At some point during the last year I had decided to do a bit more reading on my free time. Since then I have read a handful of books and with plans to read more. I’d like to share some of my favorite reads so far.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
My first book was inspired by one of my favorite movies. I have been a fan of the movie franchise since I was a kid and finally decided to read the book for which it was based off of. I must say now that I’ve read it, I will never see the movie the same way again.
The book and the movie share some similarities but the movie did take some creative liberties with their story line and how they dealt with certain characters. I completely understand why the producers of the film made the changes they did, if they would’ve stuck to the script they would not have been able to build a successful movie franchise.
With that said, I enjoyed the book immensely even though there were some main characters who did not survive. The atmosphere created by Michael Crichton was eerie which made for tense moments for the characters as they fought for survival. Crichton also uses his background in computer science to give a technical and analytical look at the situation which I found gives the characters much more depth and made the book very entertaining.
I Will Teach you To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
I mentioned this book in a previous post about getting financially fit. It provides a detailed method to becoming wealthy and using money as a tool instead of it using us. Now despite what you may think of the title, this is not a get rich quick scheme. Instead the book talks about the importance of taking control of your finances starting from which bank you have for checking and savings accounts.
It then covers a solid strategy for investing and talks about which investment accounts to sign up for based on the authors recommendations. However these recommendations are merely to guide you and are not set in stone. You’re able to choose options that are similar to those that are provided.
Having a solid strategy can ensure that you can weather any financial storm like the one that we are going through right now. The author makes it all easy to understand in a way that’s not hard to understand and implement.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I wanted to read up on one of the most influential men of the 21st century and cofounder of Apple, Steve Jobs. Apple is one of the largest companies on Earth but that wasn’t always the case. This book is the best, most comprehensive biography and gives you a solid history lesson on the man that gave us the most popular products on the planet. Credit is due to Mr. Isaacson who makes it his goal to tell this story from all angles and provides multiple sources to give us the full context of the man.
It starts from Jobs’ humble beginnings and ends by telling showing him trying to achieve his ultimate goal of developing a company that will last long time. Along the way you’ll see that Steve Jobs was not always a good man and reveals multiple crutches that Steve had to deal with throughout his life. Given this information though it was hard for me to not respect the man that he was when it came to his company.
Steve had an incredible vision and used it to put forth products that the masses clamored over. He had an incredibly stubborn view of how these products needed to be designed and often times broke people down or took other’s ideas and claimed them as his own. Again, people learned to deal with this side of Jobs but more often succumbed to his charm and his reality distortion field.
Before I reveal too much, I will just wrap up by saying that this book is a long but incredible read. If you find yourself reading this article from any Apple product I suggest you pick up a copy of this book, heck I’ll even loan mine out!
The Only Skill That Matters by Jonathan Levi
During the course of my reading journey, I noticed that my reading speed isn’t where I would like it. I came across this book after listening to a podcast and bought it a few days later. It is not a very big book but it does contain more than enough information to help me with my goals.
The author gives a brief history of his life and how the methods that he shares in this book have saved his life and pushed him to tackle and learn new things. He now has his own podcast and a business where he spreads more information like this. He does a great job in this book of providing research on how humans should use their genetically inherited traits to learn.
This comes from the fact the early humans used their sense of sight, smell, and taste to remember important landmarks and potentially deadly foods. He later goes over how we must satisfy certain criteria to keep our minds interested in whatever subject we are learning. Without doing so, we find it incredibly difficult to study tough subjects like real estate, or calculus for example.
Combining the knowledge of how to learn with motivation, we can apply this method to learning new subjects that interest us. There are a few techniques that he covers that helps new information stick for longer periods of time. If this sounds like something you’re interested in then you should definitely check it out.