For Christmas my brother got me some awesome custom made button up shirts he secretly had made by his “tailor” in China (he is hilarious). So for a brief moment we matched, and all was well in the universe :) !

PS. He is always striving to make me “classy”, and to go a step above my jeans and t shirt.

January 2015

1. The Reality Dysfunction – This is by one of my favorite sci fi authors, this guy dreams so big!!! This is a massive 1,000+ page book that is only part 1 of a universe I can’t even begin to explain. But, by far this is the weirdest sci fi book I have ever read. Very good but also very complicated. I don’t think it is his best book, there are others he wrote that are better and don’t sprawl as much, but it is very good, and I am going to bite off the 2nd half soon.

2. Golden Son which is book 2 of The Red Rising Trilogy. A fantastic sequel and a really great sci fi book which combines space conquest and roman society with genetic human 2.0 type shit. Great writer too! My only quip is the ending was a total plot hanger, and also frustrating… I can’t wait for the 3rd!

3. The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study – Wow!!!!!!!!! Scary to read about other people and see yourself so clearly in them. Just freaking crazy, I am going to read it again with Lindsey as it explains a lot of things about me, my brother, and her too i think.

4. Beyond The Horizon – A little fun sailing book, some interesting stories as they went around the world. There are a few other sailing books I would recommend before this though.

5. The Paleo Cure – A good read as I move into this Paleo AIP diet for myself.

6. Dear White People – Funny and biting and a good read. It is a bit short but still worth it, I can’t wait to see the movie soon as it looks great!

7. Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day – A really amazing story about Kellogg replacing the traditional 8 hour shift with 6 hours and over the last 40 years what happened to that group of people. There was a big movement in the depression area to go to this world wide, and it got defeated over time. I wonder if we will ever see it pop up again. The book was a scholarly book, so boring and without much conclusions. But, I did enjoy learning about it.

8. MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins – This was the single best book on finances/money I’ve read for the general public. I learned a ton of things I didn’t know, and although I don’t agree with the entire thing, it was a fantastic read. Especially the more motivational parts to help people understand what money is and how retirement works. Great book, highly recommended!

9. Matterhorn – Ever wondered what Vietnam was like? This book is one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, and it just leaves your mind lost at times. Incredibly incredibly well written, should be a must read for anyone thinking of going into the military or wondering what war is like. One of the best books I’ve read in the last few years. HE also wrote the book ‘what it is like to go to war’ which is also one of the most powerful book I’ve ever read. Both should be required reading in high school for everyone in the world.

10. When the Tea Party Came to Town: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives’ Most Combative, Dysfunctional, and Infuriating Term in Modern History – This book was really interesting, and not what I was expecting. It gave a really great play by play of how the budget and legislation gets passed in the house, and to some degree, the senate. Really fun read to see how our government works rather than the sound bites the media creates. Cool stuff!

11. First to Kill – A fun military thriller, took a few hours to read, decent story, good writer. I might grab the second one :).

February

12. Endsinger – Book 3 of the Lotus War trilogy, and the final book. It was amazing and a great ending to this steampunk fantasy book based in Japan. Highly recommended as a series :).

13. On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town – I found this at the place we are staying at in Nice, a quick easy read and fun :). About her life in France, a little light on some details, but def a few good tidbits.

14. 15. The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God. Book 2 and 3 of the Night’s Dawn trilogy by Peter Hamilton (one of my now favorite scifi writers). These are HUGE books, all of them seem to be around 1300 pages!!! Peter is an amazing writer and the level of detail is astounding in these books, it is like seeing a view of the entire planet and then zooming down to see the dust in different places. Fantastic book and just the weirdest most interesting presmise you can imagine. Highly recommended but only if you are a super scifi nerd :).

16. Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers – A great book with practical real world examples of how to build customer loyalty and experiment. I’d recommend this to any retail small business. Solid read!

17. Firefight – Book 2 of the reckoners book where super villians have come alive, highly recommended and I can’t wait for book 3. I wouldn’t say this one was Brandon Sanderson’s best work, it felt a bit off, but still laugh out loud funny at times, and a really interesting plot.

18. The Autumn Republic, the final of the trilogy called The Powder Mage and what an ending. An amazing universe where magic and gun powder mix, fantastic writer. This was a GREAT ending and one of the best sci fi / fantasy books I’ve read in the last 2 years. Short listed for my best of this year :).

19. 20. 21. The Dark Space Series – I read the first 3 books but don’t recommend them. They went quick so I read all 3 but I was disappointed by the plot and characters, just not very good.

22. Deadly Straits – A decent thriller, cia, that type of thing. But not my cup of tea, the characters, esp the lead one, were just not enough real people.

23. Court of Nightfall – Very similar to a premise I’ve been playing with for the last 10 years, but really really short. Ok read, and maybe ok for teenagers.

24. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir – I love Bill Bryson and this is a fantastic book I highly recommend! All about the 1950s and Bill’s childhood, fantastic read, laugh out loud funny.

March

25. 26. Dead Six, Swords of Exodus – Books 1 and 2 in a very interesting series, I would rate them around 3.5 out of 5 stars. Military thrillers but with a tinge of conspiracy theory on top. I enjoyed them and will read the next, but the author has other books I enjoyed far more.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. The first 5 books of the Monster Hunters International series, these books are awesome and so much fun! I can’t recommend them enough! So much fun, great endings, awesome characters and so much fun. The basic premise is that vampires and everything is real, and the government places a bounty on it to control it from outbreak. I can’t wait for the next one.

32. 33. 34. Book 1, 2, and 3 of the Grimnoir Chronicles. Same author as the rest of the books this month, and I loved this one. Slowly 1 in every 100 people is born with different kinds of power, and their power is stronger or lesser. Highly recommended read, I love this series! I hope there are more coming!

35. God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican – A fantastic read about the Vatican and it’s banking arm. Crazy stories of corruption, power, and insanity.

36. 37. 38. Prince of Thorns, King of Throns, and the Emperor of Thorns. – A very dark and fun series about the rise of one many to power in a medieval future. Fun read!

39. Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600–1900 – The writing style was a bit dry but still a very interesting read about these business entities and the men behind them.

40. The Return Man – An ok read about a zombie inhabited future and one man in it.

41. Storm Front – The Dresden Files Book 1 – A story about a wizard detective in modern times. I thought it would be great but I just couldn’t get into it, he is kinda a downer.

42. Darknet – Decent read for a cyber thriller.

April

43. The Silver Ships – I’d give it 2.5 out of 5. Decent sci fi but I just couldn’t get into the writing style.

44. The Responsible Company by Yvon Chouinard – A very short but sweet book on what it means to create a responsible company, to it’s people and environment. Yvon is the founder of Patagonia and done some really cool stuff and this was a quick good read.

The Responsible Company shows companies how to reduce the harm they cause, improve the quality of their business, and provide the kind of meaningful work everyone seeks. It concludes with specific, practical steps every business can undertake, as well as advice on what to do, in what order.

45. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future – Fantastic read that outlines some of the challenges we face as we seek to return the balance of labor versus capital. Some really good ideas in this book and a good overview of the problems faced with historical context.

46. 47. 48. 49. Books one through 4 of the Odyssey series, a fantastic space battle series that was a lot of fun (Into the Black, The Heart Of Matter, Homeworld, Out of the Black). The book starts with the test of a new faster than light starship engine on earth and discovering aliens. And then goes from there. Plenty of action and perfect for the beach :) .

50. Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life – By John Bogle (founder of Vanguard). A brilliant read by someone who is helping everyone’s retirement instead of stealing it with high fees. Great read for anyone wanting to learn about investing and not loosing their retirement funds to 401k and other fees.

51. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis – An amazing book that illustrates that class difference money now makes, and how American is becoming two Americas. We need to find ways to fix this problem. The book goes from case studies on the ground, to the big view, and does a great job of it. I highly recommend it if you wanted to read one book about the ramifications of inequality and the lack of community in America. It was hard to read at times, you catch yourself asking “how is this america?!?!?”

52. Hollow World – A really unique sci fi book about a man who creates a time machine and skips ahead to a universe I can’t even describe. Plus a little detective story mixed in too with some philosophy. Not my fav read but still a good one.

53. 54. 55. I read the first 3 books of the Purge of Babylon series but gave up after that (The Purge of Babylon, The Gates of Byzantium, The Stones of Angkor). Why did I give up? The writing is ok, but the books are like watching lost, nothing real ever happens, just a lot of description of moments and I got bored. This book is about the modern rise and destruction of society by vampries, which is a really cool survival concept, but it lacks a real plot and ends up just being about the day to day moments of survival.

56. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman – A great book by the founder of Patagonia and it tells his story of how they created Patagonia while still keeping their soul. Good read!

57. War God: Night of the Witch – By Graham Hancock who I’ve read for a long time. This is a cool one that mixes gods, shamen, and the arrival of Cortes to South America into a truly unique story. I give it a B+.

58. Fortune’s Pawn – Space battle one from a mercenary’s point of view. I liked it but wasn’t enough plot on the bone to keep reading the series.

59. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – A truely unique and awesome science fiction book about a group of people who die and wake up with their same life and get to relive it. Combined with a detective / thriller story about technology advantages. Fantastic read and highly recommended!!!

May

60. The Abyss Beyond Dreams – By Peter Hamilton. Peter is one of my favorite authors and he writes some of the most amazing space operate sci fi I can imagine, and the most original. Sometimes you get 400 pages into one of his books, and you have to put it down because such crazy shit is happening you need a moment to think about it :). I won’t even try to describe this one, only to say it is a fantastic book with great characters and a great mystery and universe to explore. I can’t wait for book 2!

61. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time – An amazing book and great overview of the challenges, it is a bit dated as I wish there was an update but still a great read. I bought one of his newer books and looking forward to hearing more from him.

62. Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School – A fascinating read about getting an MBA at Harvard, and to hear about the grooming school for the global elite… Some crazy ass stories.

63. 64. 65. Pulse, Instinct, and Threshold – The first 3 books of a beach thriller with a super natural spin. I liked them but couldn’t get into the flow and writing style, but they are really orig ideas. For example, one deals with discovering the hyrda and hercules, another with the tower of babylon.

66. Apex – This is book 3 of one of my favorite sci fi trilogies by Ramez Naam and probably the best thing I’ve read this year. You want to see a glimpse of a possible future? READ THIS BOOK! It is so good, it is on the short list for the best sci fi book of the year. I can’t describe the plot in a few lines, but imagine that you can use nanoparticles to program and empower your brain, and directly access shared memories and experiences. Think “internet for the brain”!

67. Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America – I got this for Tony for Christmas and after he read it he recommended it to me. This is a crazy book, and such an amazing aspect of history you never hear about. So many Nazis in the usa who helped us get to the moon and so many other disgusting things. A hard book to read when balancing morality and power during the cold war. I hope the us government learned something from this mess.

68. The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue A fantastic intro on the subject, and so many businesses should read this. I do wish it had more case studies though.

June

69. 70. 71. The 3 book bundle of the Void Trilogy – This is a bundle of the Dreaming Void, the Temporal Void, and the Evolutionary Void. I love love love Peter Hamilton and have read almost everything he has done, it is some of the biggest out of your mind sci fi / philosophy I have ever read. Describing the plot is so hard given the pure scope of the idea. Fantastic characters all set in his big universie, loved all 2080 pages of it.

72. Persuader a Jack Reacher book – I found this one at a little apartment we stayed at on the island of Korchula and read it quick. Good beach thriller :)

73. Bound For Distant Seas: A Voyage Alone to Asia Aboard the 28 Foot Sailboat Atom – A good book, not as good as his first one, but still a fun read. I wish it was a little less soap boxy but that seems to be what happens to people as they get older.

74. Buzzing Communities – A great overview of how to manage and build a community.

75. The Liar’s Key – Book 2 in the Red Queen’s War – This wasn’t quite as funny/good as the first book, but still a fun one. I am hopeful that the 3rd one is better. Fantastic characters with a dark sense of humor and always entertaining.

76. The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict – A really really bad book imo, set in space, but boring as fuck and doesn’t seem to have a story in it. Avoid this one.

77. Uprooted – A fantastic fantasy book that is a bit different than most. Less cliche and a unique story. Some of the twists were a little hard to follow but still a delight to read.

78. The Remaining – A book about some military guys left in a banker in case the world self destructs, and it finally does. I was excited about this book but it is short and just a concept book, there isn’t any meat on this, just an introduction.

79. Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value – A good overview of entrepreneurship, and a good reminder that not everyone is a 20 year old in silicon valley :).

80. The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun – I LOVED this book! She has a great sense of humor, well written, and very good mix of her personal narrative and scientific facts, and insight from others. One of the better books I’ve read this year.

81. Hades’ Daughter – This is book one of a series that is truly unique, it is set 100 years after the fall of Troy and has a really unique magic system. The writing is great and the characters pretty fun. I wasn’t quite hooked, but went ahead and bought book 2 to see how it goes given the uniqueness.

82. Peter Thiel’s Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future – Fantastic read, I totally agree on the loss in the USA of big ideas and the so called “Definite Optimism”. We are still optimistic but we no longer seem capable of planning or attempting big things. I think a lot of that is due to politics being taken over by money, and the public being disgusted and slowly uninvolved :(.

83. Clay Water Break: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least – A fantastic book from the co-founder of Kiva.org which is one of my favorite non profits. The book was excellent and talks about her life, how kiva.org came to be, her passion, and a lot of little stories about different people helped through Kiva. Highly recommended and one of the better books I’ve read this year.

July

84. Queen of Fire – Book 3 in the Raven’s Shadow novel, a fantastic ending to a great series. It was a hard plop down into the story after it came out, I wish the author had done a catch up, but still an ok read. A little too easy if you ask me to win it all.

85. 86. Darkwitch Rising and Druid’s Sword – Books 3 and 4 of the Troy Game series. A kinda cross time fantasy story that was pretty entertaining, but at times slow going. I enjoyed it but I am not sure I would recommend it to many people. Well written though.

87. Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married – This is a really helpful book and I am going to read it a few times over the coming years I bet. Lindsey and I had a lot of fun doing a book called 1,001 questions to ask before you get married, and it was a great help. This book is also very insightful and helpful.

88. Armada – I really liked the author’s previous work of Ready Player One, but this one didn’t work out so well. He is constantly throwing in meaningless cliche trivia, as well as a plot that is pretty weak. I hope his next is better.

89. God’s Concubine – Book 2 of the troy game series. See above for review.

90. A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing – A book I’ve had on my reading list for a while now, a very good read and it supports a lot of the other items I’ve read on Mr. Money Moustache and similar sites.

91. The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet – This is a MUST READ for anyone trying to get a big view of how the planet is doing and how we are doing as a species. I loved this book and the author also writes some great sci fi. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year for sketching out climate problems, and possible solutions.

92. The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism – By John Bogle of Vanguard fame. Another good read that really shows a lot of the big problems with Wall Street and the so called “free” market. Over the next 10 to 20 years we are going to see the rise of a huge 401k / retirement crisis in America as the people and government start realizing wall street has been stealing their retirement funds with fees and no service in return.

August

93. 94. 95. Fear the Sky, Fear the Survivors, and Fear the Future. This is a series about an alien invasion and humanity coming together and not coming together to stop it. I’d give it 6 out of 10 stars, I decided to finish it, but after the first book I just didn’t feel much for the characters. The most interesting they left out, and they were always kinda 2d.

96. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. This was a really really good book, the first 80% was about the moon breaking apart when a small black hole hit it, and our work to figure out how humanity will survive it. This part was riveting and interesting and very cool. The last 20% was way in the future, and just awesomely bizarre. If you love Stephenson you will know what that means :), excellent book!

97. The Three-Body Problem – This is by a Chinese science fiction author named Cixin Liu and it is EXCELLENT, not only for the change in perspective, but the story is fantastic! It is almost like a mystery combined with a lot of science combined with a possible alien invasion. I just bought the sequel which came out a few days ago and can’t wait to read it :).

98. Tesla: Man Out of Time – A fantastic overview of Tesla, his life, inventions and impact. Fascinating stuff. The book was good but sometimes seemed a little less organized than I wanted, I’d give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

99. The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey – I loved this book, the author and his brother go by Wagon following the Oregon trail. Fantastic writing and a good mixture of history one chapter followed by what they went through the next. Highly recommended read, and some of the best travel writing I’ve gotten my hands on in a while.

100. The Dark Forest – This is an incredibly well done transition of book 2 of a science fiction book by Cixin Liu, one of the most well known sci fi writers in China. I love the concepts in this book and it is some fantastic science fiction, even better is the unique perspective to see this from a Chinese viewpoint. Highly recommended, and some of the best sci fi I’ve read this year. I can’t wait for book 3 to be translated!

101. New Elite: Inside the Minds of the Truly Wealthy –
This has become a much quoted study of modern wealth, and it was a fascinating read. I am quite interested in recent inequality trends and what impact that is going to have going forward, and this was a great look at that group.

102. The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits – A well written book showing that if companies take care of their people + have very very solid operations in places to manage everything, usually the end results is above average performance. I enjoyed this book and I do think it is true, although with some caveats. I don’t think viewing people as cogs in a machine, to be replaced willy nilly is the best path. And, I think we might see a lot more companies realize this as they get some bigger data sets crunched. Wal-Mart for example is making some changes that seem to show they might slowly be coming around. Heavily tied to inequality too and some problems in our economy that might emerge if this trend goes another 20 years.

