

1. Foundation - Asimov
2. The Pastor - Peterson
3. How it went - Wendell Berry
4. The Black Swan - Taleb
5. A non-anxious presence - Sayers
6. Song of Significance - Godin
7. Curtain: Poirot’s last case - Christie
8. The practice - Godin
9. This is your mind on plants - Pollan
10. Outlive - Attia
11. The Martian - Weir
12. The Comfort Crisis - Easter
13. Husband Coached Child Birth - Bradley
14. Over sea, under stone - Cooper
15. Show your work - Kleon
16. The Phoenix Project- Kim
17. Moonbound - Sloan


Books of 2024



1. Stillness is the key - Holiday
2. The 4 dimensional human - Scott
3. Working - Caro
4. The crossing - McCarthy
5. Deep Work - Newport
6. North - Jurek
7. A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again - Wallace
8. Stories of your life and others - Chaing
9. Obviously Awesome - Dunford [Notes](/reading/notes/obviously-awesome)
10. Cheap land Colorado - Conover
11. Unsettlers - Sundeen
12. Cross talk - Emlet
13. Die with zero - Perkins
14. The perfectionists guide to losing control - Schaffer
15. The psychology of money - housel
16. Path to power - Carore
17. Shoe dog - Knight
18. Building a second brain - Forte
19. A place of my own - Pollan
20. Unreasonable hospitality - Guidara
21. To the edges of the earth - Larson
22. Leadership strategy and tactics - Willink
23. Tunnel 29 - Merriman
24. San Fransicko - Shellenberg
25. The sirens of mars - Johnson
26. City of Ember - DuPrau
27. The world ending fire - Wendell Berry
28. The unicorn project - Kim
29. A gentleman in Moscow - Towles
30. Anathem - Stevenson
31. The making of the atomic bomb - Rhodes - overly detailed and technical without a compelling narrative core.
32. We need to hang out - Baker - point taken but the how, though explored, was unsatisfactorily answered.
33. Secret thoughts of an unlikely convert - Butterfield - thoughtful and gospel rich
34. King - Eig


Books of 2023



1. Purple Cow - Godwin
2. River of Doubt - Millard
3. Bolivar - Arana
4. Project Hail Mary - Weir
5. The premonition - Lewis
6. Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
7. The Peagan Diet - Hyman
8. The woman who smashed codes - Fagone
9. The bomber mafia - Gladwell
10. Plant based athlete - Frazier
11. Factfulness - Rosling
12. The three body problem - Lui
13. Bobby Fisher teaches chess - Fisher
14. How to do nothing - Odell
15. Stolen Focus - Hari
16. Extreme ownership - Willink and Babin [Notes](/reading/notes/extreme-ownership/)
17. The faces of poverty in North Carolina - Nichol
18. Boomerang - Lewis
19. Adorning the dark - Peterson
20. Cloud cuckoo land - Doerr
21. The farthest shore - Le Guin
22. Build - Fadell
23. Steve Jobs - Isaacson
24. Hannah Coulter - Berry
25. Lies my teacher told me - Loewen
26. The bad ass librarians of Timbuktu- Hammer
27. Small things like these - Keegan
28. Towards zero - Christie


Books of 2022



1. Seven Dials Mystery - Christie
2. Piranesi - Clarke
3. How the South won the Civil War
4. A woman of no importance - Purnell
5. Three blind mice - Christie
6. The e-myth - Gerber
7. This is marketing - Godin
8. The omnivore’s dilemma - Pollan
9. James A. Garfield - Rutkow
10. The millionaire next door
11. Gilead - Robinson
12. George Washington - Stewart
13. Built to sell
14. Freedom - Junger
15. The Fellowship of the Ring
16. Arsnee Lupin -
17. Skin in the game - Taleb (Nah)
18. Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now - Lanier
19. Boundaries - Cloud & Townsend
20. The more of less - Becker
21. Hidden life of trees - Wohlleben
22. Master Thieves - Kurkjian
23. The last unicorn - Debuys
24. The Afghanistan papers - Whitlock
25. The ruthless elimination of hurry - Comer
26. Deep Work - Newport
27. Robert E Lee and me - Seidule
28. The deficit myth - Kelton
29. Time management for mortals - Burkeman
30. Thinking in bets - Duke
31. Jesus and John Wayne - Du Mez
32. When Einstein walked with Godel - Holt
33. Scrum - Sutherland and Sutherland


