What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

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10% Happier, by Dan Harris (ABC News and Nightline host) is an interesting introduction to meditation. Harris, a pretty neurotic worrier, bumped into Buddhism while covering religious topics for ABC. A lifelong skeptic he became intrigued with meditation which has a lot of science supporting it's benefits. The title is his description of the benefits he experienced which he adopted to defuse the skepticism his friends and co-workers expressed whenever he raved about meditation or Buddism. The book is even more interesting for its exploration of the upper reaches of network news from the perspective of a young rising star.
 
Don thanks for that recommendation. I've been reading on Buddhism a lot more lately, and I think that sounds like a good one. I've been slowly working through No Time to Lose, by Pema Chodron, which is a translation of sorts of the Way of the Bodhisattva. I really know very little about the subject, but it is quite compelling.

I've just started the Rational Optimist, will let y'all know how it turns out. I suspect it will be a lot like Abundance, the one with the nifty foil cover and good stories about innovation overcoming what seems like disastrous problems.

Just finished Tyranny of Experts by William Easterly. It is an eye opener about international development, and why the billions of dollars spent on foreign aid doesn't really seem to affect global poverty as much as we think it should. I got it after reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which is a harder-hitting and more exposé type book about the World Bank and other players in the development "industry". Interesting reading, that's for sure.
 
Sarah in SC said:
Don thanks for that recommendation. I've been reading on Buddhism a lot more lately, and I think that sounds like a good one. I've been slowly working through No Time to Lose, by Pema Chodron, which is a translation of sorts of the Way of the Bodhisattva. I really know very little about the subject, but it is quite compelling.
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Pema Chodron is very good. We don't have good centers around here so I take advantage of zencast.org
 
Thanks, Steely. I've been given a couple of books by Thich Nhat Hanh as well. I really enjoyed those. I'll check out your podcast resource as well.
 
Glen Greenwald's "No Place to Hide" is worth reading by anyone interested in Edward Snowden's leaks about The NSA's massive surveillance efforts. For those who parrot the ubiquitous mantra "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about," skip the rest of the book and read chapter 4 - The Harm of Surveillance.
 
Just read "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China." (Kindle Version $3.67) It was a 5 star read.

"The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history."
 
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I just downloaded several free books from Amazon.com for my IPAD. I went to the Kindle Books page and clicked on the 4 Stars and Above button. Then I sorted by Low Price to High Price and found multiple pages of $0.00 books to download. Many of them were Book or Volume #1 of a series but still worth a read. This should keep me going for a while.
 
fidler4 said:
Just read "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China." (Kindle Version $3.67) It was a 5 star read.
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I read this book when it was first published in the early 1990s. I could not put it down. It is essential reading for an understanding of China's 20th century history.
 
[FONT=&quot]After my retirement, I've found I really like "post apocalypse world" (PAW) fiction. There's a LOT of it out there on the web, some of it really good.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]I just re-read "Lights Out", by David Crawford. An electromagnetic pulse "fries" most electronics, shutting down the grid, computers (including in cars, trucks, aircraft, etc.), radios… It centers around characters in a small/remote college town deal with the shutdown of modern infrastructure, and deal with those who are not as "polite" as they are.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]As of this post it is online at:[/FONT]
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[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]http://www.shtfinfo.com/shtffiles/books_and_reading/HalfFast/Lights%20Out%20%2838%29/Lights%20Out%20-%20HalfFast.pdf[/FONT]
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For any knitters out there, Gil McNeil has written 3 very pleasant novels* about a young widow who takes over her grandmother's knitting shop in an English seaside town.

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club
Needles and Pearls
Knit One Pearl One

There isn't anything in them that requires you to be a knitter to enjoy them, it just adds a bit of fun if you are.

* I assume all 3 are pleasant - I've read the last then the first and am on the wait list at the library for the 2nd. You don't need to read them in order for them to make sense.
 
What have you read recently?

Finally got hold of Steve Jobs biography Written by Walter Isaacson from the public library 3 years after he died. Took me 6 weeks to finish it. Excellent reading and written so well. It's a biography which not only writes about the man but also the products, how destructive cancer is and death. Recommended reading. I do love biographies esp when they r written so frankly.
 
unno2002 said:
After my retirement, I've found I really like "post apocalypse world" (PAW) fiction. There's a LOT of it out there on the web, some of it really good.
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Oddly, me too.

