This is one of the greatest, most influential books ever.” I’m not sure how it’s influential but they really speak highly of this book and say, “If I could only have 10 books this would be one of them.” I’ve been wanting to read this book forever. It’s been on my list but I could never get excited about it so I’ve never bought it, I’ve never read it. I got it on audio book because I enjoyed Ready Player One and The Martian which were outside of what I normally listen to. My summary would be interesting book, glad I read it, but I guess that’s about all I have to say about it.
I bought this book and then I couldn’t get excited about reading it so I’ve tabled it but I’m going to get back to it soon. I think this will be a book worth reading I just can’t get excited so I haven’t read it yet.
This book, good book. Read this one. The Reasons for God and Genome. This would probably be the third book on my list. Maybe 4th because I liked Ready Player One. Really good book. Matt Ridley wrote a book called The Rational Optimist that I highly recommend. I thought it was a really good book. I know nothing on this topic. In fact a lot of things that I read I’m like, “Gosh man, I don’t think I paid attention at all in school.” There’s just so much that I don’t know outside of business stuff that I’d like to learn about, that I’m curious about. This is a topic that I’m curious about and granted when I was in school they didn’t know anything hardly compared to what we’ve learned today. I found this to be a really good book written by an author that I really like, Matt Ridley. Good book. Recommend it.
That’s everything that I read. I started this book just recently. I’m not sure if I’m going to make it through the book. I’m really curious about it because a bunch of people have recommended it that are pretty smart, running pretty interesting companies, that are big thinkers. I’ve had it for like 2 weeks and I’ve made it into chapter 2 so we’ll see what happens with this one. I want to get through it but it may happen later.
I read this book and it was pretty interesting. I don’t know where I found it. Probably some other thing that I read right now, it was okay. This book right now, this is the one that got me distracted from the Clock of the Long Now. This guy right here, Perry Marshall, actually I’ve read all his books on Google AdWords, on Facebook, his 80/20 book. I’ve been a subscriber to his newsletter and Renaissance Club or whatever it is for 5 years. I’ve spent a fair bit of money with Perry Marshall. He’s a good guy, smart guy. He’s generally a marketing business guy. Comes out of the Dan Kennedy world and this is not what he normally writes. I thought this would be an interesting book. It kind of goes along with some of the things I’ve been reading the last couple months so I’ve started reading this book now. I’ve read the last couple chapters and the first 2 or 3 chapters of it so that’s what I’m actually reading.
This one, one of the best books of all time, hands down fantastic book. I read it years ago and it came out on audible so I’ve just now started the audible, in fact, this morning. I’m going to go through this book. I’m sort of listening to this one right now and I’m reading between this book and that book. This is quite a bit, I’d say this is not the average. This is more than I normally get through in 60 days but I’ve tried to stop listening to as many podcasts and I’ve not been reading as much on the web. I don’t tend to read much on the web. I try to stay off the web as much as I can.
I haven’t really been reading hardly anything social, or anything web related. I’ve almost only been reading or listening to an audio book. I use those terms interchangeably. That’s why I’ve been able to get through more this month. My hands down favorite podcast is Tim Ferris’ podcast. Really like it. I’ve listened to every podcast he’s done except probably the last 30 to 40 days worth of podcasts because I’ve been doing more reading. That’s what my reading looks like currently. Had you seen it at the beginning of the year, it would have been almost exclusively all business books, all marketing books, all productivity type books. A little bit of change in pattern and I think I’ll keep this up for the rest of the year and probably not read that many business books for the rest of the year.
Hope that was interesting. Thanks.