Books of 2021



1. Foreign to familiar - Lainer
2. Digital Minimalism - Newport
3. The fellowship of the ring - Tolkien
4. Rework -
5. A Christian Manifesto - Schaeffer
6. The two towers - Tolkien
7. When people are big and God is small - Welch
8. Galileos Daighter - Sobel
9. The Gospel comes with a house key - Butterfield
10. The bad beginning - Snicket
11. All the light we cannot see - Doerr
12. A little history of the world - Gombrich
13. Start - Acuff
14. The idiot - Dostoyevsky
15. John Patton Autobiography
16. The Screwtape Letters - Lewis
17. Andrew Jackson - Remini
18. New Spring - Jordan
19. The score takes care of itself - Walsh
20. The richest man in Babylon
21. Taming of the Shrew - Shakespeare
22. Range - Epstein
23. A canticle for Leibowitz - Miller
24. In spite of the gods - Loce
25. Leadership in turbulent times - Goodwin
26. The Benedict Option - Dehrer [Notes](/reading/notes/the-benedict-option/)


Books of 2020



1. Home - Robinson
2. Blue like jazz - Miller
3. Deep work audiobook- Newport
4. Everything happens for a reason and other lies I’ve loved - Bowler (Audiobook)
5. The golden road - Montgomery
6. Pickwick Papers - Dickens
7. My mind on trial - Loebel
8. Wired to eat - Wolf
9. Persuasion - Austen
10. The commandant’s daughter - Pushkin
11. The ideal team player - Lencioni
12. Theodore Rex
13. Grace Eventually - Lamott
14. My reading life - Conroy
15. Searching for God knows what - Miller
16. Culture Code - Coyle
17. Notre Dame de Paris - Hugo
18. The tombs of Autun - De Güin
19. The Hobbit - Tolkien
20. All the pretty horses - McCarthy
21. My losing season - Conroy
22. God on sex - Akin
23. A wrinkle in time - L’Engle
24. Murder on the Orient Express - Christie
25. Northanger Abbey- Austen
26. Total Mony Makeover - Ramsey (Audiobook)


Books of 2019



1. Middlemarch - Eliot - 1/17
2. Chosen by God - Sproul - 1/20
3. The gospel for Muslims - 1/21
4. The insanity of God - Ripken - 1/26
5. Uncle Dynamite- Wodehouse- 2/7
6. The Road - McCarthy - 2/11
7. A wizard of Earthsea - 2/16
8. From Beirut to Jerusalem - Friedman- 2/23
9. The Story Girl - Montgomery - 3/1
10. No God but One - Quereshi - 3/4
11. Moneyball - 3/8
12. Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Kiyosaki - 3/11 [Notes](/reading/notes/rich-dad-poor-dad)
13. A constellation of vital phenomena - Marra - 3/15
14. Grant - Chernow - 3/23
15. Ready Player One - 3/28
16. Age of Innocence - Wharton - 4/4
17. Church Elders - 4/5
18. A gentleman in Moscow - 4/8
19. Plan B - Lamont - 4/17
20. The fellowship of the ring - Tolkien - 5/20
21. Two Towers - Tolkien
22. The return of the King - Tolkien
23. The power and the glory - Greene
24. Death in Holy Orders - P.D. James
25. The sacred enneagram - Heurtz
26. Sexual purity - Tony Evans
27. Church in hard places - McConnell and McKinley
28. Let the nations be glad - Piper
29. 1776 - McCullough
30. Tortured for Christ - Wurmbrand


