Earn What You're Really Worth... Things that made me think

Work 2 hours extra each day, read for an hour a day, listen to audio books daily, work through lunch, volunteer for everything and maintain the relationships in your life. 
       And for the other  minutes in my day I guess I'll sleep.

He would mention in different ways that All the top executives in the world do...  All the top 1% of money earners have this characteristic...
       I presume he interviewed all of them

Earn What You're Really Worth - Brian Tracy

Back to my usual meat.

As you can tell I chose this book because of the vibrant cover...  Really I went to the library because I had finished The Brother's Karamazov and didn't want to read another free book.  I just grabbed the first business-ie book I could find because I didn't have much time.

My expectations were that this would be bland and it didn't/did disappoint.  It wasn't that bad really.

The book is all about getting a good job and getting promoted faster than other people.  I couldn't tell if it was too general or too specific.  It would give advice on how to get promoted quicker such as 'work harder than everyone else around you' or 'don't take lunch breaks' or 'dress nice.'

 

Ummm... thank... you..?...

Then he would have practical things to do at the end of each chapter that were meant for people in a specific type of business, most of which I couldn't do.  I'm sure his profound advice to me would be - get a different job.  

Usually the things that brighten these books up are the stories.  There was nary an ounce of inspiration between them (I wonder if that's how you use that word).

This was the opposite of '4-hour work week'.  A slow paced get-rich-slow book.  I'm sure there were some useful things in there but the only thing I really learnt was, do judge a book by it's cover.  

The Brothers Karamazov... Things that made me think

Even though this was fiction there were some interesting things about it

Translated by Contance Garnett - this was another thing that was mentioned every chapter.  It was translated into English at the turn of the 20th century.
       It made me think about how few words we use these days.  Some words have been lost to history.
       Words I need to use: Supercilious, nary, tarry and base.

There were many different characters and the author went deep inside the mindset of at least five.
       Did Dostoyevsky associate himself with all of them in different ways?
       What was his motivation for writing this?  It can't have been just a story because most of it ins't story

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky pt2

12 books and 40 solid hours later and I'm done with The Brother's.  What to say about it?

One thing I will say is I understand why there are abridged versions of books.  I've always wondered what they cut out of the full version but I can see now that whole chunks of this book could be thrown away without really taking away from the story line.  Not that these pieces aren't interesting but sometimes they seem like a spin off.

For example there is a whole book devoted to the teachings of Father Zossima, who is obviously an integral part of the mentality of Alyosha (the main protagonist).  However, by the end of the story you forget who this person was and Alyosha does not even seem like someone influenced by this monk.  I think this was mainly an opportunity to get some of Dostoyevsky's thoughts out to the public.  

As I said this wasn't necessarily uninteresting, in fact I was surprised by the orthodoxy (in the literal sense) of these theses, while surrounded with the Eastern Orthodox beliefs and superstitions (that were obvious in other characters).  It would be interesting to read up on Dostoyevsky (maybe a Cliff note book). 

The story only really got going in the last few books with the murder of Fyodor Karamazov but there are no cliff hangers even in this as the narrator tells you of the murder the suspects and the verdict before each one is even close to happening.  The interest comes in how each is resolved.  

Apart from abridgment this book did make me thankful for a few things.  

Good parenting - Fyodor the father (interestingly the same name as Dostoyevsky) was the worst.  He abandoned all his children so that he could hedonize.  The servants that did take care of them didn't do the greatest job and the result was four very different boys.  Only one of these seems emotionally secure presumably because of his lengthy contact with monasticism.  

Forensic science - the trial at the end would not have existed if it was set 100 years later.  Maybe this is why our books are so much shorter.  

Audiobooks - This would be one of those books where, as you read you drift off and realized 5 minutes later that you haven't read a single word.  Thankfully, when I drifted off on this one the narrator kept going and I didn't really miss much.  

The Library - This was a Librivox recording from the public domain, which I was reminded of every chapter by a multitude of different speakers.  Some of these had thick accents that I could just about understand.  Not only did the characters in this book have many names each but each one was pronounced differently by the speakers.  You get what you pay for.  

So many more things could be said about this book but I've come to appreciate less words so I'll  stop.

Off on a tangent... Dream Movie

If someone can get these three actors together in a Movie I will watch it no matter what it's about.

  

We got pretty close with now you see me.  Maybe if Steve was the Morgan Freeman character we could have had the perfect movie.  

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky pt1

Wow! A slightly different book than I've been used to so far.  

I chose this one because I had run out of books to listen to and I didn't have any time to go to the library.  There are thousands of free audio books online that have been released into the public domain, so I found one that ended up on many people's top 100 list.

Without looking at any details I had in my head the movie 'The Brothers Bloom' (probably because I'd just watched 'Now you see me' with Mark Ruffalo (one of my favorite actors see tangent)) so my expectations were slightly off.

I'm 3 books into this and I'm still not really sure what the plot is.  It's has mainly been character development.  Each time a major new person is mentioned a chapter is devoted to showing you who they are.  This is a pretty good format, it is still, however, difficult to follow people because each one is called by many different names.  For example, one of the main people you follow is Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov but is also called Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alxeichick, Lyosha, Lyoshenka.  Confusing??

I had to make this family tree/ key to really understand what was going on.  

So far we have had a number of monologues about various things, God comes up quite a lot as you would expect when you put an atheist and a Hedonist in with a bunch of monks.  I feel like something is building and perhaps going to happen between Fyodor and Dimitri who are both after the same woman.  Quite a few people hate each other so I also expect some violence at some point as well.  Hopefully something will happen soon before I get bored with 'one of the best novels ever written'.

I'll finish this review when I finish the book.

Buyology - Martin Lindstrom

The last of the three business books I grabbed.  I read them in the order that I thought they would hold my interest, so this one didn't have high expectations.  

You have to get through the usual 'Why you should read this book'  hype up session in the first few chapters but after that it becomes very scientific.  Situation - Abstract - Experiment - Results.  This would be pretty boring but the experiments are somewhat interesting:

Smoking ad's and their effects
Product placement in American Idol
Subliminal messages
Superstition and religion and how these sell products
Does sex sell?

I think they also tried to make this book more interesting by having one of those gruff voiced voice over guys narrate.  I'm not sure if this was a well researched decision but I don't think it has the same punch after the normal 10 seconds.

I'm making this sound worse than it is, really it kept my attention.  I have an interest in both science and marketing so this wasn't going to be the worst read ever.  

After the hyping up the author goes into what he has been doing; investing $7m into a research campaign involving a focus group with a difference.  Instead of just discussing what they thought of a subject they are hooked up with brain scanners and put in an MRI machine.  This way showing how their brain reacts.  

The most interesting part is when they brains response contradicts what they said they felt about something.  This, Lindstom explains, is why a lot of business flop even after $$$$$ spent on market research.  See New Coke, Segway and Colgate's Kitchen Entrees. 

The 'Sex sells' chapter was a bit disturbing, thankfully I havent seen a lot of what he described, the interesting part of this was that the brain scanners showed that most of the time sex distracts away from the product rather than emphasizing it.  The main reason some of these commercials have done well in the past is because of the controversy and free publicity that comes with that.  He predicts that as companies seek out this publicity the envelope will be pushed further and further.  

Other predictions that are made in this book are that sounds and smells will play a lot bigger part in advertising and of course that Neuro-marketing (presumably headed up by Lindstrom) is the way of the future and the only way to truly see what the response to a product will be.  

See a few more details in Things that made me think.