This week my focus was a little skewed, as such I spent some time with much larger books and laughed a lot. One of these books was very pointed and as I read it I wondered how others would interpret it and laughed as I read reviews.\
My reads for this week:
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene : *** 1/2
I find myself intrigued, irritated, and appalled by this book. As I read it I nodded my head a lot (Not literally, so stop thinking I was a bobble headed reader) and shaking my head even more (see above). There is a certain air of wisdom about the book, and a certain naivety as well. With that in mind I reread a few chapters and will likely look at this again in the future as I consider life.
Something that interested me as I read was in the middle of the book I went out and read reviews. As I did I found many condemning the book, and many praising it. It lead me to only one conclusion as I progressed, you cannot take this book as law and you must look at the reversal of every law stated. Although the author doesn’t seem to, by approaching this book as both the positive and negative they present it as a choice, and a clear choice it is. Some of the examples we great successes, but some did not prove the “law” they just shadowed it that way.
As I considered my own life and experience I could relate to nearly all the laws being used indirectly, reversed, or used on me by others. I found that interesting but many of these are common or I could say uncommon sense.
My rating was tough. This book can be and the approach has been abused but the author did not assign morality, they just did a lot of work and deserve more than a little credit for the completeness of this work. So taking a mid stands 3 1/2 stars.
Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life by Jim Kwik : ****
Not mentioned – I read a few books this week I will just lose. Sometimes indie authors knock it out of the park, and sometimes, no such luck.