Books of 2018



1. What is reformed theology - Sproul - 1/3
2. Are we together - Sproul - 1/7
3. The Magician's Nephew - Lewis - 1/9
4. History of the Peloponnesian War - 1/22
5. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe- 1/29
6. Pendennis - Thackeray- 2/18
7. 4 hour work week - Ferris - 2/21
8. The horse and his boy - Lewis - 2/27
9. Ruth - Gaskell - 3/14
10. Good to Great - Collins - 3/15
11. Prince Caspian - Lewis
12. Business of the 21st Century - Kiyosaki
13. Discipling - Dever - 4/8
14. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
15. The man with two left feet and other stories - Wodehouse
16. Tudors: The History of England - Ackroyd
17. Show your work - Kleon
18. Every good endeavor - Keller - 6/18
19. Barr - 6/20
20. Hillbilly Elegy - Vance - 6/29
21. 7 brief lessons in physics - Rovelli - 7/3
22. Some assembly required - Lamott - 7/5
23. Alarms and Discursions - Chesterton - 7/13
24. Reclaiming conversation - Turkle - 7/16 [Notes](/reading/notes/reclaiming-conversation)
25. Redemption and other plays - Tolstoy - 7/19
26. Just Mercy - Stevenson - 8/6/17
27. When breath becomes air - 8/14/17 [Notes](/reading/notes/when-breath-becomes-air)
28. Small victories - Lamott - 8/23
29. The Wright Brothers - McCullough - 9/12
30. No country for old men - McCarthy - 9/28
31. The map makers wife -
32. Mansfield Park - Austen - 12/21
33. Scary close - Miller - 12/23


Books of 2017



1. Piccadilly Jim - Wodehouse - 1/1
2. Where angels fear to tread - Forster - 1/5
3. The inimitable Jeeves - Wodehouse (Audiobook) - 1/9
4. Utopia - More - 1/28
5. Master plan of evangelism - Coleman - 2/3
6. Emma - Austen (Audiobook) - 2/22
7. A voyage long and strange - Horwitz - 2/26
8. How people change - Tripp - 3/23
9. Persuasion - Austen - 4/25
10. Life Together - Bonhoeffer - 4/30
11. Starship Trooper - Heinlein - 5/2
12. Stoner - Williams - 5/4
13. American Nations - 5/15
14. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret - 5/30
15. The code of the Woosters - 6/2
16. Scary close - Miller - 6/15
17. The Blue Castle - Montgomery - 7/2
18. Passion and Purity - Elliot - 7/5
19. Does God desire all to be saved - Piper - 7/23
20. Honor and shame - Muller - 7/25
21. Why school - More - 8/8
22. Knowing God - Packer - 8/10
23. Illuminated - Bronleewe - 8/17
24. Confessions - Augustine - 9/5
25. Oliver Twist - Dickens - 9/15
26. The Jungle - Sinclair - 10/5
27. Ordinary - Merida - 11/18
28. Orthodoxy - Chesterton - 11/20
29. Just do something - DeYoung - 11/21
30. Letters to Philip - Sheds - 11/27
31. Dune - Herbert - 12/3
32. Not George Washington - Wodehouse - 12/10


Books of 2016



1. Don't waste your life - Piper - 1/3
2. The Hobbit - Tolkien - 1/16
3. Huck Finn - Twain - 1/31
4. Two Gentlemen of Verona - Shakespeare - 2/1
5. Scary Close - Miller - 2/17
6. All things considered - Chesterton - 3/4
7. Middlemarch - Eliot - 3/9 (audiobook)
8. Life on Mission - Coe - 3/11
9. Agnes Gray - Bronte - 3/18
10. Radical Together - Platt - 4/8
11. Great Expectations - Dickens - 4/11
12. Voices of the City - O'Henry - 4/29
13. The Mysterious Affair - Christie - 5/19
14. David Copperfield - Dickens 7/10
15. Through gates of splendor - Elliot - 7/23
16. The Sacred Search - Thomas - 7/25
17. The fellowship of the ring - Tolkien - 7/29
18. Code of the Woosters - Wodehouse - 8/5
19. Anna Karenina - Tolstoy - 8/18
20. The Two Towers - Tolkien - 8/26
21. Return of the King - Tolkien - 9/7
22. Go set a watchman - Lee - 9/8
23. Discipline: The glad surrender - Elliot - 9/12
24. War and Peace - Tolstoy - 10/18
25. When helping hurts - Corbett & Fikkert - 10/19
26. Taming of the Shrew - Shakespeare - 11/5
27. Organic Church - Neil Cole - 11/11
28. The Club of Queer Trades - Chesterton - 12/4
29. A Quest for More - Tripp - 12/15
30. Starbucked - Clark - 12/17
31. 100 things Panthers - Fowler - 12/27
32. Pilgrim's Progress - Bunyan - 12/29


