Stumbling Onto A Good Book Or Four

You know I have to confess that I don’t like writing book reviews. I’m not sure why not, because I like writing and I like reading, so putting the two together would appear to be a no-brainer. Then again I like cuddling my wife and I like eating spaghetti but I never combine the two, except for very special occasions that is.

I have read 4 books in the last month or so that I want to cover of in one fell swoop because I feel I owe it to you my adorable reader to let you know what’s going on out there. It also gives me an easy cop out because how much detail can a man cover in one post. Not much as you’re about to find out.

Every now and then I get somebody ask me “Why don’t you ever review bad books, are you in the pay of the evil publishing empire you charlatan?” I answer that I wouldn’t be saving up coins in a jar, eating Tilapia and driving a RAV4 if I was on the take and they nod their head in solemn agreement.

The real reason of course is because if I start reading a book and after 30 or 40 pages I’m not enjoying it, I stop reading it. It’s a dedvious plan I developed some years ago that seems to work for me. If I don’t enjoy something I’m doing or think I will get future enjoyment from it, I stop doing it. It can be watching a movie, eating a meal or having root canal work. If the end pay off doesn’t seem like it’s going to be better than any purgatory I may be putting myself through, I quit. I don’t think it’s fair for me to review a book that I don’t finish, do you? After all the ending could be as good in comparison to the rest of the book as it was bad in comparison to the rest of the movie with ‘No Country For Old Men’ and I’d have no way of knowing. So you can rest assured the following books got read/listened to and there were no unmissed twists in the tale.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert $\"\"$

This is without doubt the best book I have read in the last 2 years. It is like Blink with humor. That’s rare praise for me because Blink is up there as one of my favorite of all time. If you have read Blink and liked it, go and get this now. If you haven’t read Blink, go and get both books and prepare yourself for some greats nights in and some even greater nights out as you bore your friends to tears.

Gilbert takes a look at how the brain works for us and sometimes against us. The twist is that he presents the information in such a manner that even I understood what he was talking about. Not only that, but he had me laughing out loud on several occasions and smiling almost throughout.

The book has a downside though. It will make you realize that you really aren’t that unique. Heavens to Betsy, what am I saying, not unique? Well of course you’re unique, but you don’t really think that uniquely. You think you do, so that’s the bit that might niggle you when you finally have to accept that your brain does a great job of fooling you for much of the time.

You’ll learn why it’s almost impossible to predict how you’ll feel about things in the future, hence the reasons why we make so many bad choices. Why money has almost zero effect on your happiness levels and why it’s literally impossible to know how happy somebody else is, even if they tell you!

9 Essential Life Skills by Zorka Hereford

What an interesting book this is for the self-development newbie that wants a little bit more than an idiot’s guide to life.

A good starting point for anybody that has heard about stuff like Myers Briggs, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and the importance of values, but doesn’t really know what they are or how to use them. Hereford condenses a lot of information into a book that can be read in less than 2 hours by cunningly removing all the fluff that so many self-development authors use to pad out their publications.

It’s also packed with great quotes and sources of further information should you want to push the boundaries a bit more. If you thought ‘Flow’ or ‘Spiral Dynamics’ was too low-brow for you, then this won’t cut it, but if you want a handy reference guide to being happier and more confident with yourself, it’s worth checking out.

I have one minor complaint and I wouldn’t be being genuine if I didn’t bring this up. Hereford has a section covering astrology and personally I don’t subscribe to the belief that your month of birth dictates anything other than the likelihood that you’ll get a lot of presents around that time each year.

That’s a minor gripe though because Hereford’s sincerity and obvious desire to help people improve the quality of the lives shines through. It’s a great little guide that I would have loved to have found when I started reading self-development books a few years ago. Unfortunately she hadn’t written it then, so I didn’t

How To Finish Strong In Life – Alex Blackwell (ebook)

Alex Blackwell is a relative newcomer to the Blogosphere and has shot onto the scene over the last few months with his great blog ‘The Next 45 Years’

This ebook is a mine of information the like of which you’d normally associate with Old Man Johnson that lives in the last house on your way out of town. You know the guy, he looks like he’s 108 and spends all day in his rocking chair on his front porch dispensing his undoubted wisdom to the locals, watching the world go by and occasionally cackling manically to himself.

There’s little new in self development and there’s little new in this book. There was little new in my last book either, or Tony Robbins or Wayne Dyers for that matter. The fact is that the knowledge of how to live a better more fulfilling and content life is out there. It’s just that most people don’t bother looking for it and those that do, don’t follow it.

Blackwell starts from the premise that it’s how we finish life that matters and he’s absolutely on the money, I love that concept. What’s happened has happened and we can’t influence it, but we can influence how we go forward and how we chose to spend the rest of our days and that is all we should be concerned with.

If you are a blog reader you will love his style because it’s written in a personal manner and a really easy read. You’ll find yourself nodding your head again and again and thinking, “Yep Old Man Johnson couldn’t have put it better himself” For less than 5 bucks it’s a no-brainer if you ask me.

Stop Procrastination Now (ebook) – Fruitful Time

The guys at Fruitful Time are into their time management a bit like David Hasselhoff is in to making a complete ass of himself. This free ebook is obviously a cunning plan to sell more of their excellent time management software, but good for them I say, and it’s no less valuable because of that.

Let me start by saying that English is their second language so there are one or two unusual uses of verbiage, but that just makes it feel more real in my opinion. There’s nothing in here that’s rocket science but you probably wouldn’t expect a free ebook on rocket science. There is however some really sensible advice on understanding what procrastination is, spotting whether you suffer from it and then how you deal with it. The first two parts of that are more important than you might imagine. Some people that suffer from procrastination issues aren’t even aware of them and as such take action. This book will help you appreciate whether you are a serial staler or you actually do have to have a lunar eclipse occurring before you can finish your thesis.

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3 Comments So Far.

Comment by Be a Life Coach on 26 April 2008:

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is one of my favorites too. It opened up a lot of realizations about other peoples happiness and helped me with some of my own choices in life.
Pingback by time » Blog Archive » Stumbling Onto A Good Book Or Four on 26 April 2008:

[...] candice wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe guys at Fruitful Time are into their time management a bit like David Hasselhoff is in to making a complete ass of himself. This free ebook is obviously a cunning plan to sell more of their excellent time management software, … [...]
Comment by Tim Brownson on 27 April 2008:

Agreed BLC. It has helped me understand myself and why I have repeated errors in my life. Can I now stop doing that? Who knows, but at least I know I have a choice.

Thanks for dropping by.