This is a list of books that I found enjoyable . . . some life changing . . . others gave me a different perspective. I would encourage anyone to read these books.
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel – Vagabonding is about taking time off from your normal life—from six weeks to four months to two years—to discover and experience the world on your own terms. Veteran shoestring traveler Rolf Potts shows how anyone armed with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel. Potts gives the necessary information on:
• financing your travel time
• determining your destination
• adjusting to life on the road
• working and volunteering overseas
• handling travel adversity
• re-assimilating back into ordinary life
Not just a plan of action, vagabonding is an outlook on life that emphasizes creativity, discovery, and the growth of the spirit.
The 4-Hour Work Week
The 4-Hour Work Week – Timothy Ferriss – Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan-there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.
The 4-Hour Body
The 4-Hour Body – Timothy Ferriss – The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation. What are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results? How to lose those last 5-10 pounds (or 100+ pounds) with odd combinations of food and safe chemical cocktails. How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends). How to increase fat-loss 300% with a few bags of ice. How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time. How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested. How to produce 15-minute female orgasms. How to triple testosterone and double sperm count. How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks. How to reverse “permanent” injuries. How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months. How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit.
The 4-Hour Chef
The 4-Hour Chef – Timothy Ferriss – The 4-Hour Chef isn’t just a cookbook. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure guide to the world of rapid learning. Tim Ferriss takes you from Manhattan to Okinawa, and from Silicon Valley to Calcutta, unearthing the secrets of the world’s fastest learners and greatest chefs. Ferriss uses cooking to explain “meta-learning,” a step-by-step process that can be used to master anything, whether searing steak or shooting 3-pointers in basketball. That is the real “recipe” of The 4-Hour Chef. You’ll train inside the kitchen for everything outside the kitchen. Featuring tips and tricks from chess prodigies, world-renowned chefs, pro athletes, master sommeliers, super models, and everyone in between, this “cookbook for people who don’t buy cookbooks” is a guide to mastering cooking and life.
Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life
Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life – Neil Strauss – Before the end of the world as we know it, you’re going to want to read this book. Because tomorrow doesn’t come with a guarantee . . . Multiple passports, moving assets, lock-picking, escape and evasion, foraging, even how to cross borders without detection, it’s a veritable encyclopedia of for those who want to disappear or become lawsuit-proof global citizens.
The Alchemist
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, above all, following our dreams.
Eleven Minutes
Eleven Minutes – Paulo Coelho – Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that “love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer. . . .” A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune. Maria’s despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness — sexual pleasure for its own sake — or risking everything to find her own “inner light” and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.
Nirvana in a Nutshell
Nirvana in a Nutshell – Scott Shaw – The text ‘Nirvana in a Nutshell’ is a collection of meditations which helps the reader to understand that Enlightenment is a gift readily available for everyone. It consists of 157 brief, spirited, inspiring meditations on the true presence of Nirvana. Nirvana is the state of grace where there is no any physical suffering and mental anguish. This exciting booklet is a cautionary book as well as an encouraging book which helps to render big changes in how you see the world.. Do to become . . . undo to unbecome
Business and Information Technology
Tribes
A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical. It?s our nature. Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they?re enabling countless new tribes to be born?groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming. And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?
Permission Marketing
The man Business Week calls “the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age” explains “Permission Marketing” — the groundbreaking concept that enables marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it. Whether it is the TV commercial that breaks into our favorite program, or the telemarketing phone call that disrupts a family dinner, traditional advertising is based on the hope of snatching our attention away from whatever we are doing. Seth Godin calls this Interruption Marketing, and, as companies are discovering, it no longer works.
What Would Google Do?
Jarvis, columnist and blogger about media, presents his ideas for surviving and prospering in the Internet age, with its new set of rules for emerging technologies as well as industries such as retail, manufacturing, and service. We learn that customers are now in charge, people anywhere can find each other and join forces to support a company’s efforts or oppose them, life and business are more public, conversation has replaced marketing, and openness is the key to success. Jarvis’ other laws include being a platform (help users create products, businesses, communities, and networks of their own); hand over control to anyone; middlemen are doomed; and your worst customer is your best friend, and your best customer is your partner. Jarvis offers thought-provoking observations and valuable examples for individuals and businesses seeking to fully participate in our Internet culture and maximize the opportunities it offers. It is unclear what role Google played, if any, in the preparation of this book, which provides excellent advertising for the company.
The Starfish and the Spider
If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish’s leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world. What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths?
