I’ve been reading quite a few books lately, not sure if it’s just because I’m getting old or what but I seem to prefer reading on paper to staring at my screen like I do for the rest of my life, so I’ve been putting RSS behind me and focusing on reading ‘real’ books instead. Here’s some short reviews of some of my recent reads:

The 4 hour work week – Timothy Ferriss

It’s an inspiring read if nothing else detailing how to manipulate your daily routine to maximise the free time you can spend on personal projects, travelling the world and generally dicking about. I’ve put a number of steps from this book into action and have already managed to make myself way more efficient than I have been in the past. Well worth reading.

How to make millions with your ideas – Dan S. Kennedy

I was a bit disappointed by this book – I was hoping for something radical and outstanding, but what I actually got was a book thats over ten years old featuring outdated marketing schemes and a minimal mention of the ‘information superhighway’ (as the author calls it). I’m sure it was radical for its time, but in 2009 it’s more like a ‘marketing for dummies’ book.

Get to the top on Google – David Viney

A great book with some really interesting tips for anyone with an interest in search engine optimisation, with lots of interesting resources and methods of performing well in search engines. To summarise the book, write lots of good content, optimise the markup then get lots of inbound links. Of course, the book goes into a lot more detail than that, but thats the long and short of it. One of the reasons I bought this book was a promise of access to the authors forum where you can actually discuss SEO with like-minded people and the author himself. Unfortunately, for some reason the author has gone awol and most of the most knowledgeable posters have jumped ship. A great book, let down by a lack of follow up advice on the promised forum.

The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less – Barry Schwartz

I haven’t finished reading this yet, but it’s a pretty in-depth psychology book explaining how your average person is swamped by the multitude of choices they have to make in the modern world and how actually giving people less choice improves their quality of life. I’m already applying principles from this book in my day job and it’s having great results! Highly recommended to anyone that has an interest in psychology or user interaction.

I’m also currently reading a lot of travel books including the ‘backpackers ultimate guides’ BUG Australia and BUG New Zealand, which are a bit crap as a straight read but will be quite interesting I think when I’m abroad. I also have the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch in my to-read list.

I’m trying to decide what books to take travelling with me for general reading. I’m thinking about taking The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich and Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts. I’m not sure how long they’ll last considering I have a twelve hour flight to China at the start of my journey plus two weeks on the beach in Thailand when we arrive but I’ll need something to keep my occupied.

Finally – this post has finally pushed that noisy skate video post off the front page – hooray, you’ll never be bothered again by that annoying video when visiting my homepage!

Categorised as: Gubbins