Posts Tagged ‘non-fiction’

Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life is an inspiration-style self-help book by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is part auto-biography with each rule taken from his life and illustrated by the success it brought him.

The rules are typical for what you would expect in this kind of book: set a vision and work your arse off to get it. But Schwarzenegger places an emphasis on humility and listening, documenting his failures as much as his successes. For example, he hates the term “self-made man” because it ignores all of the people who helped him.

There is a dichotomy in the message. You have to ignore the nay-sayers. But you also have to work together and build consensus with others.

People without vision are threatened by those who have it

It is written in a very conversational style, or at least read this way. Schwarzenegger narrates the audiobook and it is peppered with jokes, apologies if his dog makes any noise and a sense of wonder at some of the amazing people’s stories he uses in the book.

I did take exception when he talked about Reg Park coming from a “small industrial town” in the north of England. Reg Park came from Leeds. It is the second biggest city in the sixth largest economy in the world. And we didn’t even get a name-drop 😆.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life is a non-fiction book by Scott Adams. Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic and in this book, he puts forward his wisdom on how he has been successful. It’s a sort of a cross between a biography, self-help book and fun read.

Adams emphasises systems over goals. He suggests goals are a bad idea because you are always failing to reach one, or it is accomplished and done. For example, if you want to lose weight, you could set a goal that you are not achieving, or you could exercise every day. The latter is a system: you follow the system and the goal happens anyway at some point.

He suggests failure is good as you always learn something. I suspect most of us would agree with that. He debates simplicity vs optimisation. For example, should you try to squeeze in a supermarket trip on the way to meet a friend? Probably, if you can remain cool if you get delayed. Should you do the same thing before a job interview? Probably not.

He likes talent and suggests that if you are normally risk-averse, but willing to take risks in one area, that is probably an indicator you have some natural talent. The best way to utilise talent is not to focus solely on the thing but to build a talent stack: complementary skills that produce a uniquely good result.

If you are launching a new product, try to find one where the market is strong from day one, even if your product is not. Mobile phones, laptops and fax machines were all terrible to start with but they sold from day one and got better.

Adams suggests there are some all-round skills that are valuable in life regardless of what you do. These include public speaking, psychology, business writing, accounting, design, conversation, persuasion, technology and vocal technique.

He also offers four keys to success: lack of fear of embarrassment, education, exercise and treating success as a learnable skill. In the latter case, this means finding out what skills need to succeed in your chosen endeavour and going out and getting them.

The Salt Path is a non-fiction book by Raynor Winn. It is technically travel writing as it tells the story of her and her partner walking the 630-mile South West Coast Path after they are made homeless and her partner receives a terminal illness diagnosis.

It certainly starts on a negative note. But despite the premise, the story quickly becomes a heartwarming tale as the two discover new resources within themselves. Winn is a funny and entertaining writer and the story is captivating throughout.

Basic Anatomy For Yoga Instructors and Everyone In Between is a book by Alecia Croft.

It’s a pretty short read. It is 55 pages on my Kindle, including about ten pages of contents and opening matter and appendices. And most of the page space is taken up by diagrams. As such, you can get through the book in less than half an hour.

Whether you should is a different question. The diagrams are good and there is plenty of information packed into it. So, if you were to take the time to learn and memorise each of the bone and muscle names it would take you much longer. It does feel like a bit of a list most of the time, though, so that is not an inviting prospect. Having learnt this stuff in more detail previously, it was more of a refresher to me.

The Prison Doctor is a book by Dr Amanda Brown. It is an autobiography (or maybe a biography given there is a co-author, although it is written in the first person) that discusses her times working in prisons.

After a spat over the new GP contract, she leaves per practice and goes to work in a young offenders prison, Wormwood Scrubs and later a women’s prison. It’s an okay read. Well written.

Gotta Get Theroux This is an autobiography by Louis Theroux. It was always going to be a half-decent read as Louis is such a good storyteller. Although, he would probably be one of the first to admit that his documentaries are the result of a team of people that he happens to be the face of.

I didn’t know much about Theroux’s persona life. For example, I did not realise that he started by working with Michael Moore. I knew he had a family, but to hear his dreary tales about domestic life was a nice reminder that even rockstars have to do some chores.

Some documentaries get a lot of time. Others don’t get any. As may be expected, there is a lot about Jimmy Savile in the book. The audiobook includes a whole bonus chapter about “Jimmy Savile deniers” have some have dubbed them.

Overall, a good read.

Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance is a book by Alex Hutchinson.

It’s an interesting book for understanding the limits of human performance from both a physical and psychological point of view. Not that all questions are resolved. But there is plenty of discussion.

Below, I have picked out a few points.

Typically, you don’t run yourself to exhaustion. Your brain stops you before you reach that point. And that starts from the minute you start exercising. For example, cyclists set off slower from the start on a hot day.

But when you get in sight of the finish, you know the danger is over and you can sprint. Hence we can be hurting so much until the final straight, at which point we find that last bit of energy to push across the line.

How does this work? Is there some kind of internal regulation in the brain that we are not consciously aware of? Or is there another explanation? For example, could we be tapping into anaerobic energy?

It seems likely that the brain does have some control. For example, everyone finishes a marathon in just under 3, 4, 5 hours. Only the brain can respond to these abstract concepts. So why do so many more people finish a marathon in 3:59 than 3:47?

Similarly, how is it that the limit that climbing a mountain without oxygen turns out to be almost exactly the high of Everest? If Everest was a little smaller, or a little larger, would it turn out that the limits of climbing without oxygen were different also? It seems likely given that it was thought to be impossible until Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler did it. Then they changed the sums to show it was just possible.

Finally, a note on hydration. We often hear the idea that if you wait until you are thirsty, it is too late. But voluntary dehydration seems to be fine in the short term. Top marathon runners sweat more than 3.5 litres per hour. They replace nowhere near this much. If our performance drastically drops when we lose 2% of our body weight, how did Gebrselassie become an Olympic champion when losing 10% of his body weight? That is not to say drinking to thirst is the perfect strategy for running a marathon: but it does seem to be fine for everyday life.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a book by Yuval Noah Harari. It looks at the near future (the next century) and the challenges that society will have to face.

Chiefly, this revolve around info-tech and bio-tech. What will happen when the majority of jobs are automated? The workforce had power when labour was required. But, as the rich upgrade their bodies to become superhumans and machines can replace the working man, how will this restructure society?

I highly enjoyed his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

This one was thought-provoking, but not what I expected. I went in thinking there would be 21 clearly defined points that gave me something to think about. In reality, it was more of a ramble through various ideas, each spilling into the next. Interesting, but perhaps not as clear as I hoped it would be.

The Chimp Paradox is a book by Dr Steve Peters. In it, he describes his model of the mind as two parts: the chimp, an irrational emotion-driven strong animal, and the human, the higher part of our brain that we often like to pretend is the “real us”.

It is a generalist book in that it is a useful read for anyone, not just those struggling with their own mind, but more of a popular self-help book with applications for every day relationships and problems.

I found it an interesting read, most of the time, but I don’t think I ever made it to the end.

Yoga for Athletes is a book by Ryanne Cunningham. It provides an introduction to yoga and makes some suggestions as to how athletes can use yoga. But, to be honest, it all felt pretty vague. More like a general book of yoga with a nod given to the idea that the reader may also be an athlete and that yoga could be useful for that.

The various poses are explained, but not in a manner I found completely clear. The routines may be more useful, but only make up a few pages at the back of the book.