Books Recap for February 2019

It was another good month of reading. I finished 2.5 books and read about 830 pages this month. I’m only slightly down from last month as I didn’t travel anywhere, so I didn’t have quite as much dedicated reading time. The 2 books I finished are Educated and This is Marketing.

Book 1: Educated

Oh boy – I flew through Educated by Tara Westover. This autobiographical story is gripping to the point where it reads like fiction. Tara was born in Idaho to a survivalist Mormon family, and she never set foot in a classroom until she was 17. There are tons of interesting points from this book, like the fact that certain things we take for granted were foreign to her. Here’s a recurring thought I had, from my notes on Goodreads:

The way her parents behave (especially her father) with recklessness for life because of “God’s angels” infuriates me.

Indeed as someone who’s struggling with his faith a bit, it’s insane to me that someone would behave so recklessly because “God will protect us.”

In any case, this book was one I couldn’t put down. I even took time out of the work day to finish it. I strongly recommend it.

This is Marketing

To change the pace completely, my next book was This is Marketing by Seth Godin. Marketing is not really my strong suit and I wanted to get some thoughts and advice on how to be better at it.

Godin is a great author and always offers a practical view on things, and this book was no different.

The best thing about the book was the prompts it provided and the ideas it generated. There’s lots of good advice in it, and even more thought provoking statements.

I took notes throughout the book, and after I finished took an afternoon to flesh out my messaging and who I was really talking to. I even reworked my home page over at Creator Courses. My personal website is next.

Currently Reading: The Last Republicans

The rest of the month was consumed by The Last Republicans, a biography about George H. W. and George W. Bush, and their relationship.

I’ve always admired the Bush family, and as we wade through the current political climate, I’m happy to read back on times I lived through, but didn’t quite have the right perspective on. I’m a little more than halfway through it and hope to finish it by the end of next week.