103. Sunbolt – Well written but really really short and not much meat on the bones. It is basically an introduction to a world of really interesting creatures, some hints about what is going on, and then it ends. I wish it was longer, felt more like 5 introductory chapters.

September

104. On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads – This was an amazing book about a dude traveling on horseback from Mongolia to Hungry just like the monguls. This was the BEST travel book I’ve read in years. Highly recommended, just beautiful and so well written.

105. National Security (Jericho Quinn Thriller Book 1) – Bad book, waste of time.

106. Dark Intelligence – Decent read about a rogue AI and the crimes it committed. Very interesting universe, I might try another by this author.

107. The Secret Corps – This book is Dick Cheney’s wet dream. Worst book ever. The guy can write, but man is he a nut job.

108. The Forever War – Reread. A classic, and weird to read one that has a concept so many authors use today. Decent, but surpassed by so many other authors since it’s release.

109. A Hymn Before Battle – A military sci fi thriller where aliens suddenly approach us to fight for them. This was the first book in a longer series and I might grab the 2nd book. My only complaint is that the battles are a bit haphazard to visualize through the author’s writing. Otherwise decent characters.

110. Zero Day – This was almost a mystery book but from a military investigator perspective, excellent writer and I am going to try another one. This one was an investigation into the murder of a senior military man and his family in rural Virginia. The ending was weirdly “big” in scope, but otherwise fun.

111. The Girl in the Spider’s Web – This is a sequel to the hacker series about Lisbeth Salander. It is a bit of a flop, not a bad book but not nearly as good as the others which are brilliant. I recommend skipping it.

112. Warship – Another space sci fi for some fun. Good build up and decent read, I am not sure if I will grab a second. Very similar to Battlestar Galatica in some ways, a very old ship at the end of her road, a war captain in a peace era, and a threat that comes out of nowhere.

113. Fool’s Assassin: Book 1 of the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy – I’ve never read any Robin Hobb books but they are excellent, this was one of the best fantasy books I’ve read so far and dominated by really interested characters from some of her previous books. It has a very slow build but that gives it time for the back story to slip in. Loved it and reading the 2nd one as well!!!

October

114. Fool’s Quest – Book two of the Fitz and fool trilogy. Magnificent once gain, and I can’t wait for the 3rd one hopefully next year. Great characters and a little faster paced. The end of this one is super mysterious and can’t wait to have my questions answered…

115. The Forgotten – Book 2 in the John Puller mystery series, John is an army investigator. Fun read, the author can write well and sucks you in, good characters too. This one was about human trafficking and good plot.

116. 117. Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain and A Parrot in the Pepper Tree – Fantastic books that follow the life of a couple who buy a farm in rural Spain and make a go of it. Great reads and it was nice to dive into some travel books.

118. When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail – I bought this in 2012 and finally dug into it. This is incredibly well written and a fantastic overview of the history of China and the United States through the age of sail. I found it incredible that the record holding trip at the time was 90 days to go from NY to China.

119. Shadows of Self – From my favorite writer Brandon Sanderson a new book in the Mistborn world. I loved it and it was awesome, I can’t wait for the next one and hope he keeps writing so fast in the years to come :). Mistborn is a world where people can digest and burn metals to achieve special effects, but which one depends on what you are born with and some other factors. Cool concept and it would be nothing without superb characters and plot.

120. The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass – A good book but a little flat on the characters, cool concept though with ships flying through the clouds. I might try the next one in the series when it comes out but I am not sure. I just don’t jive with the author’s style and I’ve tried a few of his books with the same feeling.

121. My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life – A kinda hilarious ramble by Gabrielle Reece, famous in her own right plus married to Laird Hamilton. Laugh out loud funny at times, and sometimes it goes into some weird subjects but a decent read.

122. Split Second – A kinda fun thriller, with a little bit of a sci fi twist. Fun read, recommended for the beach. Imagine you can go half a second backward in time, how do you make that useful?

123. Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears – Fun book on the rise of AI and it feels pretty realistic. Fun read but really a bit of a concept book. I enjoyed it though.

124. What No One Tells the Bride – Hilarious book we grabbed, some really funny stories in here as well as some very real ones. Nice to see a realistic look at the first year of being married :)

November

125. Son of the Black Sword (Saga of the Forgotten Warrior) – Larry Correia is now on my list as one of my favorite writers! This book is FANTASTIC and on my short list for best fantasy of the year. Fantastic main character, and the writing style is so easy to visualize. I loved his MHI series, and I hope he can keep turning out great books like this. I hate having to wait for the next one :)

126. 127. 128. The Steel Remains, The Cold Commands, and Dark Defiles. A fantastic fantasy trilogy by Richard Morgan. The first book took a while for me to love it, it wasn’t until I was 75% through that I could really see the characters and the world. From there on out it was amazing and a great read. Good ending!

129. Silicon Man – A fun short little thriller, it reads more like a short story though. The book is based in the future where robots do all the work but are starting to waken. I found the situation a little hard to believe…

December

130. Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In: Lessons from an Extraordinary Life – Louis Zamperini is an amazing guy with an amazing story. This is the guy they just made the movie Unbroken about, and I really enjoyed hearing more about his life.

131. CyberStorm – A very interesting book about a hypothetical internet war setoff by a China/USA spat. Good perspective and a bit scary to read. I am not sure how accurate it is but still very interesting read. I am not sure I liked the ending but it was a decent read.

132. Traitor’s Blade – Book 1 of a series about a 3 musketeers like group of soldiers hanging onto ideals infused with them by a long dead king. Great read and buying the 2nd one.

133. The Star Cross – An interesting book about a space war and earth entering a huge galactic union. I am not sure if I will read the second one as it just didn’t click partially with me.

134. 135. Red Tide: The Chinese Invasion of Seattle and Occupied Seattle – Silly books about the invasion of Seattle, I was hoping for more Tom Clancy style where it was believable but this was more action move. Still fun reads but nothing spectacular.

136. Invasion – Great writing and almost like Speed but for a family escaping the panic that comes with an alien invasion. That said it was super super frustrating as nothing happens except them fleeing the panic and it has a huge cliff hanger to convince you to buy book 2. Disrespectful to the reader.

137. Wolf By Wolf – The year is 1956 and the Axis powers control the world. This is the story about a shape shifting girl and her quest to kill Hitler. Great read and I’d give it a solid B+. I am hoping a sequel comes out.

138. The Long Way to a Small, Angry, Planet – Space thriller, but not enough action for my tastes. Too much stuff with interpersonal conflict / relations on the ship and other weird stuff. A little too basic in what it is about. Solid writer though, just not for me.

139. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Great read, Nick read it too and going to compare notes. I’ve read a lot of similar points in the past so nothing too groundbreaking, but I do strongly recommend it.

140. Knight’s Shadow (The Greatcoats Book 2) – A fantastic series that was really fun, think 3 musketeers but with a little magic.

141. Alif the Unseen – A really really cool techno thriller with some mysticism thrown in. It takes place in the middle east with hackers and a dictatorship and then throw in some Jinn. Fantastic book and totally different, highly recommended!

The nearby town of Menton puts on a Lemon festival every year, so we wandered over to take a look. The theme this year was “the tribulations of a lemon in China”, which is really weird and I couldn’t find any further info on what tribulations the lemon endures. What I like best about this poster is the ninjas on the bottom, which is not very chinese, but maybe they are kung fu ninjas? Not to mention all the crazy weird things they did in the spirit of china…

Question, is drawing asian eyes on a white mannequin racist or thrifty?

I’ve been on the Paleo Autoimmunte Protocol (AIP) Diet for almost 3 months and I wanted to post some thoughts on it :).

First, what is the Paleo AIP diet? In the creator’s own words:

“This diet is appropriate for everyone with diagnosed autoimmune disorders or with suspected autoimmune diseases. It is very simply an extremely nutrient-dense diet that is devoid of foods that irritate the gut, cause gut dysbiosis and activate the immune system.”

Why would you want to avoid those types of foods?

“By removing the foods that contribute to a leaky gut, gut dysbiosis (the wrong numbers, relative quantities, or types of microorganisms typically growing in the wrong locations in your gut), hormone imbalance, and that stimulate inflammation and the immune system, you can create the opportunity for your body to heal.”

Basically if you are on this diet you can’t eat any grains, eggs, nuts, seeds, nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers etc), rice, sugar, alcohol, and a number of other things. It is easier to focus on what you can eat :). Which is good meats like beef, lamb, fish, and green veggies. Plus a little fruit.

I am on this diet because Doctor’s think I have crohn’s disease (an autoimmune disease). I am not sure I agree as they don’t seem to even know much about the disease. But, I do know my gut was inflamed last year, and I decided to follow this diet to give my gut a chance to heal naturally before my next checkup.

So what is this diet like after 11 weeks?

When I started the diet I was already doing a lite version of paleo so I didn’t have to go through the whole “paleo flu” thing. The paleo flu is this 2 to 3 week period where you feel lethargic and out of it while your body transitions off grains.

I’ve been on the Paleo AIP diet for about 11 weeks and I can say that it isn’t too bad from an eating perspective. I don’t require a lot of diversity in my food even though I enjoy it, and that is good since this diet doesn’t offer much diversity unless you put a lot of effort into it. I cook a lot of slow cooked meals and end up throwing sweet potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and other veggies into a big pot along with different parts of beef/lamb/duck/ etc. Plus I eat a lot of fish and salads. I love vegetables and my diet was pretty good prior to this so I never really had crazy cravings for anything. I never ate much sugar either which made it easy.

Mentally this diet is very difficult though. It totally strips you of normalcy with a huge aspect of your life, and that makes it very hard.

What is the biggest shock?

The loss of normal, on this diet you can’t eat out and you have to prepare and think about every meal. It is exhausting :). I also miss the normalcy of drinking alcohol.

I am not a picky eater, I love trying everything. When I am out in the world and get hungry I can’t just grab something. And, given that I am a big traveler that is really hard as if you are going to be strict with this diet it totally changes your travel style. In fact it is impossible to travel in some places on this diet (ie rural china).

What were the other big shocks?

Meal Prep Time…
It takes a lot of time each day to prep a meal and that has really impacted my schedule. With a slow cooker or dutch oven I generally am chopping a lot of veggies to prep a meal, and my other meals require a lot more prep too. I was used to a bowl of granola with fruit on most morning, and now it takes a lot more time to get food done. And, you have to plan or you end up crazy hungry with nothing to eat.

Cost…
It cost a lot of money for meat, I am a pretty big / active guy and it cost a lot of money to fill me up. There are some ways to make it cheaper by eating a lot of offal but it is still expensive compared to my diet before.

Impact?

Unfortunately I can’t judge the impact of this diet yet because I wasn’t having any physical symptoms. I started this diet because they saw some ulcers during a medical check up and figured it couldn’t hurt to help my body heal along with some meds. I am going to circle back in July for a checkup and see how things look. For the first 2 months of this diet I was very strict, and now I’ll have a treat every so often.

I do trust the medical research the creator of this diet did though, and her book is fantastic. I highly recommend Sarah Ballantyne’s book on this diet and the research behind it. Amazing work!

Year 2013
*137 books!

January 2013

1. 2. 3. 4. Protect and Defend, Act of Treason, Extreme Measures, and Pursuit of Honor.- The last 3 in the long long series by Vince Flynn about an off the books CIA agent, best thriller/military writer since Clancy. Highly recommended, I read all of them in a week they were so good.

5. Raising The Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc. – Not great but ok, just not enough in it to make it interesting. Cool guy though.

6. The Sun Also Rises – My first Ernest Hemingway, what a haunting book. I love the style.

7. 8. Tricked and Trapped – Books 4 and 5 in the Iron Druid Chronicles, hilarious books that make me laugh out loud. Good plot and really well thought out world where ever god from Jesus to Morrigan to the olympians are alive and interacting.

9. Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Suceed – By Michael Eisner, a great book although I think the best part is the first 3 to 4 chapters. After that it gets a little weak. I wish there was a little more analysis but not bad for a short read.

10. Turkey – Culture Smart – A good read for a broad overview of one of my favorite countries. And the first one I visited on my own in college.

11. Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking – Fantastic guide to the best kind of marketing you can do. Lots of great ways to get started etc etc, highly recommended!

12. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work – Read about the author in the book Blink and some others, very interesting studies and book was pretty useful. One of those that can help just about any type of relationship you have.

13. Resurrection – A breath of fresh air and a good sci fi book that also brings in Egyptology. Basically about the search for some technology aliens left 5,000+ years ago and a war in a far off galaxy where both sides need that information. One needs it to survive, and one needs to stop them from getting it in order to win. Good story, well wrapped up.

14. Ender’s Game – It’s been a few years since I read this brilliant book, reread it as hoping the movie is coming out in a year. Highly recommend read for anyone.

15. The Complete Insider’s Guide to Romania – Awesome book and hilarious, learned a lot. Highly recommended if you are interested in Romania.

16. Term Limits – By Vince Flynn. This is separate than the ~12-14 book series I read earlier this year but quite good. Highly recommended if you are looking for a military thriller, best writer since Clancy.

17. Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com – Ok book but I wanted more case studies and real world examples. There was too much focus on enterprise and high level sales, I wanted to see more small business to medium business usage + cheaper products.

18. The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street – Fantastic book by John Talbott. Just one more nail in the coffin on why Wall Street sucks.

19. Dark Pools: High-Speed Traders, A.I. Bandits, and the Threat to the Global Financial System – A must read if you want to know more about the shit going on in that world. Regulation needs to happen soon before it creates an even bigger crisis. Some really great stories about the people involved, great read!

February

20. Tea and Bee’s Milk: Our Year in a Turkish Village – Ok book about living in Turkey for a year. Not a very good travel story, more just a day to day account. Not recommended if you were looking for some stories.

21. Bossypants by Tina Fey. Hilarious laugh out loud funny. Choked on my drink several times at the cafe while reading.

22. Shadow of the Giant. By the author of Ender’s game which is better, but this is still quite good. Good writing style and about the other people involved in that story… (Ender’s Game is one of the best scifi books out there).

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. I’m rereading the massive Wheel Of Time Series. One of the best fantasy series out there. The last one was finally made, and can’t wait to read it. Unfortunately they made the stupid decision to not release the ebook version of book 14 for months ater the paper version. Annoying! The Eye Of The World, The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn, The Shadow Rising, The Fires Of Heaven… Lord of Chaos, Crown of Swords.

30. 31. The Path of Daggers, Winter’s Heart

March

32. 33. 34. Crossroads of Twilight , Knife of Dreams, The Gathering Storm, The Towers of Midnight.

35. Memory of Light. After rereading the previous 13 books in this amazing series I had to buy the 14th book in dead tree format because of some stupid old person decision by his widow (annoying but a rather mundane 1st world prob). Anyway apart from no ebook version for months, this book was fantastic. It’s hard to end such a long series, by the time you finish you feel like you are loosing friends. Either by them dieing or just by not being able to read more about them. Sad but happy is the best way to sum it up. Read these over the years since college, hard to say goodbye.

36. Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book. Sure his political comments this last year have destroyed his reputation and made him look like a fool, plus his outsourcing might have been a fad, plus he seems like a total dick. But anyway, the book is actually pretty good and has some good advice.

37. The Windup Girl – A solid science fiction book about a future where the oceans have risen, nature has risen against engineered food and whole lot more. All based in Bangkok. Great read! The pacing and characters were a bit off for me but a really interesting look at the future.

April
*Slow month, March and April have just been crazy with work + Joel visited for a few weeks so we did a road trip on GO road, Tasmania, + work. Slowest book months in a while, bit burned out too as read a lot first few months.

38. The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History – A bit dry but still a great read about the chaos a volcano erupting caused in the 1800s. A mini ice age, famine, etc. Crazy how one event can alter the course of nations and people in such a huge way and they don’t even know it.

39. You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself – A fascinating book and a must read! One of those books I’m going to read a few more times in the future to let it sink in. Well written and one of the best books about the mind I’ve read in a while, read it!

May

40. Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom inthe West – An amazing book and a must read for learning about North Korea and the hell hole it is. Tear wrenching story about a guy escaping from a political camp, the only person to have done so. Crazy crazy shit.

41. The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business – I was disappointed in this one as I was expecting more details for people building platforms, instead it was just this broad overview of existing big players. Blah, good book but meant for newbs…

42. Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West by Peter Hesller. Peter is one of my favorite authors and this was a collection of short reports he did about coming back to the states from living in China and other topics. Fantastic as always but not my first pick for the first book you pick up by him.

43. Antarktos Rising – Cool book but kinda crazy, author is going to be pretty sweet one day I think but just didn’t mesh well in the first book. Going to wait a while to try another of his.

44. This is Cannabis – A book my brother got me for Christmas on the history of it + historically. Interesting read and first paper book I’ve read in a while.

45. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization – A really unique perception of the changes globalization have brought and a good read, esp for soccer fans. Especially the transition of clubs from being supported by the blue collar class to now only the rich rich rich being able to afford tickets. Something is happening in the world over the last 35 years in that regard and I’m not sure where its going to take us.

46. The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian by Jack Campbell. A long running sci fi series I love, big space battles and all that :).

47. A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market. By Jim Rogers who is pretty famous at this point and a decent read if you are interested in his views + some perspectives on Chinese growth. Older book but still a good read.

48. Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield – By Jeremy Schahill, read his first book as its good too. This book is just stunning and a read on the emergence of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld tactics that have weakened this nation in many ways and strengthened in others. This country changed tracks at some point and there is a fight going on for what we stand for that continues. Dives into drone policy as well. Just a book full of jaw dropping holy shit moments, followed by did we actually do that… A must read for people who want to see a big picture of what is going on behind the scenes through the last 12 years.

49. Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China – One of the best books I’ve read on China and really a punch in the gut to remind people to stop freaking out. Everyone in the USA needs to take a deep breath and remember that every country is full of problems, China isn’t going to suddenly surprise us and solve all of them. Every country has 99 problems and just like Japan in the 80s we overblow the concern.

50. The daylight War: Book 3 of the Demon Cycle – Fantastic book 3 of the warded man series, highly recommended and can’t wait for the next one. Peter Brett is fantastic!

51. Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face–and What to Do About It – A very well written book that had some strategies and case studies on how to best approach not getting stuck in Denial. Very important as its hard when you run 24/7 in an industry and mindset to break out of that and review the business/sector from a new perspective. As you never want to get trapped in a specific position when everyone else can see change coming.

52. Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger – A weird but fun book about a couple learning about the Tassie tiger. Good read if you are interested in this interesting creature, is it alive still or truly extinct? …

53. Wool Omnibus 1 through 5 – Amazing story and I highly recommend it. Some good sci fi and excellent writing about people living in Silos… Read it!!! Going to buy everything this author writes.

54. How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It – Super short read, with a few interesting items about his lift, but overall pretty meh on details. I’d love to see him write a full write up on his run.

55. Buyout: The Insider’s Guide to Buying Your Own Company – One of the best business books I’ve read in a while, more for the financial models and financial overview + case studies. I’m going to read this one a few times as I learned a ton. Very very useful and a must read.

56. The Rithmatist – I will say it simply. Brandon Sanderson is a genius!!!! I’ve read every book he writes and they are fucking all amazing. I seriously considered trying to take out life insurance on him as I really want him to survive till 110 so he can keep turning out books after book of unique and genius ideas. Love love love love this guy and you must read anything he creates!

June

57. The Secret History of Vampires: Their Multiple Forms and Hidden Purposes. I love myth and stories and this was a great way to learn about some of the historic fictions that built up the concept of vampires. Great read and more scholarly than I was expecting!

58. Books 6, 7, and 8 of the silo series. I’m not liking where they are headed so checking here. Counting them as 1 book as it’s 3 mini books.

59. 60. 61. 62. All 4 books of the Molly Fyde series. Good reads but kinda got old by the end, but had to finish them and figure out where it was going. Aimed a bit more at a younger audience but a fun read overall.

63. The Hurricane, a story about a hurricane hitting a town and the result. A well written book but a bit mundane, great writer though. Seriously this book is mostly about what happens when you don’t get a phone signal and instead have to talk face to face and chain saw trees :).

64. Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders – A great book and one that I need to revisit in the coming years to see how the teachings evolve based on where our company is at. Good read.

65. 66. 67. The first 3 books of the Cassandra Clare Series. Those being City of Bones, City of Ashes, and City of Glass. I’m super super interested in fallen angels and the myths behind them from biblical times, spent time on this in school as well. Good books but by book 3 just couldn’t read anymore, some cliche parts and just not clicking with the author.

68. Survival Investing: How to Prosper Amid Thieving Banks and Corrupt Governments – by the always famous John Talbott. Great read and one I recommend, a bit depressing on the whole setup… But good to know you can’t trust wall street / banks at this point.

July

69.The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune – An amazing fantastic book, not only for the man but also the business of duty free :). One of the best business bios I’ve read in quite a while. And love what he did.

70. Random.

71. Love with a Chance of Drowning – Best travel book this year and a MUST READ as it’s hilarious and awesome. Basically girl meets boy, girl is deathly afraid of water, boy has a boat and wants to go around the world in it, girl comes. Must read!

72. Neptune’s Brood by one of my favorite authors Charles Stross. Good book, way out there sci fi with a lot of cool thoughts on bit coins, currency and finance markets when dealing with long distances, etc :)

73.
The Mongoliad: Book One – A little slow to start but seems good, I’m going to try a few more… This takes place right after the Mongol invasions of Europe and a plot to kill the kahn.

74. Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist – Great series of short stories from someone who does 1 month to 5 month cycling trips accross countries. A great read and something I’m thinking about doing.

75. baguettes and bicycles: a cycling adventure across France – Decent fun/short read about biking through france.

76. The Mongoliad: Book 2 – Great book about the rose knights trying to kill the kahn to stop the mongolian invasion of europe, epic in nature. A bit slow at times with a lot of people and places going on, but liking it more and more.

August

77. The Mongoliad: Book 3 – A great finish to a series that started pretty slow, combined the books are a great piece of histrical fiction with just enough myth & a touch of magic. I just listened to Dan Carlin’s history of the Mongols so it was a perfect mash up to hear that world imagined :). Good series.

78. The Balkan Odyssey: Travels around the former Yugoslavia…oh, and Albania too! – Meh, kinda boring, not a recommended travel book.

79. A Voyage For Madmen – A fantastic book about the worlds first solo race around the world. A MUST read as well written and super interesting.

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.

80. Divergent – A fantastic sci fi book about a world where everyone is divided into 5 types and each has a role in society. Well written and going to try book 2.

81. Maiden Voyage – A book about an 18 year old girl sailing around the world, and to start her dad basically just dumps her in a boat with no training. Awesome read and sailing around the world is sounding really channeling and fun. It took her 2 years although she stopped a lot along the way and this book is a good travelogue too.

82. The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How to Make the Most of Them Now – My brother recommended this one, per our many debates on life :), great read!

83. The Cuckoo’s Calling – Pretty good mystery book by JK, worth a read if you like the genre. Otherwise skip it. Good twist ending and solid characters.

84. Dust Silo Saga – A great ending to a long running book series. Good wrap up but still feel like there are giant plot holes.

85. Insurgent – Book 2 in the series, not bad, kinda basic but still interesting. Movie is coming out as this is similar to the hungar game series.

86. Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else – A really well researched book and quite an interesting read. I’m super interested in the growing class inequality in the world/USA, especially with what I see happening tech wise and the lack of options for a lot of people who used to be in the middle class…

87. Executive Toughness: The Mental-Training Program to Increase Your Leadership Performance : The Mental-Training Program to Increase Your Leadership Performance – A good book but also a lot of bullshit. Worth a read and some of the exercises are useful. Probably need to come back to it again in a year or so.

September

88. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype – A very good read for a small business, all about how to market yourself by helping others.

89. Wild – A good read about a young woman hiking the PCT. Good read! (Oprah agrees)

90. Easy Go is a really early novel by Michael Crichton, super simple and has his trademark ending where it feels like he just said “fuck you book” and makes something up to end it in 2 pages out of no where. Seriously. I had to reread the ending 4 times to see if anything was there, but nope, typical.

91. Miles from Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure by Barbara Savagae. One of the best travel books I’ve read in a long long time. Barbara and her husband biked around the world back in the 70s and super well written and super interesting. The parts about Egypt really resonated :). I loved this book and it made me laugh out loud several times. One of the best travel/biking reads and highly recommended. The ending is sad though, as you learn that Barbara died soon after turning in the manuscript in a bike accident :(.

92. Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. This book was published in 1900 and is the first person to sail around the world by himself. Great story, a tad hard to read but really really interesting to see all the descriptions from 100+ years ago.

93. Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents – Great book about some long long bike rides in some crazy places. The author decides to go to the lowest 6 places in the world instead of the biggest summits. Great read and loved the style. He has these little mind bites almost, fun read.

94. Investing in Apartment Buildings : Create a Reliable Stream of Income and Build Long-Term Wealth – Very well written book and was suprisinginly informative. Really good read and intro to this world.

95. Sell Now!: The End of the Housing Bubble. By the very famous Talbott, like all his books a good eye opener to the shit going on at wall street. And why buying a house isn’t always a good deal.

96. The Mote in God’s Eye – Great sci fi book Joel recommended. Great fun read! Kinda like a mystery inside a philisophical question wrapped up in a sci fi world.

97. Breaking Seas: An overweight, middle-aged computer nerd buys his first boat, quits his job, and sails off to adventure. Ok read but sad as he failed in a large part. He also seems to have some psch problems.

98. Across Islands and Oceans – One of the best books I’ve read this year, about a kid with a broken boat who sailed the world and walked over most islands he came accross. Such a great read and really really cool guy!

99. Steelheart by the writer-god Brandon Sanderson. How the hell does this guy turn out awesome unique innovative book after book after book. This one is a fantastic story about the rise of epics, aka people with special powers, and a group trying to fight back. Great read and I love how all his stories involve these power systems. I’m also hoping the sequels follow as quick, currently waiting on 3 sequels to his books…

October

100. Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics – By Talbott. Good read and been catching up on a few other books by Talbott.

101. The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work – A very interested book and one I would recommend. Some good strategies that are really solid if you can make them part of your daily pattern.

102. 103. Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained, a little slow to get into but once you are these make up a massive crazy awesome space epic. I highly recommend you read the amazon description as its hard to try to write a description. Some of the best space sci-fi I’ve read in a long time, and a lot of ethical philosophy type stuff in it.

104. Dirty Martini – I like a good detective book every once in a while, although the genre is pretty hit or miss. This was a good one and looking forward to buying more in the series! Def if you are looking for a decent detective read for the beach grab this one. Plot on this one is poisen.

105. Inferno by Dan Brown. What utter bullshit, I knew I shouldn’t have read this as his other books suck too. I feel sad for people who don’t know how many better writers are out there in this genre. Book sucked, stupid twist at end that makes no sense like all his books.

106. The Circle by Dave Eggers. A scary as hell view of the future where the Circle, aka Google, is rising up and there is less and less privacy. Disturbing to read and the next 100 years are going to have some interesting challenges, unless we all die from global warming.

107. The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work – An excellent read that I highly recommend for anyone at a company with a remote team. Some good insight into how WordPress is run, although I wish there was more. And some interested notes on their transition to a different management structure. Been a really useful read for us. Having seen some Matt bombs in person at conferences it is hilarious to read about them happening internally too :).

108. 109. 110. 111. 112. Fablehaven the Complete Series – All 5 books. Book 1 was not great, it was like a really long tortuous introduction, but after I made it through that the rest are great reads and really fun. And the author gets better in the later ones. Highly recommended to anyone who wants a good adventure read. I think I had aswesome adventure dreams about nibbs and farries for a few days because of this one. The author is very good, but he is not JK as compared to her characters his are a bit flat until you really get 3 books in. I think this series is aimed at a younger audience though so not a big deal.

113. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works – I’ve been working on this one slowly for about 3 months and it is one of the best business books I’ve ever read. Some of the chapters are a bit more aimed at really big companies, but the rest is a gold mine. This one is probably going to make best of year and I recommend this to anyone who wants to improve how they think about their business and future moves. Quick descript:

outlines the strategic approach Lafley, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, used to double P&G’s sales, quadruple its profits, and increase its market value by more than $100 billion when Lafley was first CEO (he led the company from 2000 to 2009). The book shows leaders in any type of organization how to guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success—where to play and how to win.

Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are: (1) What is our winning aspiration? (2) Where will we play? (3) How will we win? (4) What capabilities must we have in place to win? and (5) What management systems are required to support our choices? The result is a playbook for winning.

The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach—and then making the right choices to support it—makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.

Playing to Win outlines a proven method that has worked for some of today’s most celebrated brands and products. Let this book serve as your new guide to winning, as well.

114. Resolved: 13 Resolutions For Life. An interesting read about some of the USA’s founders and their resolutions and ways they defined their lives. If you can ignore the bullshit right wing crap in a few chapters its a good read with some valuable take aways about leadership.

115. Along the Templar Trail: Seven Million Steps for Peace. Avoid as this is a boring book about some guy complaining non stop and then getting preachy and expecting people to care about his desire for world peace and how walking long distances is going to achieve that. I was hoping it might be an interesting travelogue… but was disappointed. If you want world peace go make it, you going on tv in foreign countries because you are rich enough to walk for a long distance isn’t really doing much IMO.

116. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S Thompson. This guy is awesome and a great read. Been trying to read a few more of his book and Tony recommended this one.

117. Censored.

November

118. Allegiant – This is the last book in the Divergent series, it was a good ending but a really confusing hard start to the book. I liked the books but I’m not sure I would recommend them too strongly. I’m curious how the movie works out…

119. EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches – By Dave Ramsey. I’ve listened to the EntreLeadership podcast over and over and finally sat down and read this book. Amazing amazing book and a must read for any business owner. Really great advice you can pick through, some things I disagree on, but overall fantastic stuff. Go grab the podcast as well as it has way more details/ideas too.

120. 121. Whiskey Sour and Shot of Tequila, both great hardcore detective books. Simple fun reads and there are a ton of these. Good main character.

122. High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service: Inspire Timeless Loyalty in the Demanding New World of Social Commerce – One of the best books I’ve read on customer service and I even recommended this one to a lot of people I work with. I’m going to try to read it every few years to see how it changes as we grow too. One of the better business books I’ve read this year. (I read it a few years back as well and you get new ideas and thoughts as you reread at later stages of biz-development).

123. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century – Amazing amazing book I recommend, it really picks you up and puts you in the 14th century. Well written, interesting, and just the right blend of history and stories. I wish they had a series of these for a lot of different eras.

124. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture – Amazing story about the two Johns and their rise to gaming power. I grew up a little after this period and remember my mind being blown playing wolf 3d, then doom, then doom over serial cable network. Awesome book and great read for gamers.

125. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In – Also up there for one of the best business books I’ve read this year, solid steps to frame the way you negotiate in an ethical positive way. I need to reread this every 1 to 2 years and the most important part is practice practice practice. As anyone can read this book but learning it so it is effortless is hard, but also absolutely key to getting things done.

126. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands – A hilarious book that had me laughing out loud. By Chelsea Handler.

127. The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism – One of the most AMAZING BOOKS IVE EVER READ. Not for the style but rather the mind blowing revelations and perspective it brings on this world and Autism. THIS IS A MUST READ. So good, thank you daily show for the rec! This lets you feel what it is like to be Autistic, and is written by a 13 year old boy with Autism. Amazing.

128. The Balkans: A Short History – Such an interesting area, I read part of this during my travels there and the rest after. A bit dry as a book but good info.

129. Ready Player One – A really interesting view of the future combined with a story of a struggle for control of a massive virtual reality that most people spend time in. Very entertaining / thought provoking.

130. 131. Censored, and Censored.

132. Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man – After a late night interesting discussion with my stepdad and mom I ended up buying this one. Really tough and interesting read. I think there are a lot of problems out there for men trying to define what manhood is at this day in age, and with some of the chaos happening in capitalism and market, and in general over the last hundred years. I picked up a few books to read more about that + some of the answers and thoughts around what being a man means now. Definitely some parts of this book made me set it down and really think. Hard stuff.

133. Remote: Office Not Required – A good general overview for companies not doing it, but not much here if you are working remote. Good propaganda by 37 signals though :)

134. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine – This is one interesting and challenging book. I loved it and going to reread it, lots of things in here cause you to stop and think, or just write for a long time as you digest the thoughts in just a few paragraphs. Highly recommended.

135. Quintessence – An interesting scifi/religious book about the search for a compound of alchemy. Well written and a good story. I just bought the sequel and his first book which won a sci fi award.

136. Quintessence Sky – Sequel to the previous book, a decent ending and out there. I enjoyed it though and a pretty good writer.

137. Terminal Mind – A really interesting futuristic scifi book about people doing mods to their bodies, politics, trying to get a human mind onto the net, and some crazy shit. I liked it but it was a bit rough around the edges.

I found this in Hong Kong and this is both hilarious and possibly the most racist toothpaste I’ever seen :)! If I remember high school history class correctly this brand was started after WW2 by the Japanese I think.

I can’t wait to try it out, especially since it includes “spring water from france”, which I have to say is my favorite type of spring water. Although I have no idea why it is in my toothpaste. I am pretty sure that “Hydro Fresh Gel” is going to clean my teeth just fine. And hopefully it doesn’t melt them.

Update:
Turns out I’m incorrect, it was first started in China and used to be called Darkie. You can’t make this up. Even crazier their campaign in China still uses the slogan “Black Person Toothpaste is still Black Person Toothpaste” when translated from the Chinese. Read the rest of this crazy story here.

January 2012
*146 for the year.

1. The Olive Farm – A great story about buying a house in the south of France on the coats and rebuilding it. A little dark near the end just due to problems in the family and it took a more bibliography turn but still very interesting.

2. The Hunger Games – Second time I’ve read it, but couldn’t put it down, fun book! Must read for everyone out there.

3. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. Peter is one of my favorite authors and I’ve read all his books on his time in China. This was one was about his time in Fuling during Peace Corp and was a more relaxed read than some of his others. I learned a lot like always (about China etc).

4. Sector 64: Coup de Main – An interesting book but a bit short and simplistic. Plot in short: Pilots, UFO, huge conspiracy, world is bigger and more complicated then you think, alien enemy, battle, done.

5. Devil’s Lair by David Wisehart. This was roughly based on Dante’s Inferno. It’s written as a historical novel / adventure novel as a group of people go down into hell to recover a sacred artifact.

