Saturday, January 5, 2019

The Best of Non-Fiction 2018 (Part II)

Hey folks!

Today's entry is an addition to my recent The Best Non-Fiction Books of 2018 post. I wrote the other on December 20 so there was still plenty of time to read more - which I did. This one is supposed to simply serve as an update to highlight the last three non-fiction books I managed to finish in 2018 still.

Here we go - starting with the most useful book first.

(Note: the key to this list is as before the colour. Red = good. Light red = amazing. Black = don't bother with this one.)

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy: This one was great and definitely deserves the light red colour. In fact it should probably be pink to do it justice.
The title of the book refers to its content: Do your most important task (the biggest frog) first. I wrote a full blog post about it here: Review of Eat That Frog but for the sake of this list the gist of why it is so impactful is that:
a.) Brian Tracy does not waste words. He starts with relevant information and sticks to it. He does not add any fluff to his text and stays fully on course throughout. This is why the book is only 100 pages long (depending of course on your format) but it's so densely packed with information on how to get started and finish your most important projects it's 100+% worth the money spent on it.
b.) Tracy's tips are practical and can be used immediately. Do you want to become more productive in your most important work (your biggest frog)? Then read this book.

The Hungry Brain by Stephan J. Guyenet: This is a bit more in the health niche - specifically how the brain regulates how hungry we feel at any given point and what drives people to overeat. About 60% of it are incredibly useful and highly informative but the last three or so chapters drag. Here's a complete Review of The Hungry Brain. I personally read this book because I tend to stuff my face if there's something tasty around. It's gotten much better in recent years (after I started focusing on my health) but I notice that when there's something really tasty it's often very difficult to stop myself eating more than my stomach feels comfortable with. This book then was a way for me to understand why this happens (when consciously I don't want/need any more food but I still feel the urge to eat) and it did it's job! Recommended also if you're trying to lose weight!

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F**** by Mark Manson: I'm not going to say much about this. I already did a whole review and my opinion hasn't changed. This book is definitely overrated. It's not 'cool' or useful simply because it has a swear word in the title and foul language throughout. It simply re-chews and re-chews what other people have said much better already. Don't buy it. (Or do if you think you'll like it. It's your money!)

These three books about sum up my reading in the last two weeks of 2018 (good bye good year!). I read a fourth non-fiction book actually but it's even less worth talking about than The Subtle Art. It was so generic and yada yada (with the author actually recommending things like neurolinguistic programming (which is not scientifically backed to be effective at all) and psychosynthesis (which deals with personality and the human soul - the soul as if it's a scientific thing one can measure)).

Anyway! That about sums up my experience with non-fiction in 2018. I've recently read another non-fiction (my first this year!) which was Seth Godin's This is Marketing (The colour key doesn't count for this one!). It's not as good as The Dip but there will be a blog post about it on Monday where I'll be explaining my opinion on it in more detail.

What have you been reading so far? Do you have any suggestions as to books I might like considering what I've read in the last year? I'm always happy to receive suggestions! (Although my reading list is already chock-full.)

I hope you had a great first week of 2019!
WriteBot.

No comments:

Post a Comment