Books – thebottomlessblog.com

Book Review – “Eat That Frog! Get More of the Important Things Done Today” by Brian Tracy

Eat That Frog: Brian Tracy: 9781444765427: Amazon.com: Books

This is one of the audio books that I listened to during my time driving to and from the job a city over. There is no real timeline other than I listened to these between September 2020 and February 2021. I was on a kick of motivation and productivity being at the new job.

I remember this book being short but sweet. This won’t be a very long review I remember laughing because the guy sounds pretty smug in the recording I listened to and I believe it was the author that read it. He sounded like he just made a bunch of money for writing a cheesy book about being productive, time management, and setting goals. To me this books was fairly basic in terms of revolutionary ideas. The past couple books I listened to were much better overall and contained more relevant information.

I liked the easy read or listen. It was pretty basic in terms of lasting importance. It focuses on prioritizing the biggest most important or otherwise lucrative tasks and goals. It has some solid information and ideas for anyone who struggles with a mountain of things to do or tasks to finish. It was definitely a useful read and I got something out of it for sure. I carried everything that I read and did forward from that time working out of town. I learned a lot and was able to listen to some good material for self growth. It was a good life experience and this little books was a worthy read. Not much I didn’t like about the book. It was short and not complicated. The phrase “eat that frog” gets said a lot but the book describes what it means in better detail.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for help with productivity and accountability as this book provides some good common sense advice and tactics. You could probably finish it in a couple reading sessions but you never know the information could help you manage yourself and your time better.

Overall this is a good little book. Nothing wrong with it even if I didn’t get much out of it. Check it out if longer more in depth books aren’t your thing. It’s easy and thoughtful. A little something for everyone contained within. Hope this review was helpful or informative. As always thank you for reading and feel free to comment or engage.

Pax

Book Review – “Broke Millenial” by Erin Lowry

Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

This was another of the books I listened to while driving to and from work in another city. This was the more modern answer to “The Intelligent Investor”. In this book the author Erin Lowry gives no nonsesne and practical information on budgeting, saving, and a brief explanation of investing. The demographic of this book and her story is aimed at the average millennial. I am a millennial which is described as people born between the years of 1981 – 1996.

I remember the book was good and she more or less told a story of her upbringing and what inspired her and necessitated her need to learn budgeting and financial stability. The story involves teaching and wisdom from her father but ultimately the knowledge and advice contained within is fairly common sense and practical. To me it was nothign really revolutionary but solid information for sure.

Over the past couple years I have been more and more into personal finance. At the time of listening to this story I was making more money at a normal job than I ever had before. I was interested in preserving my money and learning how to maximize my paychecks. This book taught me a lot and I applied the knowledge practically. I no longer work at that job, but I carried all of the habits forward for the most part. I also still have all of my investments and never sold anything.

I think personal investment and finance is important for anyone to learn and for some reason they don’t teach us enough in the course of our normal schooling. I always wondered about that myself. I figured they didn’t want the average man to be learning about high finance and the way those weird systems work. As we’ve seen in the past couple years what happens when the average person has access to the finacial world, modern apps and online brokerages make available what used to be reserved for financiers, investors, and bankers. The past couple years has shown that retail investment can turn whole markets. For mbetter or worse.

I liked that the book was easy to listen to and was aimed at my own demographic. After listening to “The Intelligent Investor” I needed a book that has a bit more modern examples and practices and this book was a perfect answer for that. I enjoyed the easy and relatable nature of the book. There wasn’t much I didn’t like about it. As mentioned it was a no nonsense book of ideas and experiences. If anything the information was rather common sense but it wasn’t bad at all.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in personal finance or who is, like me, a broke millennial trying to make and save money in this backward ass, late stage, capitalist world. It’s an easy read or listen and worth the time really. Anyone can benefit from the basic information and ideas on how to build better habits for your financial success.

Overall thoughts, definitely check it out. Not much more to say about this one. Hoped you enjoyed the review and it was informative. Feel free to comment or share if you dig the material. Till next time.

Pax

Book Review – “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham

The Intelligent Investor Rev Ed. - (collins Business Essentials) Annotated By Benjamin Graham (paperback) : Target

This books was listened to during the fall / winter of 2020. The overall text is mostly analytics and investment theory with provided examples. To me a lot of it was common sense information. However the smaller details were life changing and overall helped me get a better grasp on my personal finances and budget. To me some of the information was kind of hard to follow because I was driving and the reader would run through examples with numbers and stats and it was difficult for me not to be able to see it ion paper. I think I would have gotten a bit more out of the book if I would have read it.