6. The Coming Jobs War – A brilliant book, some amazing insights, and some I disagree with very strongly. I’m going to write a full post on this, I do think everyone in the USA should read it though.

7. Freight Train Across The Outback: On Board The First Train To Cross Australia From South to North – A fun travel book about Australia and riding the first train trip across the entire outback.

8. Firebird by Anthony Bellaleigh – Not bad for a free book on Amazon, about dragons in modern times, but pretty good. Writing a little hard to visualize clearly though.

9. 10. 11. and 12. X-Wing Series: Rougue Squadron, Wedge’s Gamble, Krytos Trap, and The Bacta War. A great series I last read ~5 years ago, good to visit old friends and an awesome series. It follows Wedge who did the death star run with Luke in the movie as he reforms Rogue squadron a few years after the Endor victory.

13. X-Wing: Wraith Squadron – Book 5 and another good one.

February

14. Rift Walker – Book 2 in a fun vampire empire series. Good fun cheap read.

15. 16. X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar and X-Wing: Solo Command – Book 6 and 7 in the series, fun reads!

17. A Complaint Is A Gift – A fantastic book, going to have our team leaders read it and going to reread it every year. Great stuff on how to diffuse emotional issues in business to get to the root of the problem.

18. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. An amazing book about an amazing man, such a great read. A must read for the year!

19. Moon Guide to Living Abroad In China – Was curious, good book with broad overviews of cities, prices and so on.

20. The Last Days Of The Incas – An awesome book if you are interested in the Incas and the “discovery” of the ruins years later. The most amazing part is how a mere 60 to 200 heavily armed calvary destroyed such a vast empire, makes you realize how military technology can really do some crazy things. Very well written.

21. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier – Very interesting read, good mix of history and modern information. I really enjoyed the timeline of how cities went from death traps to better then rural areas. The book is very balanced too, the author explains the benefits of living in both areas, provides balanced critiques of current american and international policies and so on. Highly recommended.

22. How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In – A short but always amazing read from Jim Collins. Tracks specific companies and why they failed, case study style as well as rambling thoughts. Fantastic read as always, Collins and his team do awesome research and write like a rolling stones reporter.

23. Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All – An awesome awesome book, Jim Collins writes the best books. A must read for anyone who is an entrepreneur or anyone really. Fascinating stuff!

24. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Awesome awesome awesome read, I like Bourdain and the book was great. All about his rise to become Chef and all the drugs, mistakes, drinking, etc along the way.

25. Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur by Richard Branson. This was a great read and Branson’s story is really cool. I also like how he runs his network of companies under one brand, very unique operational model. The dedication to customer service is great too, almost like a big version of Y combinator.

26. Choondoonga: A Journey Around Australia – A decent travel log about a family traveling around Australia. The one annoying thing is the guy writing it doesn’t seem to realize how rich it is to buy a $80,000 dollar car. But still a great read and sounds like a cool family!

27. The Quants – An amazing book about the rise of math on wall street and a new breed of investors that use high speed computer trading and formulas to generate income. And traces the huge collapse in 2008 and a few other events to the “computer programs” failing. Overall a great read but I don’t see why we don’t just cap leverage to prevent the domino effect, why not limit leverage to 8x or something smaller. Or cap what hedge funds size can be. I need to read more as I know there are pros and cons but seems like you need to find big ways to limit the risk these people are taking with everyone’s financial system, not try to pass small micro laws that are outdated by the time they get to the paper.

28. Free: The Future of Radical Price by Chris Anderson. A good overview of the free business model, why it works, why it doesn’t, and a lot of case studies.

March

29. The Magicians: A Novel by Lev Grossman. My brother recommended this book to me, first this is a well written book and a good read. BUT, this book is depressing, the main character is a depressed little asshole, and the places this book go just make you want to pop some valium. I like the realistic dark view but they just carry it too far, why would you read a book like this? The ending seemed a little weak too.

30. Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You. – A short but great book with a fictional story of a business owner + real world tips. Less about selling and more about how to run a service company in a way that it can grow and prosper and be replicated. A lot of basics, but a few great tips I hadn’t thought of.

31. The Sweet Life In Paris – A great book about a chef’s move to Paris and some of the things he did, along with some great recipes! A short but fun read, although if you are looking for a france travel story there are more in depth ones I would recommend first.

32. Mountains Beyond Mountains – A great book about an amazing person/doctor. The guy is a machine and just stunned by what he has done and his ability to work. I think the best part of this book is his advice to just start something, nobody is going to hit his level of performance, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try, or that even your level is not good enough. If you can do some good do it, don’t put it off.

33. All In: The Education Of General David Petraeus – Another guy with amazing work ethic. Great book, gives you a better understanding of how much work goes into running our government/military. The one thing that is frustrating to me is how the hell it took us so long to rewrite the counter insurgency manual, and why we were not basing soldiers with the local populations from the start. We literally had proof of how well it worked for Greens in Vietnam, you could watch attacks go down in those areas. Just dumb founded that people think you can win a war by just shooting the guys/gals with the guns, you also have to win over the population.

34. The Breach, Ghost Country, and Deep Sky by Patrick Lee. A series of just fun Sci Fi books my dad recommended. Good reads, went very quick, and apart from the stupid ending pretty fun.

35. Timeline by Michael Crichton – I’ve read this book maybe 5 or 6 times and love it, just a really fun read. That said, the huge glaring plot hole is why the hell did ITC not make billions selling access to their quantum computers. I find it ridiculous that they wanted to build theme parks. Not that it’s a bad idea, but why try to get more investors when you can easily slow down the quantum computer, sell access to people and easily fund your take over of the world :).

36. Screw Business As Usual by Richard Branson. This dude is optimistic, I like it. Lots of the same stuff as the previous one though, and the other has a lot more advice so I recommend it before this one.

37. The Introvert Advantage: Making the Most of Your Inner Strengths – I wasn’t expecting a lot from this book but I was stunned, I didn’t realize there were actual brain/body differences between introverts/extroverts. Was really interesting to read and learned a ton about myself etc. I recommend this book for anyone introverted, some good tips and tricks.

38. And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina – The book read like a thriller, amazing telling of the financial crisis in Argentina and the role Wall Street / the IMF played. It placed the blame pretty fairly too. And basically Wall Street got a pass for the activity that caused this and no good nation bankruptcy protection was passed. I don’t think they are realizing that the vast amounts of money they control actually can affect millions of people on the ground. The stats for the amount of poverty and suffering they (in part) caused in Argentina was chilling.

39. 40. and 41. The Tourist, The Nearest Exit, and An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer. There are three books in this spy novel series and they are all good. Olen can write, the characters are a bit depressing and not your typical spy (ie alcoholic psychos). But decent plots and fun reads! I’m going to tackle his novel series next as it sounded good too.

42. Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success – I got sucked into Penelope Trunk’s awesome blog and ended up buying her book. Fantastic stuff and a great read for anyone entering the work force or in it. Hilarious blog too!

43. Bridge of Sighs – This is a mystery/cop novel set in Russia right after the war (more historical fiction than thriller). This is by Olen Stenhauer and I just read 3 of his spy novels. This book was not enjoyable though. First, his other books were well written, this one jumped around like crazy and at times was difficult to follow (I think this was his first). Second, I don’t know if the dude is depressed or what, but it gets old to have characters that are just destroyed wrecks of people. Good author but skip this one unless you want to try to make it through the series.

44. Executive Orders – One of my favorite Tom Clancy books, had to reread it! Great book and he is such an amazing story teller!

April

45. Debt of Honor – The prequel to Executive Orders by Tom Clancy, great book!

46. Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy – An interesting introduction to the off grid economy, or System D as the author calls it. I have mixed feelings on System D, we operate in it in some very slight ways. Long term I’m not sure if its growth in Africa and similar countries will continue, as I think the big explosion has only worked in the last decade because we are in a transition phase. With the cost of living super in low in some areas, but better then the traditional economy, and transition to the new information economy is happening world wide. Anyway, decent easy to read book with specific examples.

47. Wayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road – Hilarious short book about a writers travels. Highly entertaining!

48. Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works – Fantastic book and very enlightening! Well written and recommend it if you just want to learn more about how Apple operates.

49. Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries – A good introduction into the model plus specific case studies. That said I already did a lot of research and was hoping they would focus more on companies that pivoted to offer this, or problems they encountered. A bit dated and needs an update too.

50. Kraken by China Mieville. A weird book but interesting, hidden reality, squid worship, magic, god’s, and all that cool jazz.

51.The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention – One of the best book’s I’ve read this year and the author William Rosen does a fantastic job. This looks at what the industrial revolution did to society and specifically the concept of patents and creating inventions that were then protected. Read a review of this book at the New York Times. Great book!

52. American Gods – Good book just not for me. Answers the question what happens when people moving to America bring their God’s from home. Just didn’t click.

53. Oath of Fealty – A fantastic sequel to her first run. I wish it was bout 10x longer but still a great continuation after the crazy ending.

54. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. A good book just didn’t click for me. Neil can write and this is a cool concept, just wish he either went more with character development or the universe he created, instead he doesn’t go far enough with either. Awesome ending though!

55. Reversing the Slide: A Strategic Guide to Turnarounds and Corporate Renewal – A fantastic book and super super recommended! Goes into tons of specifics and great resource if you are rebuilding a company.

56. How to Heal a Broken Heart in 30 Days – A good book and worth a read.

57. The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals. An absolutely amazing book by Frank Partnoy, and a must read for anyone interested in why such strong regulations passed during the Great Depression and in globalization of business. Ivar was an amazing business man and apart from not knowing when to stop and be ethical he had a solid business plan. Matches + Monopoly is even better then Gnomes + underwear. One of the best books I’ve read this year, right up there with the history of the industrial age and patent system. Frank did a great job telling his story and putting it into perspective.

May

58. The Statues That Walked – Great book on Easter Island and answers a lot of the big questions.

59. 60. And I reread The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

61. Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. In a discussion with Joel or someone we found some stats that more and more people are living alone, so I decided to read a sociology book on the change.

62. Endless Enemies: Inside FBI Counterterrorism – Very interesting book on the emergency of the FBI’s role in international investigations.

63. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk: A Novel – A hilarious book!

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. I stumbled upon the Repairman Jack series and read The Tomb, Legacies, All The Rage, Conspiracies, Hosts, and The Haunted Air. Repairman Jack is a very cool character that fixes “situations” people might have, and lives totally off the grid. He ends up kinda running into some supernatural issues and the series goes on from there. Great stuff and still a lot to read!

70. Gateways – The next repairman jack series, not too bad, one of the weaker ones so far. But nice that his dad has a better idea of what he does, and that he knows what is coming for him. The big plot is coming together. Just bought the next 5 or 6 too for the Aussie plain ride.

June

71. The Craft of Intelligence: America’s Legendary Spy Master on the Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering for a Free World by Allen Dulles. Interesting read by the king of the CIA, he sure lived through a lot!

72. 73. 74. And more of the Repairman Jack series I’ve been really digging, good stuff! Crisscross, Infernal, and Harbingers.

75. 76. 77. Bloodline, By the Sword, and Ground Zero. Three more books in the long Repairman Jack series, great so far and only a few books left and hopefully Jack conquers the “otherness”.

78. 79. 80. Fatal Error, The Dark at the End, and Nightworld. The last three books in the 14 long series on Repairman Jack. A good ending, a little disappointed but still glad he saved the world and all. I wouldn’t mind a book or two without the crazy too.

July

81. A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing by Jim Rogers the famous investor. Not bad, short and some good advice. I’m interested in his move to China and have a few other books by him.

82. The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. I like Fareed (esp when he is on the daily show) and a lot of what he says, this book echos that. With the news and people always freaking out that we are somehow “loosing” to other countries it’s nice to take a chill pill and realize what rubbish that is in a lot of ways.

83. The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. A great rule and a must read.

84. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry. I’ve been reading this over the last month and it is one of the best book’s I’ve read this year. Great writer and just an epic view of what the medical system was like prior to this strain hitting, during, and after. A must read, I learned so much about the medical profession, medical school, influenza, rna, etc etc. Great book!

85. The Power of the Dog – By the author of the book Savages which is coming out soon in movie form. This one follows several characters in the Mexican drug cartels, DEA, and surrounding. It rips a lot from what is really going on in Mexico and the US and combines it with a riveting story that is probably a little too close to home.

86. Never Mind the Balkans, Here’s Romania – A series of short stories from a British guy who has lived and worked in Romania for a very long time. Very entertaining!

87. To Romania With Love – A crazy love story about a British Girl and a Romanian Guy. Crazy! Good 10+ year view of changes to Romania + cultural differences.

88. Out of the Transylvania Night – An interesting story, bit confusing at times but ok read.

89. Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez. His first book was genius, and the second fantastic as well. Unfortunately this one is just meh and not great, he is way better when he focuses on the technology and not the bad character development + dialogue. This book focuses on drones and a future where they are causing all sorts of mayhem.

90. Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time – Awesome book and an amazing story. One of the best business auto biographies I’ve read. Lots of great ideas from it.

August

91. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul. By the guy that started Starbucks about saving them during the economic downturn and when they lost their culture. Not bad but I wanted a whole lot more specifics, this was more a story. I recommend his first book but not this one, just not enough details.

92. When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You’re Stuck, and What to Do About It – Not bad but also pretty general. A decent read.

93. The Kill Artist – Part of the Gabriel Allon series, not bad, some holes. I might still try the 2nd one.

94. The English Assassin – Book 2 in the Gabriel Allon series, better, but not sure I’ll ready more. Decent spy / thrillers but seem to be missing something.

95. Weird Ideas That Work – An interesting book on some weird strategies that can work in a business setting. Not a bad read but nothing that really grabbed me.

96. A Year in the Merde – Hilarious story about a guy moving to France from the UK to open a chain of english tea cafes and then a whole load of merde that he stepped in… Can’t wait for the next one to finish the story.

97. he Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade – I loved this book! An economist follows a simple white t shirt around the world to see how it all works. Fantastic read, easy to follow and I wish they would write these for a lot of things. Should be required reading for anyone trying to understand global economics.

98. Bright Lights, No City: An African Adventure on Bad Roads with a Brother and a Very Weird Business Plan – Another amazing book about the guy who invented cranium creating a business in Ghana (renting out rechargeable batteries). Along with his brother they try to make it work and talk about the challenges, car wrecks, staffing issues, african marketing issues etc as . Fantastic book! With all the shit they go through it makes me realize that you have to have a lot more passion the harder it is to create a business, all that red tape would make me just want to quit, I hate red tape.

99. Jack: Straight from the Gut – Not bad and def an interesting read from Jack Welch the ex CEO of GE. Really interesting to see this book talk about GE’s financial division before the recent problems.

100. Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd. A very interesting book on what happens to products once they become commodities and how marketing tries to make them seem different. For example how there are like a zillion types of toothpaste. Interesting read given what the hosting industry is going through, and I look forward to trying something similar out over the next 5 years!

101. The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code – A really interesting book, the first half was a bit boring but got more and more interesting. Especially learning that the mood of the mother can really alter the babies genetics is amazing. Generational differences and all those implications.

September

102. The Spice Necklace: A Food-Lover’s Caribbean Adventure – A fantastic book about the Carib food and other great stories. I believe I also read their first book a while back. Called mango something.

103. What It Is Like to Go to War – One of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. Literally wipes you out, amazing read and should be required reading for everyone in high school.

104. Marry Him: The Case for Settling – My brother and I have a lot of discussions about the economics of dating/sex etc and ended up reading this book which was super interesting. There is also a great article in the economist a while back too. Fascinating.

105. Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It – A short but great book. I agree with large parts of it but as a business owner also feel he missed some key points. Read more about the issues and article that spawned the book here.

106. 50 Shades Of Gray – Had to finally read it as its gotten so huge and was curious why. After finishing it it feels just like a typical romance book with a little kinkier sex (nowhere near the level I was led to believe, and not really that kinky).
– Man that can read your thoughts? Check.
– Man that is a billionaire, plays the piano, speaks foreign languages fluently, flies his own helicopter, runs a global business trying to feed the world, is available 24/7 for your every whim, and buys you everything you need? Check.
– Man that has deep psychological problems and needs to be fixed? Check.

I read a lot of sci fi, fantasy, and spy novels so I’m assuming this is the same thing but for women. An escape from reality.

107. Hiking the Camino: 500 Miles with Jesus – A rather short book but very religious about hiking the Camino de Santiago. Written by a priest. Not bad but shorter and lacking details.

108. Skeleton Coast (The Oregon Files) – Decided to go for a fun adventure book, not a bad book but a tad boring at times. Clive Cussler and another author, no where near the quality of Dirk Pitt.

109. For Fukui’s Sake: Two years in rural Japan – A good book with little stories about living in rural Japan for a few years. Nothing mind blowing.

110. The End Of Men: And the Rise of Women – A very interesting book sparked by the article she wrote in the Atlantic about this shift.

111. Happier Than A Billionaire: Quitting My Job, Moving to Costa Rica, and Living the Zero Hour Work Week – A fun book to read with some good stories, but not one I would really dive into unless you specifically want to read about Costa Rica and are thinking of following this path. Quick read though and a few great bits. I really liked her spunk in some of the stories, good sense of humor too.

112. The Crowded Grave: A Mystery of the French Countryside – I’ve been trying to find some fun books as lately it’s been a lot more serious and business books. This one I had high hopes for but ended up just not doing it for me, not terrible but just a bit too drab. A solid 6/10 for a detective story.

113. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why – A fun book to read about some survival stories and the author’s quest for why some people survive and others die.

114. The Wrecker – An Isaac Bell Adventure – Another detective book, not terrible but not great. Uses the Clive Cussler brand so figured I’d give it a shot. Fun book but if you only read 10 books this year it’s not it.

October

115. Raise the Titanic – One of the best Dirk Pitt books out there and a classic. This is my 3rd or 4th time to reread it and a fantastic book. Great for the beach.

116. Corsair – The Oregon Files – Another Clive Cussler and a guest author one that wasn’t too good, just too typical. Maybe I’ve grown out of these or something. Don’t spend $10 bucks on this one.

117. Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World – A very interesting book about the emergence of this g zero world where no one nation has the power/drive to act unilaterally. With the EU/USA in a lot of debt and problems at home they are starting to withdraw back into their own regions while regional powers like China, Brazil, Russia and others grow in influence in their respective regions. And here was a great answer from the author:

Zakaria: What does the G-Zero mean for the United States?

Bremmer: It means that America will have to learn to do something it doesn’t do very well these days: Invest in the future. In a country where political leaders focus so much of their energies on winning the next news cycle, and business leaders try to maximize quarterly profits at the expense of long-term reinvestment, Americans need to look beyond the horizon described in this book.

Anyone who believes that American decline is inevitable has chosen to ignore the entire history of the United States and its people. For the moment, America can’t lead in quite the same way it did during the second half of the 20th century, because the world and its balance of power have changed profoundly. But the G-Zero will provoke a tremendous amount of trouble for a wide variety of people. It can’t last, because tomorrow’s most important powers, whoever those powers happen to be, can’t afford for it to continue. That’s why, if Americans can rebuild for the future, the country’s underlying strengths–its hard power capacities and its democratic, entrepreneurial values will ensure that U.S. leadership can again prove indispensable for international security and prosperity. I argue in the book’s final chapter that leadership of a post-G-Zero world should be the goal that guides American foreign and domestic policies in years to come.

118. Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy – A must read book that fascinates me! Over the next 10 years as we are using robots more and more how will our economy react? Over the next 50 years where will people find unemployment in those areas? How do we transition? How do we maintain a middle class with this going on? A real challenge for everyone in the world and a really interesting topic.

119. The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future – Another one on the rise of robotics and what that means for our economy and people? This and #118 are must reads.

120. Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden–from 9/11 to Abbottabad – A fascinating book about the hunt for bin laden. Some really emotional parts and a good read. Really explains to a lot of people how hard government work is, people constantly second guessing you and not respecting that a decision has to be made and no decision is perfect. It was frustrating to read how many political possibilities had to be run by the white house before they could act. Both parties have created this and it’s sad to see this waste of brain power.

121. Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World – One of the most amazing books I’ve read this year and a must read for anyone wanted to learn more about high speed stock trading and how it was born. It tells the story of this absolute amazing guy who immigrated and created the first computer trading. So so so so so good, read this book, accessible to anyone. And shows you why you can’t trust the stock market.

122. High: Confession of an International Drug Smuggler – A sad story about one of the biggest weed smugglers of the past, caught an article somewhere on him and bought this. Drugs can really mess up lives, need to legalize and stop the madness. People will always be addicted to something, better we bring it in the sphere of legality and control it + treatment.

123. Congo by Michael Crichton. Was waiting for the shower at a hostel this week and picked this up and ended up reading the entire thing. Love this book, especially the Crichton magic ending :).

124. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt – One of the most AMAZING books I’ve read in the last few years, what an amazing person. Cornelius Vanderbilt was just utterly amazing, started from almost nothing to the richest person in the country. At his death his fortune was 100 million in the late 1800s, if he had pulled all his money out of the markets ~1 out of every ~$10 in existence would have gone to him. Read this book, amazing story of what makes America America, the good, the bad, and the ugly. One of the best book’s I’ve read this year.

125. Starting from Scrap: An Entrepreneurial Success Story – I caught a few of Greer’s articles somewhere and decided to read his story. It’s a great one that I highly recommend, very interesting and great examples of managing people in different countries and some of the challenges. Great read!

126. Just Run It!: Running an Exceptional Business Is Easier Than You Think – A good book for small business owners. I found a few tidbits of wisdom and really liked the culture chapters. Solid book that you should read if you are thinking of starting a business or struggling with one. Especially the basic finance section too.

127. The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business – A fantastic book I recommend to anyone thinking about getting a MBA or just wanting to get a broad level of knowledge. Lots of good definitions and examples that I found very useful. I’ve always thought about getting a MBA as I enjoy the material, and I could use a lot more background in finance I think. All in all a great book.

November

128. Liar’s Poker – By Michael Lewis. An amazing book about his exp in the 1980s at Salomon Brothers (investment bank), and the creation of the CDO market that eventually caused so many problems. Plus a nice overview of why wall street is broken, and why the massive growth of debt is a big problem. A little leverage is great, too much leverage is really really bad. Great book.

130. Operation Mincemeat – An amazing true story from WW2! The story of how a British spy group planted a fake body to convince the Germans that we were not going to invade Sicily. Great story with some weird people. One guy even wanted to make whale cheese.

131. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine – By Michael Lewis. A followup to his other book that tracks who profited off the crashing CDO market. Amazing story once again, I recommend reading this one if you pick one book this year to understand CDOs and what a piece of shit our stock market is.

132. The Paradox Of Choice – Awesome book and a must read. It starts a little slow but the last half of the book is amazing. Explains why it’s so hard to make choices when you have so many choices :)

133. Faceless Killers: A Mystery (Kurt Wallander Mysteries). A well done mystery / police book. The only thing I dislike is how the book makes his life so shitty, why aren’t there ever any cops who have a so so life, or even a good one? It’s always the worse it possibly could be. Drinks too much, doesn’t eat right, dad is loosing his mind, never talks to his sister, wife leaves him, daughter is crazy and hasn’t spoken to him in 4 years, etc. We get it, he’s messed up.

134. Singularity Sky – A great book by one of my favorite authors, a nice break from the more serious books I’ve been reading this year. I need to find some more scifi. This book is out there but very enjoyable characters :).

December

135. In the Merde for Love – Book 2 in this guys story about France. Pretty hilarious, I hope all this stuff is true. There are more but I think I’m good. Funny read though on the whole british french thing.

136. Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness – Fun book and lots of food I would like to try and make!

137. The Last Man – One of the best thrillers / military ones I’ve ready since Clancy. Going to buy 2 more of his and see if they stack up, if they are good too going to buy them all. Very excited to finally find a decent writer. This one is about a missing CIA station chief and the search for him…

138. Romania – Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture – Quite interesting! Can’t wait to visit! I’m visiting Romania end of this year + work with a lot of people there so wanted to learn more! Some funny jokes in this one.

139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. American Assassin, Kill Shot, Transfer Of Power, The Third Option, Separation of Power, Executive Power, and Consent to Kill, Memorial Day – A series of amazing books by Vince Flynn about an off the books CIA agent named Mitch Rapp. Best thriller/military author I’ve read since Clancy, highly highly recommended.

There is a great online challenge called the 100 book challenge with the goal being to read 100 or more books in a year. In 2011 I beat 2010’s record of 111 books with 131 books read. I think I read a lot more fun ones this year as when I got a pretty bad case of burn out I just read and ran a lot. Here is the big list of all the books I read and short little mini reviews!

And now for my big roundup, I try to feature the top 2 books in each category plus a runner up….

Best Business Books

1. First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently – This was the most valuable book I read this year and I hope to read this every year. It basically explains what great managers do to keep their team happy and backs it up with as much data and examples as possible. And above all it makes the point I’ve come to believe that people don’t change. At best they can pivot 10% to 20% from where they are now, and it is more valuable to focus on their talents, and find ways to neutralize their weaknesses.

2. Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. – Fantastic book by Jim Collins, this is a followup to his previous. This covers a lot of companies and what enabled them to become great companies.

Honorable mentions to The Six-Month Fix: Adventures in Rescuing Failing Companies, Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, and Business Model Generation.

Best True Books

1. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie Chang -This book is a must read for those interested in China and how rapid industrialization is creating huge social changes for women. The story of the girls working in these factories is just amazing, an entire generation of hustlers who could become entrepreneurs is emerging. I can’t wait to see what they do next as more opportunities become available to them and what values they instill in their children.

2. The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean. This was an awesome awesome book and one of the best so far this year. This is about how waves are generated, the guys that ride them, and even some quantum mechanics.

3. Born To Run – The book that started the barefoot running movement, and just makes me want to run more and more! Even for non runners its a great book about what humans are capable of and how we might have run down our game by outrunning them. All in a well written book about a hidden tribe of super runners and a race against them by some American ultra runners (very short summary).

Honorable mentions to Brazil on the Rise and Out of Mao’s Shadow.

Best Travel Books

French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew – An awesome book about traveling around and living in France and going to all these different food festivals! I highly recommend it, covered things like eating truffles, cheeses, snails, a wine marathon, etc!

I read a lot of nice normal travel books too, but nothing that stood out as just amazing besides this one.

Best Thrillers

This was an easy choice this year, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the two sequels were mind glowingly awesome! It was if someone combined the best of Law and Order SVU with hacking and a great mystery. Just fantastic writing, great plot lines, and the best thrillers I’ve read in a really long time. Go buy them!

Best Science Fiction / Fantasy Books

1. Hounded, Hexed, and Hammered. Fun books I highly recommend! Basically imagine all the religions and gods of the world do exist, on multiple planes, with earth being a place they can all jump into. This follow a very cool 1000+ year old Druid character living in Arizona and having gods mess with him.

Just an ok year for finding new scifi/fantasy.

Best Books About History…

1. At Home: A Short History Of Private Life by Bill Bryson. This was an interesting funny book about how the modern house and all it’s parts came to be. Plus all the segways and humor that only Bryson can bring to the table.

2. The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope – What an amazing man with the luck of timing, this book was fantastic and I hope we get another FDR soon so we can rewrite the social contract a bit more.

Honorable mention to The Wall: Rome’s Greatest Frontier about Hadrian’s Wall which is a trip I want to do at some point.

Best Bibliographies

1. The Faraway Horses – The story of Buck Brannaman who is the “horse whisperer”, really amazing guy and great story about his life. Check out this documentary on him too, just an amazing person.

January 2011
*131 for the year!

1. Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier. A very interesting and very long book about a writer’s obsession with all things Siberia. Pretty interesting book, not quite as exciting as most travel books I read but very descriptively written!

2. Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Brandon is a great writer and I believe this is his first published book, an entertaining story, and you can see some raw writing that has become a lot more polished. Good read.

3. The Way Of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. I’ve read a lot of books by Brandon Sanderson, in fact I read his first published book prior to this one and it is amazing, absolutely amazing, how much better he has gotten considering how great he was to start. The Way of Kings is his latest book and it is mind blowingly awesome, it starts a little slow and disjointed as it introduces a wide range of characters in different areas but by halfway it is flowing, building the characters up and keeping you on the edge of your seat with political intrigue, war, and internal strife. I was so sad when I finished and realized that this 10 part series has just began and I’m going to have to wait another year for the next one, but I’m so excited to have 9 more to look forward too over the next 10 years. Plus give that the first one is 1,344 pages, I’m hoping that means the others will be as full of life!

4. The Crown Conspiracy by Michael Sullivan. This was a nice 99 cent book for my Kindle and it wasn’t too bad, it was kinda a buddy cop movie but fantasy based. Not good enough for me to buy the next one, but I think if you are younger its a good one.

5. Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Man he is such a genius at interesting systems of power and stories around those. This was a good book, the one thing I didn’t like is that it felt like it ended too soon, maybe he got tired of it. Still a fantastic read! I also felt a little betrayed, as I really liked the two merc characters…

6. Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie – I was a big fan of his First Law trilogy, it was just so different in terms of being very dark with no happy endings. Unfortunately this book is way too dark, and impossible to enjoy, the entire story is about vengeance and people who make mistakes and never learn. In fact the thesis of the entire book seems to be that people are always the same, and just when you think they are a better person they stab you in the back. Finished it but I wouldn’t recommend this one.

February 2011

7. At Home: A Short History Of Private Life by Bill Bryson. This was an amazing amazing book and I need to read every book by Bill Bryson. Ever wondered how the modern house came to be? Read this, plus a ton of other amazing little sub stories. Learned so much!

8. Gardens of the Moon – Malazan Book Of the Fallen Book 1 – I wanted to love this book but I cold not and that makes me sad. Even at 70% of completion of a 600+ page book I was confused about characters, it finally came together at the end but it was still confusing. The universe was just too foreign. Sad too as I really need a fantasy series that is long running to burn through. Some people might like this one so if you like lord of the rings, or authors who can’t write you might check this out.

9. Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation – A really interesting book but a lot of stuff I’ve already heard about because of TED talks and startup news. Basically covers a lot of topics on how we generate ideas, why intersections among fields are so important, and a lot more. Good book for those interested in how ideas and businesses are born and how they can learn to be a better brain stormer.

10. Zodiac by Neal Stephenson. A book about environmental action and a new chemical that is appearing in Boston harbor. Not bad, basically just a well written thriller.

11. Omnitopia Dawn: Omnitopia #1 by Diane Duane. An awesome awesome book and one of my favorites this year. It is all about a massive online game in the near future, some corporate espionage, and just a great story. Highly recommended! Especially for people who want to know why so many people play massive online games.

12. The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise Of India and China and what it means for all of us. A good book that did a good job of balancing both opinions and showing both the bad and the good. I’m pretty familiar with a lot of the growth story behind China and found the info on Inda very useful. I see a lot of possibilities for India and I think long term it might grow faster then China as a lot of instability starts to hit China.

13. 14. Quarter Share and Half Share by Nathan Lowell. I think these are great books for younger people but I got a bit tired and called it quits on the series after two. They are just a bit two happy without any real strife. Plus it seems like this guy is a genius even though they go to great links to make him seem normal. Not bad though and I’d recommend them to 10 to 16 year olds.

15. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang. – This book is a must read for those interested in China and what competition the USA faces down the road. The story is just amazing of what these girls are doing on their own, it is creating a generation of hustler entrepeneurs out of framers. I can’t wait to see what they do next as more opportunities become available to them and what happens with their children. A huge cultural and economic shift, just a crazy story, I wonder if India has similar going on or more constrained due to the culture. Props to Peter Hessler for finding someone who writes as well as him too.

March

16. Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. An ok book but not great, interesting idea and maybe aimed at a younger audience. I loved his other book Under Heaven, so I’ll have to try another one at some point.

17. The Wise Man’s Fear: The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two by Patrick Rothfuss – Book 2 of a series I’ve been waiting on, just amazing story telling and a great story. One of my favorite series thus far and I can’t wait for the next one. Highly recommended!

18. Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth. An awesome book about extreme caving, I love caving and although I only get to do it every few years it was a great read.

19. The Mesh: Why The Future Of Business Is Sharing. A bit overrated but interesting read, sometimes I think people write as if they want a revolution when its just an avenue for some businesses that is now possible.

20. Bitten By Spain: Renovating a Finca in Murcia. A very interesting read with a lot of local exp of Spain.

21. The Miracle Great overview of the Asian economic miracle during the 1980s, and comparing that to India/China and others today. Lot’s of case studies and good stuff. Recommended.

22. The Six-Month Fix: Adventures in Rescuing Failing Companies – An awesome book that I highly recommend, might be the best business book I’ve read in at least 6 months. I might read this one once a year to keep on track of the fundamentals.

23. Sailing to Sarantium: Book One of the Sarantine Mosaic – A good book written by an author who did another book I loved. This one is far better then his last I read. It is basically a Roman history story with a new history and some alchemy. I’m going to read the next one too. The main character has red hair so I have to love that!

24. The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. I didn’t like the last book he wrote as it was just too dark but this one was amazing! The entire book is one huge battle and just really well done, dark as always!

25. A Dead Bat In Paraguay: One Man’s Peculiar Journey Through South America – Ok read but kinda sad, guy was so focused on sex it’s just sad. There are other things in life, kinda a depressing read as guy doesn’t seem to enjoy any of his travels

26. Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools – A really entertaining book about two British people retiring to a small village in Spain. It made me laugh out loud several times, great read!

27. Lord of Emperors: Book Two of the Sarantine Moasiac – A pretty good series but not one I would strongly recommend. Guy Kay is good but for some reason after the first book I read of his the rest didn’t seem as good. The characters are just a little too flat for my liking. Beautiful story though.

28. The Passage: A Novel – The author has written a pretty cool sci fi book that makes vampires real through a gentic mutation found in the amazon etc. Not a bad story but I hated the ending.

29. The Second Ship – The Rho Agenda Book 1 – Entertaining but I’m not going to continue this series as it was just a little too kiddish. Good for boys and girls who like sci fi and are under 16 though. Short summary is the kids get super human abilities through a crashed space ship while another crashed ship does the same but to what appear to be bad guys. NSA is involved, area 51, etc.

April

30. A Discovery of Witches – Blah, not great but long. Started cool and then turned bogus.

31. Me, Myself, and Paris – Total waste of time, super short, stupid stories and just really bad. I don’t know how this got such good ratings!

32. I’ll Never Be French (no matter what I do) – This was a great book and cool to learn about the coast of Brittany. Just a nice fun travel/memoir book.

