Started 12/2/2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Friday, November 20, 2015
(#30) Radical, by David Platt
Started: 11/16/2015Finished: 11/20/2015
"The challenge is for one year, and it involves five components. I dare you over the next year to...
1. pray for the entire world;
2. read through the entire Word;
3. sacrifice your money for a specific purpose;
4. spend your time in another context;
5. commit your life to a multiplying community."
"After spending a week around precious children who eat a small cup of porridge a day, the question I have come back to Birmingham asking God is why he has blessed me when others have so little. And this what God has shown me: "I have blessed you for my glory. Not so you will have a comfortable life with a big house and a nice car. Not so you can spend lots of money on vacations, education, or clothing. Those aren't bad things, but I've blessed you so that the nations will know me and see my glory." ~p.84
"Being a part of a community of faith involves being exposed to the life of Christ in others. Just as we are identified with Christ and his church in baptism, we now share life in Christ with one another. So to whom can you deliberately, intentionally, and sacrificially show the life of Christ in this way? This is foundational in making disciples, and we will multiply the gospel only when we allow others to get close enough to us to see the life of Christ in action." ~pp.98-99
"This is the unavoidable conclusion of Matthew 10. To everone wanting a safe, untroubled, comforatble life free efrom danger, stay away from Jesus. The danger in our lives will always increase in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ." ~p.167
(#29) The Auschwitz Escape, by Joel C. Rosenberg
Started: 11/7/2015
Finished 11/15/2015
I'm not a huge novel/fiction fan, as I would rather read non-fiction: historical books, evangelical books, etc. But I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and I couldn't put it down. This was a fictionalized account of several real-life escapes from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp as detailed in the Auschwitz Protocols.
While reading it one afternoon at swim team practice, a gentleman was sitting beside me watching his granddaughter swim. He noticed the title of my book and asked me about it. So I struck up a conversation with. He said there was no way anyone could have escaped from that camp, because he had been there and seen it first hand. I didn't know how to rebut this, because I had not yet learned about the Protocols.
That led to him sharing how he had been to the Auschwitz Museum near Krakow, Poland, this past February. He pulled up images on his iPad and showed me all of the pictures he had taken. It was truly remarkable to see all of the museum pictures. Needless to say, I added Poland to my bucket-list travel destinations.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Saturday, October 24, 2015
(#27) The Years of Extermination, by Saul Friedlander
Started: 10/23/2015
This is a detailed account of the rise of anti-semitism in the Third Reich prior to WWII. Very detailed documented account, both from a Jewish perspective as well as from an inside the Reich perspective. This book has an amazing amount of detail...
Friday, October 23, 2015
(#26) The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leaderhship, by John C. Maxwell
I read this book earlier in the year and forgot to log it. Excellent read...
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Thursday, October 1, 2015
(#22) Unbroken, by Linda Hillenbrand
Started: 9/22/2015Finished: 9/30/2015
This was an incredible read. My favorite quote from the book was an actual quote from Billy Graham during the 1949 Los Angeles tent revival:
"If you look into the heavens tonight, on this beautiful California night, I see the stars and can see the footprints of God...I think to myself, my father, my heavenly, father, hung them there with a flaming fingertip and holds them there with the power of this omnipotent hand, and he runs the whole universe, and he's not too busy running the whole universe to count the hairs on my head and see a sparrow when it falls, because God is interested in me...God spoke in creation."
Thursday, September 10, 2015
(#21) Nelson Mandela, In His Own Words
Started: 9/9/2015
I did not finish this book. It was interesting for me to learn the recent history of the country of South Africa and how Mandela led it out of apartheid.
This book was a series of speeches... As a result it was hard to finish.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
(#20) The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide, by Wolfgang Benz
Started: 9/7/2015Finished: 9/8/2015
"The ghettos represented a stepping-stone on the road to the Holocaust. Despite all the misery and suffering, despite all the tragedies that were enacted in them, they were still not the main venues of mass murder. In the years 1940 - 1943, they were the waiting rooms of destruction, the antechambers of hell, the stations on the way to camps to which human beings were deported for the express purpose of being murdered."
This book gave me a better perspective of the Riga Ghetto. Kristie and the girls saw this ghetto first hand in 2013.
Additionally, I read about the Jungfernhof concentration camp in which we came very close to one day in Riga.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
(#17) Jack: Straight From the Gut, by Jack Welch
...but differentiation is all about being extreme, rewarding the best and weeding out the ineffective. Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars --and stars build great businesses. pg. 25
Monday, August 10, 2015
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Friday, July 10, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
(#6) Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B. Gilbreth, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Started: 2/26/2015Finished: 3/7/2015
Because Sarah was in the play, Cheaper by the Dozen, put on by the Southside Theater Guild, I had to read the original book written by two of the twelve original dozen kids. As fun as the play was for our family, I am selfishly glad it's over. I like having most of my evenings with my family again.
