Random Reading Recommendations - The 3 Rs!
Recently, my 29-year-old daughter finished a self-improvement book that my girlfriend had gotten for her. She loved that book and didn’t know what to read next. She came to me for a recommendation.
“What are you in the mood for?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Surprise me.”
In my daughter’s vernacular, this meant, “Give me options.”
Since I gave some thought to these suggestions, I thought I should pass them along to here.
I started my stream of text messages with this quick blurb. I needed to let her (and now, you) where I was headed.
And of we go!
IF YOU WANT FINANCES
For my daughter, I recommended You’re Broke Because You Want to Be by Larry Winget.
I’ve read many personal finances books over the past decade, but if I had to point to a single book that changed my life financially, this would be it.
There is one passage in the book where Winget points out how amazing it is that broke people have large DVD collections. Streaming wasn’t yet a thing, and I remember walking around bragging to friends and family about my 600+ DVD collection.
I was an idiot, and Winget helped point it out. After reading this book, I changed my ways.
If you’re interested, you can read a blog post I wrote on the matter (I Was Broke Because I Wanted to Be). It’s over at my personal finance that has been on hiatus.
If this kind of stuff excites, you it does me, too. I have plans to fire this back up fire soon.
IF YOU WANT PERSONAL GROWTH…
Darren Hardy’s The Compound Effect is one of those fantastic books that change how you look at your actions. It’s how the impact of little things down repeatedly in our lives can have a big impact.
I can point to many things in my life, but since this is my writing website, I’ll share how compounding has worked for me as a writer.
Every morning, I wake up at about 5:00 a.m. I set a goal for myself of 1,000 words a day. Some authors crank out way more than that, but I’ve still got some other responsibilities (don’t we all?)
Anyway, if I hit my word goal for one month, that’s 30,000 words. In three months, I’ve written 90,000 words, which is more than enough for a novel (some would say too much—trim it down and make it tighter).
When people tell me they want to be a writer, I say sit down and write 1,000 words today. Then do it tomorrow. In three months, you’ll have your first draft.
That’s the compound effect.
IF YOU WANT GENERAL INTEREST…
I stumbled onto Scott Woolley’s The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age at the library. That’s not true. Because of COVID, we weren’t allowed to browse the libraries, so I used the Overdrive app on my tablet and found it.
Man, am I glad I did!
It’s a remarkable tale of how we grew from the telegraph to the internet in basically one hundred years. That journey boggled my mind—the telegraph to AM radio to FM and the television. Don’t forget satellites, cell phones, and cable TV along the way. Boom, welcome to the World Wide Web.
All in one hundred years.
Was it easy? No.
Was there some nefarious bullshit occurring along the way? Uh, yeah. There are some tales of political and competitive interference that made my eyebrows rise. We’re lucky we made it this far!
But we did, and most of us take it for granted.
I loved this book.
IF YOU WANT FICTION…
I recommended Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale while in the middle of it. I haven’t seen the show nor the 1990 movie. So, this was a suggestion only for the book. Now that I finished it, my recommendation is even more emphatic.
Read it.
The dystopian picture that this novel painted bothered the hell out of me. It has stayed with me for fractioned nation subjugating woman in the twisted name of religion.
Want to hear something crazy? When I went to pull the link on Amazon for this book, it had over 40,000 reviews. 40,000! 4.4 out of 5.
Don’t just take my word for it. The majority of 40,000 other folks are saying to give this book a read, too.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Have you read any of these books? If so, what were your thoughts?
Given the four categories above, what one book would recommend for each?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
