IGX

Dunn wrote:

Terry B. wrote:

Ed Zachary wrote:

The Crawdaddy wrote:1. Jim Butcher - Storm Front - Dresden FIles Book 1 - decent quick read. Got it via kindle(app version) from my son. Nothing splashy and not literature or anything, but a decent read for mindlessness in the midst of thesis writing.

BEWARE! The Dresden Files are book CRACK!

+ 1,000

My wife and Butcher are friends and she has all the books - some time back I decided to read a few chapters to see what they were like, despite disliking "that sort of thing".

I didn't like the first three that much.

The next ten flew by.

He describes his own stuff as popcorn fantasy and nothing special. I subsequently have all the books now and I am waiting on him to put out another. I was genuinely surprised at how much I liked it and as mentioned before, they are a great way to break away from the deeper more studious stuff.

It's like the Anita Blake series but not gay.

24. The New Kings of Non Fiction edited by Ira Glass.

This book was pretty good stuff, with a wide variety of different authors. Worth picking up.

25. Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

I like his newer stuff better--this stuff is a period piece about the 80s.

Good link to ranking of books related to boatbuilding, if that's your ilk.

http://www.classicmarine.co.uk/books/bookindex.htm

Just finished "The official ARRSE guide to the british army".Will start reading "The outdoor athlete" later in the day.

26: The Dragon Never Sleeps - Glen Cook

This book is tough to get into, but really good. I've read that it started out 80,000 words longer so it is very tightly written, almost to the point where it's too tight. Space Opera.

27: Slowing Down to the Speed of Life: How To Create A More Peaceful, Simpler Life From the Inside Out by Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (1997)

A quick read which basically breaks down to this: if you are thinking about the future or the past, you are blowing it. Be present with what is going on.

28: Getting Started: Clicker Training for Dogs (Getting Started) by Karen Pryor

I much preferred 'Don't Shoot the Dog' as this book seems basically half-written. 'Don't Shoot the Dog' is open-ended, giving you the tools to build your own routines, whereas I was hoping that this book would be essentially hands-on, but it doesn't go far enough.

29: Thick Face, Black Heart by Chin-Ning Chu
Almost quit reading this in the middle. Basically 'ancient Chinese secret' is apparently, 'be a douche'.

30: Easy Strength: How to Get a Lot Stronger Than Your Competition-And Dominate in Your Sport
Dan John: Common sense. Pavel: Russian Scientist. Dan John: summary. Pavel: Program. Repeat.
I read an ebook edition and it kind of sucked as the program formatting was bad. (sets on one page, reps on another and crap like that).
Take home: you are probably in quadrant III.

31: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
Enjoyable science fiction, semi-space opera with a bit of discussion of what singularities might look like. It is definitely weird and has probably more politics than you might think.

28. the Karen Pryor book on clicker training? Sucks in practice. I strongly advise against.

dogchild wrote: 31: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
Enjoyable science fiction, semi-space opera with a bit of discussion of what singularities might look like. It is definitely weird and has probably more politics than you might think.

I liked Stross's dark-humored Lovecraftian spy novels.

seeahill wrote:28. the Karen Pryor book on clicker training? Sucks in practice. I strongly advise against.

What have you noticed not working? I've been having pretty good luck, especially inside the house.

Just got "The big red machine" by Yuri Brokhin in the mail.A bit old but I think it will be an interesting read.

Just finished "Broad shoulders" by Bob Hoffman.He really did like blowing his own horn didn`t?
Just started "The big red machine" about soviet athletes.Interesting read so far.

I seem constitutionally incapable of keeping a recent training log up here, so this must be what I do instead.

32: The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Watched the movie with my wife and read the book after that. Shockingly I liked the movie a bit better. I will probably read the other two when I find them lying around my house. When people ask what you read it helps if you have read Harry Potter and crap like this so you have something to talk about because 90% of the things I read seem to have only been read by like 2 other nerds.

I draw the line at 'Twilight' though. Jesus.

33: The Heartbreak Lounge (Harry Rane Novels) by Wallace Stroby http://www.amazon.com/The-Heartbreak-Lo ... 0312939124

Stroby is a badass and if you like crime/hardboiled/noir books you won't go wrong with these. Highly recommended.

34: Beginning Sharepoint 2007 Administration by Goran Husman.

For my job. I actually read this end-to-end. It communicated the ideas but reading about technology is almost always like watching paint dry.

35: The World Is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies, and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race, Barry Popkin.
Popkin explores the differences between 60's America, 80's India and Mexico and today's food climate. Interesting to a point but wants tons of government intervention. People do respond to incentives, is what this comes down to. Added sugar and extra calories are bad, and we should have PE in school. Skippable.

