Book reviews and notes
Every month I try to 'consume' a good book to work on myself, skills, talents, and life. I've been at it for years!
Fortunately for you, I learn by writing.
It's easy to grasp the advice conceptually and intellectually, but in practice - it's hard to change who we are. I often have to remind myself that to become who I am, I have to let go of who I've been.
The process of writing a book is often an effort to resolve an issue an author themselves struggle with. The majority of successful authors are reframing old ideas in new and relatable ways. Case it point - The book Don't Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen doesn't present a single new idea. Instead, he brings old ideas to a new audience. He's leverage his following on TikTok to share the same ideas that Ram Dass and Alan Watts have been sharing for 50+ years. To his credit, he's taken general knowledge and spun it in a relatable way.
That's much of what I do when I write what I learn.
Indeed, these notes are mostly for myself, as I would say is the case with many non-fiction authors. And if my notes also help you, that's icing on the cake.
Up until 2017, Amazon provided an amazing resource that was a collective of the shared notes and highlights from a community of Kindle readers. (You can still find archived pages of it here).
If you chose to make your notes and highlight pubic, they were accessible through the website. It was a great way to get the key points from a book. They were essentially crowd sourcing the creating of cliff notes for any kindle book. I used it all the time... the problem was they didn't figure out hot monetize it. I am guessing it made the content of a book freely accessible, which likely cut into the sales of a book. Perhaps authors were also not very pleased that they were republishing content from the book (in the form of shared highlights), thus I suspect there were copyright ramifications to what Amazon was doing with the site.
The good news is that all those notes and highlights are still accessible, but only to the individual who created them, you can access them anytime at read.amazon.com/notebook.
2020 Update It looks like what Amazon actually did in 2017 (but failed to explain to it's customers) is move the Kindle Notes feature over to Goodreads.
In becoming the author of their own book, authors go further to manifest the person they once only held a vision of. In other words, writing helps us fulfill out potential.
12 Rules for Life
A blunt smack of reality that will attempt to unseat your pollyanna illusion that the world is fair and that we are essentially hard wired for self-preservation.
You've likely seen Jordan Peterson on YouTube. Many consider him one of the great philosophers of our time. This book is a good compilation of his theories which are heavily rooted in reality. The subtitle is An Antidote to Chaos reflects the dance of chaos and order that is the only constant. In a large way, it's an effort to see the unseen. The tree blinds us to the forest. Often we can't see what is most real. I kept coming back to the idea that 'Awareness doesn't care' as I was reading it.
The 10x Rule
Make no excuses and take massive action. Stop whining. Accept that nothing good ever comes without some suffering. Learn to feed on the suffering and inspire a team to reach for admirable goals. Successful people share 32 common traits. Grant's intensity may turn some readers off. He is a type A overachiever and has a big ego. But he makes no apologies for who he is and I admire people like that - they know who they are and don't try to change who they are to please others.
The 12-week Year
The One Thing
168 Hours
A Curious Mind
Atomic Habits
Clockwork
Coming into Existence
Brain Fog Fix
Dream Year
A Guide to the Good Life (William Irvine)
Microresolutions
Million Dollar One Person Business
Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived
Personality Isn't Permanent by Ben Hardy
Soft-Style Conscious Awakening by Gary Crowley
SANE: Getting Real with Reality by Clare Dimond
Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
Take Back Your Life
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment
How the Left-brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement
The Paradox of Choice
This Year I Will (MJ Ryan)
The Miracle Equation
The Miracle Morning
The Path of Least Resistance
The Practice
Ready for Anything
Reimagined
So Good They Can't Ignore You (Cal Newport)
When (Dan Pink)
Work on Your Game by Dre Baldwin
The Slight Edge
The Compound Effect
Technical
Practical SVG by Chris Coyier
As of late, I'm finding myself less and less compelling to read books. It's a bit disturbing given I work in book publishing! The fact is, with our always on digital culture - there is simply too much 'enticing' content as videos (YouTube), Audiobooks, Podcasts, Blogs, and streaming video to consume. I do think we've got to make a conscious effort to keep books in our society. Otherwise, I see the day books will be like cassette tapes. Full of valuable content, but not in the format people prefer.
It's not that books are going away, it's more that the format of a book is changing. By extending the definition of a book, I could argue this website a book. In fact, my main mission is to help authors ####Webify their Books####.
It's just how the content is being 'consumed.' If you take for example Andy Weir's 'The Egg' short story, you will find it's familiar to millions because he put it out there for everyone ######on his website.###### It's really what put him on the map long before he head legions of people reading The Martian.
When you webify your book, you give readers the ability to read your work anywhere on any device. It has to be mobile friendly. TTS (text-to-speech), autoscroll, hyperlinks, and the ablity to interact with your readers are a few of the advantages print books will never be able to offer!
To succeed as an author, you main job is to acquire more readers. It's all about making it as easy as possible for readers to find, share, and promote you.
Are you podcasting? If not, are you getting featured on other's podcasts?
Are you YouTubing? If not, you are neglecting a major source of how how people find and consume content.
What if you published a chapter a week on YouTube? You can scroll the words and record the video.
I've talked in the past about books in print reflect one of the more proprietary forms of content. You can't see what I've written unless you have my physical book. What's more proprietary and privy is what is on a 'need to know basis and you don't need to know.'
When a conversation exists between two people and you are not in that conversation - you don't get info. Whether it be a classroom or a ticketed event. The more valuable the content, the more exclusive it is. The only thing more proprietary that a conversation between two people is the conversation we have with ourself.
What is gossip? Word of mouth.
When you become the talk at the water cooler, like David Casarez did when he was looking for a job, you gain momentum. Once you have momentum, you just need to keep the flywheel spinning.
One of the most innovative forms of publishing I've seen yet was created by Pieter Levels. The content is obfuscated until you pay for it. Check it out at https://makebook.io/. He addresses many of the challenges authors face when they want to webify their books (like page #'s!).
PS: There's another great treasure trove of book notes (in the same way I learn) by Derek Sivers. You can search his list of books below: