Finished Tongue-Fu by Sam Horn – a book I added to my list because it was highly recommended by so many sources – even a glowing review by Tony Robbins himself.  Here’s a quote from Library Journal:

“According to professional speaker and consultant Horn, the purpose of Tongue Fu, a spoken form of self-defense, is to guard against psychological attacks. Dealing with difficult people is a part of everyday life. However, by focusing on real-life responses to verbal challenges instead of theories and platitudes, the author has delivered a convenient handbook for the mental martial art of verbal self-protection. Divided into four sections, the book offers techniques and skills for responding thoughtfully in conflicts, expressing honest feelings and goals, seeking cooperation in difficult situations, and living a life of value during trying times. “

I wasn’t really impressed.  95% of the book is basically to avoid confrontations at any cost – heavy use of the phrase “Is this conflict worth risking a friendship/your health/your well being/your life over?  In other words, give up and take your lumps.  The few pages that advise standing up for yourself tell you either to

a) Tell them you won’t take this (and assume this is going to work)
b) Refer you to another book for handling sociopaths

I kept at it in the hopes that it would get better, but it never did.  Live and learn.

I suppose this book might be helpful for someone with absolutely no social skills, or no experience in asserting yourself – or maybe people who fly off the handle at every confrontation.  And I see where Tony’s bit comes in – she advises some specific language to make mild conflicts easier and that kind of jibes with his NLP stuff.  But if you’re a regular person who gets along with most people and has some degree of tact in communications, your money could be spent better elsewhere.

My reading has really fallen behind lately with everything going on, but I finally finished On Method Acting by Ed Easty.  It was a good read and helped me get a little more insight into the renowned Stanislavsky technique.  I didn’t really spend a lot of time with the exercises as it was more of a knowledge read than a practical one for me.  Doing community theater you don’t really plumb the debts of the character’s psyche…  but I wanted to better understand the method and be able to discuss it intelligently with people who are a little more serious about their craft.  And there is definitely some usable stuff there, even for small timers like myself.

On that note, we have also finally filled the cast and started rehearsals for 1940’s Radio Show – hope to get some publicity going soon about it on the Tallahatchie River Players web I’m doing for them now.

Today was Renee’s surgery to implant her chemo port. She came through fine and is home now, but it means I got a lot of reading done.

Not Now, I’m Having a No Hair Day was the first on the roster. It attempts to be a humorous look at cancer treatment, but it just didn’t go far. The jokes were lame and bittersweet and it just didn’t fit the bill.

I’d Rather Do Chemo Than Clean Out the Garage: Choosing Laughter over Tears was a little better to me.  Whereas “No Hair Day” mostly focused on embarrassing little moments in the treatment process, this one was a little more mean-spirited, making fun of people bringing food, using your treatment as an excuse to dodge work and indulge yourself, etc.  I can imagine it being a lot more fulfilling to someone who’s dealt with the side effects of the treatment.  It was a bit depressing, as the author is dealing with a situation many times worse than ours, but it finished up with some great solid advice on handling the treatment from a veteran.

The Fred Factor was not a planned read – I picked it up between reads because it was in the house and unread, so I felt like I should turn it around.  It’s basically about considering service – either to mankind or to customers – as your life’s work.  I didn’t really get lots from this – it basically read like a magazine article or short speech padded out into a few more pages.   It was a very basic read, so not a lot of fun for me.  Would probably work for your typical corporate training session, but I kind of felt it was wasted time for me.

The 4 Hour Workweek I was looking forward to -  I had read several articles and interviews with Ferriss and had corresponded with him just a bit.  It’s basically his advice on how to change your life so you’re setting up a system to earn money for you that requires little maintenance, then going out and spending your time doing what you want.  This wasn’t a new concept to me – I had the basics down from previous Steve Pavlina experience – but Ferriss did a great job of getting you started with suggested companies and contacts and fully illustrating his personal fulfillment models. I will probably play with some of these suggestions since it’s laid out so well, but my main concern with this kind of lifestyle is how long it can be sustained as the average consumer gets more and more tech savvy.

Beyond that, he spends a lot of time explaining his ideas of the good life – doing exciting things all over the world for a reduced cost.  He again is extremely practical with this, giving you tons of websites and contacts to use, but it’s mostly from the perspective of a single guy with few commitments.  A lot of it just isn’t practical to the family man who wants to be a pillar of the community.  Yes, I’d love to study martial arts with Chinese monks for 5 years and become a world champion as well – but I can’t imagine dragging my wife and children along for the ride, or canceling my local commitments to community, family and friends to indulge my fantasies.

The best idea I came away with was not saving yourself for retirement, but getting out and enjoying your wealth as you go along.  It was a nice prod for me, who tends to take the unexpected cash that comes my way and put it in an IRA.

In any case, it was time well spent and I’m looking forward to dreaming up some companies to “set and forget” and see how it turns out.

All these added up to 19 books this year from a goal of 12.

Finished On Method Acting by Edward Dwight Easty.  A good overview of the technique and exercises, although it was a pretty dry read.  This was actually a book I bought for Renee after we got started in community theater.  I’m really more of an amateur actor, but this book gave me a lot of great points to work from.