I picked up the book from GA Pines to see how true the play was to the original biography. Come to find out, many of the scenes in the play were verbatim the way they were written in the book. The book goes further in depth into what it was like to grow up in this household.
An easy read that I recommend for anyone.
Monday, February 2, 2015
(#5) 9 Things You Simpy Must Do, by Henry Cloud
Started: 2/4/2015Finished: 2/22/2015
Thanks to a good friend who gave me a book the last time I saw him. It was a good read. I'd like to consider myself a deja-vu person, what this book describes as someone that doesn't let life get them down over and over - that rolls with all the punches - someone that reaches their goals - and doesn't let the set-backs in life cause them to get derailed.
The nine things you must do are as follows:
1. Dig it up. Pay attention to what bugs you. Don't ignore the little signals that things aren't quite right inside. Don't let negative feelings just sit there. Grasp your dreams and reach for them.
2. Pull the tooth. Don't hang out on the bad stuff. Deal with the negative. "Clutter, dead weight, things we keep around that don't help us but take up space or drain resources." "The overriding principle is that unresolved negative things are a drain and take away from that which has life. They have no place in your heart."
3. Play the movie. "Any one thing you do is only a scene in a larger movie. To understand that action, you have to play it out all the way to the end of the movie."
4. Do something. "What can I do to make this situation better?" "I have never seen successful people stall out because of some feared, anticipated, or hypothetical outcome.
5. Act like an ant. "They achieved their goals by taking tiny steps over time." "Wanting it all keeps you from having any."
6. Hate well. "Character is in part formed by what we hate, because we move to be different from whatever that is." "Successful people move against the problem, and show love and respect to the person at the same time." Subjective vs. objective hate. Direct your anger towards the issue, not towards people and things. "Transform [hate] to the kind of hate that solves problems, protects things that you value, and stands against the things that you do not want in your life."
7. Don't play fair. "Give back better than you are given." "Successful people do not blast others with anger."
8. Be humble. "Successful people show kindness, understanding, and help to others who fail."
9. Upset the right people. "Deja vu people do not make decisions based on the fear of other people's reactions." "Do not rescue an angry man."
Sunday, January 25, 2015
(#4) The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs
Started 1/22/2015Finished: 2/2/2015
I read about this book on Amazon's Top 100 list. It received great reviews, so I checked it out through GA Pines.
This was the biography of a brilliant young man (not too much younger than myself) that grew in in East Orange, NJ. His father was in prison most of his life, while his mother raised him. Robert was a brilliant student who ended up getting a full-ride to Yale ultimately to return to a difficult life in Orange after his graduation.
What a troubled life this man had. Heavily into drug use and drug dealing. In the end, he was gunned down in a brutal murder. What a sad sad existence...
Difficult to read, hard to put down... I have mixed feelings about this book.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Saturday, January 10, 2015
(#2) The Intelligent Investor, Revised Edition, by Benjamin Graham
Started: 1/10/2015Finished: 1/22/2015
Hailed as one of the best books ever written on investing, this 1970's book had been updated in the early 2000's with commentary by Jason Zweig. Definitely a deep book that was a slow read. I got more practical information from the commentary than I did the main text.
"The intelligent investor realizes that stocks become more risky, not less, as their prices rise - and less risky, not more as their prices fall. The intelligent investor dreads a bull market, since it makes stocks more costly to buy...you should welcome a bear market, since it puts stocks back on sale."
"If your investment horizon is long - at least 25 or 30 years - there is only one sensible approach: Buy every month, automatically, and whenever else you can spare some money. The single best choice for this lifelong holding is a total stock-market index fund."
"The longer and further stocks fall, and the more steadily you keep buying as they drop, the more money you will make in the end - if you remain steadfast until the end. Instead of fearing a bear market, you should embrace it."
Thursday, January 8, 2015
(#1) You Have More Than You Think, By David and Tom Gardner
Started: 12/29/204Finished: 1/10/2015
This is an older book, but a good introduction to stock investments.
An investment strategy that they recommend:
1. Get the list of the Dow 30 companies.
2. Obtain the dividend yield and the price per share for each stock.
3. Sort the list by dividend yield highest to lowest.
4. Exclude from consideration all but the ten highest yielders. Exclude the highest yield stock if it has the lowest share price.
5. Sort the remaining nine or ten stocks by share price, lowest to highest.
6. Buy as many of the first four stocks as you can afford, in equal dollar amounts.
7. Eighteen months and a day later, go through steps 1 to 5 again. Generate your list of the new Foolish Four and make any transfers necessary.
8. Retire and/or write a financial book.
A few other takeaways:
1. A single dollar a day.
2. Health risk of credit borrowing.
3. Invest dollars not needed for 5 years.
4. Common stocks over mutual funds.
5. Use Sharebuilder for DRP's.
6. Invest in "Great Companies" and the "Foolish Four" and "What You Are" stocks.
7. No single stock greater than 15% of your portfolio.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)