One that struck a chord with me was The Old Man and the Wasteland
by Nick Cole. It's best to read (or reread) Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea before reading this book.
 
fidler4 said:
Just read "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China." (Kindle Version $3.67) It was a 5 star read.

"
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I have this on my kindle to read but right now I am reading Ken FoLLett's "Fall of the Giants " . I liked it so much that I bought "Winter of the World " The sequel . Great books I really could not put them down .
 
Midpack said:
Just finished Coming Apart by Charles Murray. A very good read on what's led to the decline of our (US) culture. Lots of data, though more on what happened and less on how or why. Finishes with two potential futures, leaves the reader to speculate which way we'll go...
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I just read this book and I did not like it. Murray seemed to blame a lot of the decline in the last 50 years on people becoming less religious and not getting married and not having children. [mod edit] This relic has to get out of his 1950s lifestyle choices.
 
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Early Retirement Extreme

Wasn't sure where to put this post. I'm currently reading "Early Retirement Extreme" and it is not what I was expecting! I thought it would along the lines of "Retire Early, Retire Free" but it is more a philosophical argument on the wage slave society that has developed than it is a how to manual on early retirement.

I'm enjoying it because it was written by a former physicist-type, so it is well-reasoned and I have a natural propensity to take an outsider's view on most things--like many independently-minded introverts so it resonates with me.

The gist of the book as it relates to early retirement (mind you I haven't finished it) is that extreme early retirement, meaning for people with as little as 5 years of full-time career work, is not about taking a permanent vacation like many traditional retirements where the retirees are 65+ and have lured years of health remaining. It is about developing multiple streams of income and being self-sufficient unordered to break away from the "tight coupling" of paycheck and lifestyle. By having a "loose coupling" between income streams and lifestyle, one gains the freedom to define one's own path in life instead of following the pre-canned scripts that society has dictated as acceptable.

Here are some lifestyle ideas that might come out of this paradigm shift: Living full-time on a sailboat cruising the Caribbean; Being an organic farmer; Being a professional blogger on a subject of personal interest; Pursuing an art, craft, or music in earnest; Pursuing charitable or other social or religious work; Traveling the country or world full-time; Etc.

Again, I think the idea is not "I did my 30 years at mega-corp, now I'm done with work" but more, "I avoided spending 30 years at mega-corp and instead enjoy a lifestyle where I do several part time activities that might generate some income, while using my skills to live frugally and self-sufficiently."
 
I think the idea behind ERE is more, "spend a few years working, decide to retire and blog about it, then get a job with a fat salary as a quant and go to work for the corporations again."

Jacob is the man though. I admire his determination.
 
Mod note: a few of the books mentioned include issues that are emotionally charged for some. Short descriptions of the content are fine but this thread should be about the author and book, not whether we agree or what our personal views are on the same subject.
 
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Fermion said:
I think the idea behind ERE is more, "spend a few years working, decide to retire and blog about it, then get a job with a fat salary as a quant and go to work for the corporations again."

Jacob is the man though. I admire his determination.
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I don't follow the author's blog. Not surprised someone that young would go back into a corporate job, though.
 
What have you read recently?

I recently read "Navajo Autumn: A Navajo Nation Mystery" by R. Allen Chappell. It was a good quick read. Although it was fiction it had a lot of the Navajo culture written into it which was interesting. It is the first in a series. I have the next one cue'd up from Amazon.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum
 
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I have One Kick by Chelsea Cain on my bedside table. A new series by the author of the Portland-based detective Archie Sheridan series (hmm, now that I have actually been to Portland, I might have to reread those).

Returning Vertigo 42 by Martha Grimes, a new Richard Jury book, to the library today. I just coudn't get it open to read before it was due, but I used to love her books. Will check it out again later.
 
Just finished "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks. This is a collection of essays about neurological cases centering around music and the brain. I didn't think it was as good as "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" but there was one case study that solved the mystery of the hearing problem that I developed 3 or 4 years ago.
 
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