The information contained in the book has been proven throughout time. The book remains vital reading into the fundamentals of intelligent investing. I believe this book was written in the 1940’s or 50’s by Benjamin Graham, a renowned and successful investor. The data and stats in this book reflect the time in which they were originally written. It definitely would be nice to have an abridged modern version that would run some of the numbers with modern day stats and inflation and wages. Lets face it the standard of living was much different in the 1950’s.

This book was very informative to me overall. I was currently working a new job and learning about my finances in a more mature light. For the first time in my life I was thinking about the future and making plans for long term savings and investing. Also this was all relevant information to me because a certain security i owned had recently taken on a massive upswing. For the first time in my life I had a stash of “Nest Egg” money that I didn’t know what to do with. More than anything I wanted to learn how to protect my investment and make the most of the opportunity. This book set me on a path of great knowledge and understanding about my personal finances.

The book was great in that all of the knowledge was easy to follow and the examples were real life and not pertaining to billionaires or the super rich. The text is aimed at helping the average man handle his finances better and pointing one in the right direction to start investing correctly and smartly.

My one negative critique of this book was the older examples but it is no fault of the author. This book was written in a different time and money and finances were a lot different. I took the information and applied it as best as i could to my own personal situation was able to learn and take a lot from the book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to better their base knowledge of finances, budgets, and investing. This is not a strategy book, and it doesn’t dive into analyzing companies or anything like that. This book gives some solid metrics on what is healthy savings, what percent of income you should be investing long term, and overall ideas on good financial health. it was a fairly quick book from what I remember.

Great book overall. There are definitely more relatable books out there on this subject that have more modern examples and numbers. In regards to the information in the book it is solid knowledge for anyone to have. I got a lot out of it and if you are interested in finance, or curious about investing you should probably check this book out as a good starting point.

Hope you enjoyed the review. Hope it was helpful. Stay tuned for more. Playing a bit of catch up on my media reviews. haha Procrastination nation!!

Pax

Book Review – “Art of Solitude” by Stephen Batchelor

This was one of my audio book experiences while I was working at the medical dispensary in the city about an hour away form my house. I guess you could say I was going through a transformational period myself. The overall impact of the COVID pandemic plus the isolation of being on the road for 2 hours a day was tough for me. Factor in a schedule that didn’t allow much free time and I was feeling the burn of solitude and isolation. I was motivated to try and promised a lot that ended up not panning out. This book was a symbol of me trying to cope with the isolation of a work grind with over 2+ hours of driving daily. This is all to add some context of why I chose these self help, motivational, and personal productivity type books.

The book wasn’t bad at all. In fact it was really good but I do remember the readers voice being very monotone and not very exciting to listen to. The book is basically the tellings of a famous guru type Buddhist Teacher philosopher named Stephen Batchelor. Stephen basically quit his teaching and took on a journey that sought clarification into his own mortality and isolation, as well as, a deep dive into his thoughts on lonliness and solitude. I thought this relevant to all that was happening in our personal and social lives during the onset of the COVID pandemic during the late summer and fall of 2020.

The book was fairly short and nothing really stuck as being super enlightening and impactful to me at least. It was a long time ago that I finished listening to this book, but it was less teachings and advice and more of his experiences during this period in his life. Some of the more entertaining parts had the author describe attending various psychedelic rituals involving Peyote and Ayahuaska. I have experienced these substances and can more or less relate to someone who has never tried them and is experiencing them for the first time.

I liked the even tone of the book. There was more substance aside from his personal experiences. The author would add his own statements and ideas that relate to all the great thinkers in our history. I appreciated that he did a deep dive into what solitude means to himself, although, I didn’t quite connect to some of the concepts. In some of the experiences he was not alone and he was not in solitude but in a group setting. To me solitude is .. solitude. Like being up, tripping face, doing art or music at 3:45am when the rest of the world sleeps and nobody will disturb you.. solitude.