33. Darkfever – Book 1 in a series that starts with a murder in Ireland and has all this mythology pulled in from the wee island. Think Harry Potter but a bit older and more drama, I’m going to stick with the series because its fun.

34. 35. 36. 37. Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, and Shadowfever. I read these so quick it was scary, they were fun and a great read. The ending was absolutely fantastic, and although I guessed a key plot turn it was fantastic. I highly recommend them!

38. I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away – Another fantastic book from Bill Bryson, it basically is a bunch of columns he wrote about coming back to live in the USA after living in England. As hilarious as always.

39. The Search for God and Guinness – An interesting book on the history of the Guinness family. Great story!

40. Mediterranean Summer: A Season on France’s Cote d’Azur and Italy’s Costa Bella – The story of a cook/chef and his 5 year journey cooking for a super rich couple on a yacht. Interesting read and well written.

41. A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France – A great book, if not a little dated, about living in france.

42. French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew – An awesome book about traveling around and living in France and going to all these different food festivals! I highly recommend it, covered things like eating truffles, cheeses, a wine marathon, and a lot more!

May

43. Girls of Riyadh – Amazing book and one of the best so far this year. Reveals what it is like for 4 girls/women living in Saudia Arabia. What a fucked up place to be human.

44. The Thank You Economy – Another great book by Gary V, one of my favs! Talks about the importance of good customer support and being active in social media!

45. The Wall: Rome’s Greatest Frontier – This was the first non kindle book I’ve read in a while, it reminded me why I like the kindle :). Great book about Hadrian’s Wall and the history of why it got built, and all sorts of historical tips. Great read! I’m thinking of doing a walk along this at some point!

46. A Dance of Cloaks – Pretty solid fantasy book, but just not feeling it. So skipping sequels or others by the author for now.

47. Courage and Croissants – A great book about a family moving to France, I liked this one as talks about a lot of the problems in the USA in terms of time/money.

48. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms – Good fantasy book, basically about a trinity of gods who are trapped by one of them and their desire to escape. Easy to read, but characters feel a bit flat. Probably won’t read the next one.

49. The Adamantine Palace: The Memory of Flames, Book I – A good fantasy book, but not sure I’ll read the next one, maybe at another time. Basically it’s about the politics of a group of kingdoms, and the overall plot involving dragons and alchemists gaining control over them. Good story.

50. Origins – Spinward Fringe – A solid sci fi book at a great price (free). Its the first in a big series but I just can’t get past some of the bad dialogue, don’t let that dissuade you. It’s a fantastic book and well written, just not for me.

51. The Half Made World – A weird world about a wild west populated by giant steam powered demon machines fighting against cowboys with weapons powered by demons. Pretty cool but the ending absolutely sucked! I’ve been on a bad non-fiction run.

52. The Faraway Horses – An amazing book about a “horse whisperer”, really amazing guy and great story about his life.

53. Born to Run – One of the best book’s I’ve read this year! About running barefoot, a tribe in Mexico and so on. I highly recommend it, written very well!

54. A Walk In The Woods Another awesome book by Bill Bryson, hilarious laugh out loud as the author and a friend hike the Appalachian trail.

June

55. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir – Bill Bryson’s store of his child hood, hilarious as always!

56. The Numerati – A very interesting book on how much data is being collected on us, how it’s being used, concerns, and so on.

57. SuperVirus – The first 80% of the book is an awesome cyber theory and pretty entertaining, then it goes bat shit insane with talking apes, and other craziness. Decent read, highly recommend if you tend to do shrooms during the last 40 pages of a book.

58. Committed – The follow up to Eat, Pray, Love. I really liked this book, good read!

59. The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry – A very interesting book I read in one night. Learn how to test for psychopaths and why they might be some of the leaders in the business and political community. Fun read by the same guy that wrote Men Who Stare at Goats. Fascinating!

60. The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living – Fantastic book, highly recommended.

61. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson. A great book with a lot of great examples, I learned a lot!

62. Super Crunchers – A decent book about all the metrics and crunching we are doing now.

63. Corporate Canaries: Avoid Business Disasters with a Coal Miner’s Secrets – A fantastic book by a guy I like, good stuff.

July

64. 65. 66. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest – I started reading these on Friday at the beach, it is now Sunday and I’m done with all 3. They are fucking fantastic, it is like someone combined the best of Law and Order SVU with hacking. Just fantastic writing, great plot lines, and the best thrillers I’ve read in a really long time. Usually I find books this popular suspect but awesome to see people appreciating something so good.

67. Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All Night Runner – Awesome book that I read in a few hours cause I just couldn’t put it down!

68. Rule 34 by Charles Stross – I was really looking forward to this one as one of his past books was just amazing. This one was absolute suck though. No central characters, and most of the characters were just depressing hunks of skin. Plus it seemed to even lack a central theme. Super super disappointed.

69. Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy: Heir to the Empire: Star Wars Volume 1 – The gold standard of star wars books, I’ve read it before but decided to exp the books again. As awesome as always, highly recommended.

70. Robopocalypse – Awesome book! All told from a survivor of the robot wars of the future, destined to be shot into a movie, highly entertaining and an interesting look at everything.

71. 72. 73. Heir to the Empire, Star Wars: The Thawn Trilogy: Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command. The best of the series that follows what happens after Return of the Jedi. Amazing amazing books that need to be movies, and not the shit they made with 1, 2, and 3.

74. Spin – A solid science fiction book about a mysterious enclosure that sets upon earth and regulates our planet’s eco system. But also speeds up time space around earth… Great book! I’m not sure if I will read the sequel but I might.

75. The Lies of Locke Lamora – An awesome book and one of the best fantasy books this year. It basically tells the story of a thief and how he came to be, while telling the story of their current planned heist. Really well done and on my way to order the sequel.

76. Red Seas Under Red Skies – The sequel to number 75 and a great book. It was a little weird that he used the same story telling method of intertwining stories from different times in the story but oh well. I’ll probably pick up the next one when it comes out.

77. Leviathan Wakes – A scifi mystery, very good and I’m looking for the sequel now. It’s about a et intelligience that was meant to be sent to earth billions of years ago but got stuck on Saturn, and then earth/mars finding it… Space opera genre.

78. Odyssey One – A classic huge space opera book, good stuff, a little slow at times and cliche but still enjoyable. I’ll probably pick up the sequel when it comes out later. Basic premise is that faster then light travel is discovered, they build one ship, and on their first mission find human colonies other places…

79. Giants Lost Civilizations: 1 – An interesting book about some of the stories about fallen angels, their children, and the men who roamed the lands at that time. Biblical based, I think I’ll grab the next one but I’m not sure as it was pretty short and basic.

80. 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America. Not a bad book, some interesting stuff but also pretty out there. Just to give you a glimpse, part of the book is about the USA selling China LA.

81. The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean. This was an awesome awesome book and one of the best so far this year. This is about big wave surfing and big big wave surfing, amazing amazing read and loved it!

August

82. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – I reread this in one day, just amazing amazing books, some of the best I’ve ever read. I’m so sad the story is over.

83. Run!: 26.2 Stories of Blisters and Bliss – Not a bad book but kinda weird, just some random stories and I don’t think I knew what I was getting into. I wouldn’t recommend, only about 4 to 10 of the stories were of use unless you just wanted to learn about Dean. I was more looking for training and running stories.

84. Machine Man – A great sci fi book about a person trying to become a machine. Entertaining read!

September

85. Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life – A very interesting book by an awesome writer. Hard to put down while at the same time annoying because he is afraid of everything. Basically about Neil’s 7 year quest to get a second passport and survive if society breaks down. It has a great ending though, and I really like what he ended up becoming.

86. 87. and 88. Hounded, Hexed, and Hammered. Awesome fun books I highly recommend! Basically imagine all the religions and gods of the world do exist, on multiple planes, with earth being a place they can all jump into. This follow a very cool 1000 year old Druid character living in Arizona and having gods mess with him.

89. and 90. Siege of Titan – Star Crusaders Book 1 and Tears of Kerberos. Books 1 and 2, they were ok but couldn’t go further as just were not good enough.

91. Wired – An ok book about splicing stuff into your DNA to live forever, or get super smart. Really really stupid frustrating ending, why do people think you can just have a complete 180 and the lead character realizes everything in one moment. Stupid.

92. Washington: The Making of the American Capital – Good book, very very interesting especially how the decision to put DC where it is was because of slavery.

92. The Plain Man – I loved the previous 2 books but this one was just not great, I couldn’t visualize anything, the writing was hectic, and the characters not reintroduced very well. Plus just a very hectic confusing plot that wasn’t laid out well.

October

93. The Forever War – A decent read and good sci fi book. About a war between planets, some cool time concepts and so on.

94. Horns: A Novel – This was a horror book and I tried it as I heard good thing but it sucked. Just a long horrific story with a shitty ending. Avoid.

95. Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies: Compendium Monstrum – Short and fun!

96, 97, 98, 99. The Sharing Knife Beguilement, Legacy, Sharing Knife, and Horizon. An amazing fantasy series that is heavy on the romance that I highly recommend. Best thing I’ve read in a while.

100. Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. I’m glad this book was my 100th book this year, it was fantastic and I’m a huge fan of Jim Collins (read his last book last year). This stuff is pure gold in what it makes you think about. Highly recommended.

101. The Spirit Ring – A good book by an author I like, a short one and not too bad, if you only read 10 books this year skip this one as the sharing knife series was better. Fantasy, some cool concepts.

102. The Hallowed Hunt – Another book by Lois, unfortuntly I didn’t know this one was 3 in a series of 3, which explains why I felt lost. Seems decent but still couldn’t get a clear vision of it all. Fantasy with some very cool concepts.

103. Reamde: A Novel – Not a bad cyber thriller, fun read but only if you like some weak hacking/mmopg gold smuggle stuff.

Went on vacation so read all the below on a beach!

104. The Black Prism – A great fantasy book with a light based magic system, highly recommended and one of the best I’ve read this year. I can’t wait for the next one to come out.

105. Camoflage – This was a really cool science fiction book about two aliens that landed here, are immortal basically and how they view humanity and proceed through time. Good read and very different from anything else I’ve ever read.

106. The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope – What an amazing man with the luck of timing, this book was fantastic and I hope we get another FDR soon so we can rewrite the social contract a bit more.

107. Declare – A religious thriller involving fallen angels which I find fascinating. This book was decent, a little too much jump but still very entertaining.

108. Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World – A good book but a bit too full of fear for me.

109. In Great Waters – A book about merman, mer people, and so on. Not too bad but wouldn’t recommend it.

110. Brazil on the Rise – Fantastic book that covered a wide range of the growth Brazil has exp, as well as history. Well written.

111. Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile – I’ve been picking up books on Latin American when I can as I plan my trip. This was an interesting one, I leaned a lot about Chile!

112. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men – Wow! Super super interesting, I’m going to write a full post on this one.

113. The Gunslinger – Book 1 of the Dark Tower – Unfortunately I didn’t like it, couldn’t get a clear view of what was going on from the writing.

114. Taming Fire Just couldn’t get into it, not reading the sequel. It was just a plain fantasy book and didn’t feel like much really happened. Plus if anyone can get strong by infusing themselves with Dragon Blood why wouldn’t it sell like hot cakes on the market.

115. Moneyball – The movie is fantastic too and I highly recommend this book to anyone, even if you don’t care about baseball. Just a really interesting approach to solving a problem.

116. Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think – A thought provoking book but one that I think skipped a lot of huge problems. I also didn’t mesh with the writing style, I think this type of book is better left to an expat who has lived in the country and has real examples and not case study bits of wisdom…

117. The Kinshield Legacy Book 1 – A fantasy book, it was fun but also frustrating. Not reading the next one.

118. Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big – An awesome book!

119. Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries – Another good one, bit wordy with some weird examples but still solid.

120. Sun of Suns – A cool concept for a steampunk style universe but the writing style was not clear enough. Was like trying to watch a movie with everything blurry.

121. Just Run – A short incredibly simple thriller. No point in reading it, they survive. And they don’t seem to run much, mostly driving. Tons of plot holes too.

122. The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America’s Most Troubled Companies – A good read about an interesting man.

123. The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed – An awesome book and one I hope to read again in a few years, very helpful!

124. Blood of Requiem – A cool concept, I mean who doesn’t want to turn into a dragon? That said it was not a great book and frustrating with plot holes or lack of explanation on why Dragons can kill so many griffins. Not reading the sequel.

*Vacation over here. So I managed to read a lot of books!

November
*None, was slowly reading a few and just taking a break after the crazy last month. Plus spent some time on video games and traveling.

December

125. Freedom from Command and Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service – Interesting book on a management though, how to delivery service, and loads of other stuff. More a text book, learned a lot, lots of great ideas, and need to read it 3 or 4 more times over the next couple years.

126. Business Model Generation – I’ve been working on this book for the last 8 weeks on and off, love it and one of the best business oriented books this year. A lot of this I’ve learned to do myself but the book is great in sparking new ideas, reading studies of how others have applied different business models, etc. Huge fan of what they are doing.

127. First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently – Another of the best business books I have read this year, learned a lot and will reread it often over the coming years. Super valuable!

128. Eyewitness Travel Argentina – I grab these as they have great pictures and big picture views of the countries. Plus I can usually make a list of 20 to 40 things that sound super interesting in those areas and then research them future. Good reads before you get somewhere, but not useful when you are there too much.

129. Eyewitness Travel Chile/Easter Island – Ditto on above.

130. Machu My Picchu – A short travelogue about Peru and some other places by this crazy Israeli girl. Fun read but not what I was expecting.

131. Out of Mao’s Shadow – An amazing book that I highly recommend that gives a full complete picture of China and their government, both the pros and a lot of cons. It shows how terrible corruption is, problem with rural, movements to change internal policy, and highlights a lot of amazing people who stood up to the government.

Year 2010
*111 books!

January 2010

1. Boneshaker – Fairly good story. Not fantastic but might make a good movie and cool that its placed in Seattle.

2. Freedom (TM) – This is the sequel to Daemon by Daniel Suarez and an awesome awesome scifi book. Highly recommend and both books are in my top 5 for best sci fi of the decade.

3. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson – Hilarious book about traveling in Australia and Bill’s random thoughts. My step dad recommended it and it was just great writing, I’m going to buy all his other books as soon as they release them on Kindle. I literally was laughing out loud, plus where else do you find out that Australia has 12 foot long earth worms???

4. My Life in France – Great book about Julia Child, had some nice commentary on politics between generations that I enjoyed. She had a very interesting life and the food all sounds amazing, as well as being in France to watch them rebuild.

5. Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing – Not bad, I would recommend to someone who hasn’t done a lot of modern marketing, esp in the Twitter age.

6. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – Great book, highly recommended! Humans are so weird in that we have a great ability to take an instant snapshot of something that is so useful and also analyze, the problem seems to be which we choose and how we decide on each. The conclusion one researcher reaches is that for straight forward decisions go with analysis, and with complicated multi variable problems we should trust our Gut more. Very very interesting. I also like the bit on providing screens in the court room, understanding how our brains work and tricking them to operate how we want, over the failed assumption we can change so many years of evolution and trained thin slicing.

February 2010

7. The Truth Machine – A great SciFi book on the possibility of creating a machine that could perfectly tell if anyone is lieing, the affects on civilization and a little personal story about the creator. I really enjoyed it, quick read, well price and entertaining!

8. Long After Midnight at the Niño Bien: A Yanqui’s Missteps in Argentina – A great book about the Tango and Argentina during the last financial crisis. Very interesting stuff on the history of Argentina and the Tango and just a good travel story.

And this is why I love going on vacation, I read tons of books :). I read 9 books in the last 4 days.

9. A Short History Of Nearly Everything – This book is a national treasure and should be ready by every high school or junior high student. It makes science just so awesome and awe inspiring, I love love love this book and going to be buying a lot of copys for friends. Fantastic!

10. MetaGame – A really interesting SciFi book about religion/god and a future reality where everything is structured around “games”. That doesn’t do the book description but it was a very fun book.

11. Origin – A fun book about the interesting conundrum of what do you do if you actually find the devil buried in a coffin… Part horror, part scifi… Just a fun book and I love it because nobody would publish it so the author shelved it and later released it on the Kindle, fantastic story of how the Kindle is going to revolutionize the book business!

12. Pirate Latitudes – This is a Crichton book and one they found in his notes after he died. And for good reason as its not as good as any of his others, just a fun pirate book.

13. Drive – I really liked this book and it does it’s best to explain what drive’s us after you take care of the basics and money. It isn’t all about money and it is time we adjust our system to understand that for business and for education. Great thinking book!

14. Julian Comstock – Great scifi book about the time after the fall of oil. Just a good scifi read and nothing too spectacular.

15. Wireless – A collection of short story SciFi stories by Charles Stross. This made me realize how much I dislike short stories, I’m about char development, not concepts in most cases. Good stuff but I did have to skip one story which was just too weird and not well done.

16. The Ghost Writer – Fantastic thriller and just great book! Very fun read and it is going to make a great movie!

17. Brisingr – Book 3 in a fantasy series I started reading a long time ago. This is the best one yet as I believe the author was 12 years old for the first one, he has come a far way and although they are pretty cliche it is a great concept a very fun read!

