Tag Archives: book list

Posted on

30 Books That Changed My Life

“It’ll change your life,” a good friend of mine is fond of saying, to lend a touch of credence to a recommendation. And in most cases he’s been right. Whether it’s a good meal, movie, whiskey, podcast, video, song, sermon, album, or book, most of his recommendations have been good enough that the experiences I’ve undertaken at his suggestion have left a mark beyond mere entertainment or additions to the contextual fabric of life, two otherwise worthy ends. These experiences have, to varying degrees, changed the way I think, feel, act, or abstain.

Therefore, in lieu of a “Best Books of [Fill In The Year],” I’m following in the footsteps of Matthew Kelly, an author who has maintained a list of the “top 20” books that have changed his life. Although in my case I was unable to limit that number to 20, I hereby submit 30 Books That Changed My Life, in four distinct alphabetical categories: fiction, non-fiction, spiritual, and vocational.

Fiction

Fiction is the category that wouldn’t have existed on my list only 10 years ago, because I’d fallen prey to the silly notion that fictional books, by their very nature, can’t actually change our lives for the better. How foolish I was to think that!

  • Cutting For Stone, by Abraham Verghese, was recommended to me by #1 book referral friend. While most times, I wait until I’ve heard a recommendation from three credible sources, I’ll add anything she recommends to my reading list. Cutting For Stone is an epic masterpiece featuring “twin brothers born of a secret union of a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon.” I know, it sounds a bit like the start of an international soap opera, but the story and writing were good enough to keep me engaged for all 600+ pages. I may have been aided by the fact that I listened to this particular book–again based on my friend’s suggestion that the many words that were foreign to my ear would sing when well narrated–but I think I’d have stuck it out just as well in print.
  • Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry, opened my mind to a whole new form of reading, writing, and living. Wendell Berry is an American philosopher, essayist, poet, and fictional author whose creation of an autobiographically-inspired town, Port William, has made me yearn for a more deliberate, tangible, and meaningful life. Jayber was Port William’s barber from 1937 until 1969…and that’s about all I can tell you, if I’m to hold myself to Berry’s “ORDER BY THE AUTHOR,” a notice written to readers in the preamble: “Persons attempting to find a ‘text’ in this book will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a ‘subtext’ in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise ‘understand’ it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.” All I can tell you is that I’ve read and enjoyed many of the Port William series now, but none has had an impact on my like Jayber Crow, although I’m barred from attempting to tell you how or why!

  • A Prayer For Owen Meany was my introduction to John Irving’s work, and I enjoyed it so much, I’m afraid to read anything else he’s written lest I spoil it. Although not on the grand scale of Cutting For Stone, I’d nonetheless refer to A Prayer For Owen Meany as an epic, too, although mostly confined to the small town of Gravesend, New Hampshire. While Irving seems much more inclined than Berry to allow his worldview to charge through the text, in this case through the lens of an often heart-wrenching confluence of coming-of-age stories, you don’t have to agree with the author’s opinions to acknowledge the brilliance of his writing.
Posted on

1 Book, 1 Practice, And 1 Post For The New Decade

To help you kick off your New Year — and the new decade — with more clarity and purpose, I’d like to recommend a blog post, a simple daily practice, and a transformative book that I believe could propel you not just through 2020, but the 2020s. I’ll list them in the order of the lowest investment of time to the greatest:

1 Post about a family who suffered the greatest loss imaginable in 2019, and the lessons their loss teaches us about making the most of our lives, personally and professionally:

The biggest challenges most of us had in 2019, thankfully, pale in comparison to that which my good friends continue to endure — the sudden loss of their 17-year-old son to a previously unknown heart condition. It was the last, most challenging, and most important post I wrote for Forbes last year, or in any year.

But the life of this young man and the habits he embodied — sharing his self-confidence, speaking words of affirmation, and finding the best in any circumstances — could change the course of your life and those you love. I know it has mine.

1 Practice that draws us away from the distracting world of electronics and into the “analog” space where the research shows our time is best managed:

There’s an app for everything, and there are more than we could possibly count that promise to make us more productive and to manage our time better. Ironically, research suggests that the very best tools for optimum productivity may actually be a good old-fashioned pencil, paper, and most importantly, a little uninterrupted time.

With an attention span easily swayed, I’ve spent the better part of my career hunting for the best productivity methods and mechanisms. After getting on and falling off of that wagon more times than I can count, with complex “systems” that seemed hard to adopt and even harder to adapt, I finally found a method that has stuck with me now for three years without fail — Bullet Journaling.

1 Book that changes the way we think about work — and life — and helps us get more from each through the power of intention:

You’ve heard that multi-tasking is a myth, and it’s verifiably true. But most of us are still working — and playing — in such a way that this realization and its ramifications have not yet sunk in. In so doing, we rarely leave the realm of “shallow work,” where our attention is sufficiently divided that we slow the process down and decrease the quality of our efforts.

By reordering our time and space to facilitate “deep work,” we can actually get more and better work done in less time. And the same applies to our less laborious pursuits in life.

This book, this practice, and the subject matter of this post have left a mark on me — a mark that has already outlasted a few New Year’s celebrations — and I have no doubt will impact my life and work through the 20’s. I hope they are of some value to you as well.

Posted on

3 Books To Help You Be More Civil, Memorable And Inspired in 2018

I’m a sloooow reader–so I’m never going to impress anyone with the total number of books I read in a year (other than myself!).  But I do try to immerse myself in as much reading as possible each year.

In the past, I’d try to read a lot of specifically financial books considering my vocation as a financial advisor and writer, and I confess I even suffered guilt about reading anything other than non-fiction until more recently.  But because of my conviction that personal finance is more personal than it is finance, I’ve worked to broaden my base of reading.

This year in particular, I learned a lot about people (and therefore money) through biographies, historical non-fiction and fiction, books on charity and spirituality, and an increasing number of well-written novels, in addition to a couple financial books. (Otherwise, I’ve found that the world of financial planning is so ever-changing that I get the most current information I need from articles, white papers (zzzzzzzz), blog posts, podcasts and conferences.)

Below you’ll see my top three favorite books that I completed in 2017 with short reviews, followed by a list of the remaining books I read this year and links to my Goodreads reviews:

3. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

There’s not much more to say than, “Wow.” This book is a masterpiece, and it’s impossible not to leave it without concluding, again, that Lincoln was a mastermind.  His ability to be civil while strong, conciliatory while persuasive, articulate without condescension, and especially to be a friend to political foes whom he knew sought to undermine him–all at the unquestionable height of our country’s political division–seems so far from what is exhibited in our present.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is certainly among those precious few non-fiction writers who  craft a narrative out of lifeless facts that comes to life like a novel, without sacrificing any of its veracity.

To be clear, this book is neither new (it was published in 2006) nor short (944 pages–I “read” it on Audible), but it seems at no time more prescient–or necessary–than now.

Posted on

Top 5 Books To Put The ‘Personal’ Into Your Finances This New Year

Originally in ForbesBecause personal finance is more personal than it is finance, just about every step we take in our personal development aids us in financial planning, and vice versa.

top-5It is in better understanding ourselves that even the most confounding financial decisions are made simple. Therefore, it’s entirely possible for a seemingly non-financial book to have a meaningful impact on your financial life, while the reverse is also true.

Consider, then, this list of my choices for the top five (mostly) recent books that can improve your life, work and financial serenity in 2017:

5) The Whole 30: The Official 30-Day Guide To Total Health And Food Freedom is not your typical diet book. I don’t do those. But I am fascinated by various “life hacks,” small behavioral changes we can make in our diet, exercise and sleep patterns that make life more livable.