Studio711.com – Ben Martens

It has apparently been six years since I did my last post of things that I’ve highlighted while reading books on my Kindle. I thought I’d do another batch but this just goes back through books I’ve read in the last two years. For a full list of all the books that I’ve read, you can follow me on goodreads. It’s mostly science fiction and fantasy with a few nonfiction thrown in every once in a while.

Before I get to that though, note that I chose Hail Mary by Andy Weir for the thumbnail but I didn’t include any quotes. I’m not giving you any spoilers, but I think this was my favorite book of the period. If you’re even a little bit sci-fi curious, check it out.

Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?” “Uh … that’s a trick question.” “It is the key question, dear Wyoming. A radical question that strikes to the root of the whole dilemma of government. Anyone who answers honestly and abides by all consequences knows where he stands—and what he will die for.

Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“Relaxing isn’t relaxing,” he said. “Sit around too much, and you start sitting around even more.”

Brandon Sanderson, Rhythm of War

If your joy lives in a codependent relationship with anything on earth, then your joy is dependent on something undependable. You don’t want that. The wisest man in history doesn’t want that for you either. King Solomon warns, “Hopes placed in mortals die with them” (Proverbs 11:7).

Mike Novotny, 3 Words That Will Change Your Life

I always thought when I became a man, I’d feel more confident, but towering over this boy, I feel so very small.

Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

Anger is nothing more than justification for bad behavior. And I have no time for bad behavior.

C. Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust

He defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company.

Michael Connelly, The Black Echo

This time, when she’d pointed it at me, she’d flicked the safety on. If that wasn’t true love, I don’t know what was.

Brandon Sanderson, Firefight

When you’re young, you can assume that everyone older than you has life figured out. Once you get command yourself, you realize we’re all just the same kids wearing older bodies.

Brandon Sanderson, Starsight

The huge moments in life seemed like they should have more ceremony and effects. The important words—the life-changing ones—should echo a little. But they didn’t. They sounded just like everything else.

James S. A. Corey, Tiamat’s Wrath

And I have to give an honorable mention to Grace Abounds by Daniel Deutschlander. I clicked on that to look at the highlights and I made over 700 highlights in ONE BOOK.

Don’t make money decision based on my ramblings, but somehow I’ve found myself in and around quite a few investment conversations lately so I wanted to share a couple things that have helped me.

1. When I found Dave Ramsey’s “7 Baby Steps“, it solidified a lot of ideas and thoughts I had around saving for emergencies, getting out of debt, and saving for retirement. He has plenty of books, website material, and podcast episodes about it, but honestly, the list alone is a great guide for us because I didn’t need to be convinced that it made sense.
2. If I only read one book about investing (and that’s not too far off), I would want it to be “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” by John Bogle. It’s short and it’s simple. He repeatedly lays out statistics to show that buying individual stocks is a gambling hobby. Investing for the long term means buying and holding a total stock market index fund (or ETF) and maybe a total bond fund and a total international fund too. Yes, there will be flashes of success here and there where people beat the market in the short term, but the lasting, winning bet is a low cost index fund that covers the whole market. It’s nearly unbeatable, and it’s super easy.

Ask me in thirty or forty years how it worked out.

This summer, I decided to read book 1 of The Expanse series. I’d heard that the TV show was really good, but before watching that, I wanted to read the books.

Honestly I was disappointed by the first book. It started off slow and then I felt like I got tricked. Instead of sci-fi, I thought it was turning into a zombie book. Thankfully it was not. Zombies are dumb.

I only gave the first book 3 out of 5 stars, but it finished really strong so the second book got it’s chance. And boy am I glad I read that one. I was completely hooked and I’ve read all the way up to book 7 which was just released.

The story is set in a believable future where we’ve expanded out to various parts of the solar system. There are a lot of politics that play out between Earth, Mars, and people who have settled out on the asteroid belt and various habitable moons. The physics of space travel make sense. There’s no hyper space or warp drives. And then… well, then spoilers.

I’m almost done with the 7th book and then I think I’ll switch over to watch the TV show. Then I’ll just gobble up TV seasons and new books as they come out. If you enjoy sci-fi at all, I can’t recommend this series enough. I’m hard-pressed to think of another sci-fi series that has captured me like The Expanse has.

I was listening to an old Stuff You Should Know podcast and they briefly mentioned some of their favorite childhood books. It got me reminiscing about books from my own childhood. I know there are some great ones that I’m forgetting but the ones that stick out are:

• The Hardy Boys
• Tom Swift (the third and fourth series)
• Ender’s Game

Those first two entries contain lots of books in them, but Ender’s Game is probably the single book that had the biggest effect on me. It such an epic read, especially as a 10-12 year old (but even now it’s great.) I credit that book with launching me off into a love of science fiction.

What are some of your favorites?