Books of 2015



1. Villete - Charlotte Bronte - 11 Mar 14
2. Troilus and Criseyde - Chaucer - 31 Jan 14
3. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Pearl Poet - 5 Mar
4. Temple of Glas -
5. Piers Plowman - William Langdon 13 Feb
6. Pearl - Pearl Poet - 25 Feb
7. Grace abounding - Bunyan - 11 Mar
8. Whose Body - Sayers - 22 May
9. North and South - Gaskell - 25 Jun
10. Psmith in the city - Wodehouse - May
11. Orestia - Aeschylus - May
12. Vanity Fair - Thackeray - Apr
13. Holiness of God - Sproul - 25 Jun
14. LMM Short Stories 1909-1922 - 5 Jul
15. Little Mountain - Mundell - 1 Jul
16. Just Do Something - De Young - 20 Jun
17. Tale of Two Cities - Dickens - Mar
18. Heir of Redclyffe - Yonge - 14 Jul
19. 7 marks of a NT church - black -11 Jul
20. Persuasion (audio book) - Austen - 16 Jul
21. Short stories 1902-03 - LMM - 24 Jul
22. Damsel in distress - Wodehouse - 26 Jul
23. Tess of the d'Urberville's - Hardy - 3 Sep
24. The man with two left feet and other stories - Wodehouse - 6 Sep
25. The adventures of Sally - Wodehouse - 28 Sep
26. Home - Marianne Robinson - Sep 30
27. Disciplines of a godly man - Oct
28. Brothers Karamazov - Fydor Dostoyevsky - Nov 6
29. Jacob's room - Woolfe - 29 Nov
30. How people change - Tripp - 30 Nov
31. The secret garden - Burnett - 28 Dec


Books of 2014



“When subordinates aren’t doing what they should, leaders that exercise Extreme Ownership cannot blame the subordinates. They must first look in the mirror at themselves. The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute.”

“With Extreme Ownership, you must remove individual ego and personal agenda. It’s all about the mission. How can you best get your team to most effectively execute the plan in order to accomplish the mission?” I continued. “That is the question you have to ask yourself. That is what Extreme Ownership is all about.””

“one of the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.”

“when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate. When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard. Therefore, leaders must enforce standards. Consequences for failing need not be immediately severe, but leaders must ensure that tasks are repeated until the higher expected standard is achieved.”

“In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission. Even when others doubt and question the amount of risk, asking, “Is it worth it?” the leader must believe in the greater cause. If a leader does not believe, he or she will not take the risks required to overcome the inevitable challenges necessary to win.”

“Junior leaders must ask questions and also provide feedback up the chain so that senior leaders can fully understand the ramifications of how strategic plans affect execution on the ground.”

“Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism. It can even stifle someone’s sense of self-preservation. Often, the most difficult ego to deal with is your own.”


Extreme Ownership



If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference. - Marina Abramovic

Most products are exceptional only when we understand them within their best frame of reference. - pg 24

2 traps:

Trap 1: You are stuck on the idea of what you intended to build, and you don't realize that your product has become something else.
You probably weren't aware of it, but the minute you decided what your product was, you made a set of critical business decisions. These include:

- Target buyers and where you sell.
- Competitive alternatives
- Pricing and margin.
- Key product features and roadmap.

Trap 2: You carefully designed your products for a market, but that market has changed.