18. Outliers: The Story of Success – Pretty good book that was very thought provoking. Basically trying to debunk the notion that things happen without a multitude or reasons when it comes to people we identify as business geniuses or geniuses. Very good stuff on education I hadn’t heard before too.

19. Purple Cow By Seth Godin – Might be good if I hadn’t heard it all before, but then again I do online marketing. So this book is probably a good read if you haven’t and want to learn more about it.

20. Atrocity Archives – Just a fun scifi book where religion can be explained by science and the main character works for the department that has to keep religion and demons in check in the world. Although this is a secret so only they know that math can explain it all.

21. At The Mountain Of Madness by HP LoveCraft – A giant when you hear about SciFi, I finally had some time to read this one. It was very very very good and I can see why it blew some people’s minds back in the day. Highly recommended if you like more literary scifi than popular.

March

22. Founders At Work – Well written book about tech pioneers and how they got their companies started, challenges, and a lot more. I hope the sequel does more modern founders, book was great but I really don’t care about some of the 1970s.

23. Blood Done Sign My Name – A distributing true story about race relations in the USA and specifically on the killing of black boy in North Carolina that helped spark a more violent movement. This was written by a kid who was just a boy in the town at the time and really well written. I learned a lot, some of the more violent aspects of the movement I didn’t know about so this was a great read.

24. Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide – A very entertaining book about being a Safari Guide. Awesome stories about just things in the “bush” and I learned never to pick up snakes or run from lions. Good lessons right?

25. The Folded Knife – An awesome book that is incredibly well written about the rise to power of a very Roman leader. The book was a bit odd in that it all ended very abruptly and without much closure. But still a great book and you really feel for the character. Although the ending was like a Michael Crichton movie, short and without much thought to it.

26. Stones to Schools – A book EVERYONE should read, the sequel to 3 Cups of Tea and just an amazing story of what Greg’s charity is doing for the world and what we should be doing to change it.

27. The Gathering Storm – The 13th Wheel Of Time book and it was great, just wish it had wrapped up the series. Two more books left and I can lay this awesome series to rest. This is the first book since the death of the author Robert Jordan, I thought the new author did well and will be able to follow the spirit of his writings.

28. Give Us Credit by Alex Counts – Great book with practical examples on Yunus’ micro bank in Bangladesh and how it has worked in Chicago. Very interesting read and it is really interesting to see the effects credit can have to combat poverty, tempered by the fact banks like this fact a lot of possible problems.

29. Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen – A fantastic book (hopefully I don’t get my man code pulled for that one) and I highly recommend. A great read about a neurotic women cooking her way through Julia Child’s cookbook and just a great story about her life.

30. The Ipcress File – Written in 1965 it is a decent book but hard to follow in a few ways.

31. ReWork – A great book by the guys from 37Signals, all stuff I’ve heard before and a lot of common sense but it was very well put and good for most people to read.

April

32. Shutter Island – Good read but didn’t like the ending too much. Twisty and written to be a movie.

33. Eat, Pray, Love – I had to read it, decent book and very entertaining. Some good travel stories too.

34. Start With Why – Decent book with a great premise, one that if a lot of companies could do it would really help them in their markets I imagine. Decent read and very quick.

35. The Long Man – A fantastic book about a gun toting alchemist, I absolutely loved it and can’t wait for the next one. Just ordered the first one in non Kindle form which speaks to how good it is!

36. The Point Man – The first book in the series that was the previous book the Long Man, absolutely fantastic of magic, science, and guns. Love love love it!

37. The Apocalypse Door – Bought this on Amazon off a recommendation, not a very good book. Plot doesn’t really make sense, characters are one dimensional, and book is boring. Plus the action scenes are just confusing and badly written.

38, 39, and 40. The Deed Of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. A fantastic book that is actually 3 books bundled into one big one since they have been published for some years. I strongly recommend you read this, great character and great story telling! One of the best fantasy books I have read since Wheel Of Time.

41. The Prince Of The Marshes – A great book on someone who was basically a governor for a few years in Iraq for the British during the transition period. Very interesting and not terribly optimistic.

42. The Coming Population Crash – A fantastic book on the mistakes we have made with Eugenics and some of our false predictions that we are all going to die. Plus some great insights into the future in terms of a population that will get very large and then start getting smaller as people have less kids. Highly recommended and I learned a lot!

May

43. King Solomon’s Mines – Great book, a classic story!

44. Relentless – The Lost Fleet Book 5 – A great series I’ve been working through, just a solid fun space Sci Fi series and its really starting to get good as they finally made it back to their home sector and now can face a bigger challenge.

45. The Ark: A Novel by Boyd Morrison – A solid junky fun action novel with a religious twist (which I love). Good stuff and I like it even more because the author was discovered after releasing his book through the Kindle, then he was signed to a publisher. Cool stuff!

46. The Quiet American by Graham Greene – A great book that I really enjoyed, I highly recommend it! About a British journalist, an American “agent”, and a woman in the early phases of Vietnam. For me it just emphasized the failure of American foreign policy during that period and over the last 60 years since WW2, mostly in our inability to look for long term solutions that require patience.

June

47. The Lost Fleet: Victorious – Book 6 of a 6 book series, it ended well and was a great read. Hope there are more with same characters as really want to know what happens after.

48 and 49. Right Ascension and Declination by David Derrico. Solid adventure science fiction, space battles, alien invaders, really entertaining! Good vacation reads!

50. Space Prison, The Survivors – A fantastic psch story mixed in with some scifi, a quick fun read!

51. The Martian General’s Daughter – Not a great book but interesting twist to take Roman history and play it out in space. Ok read but not recommended as a bit slow and seemed lost to produce any excitement.

52. War by Sebastian Junger. This is one of the most amazing books I have read in the last 5 years and is a must read. It is wonderfully written and shows what drives the soldiers in the worst position in Afghanistan and what they encounter from day to day. Both telling the story of the men there, and trying to figure out how people survive those levels of stress and adrenaline. So good I’m going to order a few copies to send to my family.

53. My Father, the Captain: My Life With Jacques Cousteau – A great book about an amazing man, written by his son. I might grab another version just to learn more about the time diving and less him, but great read!

54, 55, 56. Book 1, 2 and 3 of one of the best fantasy series I’ve read in a long time. The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and Last Argument of Kings. The first book started a bit slow but the next thing I know I’m in love with the characters, and unlike a lot of books in this genre, they are deeply flawed, funny, and human. The ending is a bit dark, but then so is humanity.

57. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson – A well written book on who Shakespeare was and debunking a lot of bad info out there. We really don’t know much about him. Best part of this book was just what it was like to live in that age, pretty crazy with all the plagues and so on. Glad I don’t live then.

58. Starship: Mutiny by Mike Resnick. Book 1 in a 5 part series, just a good fun entertaining book. Saving the other 4 for when I get to a beach! Hoping to get to a more serious book soon but these have been very relaxing!

59. Lamentation by Ken Scholes – A fantasy book with a lot of politics, strategy and interesting universe. Pretty good for his first book, going to grab the second!

60. Dominant Species – A really good mystery sci fi book, plus throw in some evolution and some other crazy stuff. Quick fun read…

July

61. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. A serious book I found at the house I’m staying and was really really surprised how amazing it was. I don’t see how anyone could think this is his worst book as it was about the living conditions of depression era England and then an analysis of the class structure. Very very interesting especially his worries about the growth of fascism which at the time had just taken hold in Germany. Highly recommended read! I’m order his down and out one as well since it was so good.

62. Inca Gold by Clive Cussler – I haven’t read this in a few years and picked it up used to read in South Africa, great book once again with a character that is a mash between Bond, a marine engineer, and just cool. Very entertaining story too.

63. Guerra by Jason Webster. A very well written book from someone who has been living in Spain for 10+ years and who starts learning about the Spanish Civil War. This book is half history, half him traveling in modern day Spain to sites most of the country would rather forget. I learned a ton about the Spanish Civil War that just blew my mind, for some reason we never touched on it in high school or college. Highly recommended! I’m going to grab his two other books on Spain too as he is a great writer.

64. Treasure by Clive Cussler. I hadn’t read this one in a long time so I grabbed a cheap copy and it is one of his best works. Just a fun adventure story about finding what one man salvaged from the library of Alexander. Great stuff!

65. Crusader Gold by David Gibbins. Absolute shit, hard to read, hard to follow the plot, don’t read this book. I only finished it because I have a problem giving up on a story.

66. Witchfinders: A Seventeeth Century English Trajedy – A really crazy book on the history of the Witch trials of the 17th century in England. Very interesting, and even scarier when you find out how many people are killed for being witches in Africa last year…

67. 68. The Warded Man and The Desert Spear by Peter Brett. An amazing series and I can’t wait for the third one! Maybe the best SciFi series I have read this year and very very original. It shifts around at first between the three major characters but as the strings come together it makes a lot more sense!

69. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. A fantastic book by the guy that built the culture around Zappos, I learned a lot from this book and highly recommend it for anyone in the service industry (or biz in general).

70. Speak Human: Outmarket the Big Guys by Getting Personal – A fantastic book is one of the best 2.0 marketing books I’ve read, highly recommended and good to see what we have been doing at Site5 is recommended. Plus learned a few new tricks!

71. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding – I learned a lot from this book, a lot of good nugget of information. But don’t read it if you are not super into marketing, how to build a really big brand in a segment, and that junk, as you might get bored.

72. Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets Of Building A Five Star Customer Service Organization – Amazing stuff, really well written and very very interesting. Like the fact that at high end hotels every employee is given $2,000 to make sure customers are made happy, just by giving this responsibility they don’t spend it but they do take the extra step.

73. Shit My Dad Says – A hilarious book and a good one for a fun read, guy can actually write too.

August

74. The King’s Coat – A fun adventure book based on a little bit of historical action and mostly around the character Alan Lewrie. Pretty good and I might try book two.

75. What Works In Girls’ Education – A great book I found off a reference in another, very interesting collection of summaries on studies basically showing that aid/school/etc to women as a much larger benefit to society.

76. Smart Pricing: How Google, Priceline, and Leading Businesses Use Pricing Innovation for Profitability – A super detailed look at pricing and what it should allow for in a business. Great read and some really amazing stories from history and modern times. Should help you come up with some great ideas of course.

77. Starship Pirate Book 2 – Fun fun fun, and with a title like this how can’t it be amazing? Can’t wait for book 3 and 4. Basically a story of a man who mutinies, has a ship, becomes a pirate, a mercenary, and then starts a rebellion.

78. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves – A fantastic book and highly recommended, shows a nice history of how pessimism and this constant fear of change have produced exaggerations time and time again. If you get tired of hearing how global warming is unstoppable, or how we won’t have any water in years, or how civilization is crumbling read this book. Amazing to hear the same things being said over history.

79. and 80.0 Starship: Mercenary and Starship Rebel by Mike Resnick. Just a great fun space action series about a brilliant captain and his eventual rise from a mutineer to pirate to mercenary to rebel etc. I believe there are two more books in the series and I’m looking forward to them!

81. Fagship – Starship book 5 – The last in a series of 5 books, highly entertaining and a great read. Cheers to Captain Cole and his crew :).

September

82. Radical Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online – This should be required reading in junior high or high school, a great in depth explanation of how online is your reputation as this day in age. A lot of stuff I already knew but great read and very solid book, highly recommended if this isn’t your ball game.

83. The French Admiral – A good book and the series is getting better, the main charterer is really developing and turning less one sided. I think I might even pick up the next one. This is basically about british sea warfare during the american revolution and after. I learned some nasty things Americans did to each other during that war, a lot of stuff they leave out of history class. In many ways it was the first civil war.

84. Legion of the Lost: The True Experience of An American in the French Foreign Legion – A very cool book and I enjoyed it tremendously. I really wanted to join the legion when I was younger, nice to read about someone who did. Probably good I didn’t.

85. 86. 87. Mistborn: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages. This is an awesome 3 book fantasy series that is different then a lot of what I have read. One of the best reads this year and as good as any of the previous I’ve raved about. I’ve found that finding sites that list the top fantasy books of the last few years is pointing me towards some amazing books!

88. Good Boss, Bad Boss – A good book and hopefully I learned a lot, some really scary stories about psycho bosses.

89. Canticle – Book 2 in a series I like, it gets a little confusing sometimes but still a very good book. Quite different then a lot of fantasy, more steam punk but still with magic. A lot of good internal politics though.

90. The Dervish House by Ian McDonald – A really cool look at the future of nano technology inside a book that is 1/3rd thriller, 1/3rd science fiction, and 1/3rd travelogue. It takes place in Istanbul which was fun since I’ve been there a few times.

91. Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay – The BEST historical fiction book I’ve ever read. It takes place in China during the 9th dynasty and during some very interesting times. Highly recommended, Guy Gavriel Kay can write.

92. Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory – A great book from a journalist I’m loving more and more, such a great writer! It basically tells a lot of stories about change in China over the last decade through road trips the author takes around the country. I’m reading one of his other books next.

93. Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time In China – Another great book from Peter Hessler about China through the last ten years. Really interesting stuff on some of the ethnic minorities and lots more.

94. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell – A crazy book that spans a lot of different subjects along with common sense. Decent read but I’d flip through it to make sure the different reports are up your alley.

October

95. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not The French. The title of this book sounds odd but this is ONE OF THE FIVE BEST BOOKS I’ve read this year and that is saying a lot. I learned so much about France and the French that it literally blew my mind. Amazing amazing book and I wrote a small review on the blog here.

96. Wolfen by Whitley Strieber. Remember how you used to sleep really well at night? That was before you read this book… I read this book when I was 13 as my dad recommended it, scariest book i’ve ever read and even after reading it again it is still scary as frack. This book is awesome, I really would love to see a movie about this or even a suspense game on XBox. I also realize that my love of books and stories that take myth and make it real started when I was very young (wolfen are a realistic explanation of the stories about werewolves).

97. The Other Side Of Russia: A Slice of Life In Siberia and the Russian Far East – I bought a lot of books on Russia lately and this is the first I finished. This basically follows two professors doing one of the earliest campus exchanges between a few Russian universities in Siberia, and the University of Maryland. This book covers her day to day and is very interesting to see what people put up with. I really liked her stories about train travel through Siberia, and how cold it got when the power would go out. I recommend this one if you want to see more of what Russian Siberia is like.

98. The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert Redick. Book one in a new series I’ve started, pretty entertaining so far but nothing that knocks my socks off yet. So far it’s been a lot of politics, a little magic, and the one cool thing is 90% of it takes place on this giant ship.

99. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – I think I need to take some stats classes after reading this book. Good book but pretty dense, and basically to summarize it is super hard to predict the unpredictable. So when you think your fancy new economic system is full proof just remember it probably can’t account for X super rare event. And we should design everything with the belief there are going to be a crisis and what is important is remembering that and preparing.

November

100. Towers of Midnight – Book 13 in the Wheel of Time Series, wow great book and man I can’t wait for things to wrap up in book 14. Things are finally coming together, the next book is going to be intense. Props to the new writer as he is doing a great job following Robert Jordan’s style.

101. The Ruling Sea – Robert Redick. A sequel to a book I’ve been reading above. It is decent but not feeling a whole lot for the charecters which is odd considering I’ve read 700+ pages on them. One more book in the series so going to finish it as it does have a pretty interesting plot.

102. The Greyfriar – I loved this book and can’t wait for more. The premise is that in the 1870s vampires emerge from the north and conquer civilization and push humanity down towards the equator where vampires can’t stand the head. Humanity has slowly rebuilt and focused on technology and now they are ready to take back their homeland. Think steampunk mixed with vampires and politics. Good stuff with a lot of romeo and juliet plot stuff mixed in.

December

103. Built To Last By Jim Collins – This is the single best business book I have read in a long time, I highly recommend anyone starting a company, wanting to understand how companies last, and anyone wanting to understand how great companies become great must read this. I can not say enough good things about this book, I bookmarked about 50 pages to come back to in this book and I’m going to reread it every few years. Amazing, amazing!

104. Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel. Wow, what absolute shit, like imagine the worst bond book with bad writing. I almost didn’t finish it but pushed through, mind numbingly stupid plot. I can’t believe I paid $13 bucks for this terrible terrible book (plus it was long).

105. 106. The Hunger Games
and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. Fantastic books and I’m about to finish the third tonight as I can’t put them down. If you have ever seen the Japanese movie Battle Royale, imagine that, but with a dictatorship forcing children from districts to fight and the rumors of an uprising slowly building in the background. Great writing too!

107. Mockingjay – By Suzanne Collins and the last in the Hunger Games series. A great ending if not a little bit distraught, although I’m starting to like books like this going on a little darker path. You get to know the characters so well its hard to see what they go through, but you like them so much you can’t help but read on. Great series and I highly recommend it.

108. Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug. I was expecting some more info on UI and this was mostly on how to test it with groups. Pretty boring and a disappointment as don’t really need to know any of this right now.

109. The Cracked Bell: America and the Afflictions of Liberty – What a great book! Basically a British guy spends a long time traveling around the USA and gives his perspective on our beliefs, actions, politics and so on from a foreign point of view. Then in the last chapter he compares that to what the British believe and similarities and differences. Very interesting!

110. Upstart Start-Ups!: How 34 Young Entrepreneurs Overcame Youth, Inexperience, and Lack of Money to Create Thriving Businesses. – Not a bad book, mostly centered around problems and then they each give a brief page on how they got past that, or why it wasn’t a problem, etc. More like a bunch of case studies, somewhat useful.