It’s been a couple years since I’ve posted some of the text that I highlight while reading books on my Kindle. I’ll pick out a few good ones since the last one.

A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character by Bear Grylls

• If you can be the most enthusiastic person you know, then you won’t go far wrong.
• Success almost always follows great attitude. The two attract each other.
• How you speak about others speaks loudest about yourself.
• The smart man and woman save the best for those they love. If we show our loved ones the most gratitude every day, then life will smile on us in return.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

• Reason is the first victim of strong emotion

The Well of Ascension: Book Two of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

• Those who take lightly promises they make to those they love are people who find little lasting satisfaction in life. This is not an easy time in which to live. That does not mean that it has to be a difficult time to love, but it does mean that you will find unusual stresses upon your lives and your relationship.
• When you can’t have both freedom and safety, which do you choose…?

The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan

• Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.
• Morgase claimed she had just made it up, her reply was “At my age, if I make it up, it’s still an old saying.”
• Never make a plan without knowing as much as you can of the enemy. Never be afraid to change your plans when you receive new information. Never believe you know everything. And never wait to know everything.
• Married life taught a man about women; or about one woman, anyway.
• One nice thing I’ve noticed about getting older is that your body doesn’t seem to need its sleep as much anymore. Dying doesn’t take as much energy as growing, I guess.
• Darkness cannot push back Light. Darkness exists only when Light fails, when it flees.

 

I recently finished reading How Star Wars Conquered the Universe. The first half of the book talked about how the original trilogy came into being, but I enjoyed the second half more which talked about the cultural impact of the movies and why the prequels were flops. The biggest revelation to me was about why George Lucas keeps changing the movies as he releases them on different mediums: in his mind, the movies are a work in progress. He had to make a bunch of compromises to get them produced and as he has more technology and money available, he’s able to remove some of those compromises. Makes sense to me.

After reading the book, I wanted to rewatch the movies (at least the original trilogy.) I’m kind of a fringe Star Wars fan. I really enjoy the movies and can quote some of the famous lines, but I couldn’t have told you the full story arc. It’s impressive how well those movies hold up. The editing was well-paced and the special effects generally don’t look too bad. The battle maneuvers and tactics are the only thing that really makes me realize their age. People just stand up in the hallways and shoot at each other with some random ducking thrown in. And why can’t anybody use a sight on their rifle? Maybe you wouldn’t miss people at point blank range if you weren’t shooting from the hip!

Thank you to Ken for loaning me the BluRay edition of the movies!

On August 15, 2014, I started reading the Wheel of Time book series. I had heard that it was good and decided to give the first book a try. After I finished it and was hooked, I realized that there are 14 books in the series and it’s pretty much a single story. The series seem almost arbitrarily divided into individual books. If you include the prequel (which I’m reading now), it’s 11,916 pages long, but it so totally worth the effort and time. The story starts off so simple and small and ends up enormous and complex in a glorious way. If you enjoy fantasy, I recommend that you check it out. It’s a big commitment and the writing isn’t always perfect, but it’s extremely good.

The writing actually gets better towards the end. Robert Jordan created the series and wrote the first 11 books in the series but he died before he could finish it. One of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, was asked to finish it. He picked up Robert Jordan’s notes and did a wonderful job with the end of the story. He kept the style much the same but got rid of a few annoyances I had with Jordan’s writing.

I’m a bit surprised that this hasn’t turned into a Game of Thrones-style TV series. The Wikipedia page for the book series indicates that some TV deals are supposedly in the works but that doesn’t mean much. Hopefully something will eventually come out… and hopefully it does the books justice.

Now it’s time to pick a new book. It has been so long since I’ve read anything other than this series that it’s going to feel really weird to switch gears. Thank you all for the various recommendations that you’ve given me. My general algorithm for picking a new book is to look at my Good Reads “to read” list, sort by average rating, and then find the highest rated one that my library has in ebook format. Looking at that list, I think I might cleanse my pallet with a little non-fiction and check out “How Star Wars Conquered the Universe“.

I love the dictionary feature of Kindles and find that I’m much more likely to look up a word using the Kindle than I was when I read paper books. I’m not sure how much my vocabulary has actually expanded, but I can pretend that I’m learning something.

Newer Kindles keep a list of all the words that you look up in the dictionary while you are reading. Here are some of the words I’ve looked up.

• harridan
• admonitory
• autoclaves
• moue
• quirt
• offal
• asperity
• depredations
• bucolic
• neoteny
• peregrination
• demesne
• turpitude
• fulminate
• esurient
• obdurate

The list goes on, but I’m starting to have flashbacks of the ACTs. Also, I don’t remember the definitions to most of these so apparently it isn’t working very well. The Kindle does have a feature that builds flashcards out of this word list if you really want to get serious about it.