My Reading Journey Backwards and Forwards
“In truth, learning is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage in a world of disruption and complexity.” (Dan Montgomery, Start Less, Finish More)
A book about Agile Project Management by Dan Montgomery
The title is almost enough.
The title is almost enough.
I started this book July 11, 2024. It’s the story of the Hurricane that destroyed Galveston Texas on Sept 8, 1900. It killed over 6000 people.
Incredibly well written. I can’t put it down any easier than a mystery or romance novel. I have no idea where this book came from. I found it while doing my book reorganization – I don’t usually read this sort of thing but I probably will now.
It has over 9000 reviews on Amazon, 56% 5 stars – 3% 1 and 2 stars. I always read the poor reviews as I’ve noted before, several of the 1 and 2 star reviews on Amazon were on the poor condition of the book they purchased not the book itself! Though some people said they found it dry. I don’t know how. But I’m not book reviewer, just a reader.
Author – Alan Watts
I’ve done a lot of highlighting in this book, the way he explains is clear and easy to understand. I haven’t decided if I’m going to read this book a second time or find something else that he wrote.
It was published posthumously nearly 50 years after he died – so perhaps something he published?? This book was put together by his son, Mark Watts, from his lectures. He says;
I selected recordings- that flowed together beautifully-from six historic events to become the Out of Your Mind audio collection
Out of your mind, Mark watts
A book about the upside of Procrastination by Frank Portnoy
I started reading this book on April 26th and finished it on July 6th, 2024.
I found it compelling and worth the read, but it received relatively low ratings on both Amazon and Good Reads reviews—4.1 and 3.6, respectively—including seven 1-star reviews!
In both the five-star and one-star reviews, the book was compared to “How We Decide ” by Jonah Lehrer and “Why We Make Mistakes” by Joseph T. Hallinan.
June 29th 2024
Well it’s been a minute. I am dismayed as usual about a number of things.
1. My lack of progress here.
2. The fact that I have not finished writing my Zettlekasten article or attempted to publish it.
3. The fact that I still haven’t figured out if I can publish the same article here and on Medium.
Well really that’s it – not so bad I guess. In the meantime I’ve made a lot of progress on my Cash In site – that’s where I make a living so I suppose it’s okay.
On Cash In I’ve been okay with publishing on my site even though an article isn’t finished or perfect – if I can do it there I can do it here. Then I’ll figure out the Medium thing.
May 3, 2024
Well, in truth, this is a different project – but it morphed from the original.
I created a Coggle (Mind Map) pictured at the top of this article for 2024. And that led me down a rabbit hole that turned into deciding to finally re-organize my books – chronologically by decade and to write about it while I do it.
I’ve previously organized by genre and author but I think this will be pretty interesting – to me. I haven’t had a particularly remarkable life – and it’s hard for me to remember much of it – but the books seem to anchor some things in time – we’ll see.
My daughter will be interested even if no one else is:)
I was 6 in 1960, so it was probably a couple of years before I started reading the three books pictured here. They were a gift, given apparently to my sister and me by my Dad and his wife Peggy.
I say apparently because it’s been many, many years since I knew that they were given to the two of us. The inscription was in Arabian Nights, and when I saw it tonight, it was as if I was seeing it for the first time. I don’t think you can give a book to two people—certainly not if I’m one of them. In any case, my sister didn’t read at that time, and I doubt she remembers them at all.
I however, spent many, hours with them. I spent the most time reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales – I rejected Pinocchio because it wasn’t the same as my beloved Disney version – and I never got that into the Arabian Nights either, but I read a few.
I learned to read phonetically when I was 6, so if you handed me a book and told me to read aloud I could do it. My mom loved to break out the encyclopedia and have me read. At the time reading at 6 was early. I think most parents in today’s world would say that is late – but in my time that was not the case.
I actually started reading when I was 8. I believe the first book I ever read was No, No Mrs. Goose. It is the 7th book from the left in the top shelf pictured here. I was 8.
These by no means represent all the reading I did between 1962 and 1970. At that time, most of the books I read were borrowed from the school library. We, that is I and my classmates visited the library every two weeks. We would return the books we had and choose 2 or 3 for the next two weeks.
Pippy Longstocking and Mary Poppins books were big favorites. Caddy Woodlawn, and anything I could find written by Carol Rye Brinkley. Little Women was my absolute favorite book, then anything written by or about Louisa May Alcott. Black Beauty, Beautiful Joe and Baby Island. I must have read that a dozen times. The Doll House – I still have my copy. Many, many biographies. Nancy Drew of course.
Reading was my refuge. My safe place.
In 1960 when I learned to read I was 6 in 1970 I was 16 – a lot changes in that decade. Reading tastes change quite a bit. At 16 I was reading Heinlen, and Tolkien and ?
(story of the Micky Spillane closet)
(story of the lost Little Women here)
(story of the Nancy Drew books)
July 7, 2024.
I graduated from Marshall High in 1972, I was 17 and I left home a couple of weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Julius, was born in 1978.
The late 60’s and early 70’s I was reading Hermann Hesse, Robert Heinlein, Ayn Rand and I think this was when I started reading Mitchener.
Apr 30, 2024
Since I last posted my websites were hacked, all three had malicious code but my primary website for my business was completely unusable.
I could be offering this as an excuse for not posting for two weeks – but the excuse is really only good for about a week of it. The other week was me being distracted.
But I’m really writing it to bitch about Hostgator – I should really do a real review. Anyway – they were worse than useless. When I called they sounded like they were going to be very helpful but when I said the site had been hacked and there was malicious code they let me know the team that handles that doesn’t work on weekends. Huh?? Is that like a joke – no seriously.
Not a joke. So I did some research found a new host and had all three sites migrated to a host that backs up daily – scans for malicious code 24/7 and helps if you do get hacked. A little more expensive but not really that bad. Anyway I chose SiteGround. I strongly recommend against Hostgator.
You know what they say “you get what you pay for”. I don’t happen to believe that but I do believe you don’t get what you don’t pay for.
April 12th, 2024
Well for the last 8 days I’ve been obsessed with getting my OKR’s (Objectives and Key Results if you’re not familiar with the terms) set up. I found yet another software that offers a free version for up to 5 users – after that you have to pay for 10 – at $9 per user per month. But it is even better the Cascade.
Their resources and training videos are amazing. And the clarity I’ve been able to establish about what I’m doing is – well I should be able to think of a better adjective – but for now just awesome.
In the meantime, I lost my 239 day streak in my journaling program. I use BigHugeLabs if you want to check it out. I was so shocked when I realized I’d missed a day. Especially because I was up at 3 am again – and usually the first thing I do is write.
At the same time I’m continuing my Reading Project – and since all of the books in this project are about measuring – I’ve just been immersed in this subject matter.
The 2nd software is called Perdoo. No idea what that means or stands for but – it is extremely well thought out. Cascade is great but Perdoo is better. Except so far in one respect – Cascade has a very simple process for connecting to Google Sheets for automatic updates – where Perdoo requires an add-on and an api key along with 3 pages of instructions. Not a fan.
I’m continuing to use them both for the moment until I get it figured out.
April 3rd 2024
I get annoyed with blogs that give advice in every post. Nevertheless – I’m going to give advice in this one.
Start NOW. Whatever it is, start. Ready or not start.
The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.
Seth Godin
I just started this mind map of my reading in 2024
Imagine if I’d started this 10 years ago.
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