36: The Truth About Chuck Norris - Fun, light read. http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/chuck-n ... p-50-facts

37: Getting Things Done - David Allen
38: Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management - Mark Forster

These two kind of go together. I had 'abandoned' a Getting Things Done system as being overly complex a few years ago. And what I was using was overly complex. When reading the book again, I was interested to note that I was, in fact, using many of the practices in a simplified form. The biggest change was Occam's Razor: 'entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity'. I found that, specifically, Allen presents too many 'horizons of focus' and 'contexts'. Meaning, you are supposed to generate 'next actions' lists in GTD that coincide with the various contexts that you find yourself in, e.g., 'home' 'office' 'errands-anywhere' 'errands-hometown' 'phone' 'computer' 'computer-no internet' as well as agendas for the various people in your life whom you need to talk to. On top of this, each of these lists are supposed to be just the single, physical next action that you can take to move things forward. You maintain a different list of 'projects' that have anything that is more than one step.

It's way too many lists to manage. I've squished together contexts into two: home and work. When I go to do errands, I make a sub list from my main 'home' notebook. I do put together an agenda for my boss--I mark these in my work notebook and pull them out on an as-needed basis when I'm going to have a weekly meeting with him.

I've also squished together the 'horizons' from Six to three.

I also don't like the fact that you have to get 'complete' to implement the system, which can take days.

I think the basic workflow of GTD is excellent, and I like the hard-edges that it presents about doing things 'as they show up instead of when they blow up'. This book is highly recommended if you are looking to get some more organization in your workflow. I would just caution you to apply Occam's Razor.

Do It Tomorrow is, in some ways, the superior book. For one, you can implement his techniques immediately (by declaring a 'backlog') and dealing with the backlog in the way that Forster recommends. Forster has come up with some absolutely stunning systems for dealing with the inflow and outflow of work. I even more highly recommend this work, as well as his free systems on his website markforster.net - the 'final version' is the system that I am using now, but he has other systems to solve other workflows:

http://www.markforster.net/blog/2010/12 ... stems.html

39: This Book Needs No Title: A Budget of Living Paradoxes (Touchstone Books (Paperback)) - Raymond Smullyan

Smullyan, I think, got me into philosophy. This book is kind of a mish-mash of paradoxes in everyday life. A bunch of short essays, that would be good for an inquisitive 14 year old but are suitable for adults as well. All-in-all I prefer his logic puzzle books.

40: Work Less, Live More: The New Way to Retire Early by Bob Clyatt http://www.workless-livemore.com/
Much of this didn't apply to me yet as I'm still trying to save money. It might be better if you are closer to being able to retire--you should have 20-30x the annual amount you want to live on saved up. It explores in basic outlines what some of the ideas are, and goes into depth on portfolio recommendations.

41: Negotiating Your Salary by Jack Chapman - http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2009/ ... -a-minute/

I read this one quickly, as I'm in negotiations for salary right now. His advice was a little confusing, because he had said for a long time (in previous editions of the book) to basically let the other person go first, now it seems like you are better off naming a price first if you want the highest possible price but don't mind potentially breaking the deal. He says that everything is negotiable, including things that they might not think to make negotiable. Worth reading.

42: Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst http://bitliteracy.com/
I remembered this one being better than it was--essentially, Hurst says that people are bad about email and sorting their todos. He offers concrete solutions which I feel are incorrect. He diagnoses the problems correctly but the solutions, for the most part, incorrectly. e.g., you are supposed to delete emails immediately after reading. He also mis-characterizes GTD as being 'paper based' and he has a blanket statement that no paper-based organizational system can possibly work because it doesn't scale to handle an infinite number of to-dos. This, after saying that the problem of organizing our tasks is because we need to let go of things so we can 'create space' to do things.

I agree about the problems that he describes in the abstract, but I don't think 'bit literacy' is an effective solution. You may find something useful in there, he does use the three email system, which is what I use as well--one email account for work, one for home, and one for spam and newsletter sign-ups. Anyway, it's short and 99 cents at amazon for the ebook so it might be worth reading if you're on a personal organization trip.

"Onward we charge" by Paul Jeffers.Book about Darby`s rangers.Haven`t read anything about the Darby`s rangers before and really liked this book.Highly recommended.
If you are interested in military pt you`ll probably like "The War Departmen Physical Training Manual" reprint from 1946.Much better tha the modern ones in my opinion.

Bobby wrote:If you are interested in military pt you`ll probably like "The War Departmen Physical Training Manual" reprint from 1946.Much better tha the modern ones in my opinion.

What does the training consist of? Running and calisthenics?

It consists of:conditioning drills,rifle exercises,log exercises,the strength course,guerilla exercises,marching,running,grass drills
athletics,relays,combative contests,wrestling,hand to hand,boxing,tumbling,swimming and life saving,posture training.
It finishis with fitness testing andnan appendix about the confidence course.

43: Use Your Perfect Memory: Dramatic New Techniques for Improving Your Memory; Third Edition by Tony Buzan

This covers a lot of ground that Lorayne also covers. Interesting aspects of the 'Sem Cubed' that you can read about here. http://www.ludism.org/mentat/SemCubed

44: Help Yourself Get Everything Done : and Still Have Time to Play by Mark Forster

I find Forster's advice to be solid, and this is a useful read. I think 'Do It Tomorrow' may be more practical.

45: Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told (DC Comics)
This book was published around the time that the 1989 Batman movie came out, and there is nothing really featuring the Joker (they broke those off into 'the greatest Joker stories ever told'). Not bad but certainly not 'the greatest'.