Not to get all philosophical with it, (pun intended) I think for an upper class academic who most likely has never really dove into the world of intense psychedelics, his accounts are all the more valid because he went to the deepest end of the rabbit hole doing ritualistic doses and purges of Peyote and Ayahuaska. Holy shit.. I bet he felt alone on the steps of death at points… I can honestly say I’ve experienced similar feelings on massive head-fulls.. but never in a ritualistic setting with all the spiritual mumbo jumbo attached to it.

I would recommend this book for anyone who is into philosophy, or has a desire to seek answers within themselves. This book has way more positive content than I can factually remember and it contains tons of solid quotes and ideologies by a professional thinker.

My overall thoughts are that this book would probably have meant more to me if i had listened to it in a non work or non driving setting. The audio books have to keep my attention and I feel like my mind probably wandered a bit during this book. As always I hope this was helpful or informative. Please let me know in comments if you ever want to discuss or talk about any book or subject.

Thanks for reading!

Pax

Book review – Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman

Just finished “Way of the Peaceful Warrior” by Dan Millman this morning and I was surprised what impact it had overall. I was skeptical because it has been made into a major movie. For some reason I feel like books that are turned into movies are cookie cutter because they are easily adaptable, the production took a quarter of a century, so boy was I wrong. I don’t even know why it took me half of the book to really get into it, but upon finishing I realize that is the whole point of the style of the writing it is almost like a spiritual manual but played out with characters that are interesting yet pretty normal. You kinda learn what the point of everything is as you continue on into the story. All at once it became a page turner as I had do discover what the main character was seeking just as much as he was.

First a little bit about the Author. Dan Millman is a world champion Gymnast and Sports trainer who studied at University of California in Berkeley. He later taught sports, fitness, and was a trainer at Oberlin. He has traveled the world and for many years he studied different forms of martial arts, meditation, yoga, and other training pertaining to personal betterment and well-being.

I always find books, who’s authors choose to use their own name for the main character, intresting. I always wonder how much of the themselves the author puts into the character. This is a partial fiction I believe. He writes largely of his time in Berkeley and says many of the instances of his life are included in the book. Although I think the main characters mentor, aptly named Socrates, is fictional. Regardless of fact or fiction this book contained a small amount of adventure, spirituality, intrigue, and almost a form of life manual. Dan Millman’s other books are range from story books about his characters, back stories, all the way too literal Self help and Enlightened living manuals. I will definitely check out some of these as they have peaked my interest already.

The story focuses on a smart, successful, attractive, athelete type dude named Dan who seems to be at the top of his game and for some reason just isn’t feeling content in his various life situations. By random chance he stops at a small gas station close to his college campus and befriends a mysterious and interesting clerk, Socrates, who becomes his Mentor so to speak. The story builds slowly as Socrates molds Dan into what he calls a “peaceful warrior”. I instantly loved this term. My name means Peace in Latin. I have always considered myself and any great characters who fight for the better good, “peaceful warriors”.

The story overall is filled with a type of mystery about who Socrates actually is or if he is just an embodiment of Dan himself at that particular time in his life. There good but balanced humor in this book. It doesn’t have to try hard as you can feel Dan’s frustrations at the absurdness of some of his mentors teachings. I found myself laughing aloud many times at the things Socrates would tell Dan during their various sessions together.

The story blended well with my life in a way as well I read it over several months and finished the last half of the book in two nights. It slowly built up and taught Dan what he needed to live a content life. By half way through the book the various lessons Socrates tells Dan become more serious and forthright and not so abstract and whimsical. I almost felt like I was learning a little bit about the characters experiences, as any good book should. The characters definitely are pretty good all said and done, I want to know more about Dan’s journey and more about how Socrates came to be the comedic guru that he is. I think those will be fine tales, with much to learn, besides being just worth a good read.

The way of the peaceful warrior is a guide to enlightenment, or so I have come to understand, and I would like to read more of this authors books because he delves much further into these concepts and even has manuals for helping one live the way of his peaceful warrior.

Anyways, if you like based on real life stories, personal growth and discovery, or just a thought provoking adventure I definitely recommend giving this book or any of Dan Millmans other books a read. This story encourages dreams, imagination, and meditation. The reading is easy and flows well. Easy language and not very long. Not necessarily a page turner but has a nice flow to it regardless, can be read in small parts or all at once to great effect.

Thanks for reading my book review. Much love!