111. Entangled by Graham Hancock – I’ve been a fan of Hancock’s other writings for a while, I found them interesting. This is his first fiction book and it was a good read, the characters need some more development maybe but overall very very entertaining. I look forward to the second book.

New project as I start to post these from travels, all from SpeetTest.net.

1. Washington DC, USA – 8-23-2011. 19 down / 4 up.

2. Panama City, Panama – 12-17-2011 . 3.4 down / 0.55 up.
*3G USB Stick on Mac (Digicel)

3. Volcan, Panama – 12-18-2011. 2.12 down / 1 up.
*3G USB Stick on Mac (Digicel)

4. Volcan Panama – 12-19-2011. 1.75 down / 0.43 up.
*DSL connection, plan is a 2MB Down, 512Up so not too bad.

5. Panama City, Panama – 12-29-2011. 1.73 down / 0.43 up.
*Rented apartment, cable and wireless panama. They must only pay for the most basic.

6. Cusco, Peru – 1-6-2012. 1.26 down / 0.07 up.
*Rented apartment, shared wifi, not sure on source.

7. Cusco, Peru – 1-7-2012. 0.73 down / 0.15 up. Got it up to 1.7 down / 0.34 up.
*Claro 3G modem I bought. Not impressed in terms of speed, hopefully it can do voice and going to mess with it some more and put it in my unlocked 3g modem… No luck yet. 3 weeks later finally figure out that Claro Peru is dumb and doesn’t know what they are doing. After a lot of hacking finally figured out correct settings, tweaked apple drivers, etc etc and went from:

to

*Total fail by Claro Peru. Their 3g modem defaults to edge and the drivers are utter shit, you have to download mac drivers to get it working high speed.

8. Mendoza, Argentina – 2-24-2012. 1.85 down / 0.59 up.

9. I was sharing Wifi in Buenos Aires, I forgot to post it, it was fast though. Although sometime’s some weird routes to the USA. Can’t believe I forgot to post but it was at least 6MB, tons of bandwidth ads around the city.

10. Santiago, Chile. Cable I believe. 6.33 down / 0.73 up.

11. Melbourne, VodaPhone PocketWifi connect to 3G Network, 5 bars. 3 down / 1.5 up.

12. Melbourne, TPG Unlimited plan, DSL. (Not bad). 15 down / 0.84 up.

13. Bali, Indonesia, Unknown but enough to do voice and work. Rented House. 0.51 down / 0.09 up.

14. Auckland, New Zealand Huawei 3G device off local provider. Freaking amazing! 14.65 down / 1.6 up.

15. Hong Kong – Rented apartment so not sure what they have. 3.44 down / 0.88 up.
.
*Update – Turns out it is a 3g modem, died due to usage cap but they fixed it. Still a bit slow so I grabbed a backup.

16. Grabbed a Three Hong Kong sim card to use, only $50 bucks total for a month’s worth + a card for my phone as well. Fast speeds off my modem too. 13.6 down / 2.26 up.

17. Hah, and I come back to the USA and get a 3g card to put in my 3g modem, and speeds are so slow, after 45 minutes on a support call and teaching a guy about 3 modems I finally get it working but still super super slow and shitty. Sucks to go around the world and have such terrible performance back in the USA… 2.3 down / 0.12 up.

From Austin Texas Downtown…

and:

And lots more huge variation and terrible ping.

18. Cable Internet – Split Croatia June 2013. 11 down / 1.19 up.

19. Hotel In Zagreb Croatia 2013. 1 down / 0.94 up.

20. Vodaphone 3G through Otelo. July 2013. 0.61 down / 0.55 up.

*pretty shitty.

21. Internet at apartment in Freiburg. July/Aug 2013. 9.7 down / 0.83 up.

22. Wifi at T-Mobile Telekom hotspot, grabbed a 30 day pass as they are everywhere and makes it easier to get a high speed connection at cafes. I’m not sure I could do voice, but its fine for focused work which is what I do at cafes. 1.16 down / 0.05 up.

23. Brasov Romania – Sep 2013 – Vodaphone 3g with my little wireless modem, hilarious that after Germany was so terrible, and the USA so terrible at 3g and not even being able to connect I’m finally in a country with fast connections. Very fast and cheap. 8 down / 1.75 up.

24. Amsterdam, Netherlands – Oct 2013 – KPN and T-Mobile. I have NO idea how you can have such amazing bike paths, well run city, and equality and yet the 3g is the WORST IN THE FREAKING WORLD. Unusable on my 3g modem on T-Mobile, an the KPN wifi hotspot was even worse. The hotel uses KPN and wish we had tested before using it. 0.29 down / 0.02 up.

Crazy crazy crazy.

25. Seville Spain – Oct 2013. Fantastic quality. 8 down / 3.5 up.

26. London, England – Nov 2013. Amazing. 92 down / 12 up.

27. Fayetteville, AR – Jan 2014. Awesome.10 down / 13 up.
After I couldn’t even work off broken Cox internet I switched to a 4g modem from AT&T. Awesome amazing, sweet!

28. Fayetteville, AR – Mar 2014. Awesome, and expensive from Cox :). I wish they were not a monopoly. 100 down / 22 up.

29. Paris, France – Feb 2015. Little place in paris for a week with lindsey. 25 down / 1 up.

30. Paris, France – Feb 2015. Moxx Internet for travelers in France, a pretty cool little 4g item that you rent online and they deliver it to your hotel along with a prepackaged envelope to send back. A little trouble during pickup but pretty excited, full review coming soon. 36 down / 30 up.

31. Vienna, Austria – Oct 2015. Unlocked 4g modem + A1. 20 down / 10 up.

32. Vienna Austria – Oct 2015. Apartment’s internet, lower down package but still good. 21 down / 2 up.

33. Denver, Colorado, USA – March 2016. Temp condo, literally the worst internet I’ve had in maybe 5 years. Sometimes the ping goes to 400ms during the day. CenturyLink DSL, it is extra funny as their main office is outside my window… Massive packet loss during peak times too. 12 down / 0.75 up.

34. Boulder, Colorado, USA – May 2016. Temp apartment. Freaking awesome, and such an improvement after going through multiple apartments with CenturyLink and it being TERRIBLE. CenturyLink took over a company I used to use for internet infrastructure and it is not surprising as they fucked that company up too. 153 down / 12 up.

35. Boulder, Colorado, USA – July 2016. Our new place, nice to be somewhere with fast internet :). I still wish they would get Fiber and GB… 298 down / 30 up.

36. Strasbourg, France – June 2017. Month-long break is here, slow net but works ok and not having to work really since my job is over :). 12 down / 0.67 up.

37. St. Maartin. – July 2017. 2-week vacation. It seems to work but I’ll be curious how video conference stuff works on it :). 2.2 down, .65 up.

38. Bejing China – November 2017. 3 week trip with my dad. The great firewall obviously sucks and makes life very hard for people working here. But here is the results without the VPN on from our hotel. 18 down / 19 up.

39. Bugibba Malta – August 2018. 3 week trip with family from an apartment here. Nice speed! 97 down / 6 up, not bad!

39. Valencia, Spain – February 2019. 2 month trip with family from an apartment here. Really fast, super impressed! 101 down / 103 up!

40. Valencia, Spain – November 2019. AirBNB for a few days and feels fast!

41. Mellieha, Malta – November 2019. From a 4G modem and Spanish Orange connection.

42. Valencia, Spain – December 2019. Fiber, Orange, 600/600. My new apartment!

43. Viseu, Portugal – November 2020. Cable, NOS, 500MB / Something. Our new rental apartment. 5G Router via laptop in back room.

44. Vise, Portugal – January 2020. Fiber, NOS, 1Gig. My new Office. Via wifi though.

45. So far on our Euro road trip for 2022 we have had some of the worst internet speeds I’ve seen in 15 years. In Montepellier France I was getting 2.5MB down and timing out. The host claimed it was due to city work, but was happening all week. In Karlsruhe, it was better, but not great. And, in Dusseldorf Germany (a huge city). I can’t even run a test as it is timing out. So terrible, come on Germany!

*It couldn’t even load speed test or fast.com many times due to timeouts.

**My portable modem is 20x faster, this is insane.

 

 

 

I spent Thursday to Sunday in Miami on South Beach and had a great time, the conference was well done and they had some great speakers! I was also impressed with South Beach, although not that I could ever live there. Unless I get an operation that infuses me with three popped collars, hair gel, fist pumping, non stop base thumping, and general douchery. I should note it did have great beaches and lots of normal people.

It also made me realize I am super burned out and need a vacation to let my mind rest. I ended up skipping the conference parties just because I needed too and catching up on reading and just nothingness. The weather was amazing, a solid 80 degrees and a gorgeous boardwalk to run on. I ran on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I did my longest run in a while with 12 miles. I’m doing a marathon training schedule Apey gave me, and going to see about a marathon later this summer I think.

Oh and Cuban food and coffee is awesome. I already knew this from my time living in Boca Raton, but I really miss cheap delicious Cuban food…

I read 4 books and I highly recommend this book that talks about factory girls in China and was just an amazing story (and very well written). Talk about hustlers, I can’t wait to see what those girls do over the next 40 years with their kids and careers. I can’t imagine leaving town at 16 to get a job and navigate such a crazy world, what an adventure!

Please pardon any spelling mistakes, I’m super tired. I’ve actually been getting up while I was there at 7am or 8am to run in the mornings or for the conference.

I finished the challenge to read 100 books in 2010 and figured I would do a list of recommended books out of all of them. I’m going to do the challenge again this year, it was nice to write little mini reviews and have something remind me to read.

5 Best Fantasy Books + Historical Fiction
*I’m combining these as there are a few that blur the lines.

1. The Warded Man series by Peter Brett. The third book is due to be released soon and the story places you in a world much like our own (perhaps ours many years from now) where demons rise out of the ground and towns have to be protected by complex wards. This story follows a very driven individual who wants to discover how to use the wards to go on the offensive and reclaim the world from the demons that emerge at night. Well written and fascinating world.

2. The Blade Itself series by Joe Abercrombie (3 books). One of the most unique fantasy novels I’ve ever read, it starts off normal but very quickly you realize that this is a dark series with a very unique outlook and sense of humor. I highly recommend it!

3. The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. The books place you in a world of revolution where some individuals can burn metals they ingest to give themselves super powers. Highly recommend, fantastic writer, and a very balanced system of powers.

4. The Long Man and The Point Man by Steven Englehart. I can’t wait for more of these, imagine that James Bond loves rock music, was in Vietnam, and also that alchemy and magic are real (and well explained) and he can live forever and so on. The universe is amazing, and the writing is fantastic.

5. Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. I love historical fiction and this is one of the best novels I have read in that genre. Everything takes place in the 9th dynasty of China and reading it is like picking up pure crack, very hard to stop.

Runner UP: The Deed Of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. A old school three book fantasy series which is a little slow to get started but sucks you into a fantastic story and world. Reminds me a lot of wheel of time. And also a mention to The Hunger Games series which is also fantastic.

3 Best Sci Fi Books

1. The Truth Machine. Imagine that there is a machine that can tell if anyone is lying, what affect would that have civilization. Great book!

2. Freedom by Daniel Suarez. This is the sequel to one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read Daemon. If you want to glimpse the future pick up these books.

3. The Lost Fleet series of 6 books by Jack Campbell. A classic old school space adventure, a quick fun read!

3 Best Business Books

1. Build To Last by Jim Collins. A lot of people have mentioned this book and I am happy to say it was a fantastic book. I have already digested through third parties and my own goals a lot of what he talks about, but this book is a must read for anyone trying to build a company or business. My copy has bookmarks every other page and I had to pause to write notes on my iPhone every few pages.

2. Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization by two authors. Since I manage a customer service company this was a great read and it really generated a lot of ideas. Plus I think over the coming years with FaceBook and twitter customer service is going to become more and more important to any organization.

3. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. A great book that gave me a lot of ideas on how to improve our customer service. Tony did a nice job on this book and it spawned pages of ideas.

3 Best Non Fiction Books

1. War by Sebastian Junger – This is a must read for everyone, Sebastian lived with a platoon of soldiers in one of the most violent areas of Afghanistan. If you want to know what soldiers go through in combat read this. I haven’t seen the documentary Restrepo which is based on this but I would imagine that would also be good to watch.

2. The Coming Population Crash by Fred Pearce. A fantastic book that examines the growth of the world’s population and what we have done in the past and the impact of future growth. Great book and it will be an interesting 20 years with some of the demographics changes. I agree with him that we are going to reach a max population point in the next 50 years and then things will stabilize.

3. My Father, the Captain: My Life With Jacques Cousteau. I love Jacques Cousteau and found this a fascinating read about a really impressive character.

3 Best Travel / Learn About Other Countries Books

1. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not The French. One of the most fascinating books I’ve read in the last few years. France has an amazing social and political system and this book explains it from a micro and macro level with writing that is easy to digest. Read my full review of this book here. I learned so much.

2. Peter Hessler clinches second this year with Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time In China and Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory

3. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. Bill is one of the funniest amazing writers I’ve ever come across. I’ve read a few of his books and plan to read them all but this one clinches the bronce this year. The book is hilarious while showing you Australia. Like did you know that Australia has 12 foot long earth worms? Probably not, Bill Bryson fixes that lack of knowledge. Also check out A Short History Of Nearly Everything, I wish I had that in college.

Runner Up: Julia Child’s My Life In France. Not only is she a fascinating person who I admire, but she also shows you what France was like after WW2 as well as American politics. What I saw was not something history has shown from such a personal level (especially some of the anti communist McCarthy era politics they went through).

Where Have I Been In The World?

Total Countries (In rough order of visited)

1. USA
2. Mexico
3. Germany
4. Turkey
5. St. Lucia
6. Ireland
7. United Kingdom
8. Spain
9. France
10. The Netherlands
11. Egypt
12. Morocco
13. Belize
14. Kuwait
15. Thailand
16. Singapore
17. Taiwan
18. Greece
19. Canada
20. Japan
21. Italy
22. Vatican City
23. South Africa
24. St. Maartin
25. Bulgaria
26. Panama
27. Costa Rica – Just a day…
29. Peru
29. Argentina
30. Chile
31. Australia (Tasmania is amazing!)
32. Indonesia (Bali)
33. Malaysia
34. New Zealand
35. China (Hong Kong)
36. Croatia
37. Serbia
38. Bosnia
39. Portugal
40. Czech Republic (Prague)
41. Monaco
42. Switzerland
43. Austria
44. Hungry
45. China (Mainland trip with my dad!)
46. Malta
47. Slovenia
48.

Places I’ve Lived (6 months or longer)
– In the USA: Fayetteville (Arkansas), Boca Raton (Florida), Denver (Colorado), Washington D.C., Boulder (Colorado) + born in Texas (when I was very lil).
– Dublin, Ireland (6 months + many return trips)
– Cairo, Egypt (1 year)
– Melbourne, Australia (1 year)
– Valencia, Spain (Starting Nov 2019!)
– Viseu, Portugal (Started Nov 2020)

Places I’ve been to for a month or more to explore (some 3 months)…
– Turkey
– United Kingdom (Essex)
– Thailand
– Japan
– South Africa (Cape Town)
– Panama
– Peru (Cusco)
– Argentina (BA, Mendoza, Patagonia)
– Chile (Santiago)
– Croatia (Split)
– Freiburg, Germany (BlackForest)
– Spain (Walking Silver Route)
– Edinburgh, Scotland/UK (Edinburgh)
– Spain/Portugal (All over country with Lindsey!)
– Nice, France (With Lindsey!)
– Split, Croatia (With Lindsey!)
– Nottingham, UK (With Lindsey!)
– Vienna, Austria (With Lindsey!)
– Strasbourg, France (With Lindsey and Calico!)
– China (with my dad!)
– Dijon, France (with Lindsey and Calico!)
– Valencia, Spain (with Lindsey and Calico!)
– Vodnjan Croatia (with Lindsey and Calico!)
– Aix-en-provence (with Lindsey and Calico!)
– Italy Van Francignia (just me)
– France in Issigeac in the Dordogone with family. Great summer break for a month.
– France from Bordeaux to Paris to Mont St. Michel by bike (just me)

What I love most (and hate if you are there) about Italy is that they will never be any kind of economic threat to the rest of the world, ever… Why might you ask? Because if you are wanting to buy a drink at a disco, you might think oh i’ll go buy a drink, but nay, you must first buy a ticket in a very long line, and then after that you must go to another line to present that ticket for that drink, oh and they don’t really take credit cards very well, and they have nothing like a tray to hold all the orders. I’m so glad I was not born in Italy as I would have shot myself in my sober sober head years ago from frustration. I encountered this again with sandwiches etc. My only guess is they like lines, or they like to pretend they are employing twice as much people, or they like being inefficient.

I exaggerate a little as I wasn’t that frustrated (mostly cause they have a lot of cheap wine which makes you very patient), but it is very evident they will never be able to complete globally with the USA and China’s and even Japans of the world. It’s just sad to see. Beautiful country through, and at least they make great ice cream.

I am also biased as I HATE their “soccer” team, I use quote marks as their team is mostly just a bunch of pussy actors who spend their time practicing their dives. And when I start to love a head butting french man over you, you might be in trouble as a country.

Venice was absolutely amazing, most expensive place I’ve ever been though. Go for a day or two and see a dieing city and just imagine how amazing it would have been 300 or 400 years ago.