We can break down positioning into five components (plus an optional bonus component) that come together to define what we do, why we are special, which customers we can best serve and the market we intend to win.
These are the Five (Plus One) Components of Effective Positioning:

- Competitive alternatives. What customers would do if your solution didn't exist.
- Unique attributes. The features and capabilities that you have and the alternatives lack.
- Value (and proof). The benefit that those features enable for customers.
- Target market characteristics. The characteristics of a group of buyers that lead them to really care a lot about the value you deliver.
- Market category. The market you describe yourself as being part of, to help customers understand your value.
- (Bonus) Relevant trends. Trends that your target customers understand and/or are interested in that can help make your product more relevant right now.

**Your target market is the customers who buy quickly, rarely ask for discounts and tell their friends about your offering.**

Declaring that your product exists in a market category triggers a set of powerful assumptions.

Your market category can work for you or against you. If you choose your category wisely, all the assumptions are working for you. You don't have to tell customers who your competitors are. It's assumed! You don't have to list every feature, because it's assumed that all products in the category have basic category functions.

Market categories help customers use what they know to figure out what they don't.

Trends can help customers understand why a product is important right now.
Every year, Pantone, inventors of the Pantone Color Matching System, selects a
"color of the year." In 2019, it's "living
coral" (or pink, for us regular folks). Companies then create pink clothing, lipstick and furniture to be on trend. If you create a pink couch, you are still in the couch business (your market category) but you used a trend (pink) to make it clear that your couch is cool in 2019.

Using a trend in positioning is optional but often desirable.
Position your product in a market category that puts your offering's strengths in their best context, and then look for relevant trends in your industry that can help customers understand why they should consider this product right now.

The first step in the positioning exercise is to make a list of your best customers.
They understood your product quickly and bought from quickly. They became raving fans, referred you to other companies and acted as a reference for you. They represent the perfect type of customer you want to buy from you (at least in the short term). Make a list of them. You will use this list as a reference point for the rest of the exercise.

What if I don't have any super-happy customers yet?
This positioning process assumes you have enough happy customers to see a pattern in who loves your product and why.
Until you can see that, you will want to hold off on tightening up your positioning.
Time for a test. In the early days of a company, when you are still learning about what customers love and hate about your offering, you need to get your product in front of a fairly wide set of potential customers. Test your offering on this diverse audience so you can see patterns emerge.

Think of your product as a fishing net. You have a theory that your net is good for catching grouper, but you haven't hashed with it yet so you aren't certain what you might catch.
At first, you'll want to go where there are lots of different fish and see what you pull up. If you notice over time you're pulling in a lot of tuna, not grouper, you can move to the tuna spot and do the same amount of work to get a lot more fish. If you had positioned your tuna net as a grouper net in the beginning, you might never have figured out your best positioning. Positioning your net broadly as a "fish net" when you have little market experience is the best way to keep your options open until you have enough customer experience to start seeing patterns.
But I want to start with my product, not my customers!
Your first instinct might be to consider your product and its special features and position around them. Understandable!
That's the part you understand--and possibly enjoy- the most.
But that's a trap. If we start by laying out our unique features, we are unconsciously comparing ourselves to a set of competitors. The trouble is, we frequently see our competitors much differently than customers see them. I've found this to be particularly true in technology startups that are keeping an eye on other startups in their space that are competing with them.


Obviously Awesome



Relationships deepen not because we necessarily say anything in particular but because we are invested enough to show up for another conversation. In family conversations, children learn that what can matter most is not the information share but the relationships sustained. (pg 107)

Relationships in families are messy and untidy. If we clean them up with technology, we don't necessarily do them justice (pg 130)

Catastrophes have the ring of an act of God. They happen to us and we can't see them coming. When terrorism is presented as a calamity, and it is, it is presented as separate from the history that created it, so that it comes to be more like a natural disaster, a state of evil, rather than something that can be addressed by politics or through a reconsideration of its historical roots. When terror is treated as a natural disaster, all we can do about it is kill terrorists. (pg 301)

"Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities." - Alan Bloom quoted on page 307