Book review – Poland by James A, Michener

May I first start by saying, few nations in history have had such a tragic, yet naturally beautiful, dignified, and proud history. It was an honor to learn about Easter Europe’s history through the lens of such a timeless and knowledgeable writer

First a little bit about the author. James A Michener is an American classic author who wrote dozens of books throughout his lifetime. He passed away in 1997 at the age of ninety. His books are mainly novels in the Anthropological fiction sub genre. In summary, Michener takes a region or place in our world and goes back a thousand years, to before you knew anything about that particular place, and starts to build a narrative based on made up characters. His books end up being about 85% factual history mixed with 15% of the narrative liberties taken to make a cohesive story which spans hundreds if not thousands of years.

Michener himself was an avid traveler in his lifetime (which I have done and admire greatly), and I believe he was in the Navy during world war 2 and from his journals and letters he ultimately penned one of his first and most popular books “Tales from the South Pacific”, which I have yet to read. This is how he generally makes the material for his books it would seem. His research usually involved living and absorbing the places he would then write about. For Poland he spent much time in Eastern Europe and took great care to piece together what was ultimately a region with a shattered history.

I was drawn to his style of writing because of his use of language which is classic but not olde.. it was easy to read and very few times did he use overly elegant words which I had to look up. The hardest part of reading his books is the Languages and names of the characters which I often times had no idea how to pronounce properly. This small detail, of course, was not enough to detract from the Majesty of the tale he weaves.

In Poland, Michener outlines the chapters so the reader has a sense of what is actual history and what is fictional. He creates three family lines One noble, one middle class gentry, and one peasant. He then proceeds to introduce them briefly before launching you almost one thousand years back in time to when these characters great, great, great on an on, ancestors lived.

It was almost as if I was teleported to the beautifully barren lands of Eastern Europe. I could feel and see the lush forests and serene rivers where the characters family lines originated from. In all this beauty comes the tragedy and triumph of a country that never really had central leadership and was often the scapegoat of other nations greed, anger, and mistrust.

The story takes the reader from when the barbarians and sons of Genghis Khan would terrorize the villages and castles, through the tumultuous crusades when Poland was terrorized even when they preyed to the same gods as their oppressors.. all the way to the inevitable Nazi occupation and through the subsequent Holocaust.

My breadth of knowledge about this country stopped in World War 2. I Personally have been to Poland and the infamous town of Oswiecim, which the Nazis named Auschwitz.. I have been to Birkenau, one of the Nazis most “efficient” death camps. Needless to say traveling through the country and taking in physically and directly, some of that tragedy.. When I found out about this Author and then discovered that he had written a book about this countries history I bought it without a second guess. I’m proud that I did.

By far one of the more chunky books I have ever read up there with Shantaram, i believe there about 650+ pages. However don’t be intimidated by the size. The tale that Michener weaves is so intriguing and full of knowledge that the pages seem to melt away and I would read till three or four in the morning before I would even notice the time.

Micheners books are definitely for people who enjoy literature. His books are mostly all literary Epics, in scope, and Mastery in content. His Pulitzer Prize winning stories are beautifully created within the confines and ruthless happenings of

History. I recommend his books to anyone who likes or loves history, as well as large and very detailed novels. Despite the length of the story he wraps up all of the timelines and Ancestory so well that it’s hard to tell it was a seven hundred page book.

I will undoubtedly be reviewing many of James A, Michener books. Stay tuned and feel free to comment if you have any favorites or recommendations!

Much Love, as always, thank you for braving the bottomless blog.

Book review – The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

This was an exciting story that I read over the past year, on and off. A lot of life happened in my 2017 year, and so the book further captivated me by literally showing me that the content and arch of the books plot, is really a reflection of the happenings in my real life. More over, in all of our lives.

This book is a novel about a seemingly random guy who gets hold of some information. Through a series of learning, practicing, and evolving the main character is compelled to go on this epic journey to the country of Peru, and to the ancient cities and monuments there. His quest and conflict get tied up in this “manuscript” that supposedly holds the keys to religion or spirituality. The conflicting force in this story is the church, for they feel that this manuscript denounces and de-legitimizes Christianity and uniform religion in general.

However this book is not about religion at all. Well not in a traditional sense. This story explores not who or what religion, but HOW one becomes, or already is, religious.. more in the spiritual sense rather than deity worship. The arch of the story focuses on connection to our surrounding, energy forces in nature and fellow humans, and the coincidences that bring us to learn, grow, and experience life.