46: A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
I had an abortive read of 'A Dance With Dragons' where I managed to forget huge plot threads and characters. I decided to start over from the beginning. This book is great, even if you're not on the HBO show kick. I first read it in about 2001 and I manage to re-read it with every release since I end up forgetting all the details.


47: Winning Weight Lifting and Powerlifting by Franco Columbo.
This kind of lazy book couldn't exist in the internet era. Still, probably enough to make some people strong without any complication.

48: The Memory Book by Jerry Lucas and Harry Lorayne.
Pretty much the classic memory text. You're not going to go wrong here.

Just finished White Night by Jim Butcher, so now I'm thru books 1-9 this year.


EZ was right. Pretty much crack.

The Crawdaddy wrote:Just finished White Night by Jim Butcher, so now I'm thru books 1-9 this year.

EZ was right. Pretty much crack.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Ed Zachary wrote:

The Crawdaddy wrote:Just finished White Night by Jim Butcher, so now I'm thru books 1-9 this year.

EZ was right. Pretty much crack.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Truthy... and yet a "good" warning.

dogchild wrote:37: Getting Things Done - David Allen
38: Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management - Mark Forster

These two kind of go together. I had 'abandoned' a Getting Things Done system as being overly complex a few years ago. And what I was using was overly complex. When reading the book again, I was interested to note that I was, in fact, using many of the practices in a simplified form. The biggest change was Occam's Razor: 'entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity'. I found that, specifically, Allen presents too many 'horizons of focus' and 'contexts'. Meaning, you are supposed to generate 'next actions' lists in GTD that coincide with the various contexts that you find yourself in, e.g., 'home' 'office' 'errands-anywhere' 'errands-hometown' 'phone' 'computer' 'computer-no internet' as well as agendas for the various people in your life whom you need to talk to. On top of this, each of these lists are supposed to be just the single, physical next action that you can take to move things forward. You maintain a different list of 'projects' that have anything that is more than one step.

It's way too many lists to manage. I've squished together contexts into two: home and work. When I go to do errands, I make a sub list from my main 'home' notebook. I do put together an agenda for my boss--I mark these in my work notebook and pull them out on an as-needed basis when I'm going to have a weekly meeting with him.

I've also squished together the 'horizons' from Six to three.

I also don't like the fact that you have to get 'complete' to implement the system, which can take days.

I think the basic workflow of GTD is excellent, and I like the hard-edges that it presents about doing things 'as they show up instead of when they blow up'. This book is highly recommended if you are looking to get some more organization in your workflow. I would just caution you to apply Occam's Razor.

Do It Tomorrow is, in some ways, the superior book. For one, you can implement his techniques immediately (by declaring a 'backlog') and dealing with the backlog in the way that Forster recommends. Forster has come up with some absolutely stunning systems for dealing with the inflow and outflow of work. I even more highly recommend this work, as well as his free systems on his website markforster.net - the 'final version' is the system that I am using now, but he has other systems to solve other workflows:

http://www.markforster.net/blog/2010/12 ... stems.html

I think that everybody who gets into GTD either over-complicates things or immediately tries to simplify what Allen has outlined. The former group either realizes what you did and eventually limits the number of contexts in their life - otherwise they spend most of their time thinking about how to manage their lists. Find nearly any GTD discussion board for more prefect examples than you care to read. The latter group usually drops off the bandwagon fairly quickly or holds on to some part of the system without context (i.e. My inbox is empty!).

Personally, I have found that in the past years, my contexts and areas of focus have been narrowing though I have a shitload of projects, many of which could be knocked out of the way in a few steps. Of course, a few years ago, it was nearly the opposite. Have heard of Forster but never read anything from him so appreciate the link.

This year's stand out for me..


The Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin is the top.

Girl with the Dragon Tatoo and the Gorl WHo Kicked the Hornet's Nest were real good.

Yeager, finally got around to this and I am glad I did. He was always a Hero of mine but even more so now. His background, accomplishments, Ballz and attitude. My Boy's will be required to read this one.

Ba Ba Black Sheep by Col.Gregory "Pappy" Boyington. Not just because of his war exploits but the self realization of this book was great. A very human book.

An Ace of the 6th. Norman "Bud" Fortier

Anthem by Ayn Rand. The inspiration for Neil Peart for the story of 2112. My Son is reading it now.

Save the Last Bullet for Yourself. About Custer's Last Stand.

I've never had a "hero" but Yeager damn sure made me respect and admire the man.

Ed Zachary wrote:I've never had a "hero" but Yeager damn sure made me respect and admire the man.

That's what a hero is to me, someone you admire and respect, someone who inspires you. Be it ones father, an uncle, an athlete, a teacher, a pastor or a warrior. Some might be people you know or some you read about.

I think it could be sign of self importance or conceit to not have heros. Not throwing that at you Ed because you just siad "Yeager damn sure made me respect and ADMIRE the man." Hence Chuck Yeager is a hero of yours. Not a God or someone you would follow blindly.