Review: Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life

Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life by Donald J. Trump
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Trump comes across as a gruff, New Yorker, businessman version of Dale Carnegie, providing business and life advice much like you'd expect in a self-help book. The advice was pretty common for these types of books, of which I've read dozens. I liked that this was a collection of short writeups, like newspaper columns, that held together loosely, often based on something that happened on 'The Apprentice' or in business. You got the feel of the author here, and it's not how the "news" portrays him. The first essay was unexpectedly very positive toward Obama, for instance. Overall, a nice motivational read from a larger-than-life personality, written in the middle of his run on 'The Apprentice'.

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Review: Everyday Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth--And How You Can Too

Everyday Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth--And How You Can Too by Chris Hogan


The book is touted as an update to the classic "The Millionaire Next Door", with a bigger and more recent sampling of millionaires in the US, to determine how they got to their million(s), and other related topics. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, but I can't say I got anything new out of it. If you have heard Chris Hogan on the Dave Ramsey show on the radio, you know exactly what this is about. You get a few more details, and a few more personal anecdotes from the author, and a few illustrative anecdotes from millionaires about their path. But this is very similar to many other wealth-building books out there. I still recommend "The Millionaire Next Door" as a great glimpse into the mindset of those prodigious generators of wealth that are out there. One specific nit about this book - at one point it says none of their 10,000 interviewed millionaires mentioned individual stocks as a top 3 factor contributing to their wealth. I don't believe this, given company stock purchase plans and huge gains on some popular stocks. None? No Silicon Valley millionaires in their survey? This just doesn't pass the sniff test. Either the survey wasn't built very well or the interpretation and data analysis was flakey. When you see bits like this that seem to defy logic, you wonder what else has been oddly interpreted to create a narrative. As I read these for motivation, I find the anecdotes often most interesting, and that was the case here.

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Review: The Hearts of Men

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Bugler is a social outcast. He's also the one to bugle the summer Boy Scout campers awake during their stay in the woods in Wisconsin. But the Bugler performs an act of sheer ... not bravery, more self-debasement, and it sets his personality and his life path on a new direction. Butler then fast forwards a few decades as the Bugler has become Camp Master, and deals with the campers that have drastically changed over the years. It was quite situationally funny at times, quite dramatic and melancholy at times. I enjoyed the writing, and I enjoyed the story and characters.

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Review: You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future

You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future by Jonathan Keats
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nice retrospective of Fuller and, mainly, his ideas and how they fit into the world when he was expounding on them, and updated to today. He comes across as a crackpot at times, as an innovator most all the time. Interesting and odd. The topics of the book and the person.

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Review: Coach Wooden's Forgotten Teams: Stories and Lessons from John Wooden's Summer Basketball Camps

Coach Wooden's Forgotten Teams: Stories and Lessons from John Wooden's Summer Basketball Camps by Pat Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I grew up tall but clumsy, a poor basketball player who once attended a basketball camp when I was in junior high. I remember getting the "most improved" award, a basketball. I still remember some of the things that our high school coach pointed out about my play (while, I suspect, stifling his own laughter). Despite never playing organized basketball, I can see how a camp can make an impact. This book is about how the summer camps run by arguably the best college basketball coach in history worked. The author shares some of the lessons Coach Wooden shared throughout his many camps. These started with how to wear socks and shoes (a focus on the basics) which he started every camp teaching. Then he went on to teach his life philosophy, mixed in with basketball fundamentals and play. The author gives these two aspect an even share of the story here, perhaps leaning more on the philosophy side. He realized that most of his camp attendees would not play ball professionally, so used the camps as a way to influence the kids to live a kind and giving life. I loved the stories behind the scenes of the camp, including the stories of camp counsellors assigned to drive Wooden around. That was real pressure for these young drivers. Good for uplifting stories, and stories of the running of summer sports camps, but not as much basketball action as you might think.

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Review: The Sleeper and the Spindle

The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's always interesting to listen to an audiobook of a book that appears from the online description to be mainly a showcase for artwork. Can the audio make up for the missing visual aspects of the package? In this case, having not seen the artwork, I think the audio can stand on it's own feet. The production was excellent, just like you'd expect from a short fairy tale, with a number of narrators/voice actors, music, and mood. The story was entertaining. I found myself listening for how Gaiman would create a new fairy tale, and this one started as a mash up of a couple of familiar fairy tales, with some role reversal thrown in to make things more interesting. Nicely done.

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Review: Louis L'Amour's Desert Tales: Desert Death Song and Law of the Desert

Louis L'Amour's Desert Tales: Desert Death Song and Law of the Desert by Louis L'Amour
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I listened to this short audiobook of two L'Amour stories while driving on I-80 through the center of Illinois. These stories had in common that the hero in each story is being pursued into the desert by a group of men that are, shall we say unfriendly. One of the hallmarks of Westerns is the thorough description of the land, and with the desert here you feel the overwhelming vastness and emptiness and underlying danger. Kind of like I-80 during construction season. The heroes here are smart and resourceful, like most Western heroes I've read, and they face death and their pursuers and prevail in the end, in no small part because of their intelligence and knowledge of the land. A good set of stories. These were narrated, instead of having a full cast production, but as there were long stretches of story with only one character present, this worked fine. And I also noticed the excellent production of the audio, including music. Well done.

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