When she was younger, she was "creeped out" by Facebook having so much information about her, but now she deals with her distrust of Facebook by keeping her posts light (pg 311)

"In the end, we will be defined not only by what we create but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill quoted on page 317

## GUIDEPOSTS

- Remember the power of your phone. It's not an accessory.
- Slow down
- Protect your creativity. Take your time and take quiet time. Find your own agenda and keep your own pace
- Create sacred spaces for conversation
- We teach the capacity for solitude by being quiet alongside children who have our attention
- Think of uni-tasking as the next big thing
- Talk to people with whom you don't agree
- Obey the 7 minute rule (it takes at least 7 minutes to see how a conversation will unfold)
- Challenge a view of the world as apps
- Choose the right tool for the job (often that's not a tech tool)
- Learn from moments of friction
- Remember what you know about life
- Don't avoid difficult conversations
- Try to avoid all or nothing thinking.
- Robots get us to hope for more...for simple salvation (pg 339)

We want more from technology and less from each other. What once would've seemed like "friendly service" at a community market had become an inconvenience that keeps us from our phones. (pg 346)

In our new culture of connection, we are lonely but afraid of intimacy. (pg 357)

Younger people are supposed to be listening. This is the compact between generations. When we celebrate robot listeners that cannot listen, we show too little interest in what our elders have to say. We build machines that guarantee that human stories will fall on deaf ears. (pg 359)


Reclaiming Conversation



Lessons taught by rich dad:

1. The Rich don't work for money

When it comes to money, most people are motivated by fear and greed. Fear if they don't have it and greed if they do.

The rich have their money work for them.

2. Why teach financial literacy

- If you want to be rich, you need to be financially iterate.
- Rule #1 is knowing the difference between assets and liabilities
- Assets add to your income. Liabilities takes money out of your pocket.
- Want to be rich? Buy assets.
- Assets fund luxuries like houses, cars, etc.
- Wealth is the measure of the cash flow from the asset column compared with the expense column. When your assets generate enough income to over your expenses, you are wealthy, even if you aren't yet rich.
- Rich people acquire assets. The poor and middle class acquire liabilities they think are assets.

3. Mind your own business

Don't spend your whole life working for someone else.

Real assets are:

- Businesses that do not require my presence - they are managed or run by other people
- Stocks
- Bonds
- Income-generating real estate.
- Anything else that has value, produces income, or appreciates and has a ready market.

4. The history of taxes and power of corporations
5. Financial IQ is made up of accounting, investing, understanding markets and the law.
6. Employees earn and get taxed and live on what's left. Corporations earn, spend and is taxed on anything that is left.
7. The rich invent money

Small amounts of money can be turned into large amounts with astute, well-timed investments

8. Work to learn - don't work for money
9. Overcoming Obstacles

I'm not poor, just broke.


Rich Dad, Poor Dad



“Here’s how to start with the anti-political politics of the Benedict option. Secede culturally from the mainstream. Turn off the television. Put the smartphones away. Read books. Play games. Make music. Feast with your neighbors. It is not enough to avoid what is bad; you must also embrace what is good. Start a church or a group within your church. Open a classical Christian school or join and strengthen one that exists. Plant a garden and participate in a local farmers market. Teach kids how to play music and start a band. Join the volunteer fire department.” p98

“Southern Baptist literary critic Ralph Woods contends that the church’s task today is “not to create a counter-culture, so much as a new culture based on one so ancient and nearly forgotten that it looks freshly minted”” p105

“Only beautiful things lead us out to join the world beyond our heads” - Matthew Crawford quoted on page 117

“Barbarians are people without historical memory. Barbarism is the real meaning of radical contemporaneity. Released from all authoritative pasts, we progress towards barbarism, not away from it” Phillip Rieff quoted on page 154


The Benedict Option



The fact of death is unsettling. But there is no other way to live. (pg 132)

The problem, however, eventually became evident, to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning – to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. (pg 169)


Books By Year

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

Reading Notes

Extreme Ownership

Obviously Awesome

Reclaiming Conversation

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

The Benedict Option

When Breath Becomes Air