This was an easy to read and pretty swift adventure. Most of the character dialogue content is on the meta-physical, and philosophical level, but it is put into many different scenarios and situations so the story gives literal examples of what the characters were talking about and describing to each other. It seems complex but it flows really nicely and the language is basic so it is fairly easy to wrap my head around. There were a couple parts I had to read a second time, to be able to grasp the concept that the characters were talking about, but nothing was out of my sphere of understanding.

I really liked this book because the main character is constantly learning how to see and experience the world around him. A lot of it has to do with meditation and relaxation. Really taking in your surroundings. I love this concept because I have always been a practitioner of meditation and relaxation to calm me when I get stressed out. It’s good to be reminded of the world around you and to remember to relax sometimes, because there is really nothing we can do in some situations and our attitude really does affect the overall outcome of our life scenarios.

Overall I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes self discovery, growth, meditation, or those who are interested in spirituality on any level. Again this book is not about religion directly but encompasses the broader notion of personal spirituality. The reading can be understood by any age really. I didn’t know what to expect when it was given to me. After reading it I am surprised by how much I took from it.

From what I understand there are many books in this series I would like to read more. If I ever do I will definitely review them and if you have read any of the others let me know how they are.

Thanks for reading, feel free to comment and share if you or someone you know needs a good book recommendation.

Book review – Shantaram – By: Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram

By: Gregory David Roberts

This is an amazing tale that I would recommend to anyone as just a solid piece of literature. There are many endearing factors of this story, but the characters were the most engaging I think I have ever read about. The setting was detailed and rich, and the action was well paced with the unfolding of the story. Gregory David Roberts, an Australian author, ex heroin addict, convicted bank robber, and humanitarian (you read correctly) writes with an elegant style that is almost poetic at times but strait forward enough to keep readers on track. I just wanted to do a light review of the book and what it meant to me. Basically why I enjoyed this story.

The story is a novel but it is largely based on the life, trials, and tribulations of the author Mr. Gregory David Roberts. There is much debate over how much of the story is factual versus inflated with fictional aspects. This makes the story so much more endearing and lasting to me, because I know it is steeped with real details from his life.

He himself stated in an interview “Some experiences from my life are described pretty much as they happened, and others are created narratives, informed by my experience. I wanted to write two or three novels on some bare elements from my life, allowing me to explore the themes that interested me, while keeping the narrative immediate by anchoring it to some of my real experiences. They’re novels, not autobiographies, and all of the characters and dialogue is created. It doesn’t matter how much of it is true or not to me, it’s how true they are to all of us, and to our common humanity.”

The characters in this book are absolutely genuine and are expressed with definite sense of passion. Right from the start you are drawn in by the people he describes. Their looks, personalities, emotions, and actions captured with such brilliance that you feel drawn in from the very first couple pages of the book. There are so many characters that you fall in love with because of the things they say and the things they do. Just really well written the dialogue for me was easy enough to follow. Some of the names of the characters got a little confusing because there are so many but the important ones are described in detail many times so you start to remember and even begin to feel like you know them as you continue to read. There are little bits of the native languages peppered throughout the story and that adds to the immersion of the setting. The small bit of language and the accents he uses in his writing are top notch and really drive home that the people speak English only as a second language. The author describes nationalities and ethnicities of many different people and he describes their physical features with the same detail so after a while when he says a person’s name you can get a mental image of what they look like when they walk up to him.

The setting of the story is in Bombay. He describes the city in such a fashion that it seems dangerous but beautiful, diverse but traditional, and all in all like a magical, colorful place. He describes how culturally imbalanced the social strata is and he describes the slums in great details and even lives in one himself. He saw firsthand the class difference from neighborhood to neighborhood. Later on in the book he travels to other locations around Bombay. Being what it is I love to travel and have done quite a bit of globe-trotting, It all sounds so beautiful. This book and the wonderful descriptions of the setting and culture made It a point on my personal bucket list to travel there and experience the sights, sounds, and smells for myself.

The Book has a little bit for everyone: plenty of action, adventure, love, lust, crime, humor, life, and death. All these things blend beautifully together to create a hell of a story. The author Gregory David Roberts is a real person and pretty much is himself in the story. This makes the book all the better to me because I feel more connected to a story when I have experienced some of the feelings and emotions as their characters.

Let’s talk if you have read it!

Happy reading!