Book 15 of a goal of 12 this year.

Around the holidays I usually ask for books.  Sometimes this bulk of material gets stuck away on a shelf and I don’t get to it like I planned.  I found this book on my shelf, completely unread since I received it this Christmas.  And since Amazon has been delaying my last shipment, I completely devoured it.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Revisited was a great read.  I had a cursory knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls, meaning I understood that they were the remnants of an Essene library outside of Jerusalem and that they supported the Bible’s credibility.  I now understand how ignorant I was.

The book is an easy read and divided very logically, although it comes to an abrupt end.  It’s obviously the work of a scholar and not a novelist.  From this work I gained an understanding about the documents themselves, the uncertainty about the community that kept them and got some perspectives on Christianity that I would never have gleaned from Christian authors.

Book 14 of a goal of 12 for this year.

Tuesday we stopped by the bookstore and having a shipment of books already in-route from Amazon, I grabbed a magazine.  On the way out, I saw this in the bargain book bin and since this ~250 page book was cheaper than my magazine, I got this instead.  I have Charles’ other book and enjoyed it, so I thought it would be better time spent.

Unlike his previous book, this isn’t about Charles Barkley at all.  Rather, it’s a series of interviews with prominent Americans with peppered comments from Charles on racism and race relations.  It was a little disjointed, and I don’t think it really made any points other than racism is a bad thing and someone needs to do something about it.  But I will give him points for attempting to use his notoriety to call some attention to the issue, and it was great to hear from many of the people he selected.  I wouldn’t have expected some of the responses I read.

This is book 13 of a yearly goal of 12 this year.

Just finished “The Reluctant Parting”, a wonderful book on the New Testament from the perspective of a former-Christian, currently-Jewish author.

It was a good overview of all 27 books, including authorship details, cultural practices and the Jewish perspective on a book written exclusively by Jews and read by almost none today.  The most stimulating bit of quandry?  The fact that the infamous “Jews” lambasted throughout the Bible may not have been addressing the Jewish population proper, but Christian “Judaizers” instead.  It was a fresh perspective for me and it really helped me fill in a lot of blanks I had remaining, including the relevancy of the apocryphal 1Enoch.  It also gave me a good chronological overview of the books and a perspective on the early church as represented.

This is 12 of 12 for my reading list this year.  100% goal and not even half way through the year.  Next year I will need to readjust the standard “1 per month” scheme, as I’m finding more and more time to blow through them.

I read again “Man’s Search for Meaning”, an incredibly moving book from Holocaust survivor and therapist Viktor Frankl. The autobiographical part of the book is stirring. The details of Logotherapy wore a bit thin on me this time around, since much of it was old news.

I don’t really relate to the idea of suffering as a life accomplishment – not because I devalue the trials of those who have no other choice, but just because I’m disconnected enough from it that I have trouble relating. I do continue to find the idea that a purpose is imposed on you rather than vice versa intriguing, although again, I’m not sure that I agree.

It’s a great book and everyone should at least make a lap of the biography to understand what the Holocaust looked like from an insider, particularly people like myself who have been affected by the death of loved ones.

11 of 12 for this year.

I just finished “Unlimited Power” by Tony Robbins, and I’m reading it again immediately.

This was a great, great book. I have resisted reading his stuff for quite a while because his ventures are so commercialized and he still has a bit of that infomercial stigma in my head – but I was completely wrong.  This book was gold.  Great for beginners, great for the experienced.

About half the book is basic material that I was well acquainted with – goals, health, motivation, etc.  Although I did get a few new viewpoints.  The real benefit to me was the introduction to Neuro Linguistic Programming, or at least Tony’s flavor of it.  It was so effective, I was able to put it into use while only about halfway through the book.  Renee and I were stuck waiting for our son in a dentist’s office that had the air at about 65 degrees and I was able to program myself into feeling warm – the chillbumps went away, my skin warmed up – Renee’s a witness.

I’m going back through it with pencil and paper now that I’m sold on it to give the whole thing some more thought.

This was my 10th book from a goal of 12 for the year, and time well spent.

Re-read “Watchmen” while waiting for a new book shipment, because it’s an easy and quick read.  This makes about the 10th time I’ve been through this series.  It really was an amazing turning point for comics.  I caught it a few years late, but the impact was no less effective.  The shifts between current and flashback, the relationship of the side stories to events in the characters lives  – and particularly the dark, adult subject matter explaining the motivations of the various flawed characters made it so real – a little too real at my first exposure.

Although it’s not the most clever story in the whole, my favorite character to analyze has always been Dr. Manhattan.  As kids we played superheroes and the inevitable escalation of powers always led to the taunt “well, SuperBill (or whatever) can do anything“.  As an adult, Watchmen explored the idea of exactly what happens to a person that can basically do anything – how it affects his mental shift, values and relationships.  It remains the most intriguing mindplay from the series, at least for me.

I don’t have to extol the values of the series; they’re well documented. This series and the Dark Knight Returns series was what brought my attention back to comic books from my grade school days with Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.

This book doesn’t count toward my reading goals because it’s basically entertainment only, but I do get extra credit