So last year I planned on procrastinated about giving you a list of the awesome list of books I had in my reading list. Without further ado, here’s the list of what I plan to read in early 2008.

Each of the titles links to Amazon, just in case you want to buy the book; in the order in which I intend to read them, here’s my list.

…actually the first three I’m reading concurrently.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris. I heard about it on one of the podcasts I subscribe to. I actually can’t find which one of my dozen or so podcasts I got the tip from, but they recommended 3 books; I started with this one. Consisting of 221 pages, with an epilogue and an after word adding about a dozen pages, it has been a breeze to read thus far. I’m on page 164 and should be finished by mid week next week.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, by Timothy Ferris. I am also in the middle of reading this awesome piece of work. It is a motivator, if you are yearning for change you should read this. I’m taking it one chapter at a time because it calls for specific stuff you should do. Informal exercises call for action which makes the reading an interactive experience. As with most good books, a lot of the narrative is very down to earth and much of the “how to” in this book just makes sense.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Somehow subconsciously, I bought this and the 4 hour workweek at the same time; I think I picked up the tip subconsciously from one of my daily RSS reads. If the 4 hour workweek is the “why” this is the “how.” GTD has been making waves for a long time now. This is the book that could change your life if you are a procrastinator like me or just simply want more out of life, but aren’t sure how to do it — whatever *it* may be.

The rest of the books are on my nightstand ready to be cracked open soon. Mostly purchased out of recommendations either by friends, bloggers or bestseller lists. In the order which I intend to read them on:

- Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. The cover reads “In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself….”

- The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. The comical cover of the Author dressed in ancient costume, holding a coffee cup resembling a Starbucks Latte on one hand, and the 10 commandments on the other, expands on the title with this: “One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible”. I just have to read this.

- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. This is an older book (1955), controversial in topic even today. One of those that many people say is a must read. Wikipedia says: “The novel is both internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the book’s narrator and protagonist Humbert Humbert becoming sexually obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl named Dolores Haze.”

- God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens. In my ever persevering search for truth, this makes #2 on that group of 3 books I mentioned earlier.

- Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. During high school I managed to skip reading this classic. Huxley’s essays caught my attention some time ago, and this is the most popular and renowned. So I think it also falls into the “you should read this” category. It describes a Utopian society and Wikipedia further describes that after the utopia state has been reached… “The irony is that [Utopia has] been achieved by eliminating many things that humans consider to be central to their identity — family, culture, art, literature, science, religion, and philosophy. It is also a hedonistic society, deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drug use, especially the use of soma, a powerful drug taken to escape pain and bad memories through hallucinatory fantasies. Additionally, stability has been achieved and is maintained via deliberately engineered and rigidly enforced social stratification.”

- The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Sam Harris, opens his after word for The end of Faith, with a long quote by Richard Dawkins. And this is the 3rd of those three books I mentioned earlier. I can’t wait to get to it, that is why its at the bottom of the list; hopefully the motivation to read it will push me through the previous books.

That is it for now. I intend to keep a small log for each of the books as I read them so stay tuned if you’d like to know what I think of each one as I go through them. I would like to be done with these by mid February, hopefully some of your feedback keeps me motivated. Do you have suggestions for the next list?

I’ve been meaning to write a few posts about the environment. Global warming is on everyone’s minds, its a hot topic for the presidential election in 2008 and as some would say, if we don’t stop Global Warming. We are all gonna die!

Well I’m not so sure about all that. I’m not sure that if I change my light bulbs to energy efficient light bulbs I will make any impact on Global Warming. I do know though that for the most part most of humanity treats the environment like shit. I’ve been guilty of mistreating our planet myself and thus I can’t stand here and be a judge or point fingers. Continue Reading “Doing my part on the enviroment issue” »

I was surprised to see that the US doesn’t have a city listed until number 27! That is pretty crazy if you think about it. We think the US is the greatest place to live, but according to this list… it is not. Once you get to some of the cities that the US does have in this list, you’ll see Los Angeles as one of them. Los Angeles is listed as #55. I can think of 100 cities I’d rather live than L.A. it is overcrowded, dirty, traffic is horrible and crime loves it. I wonder what are the 39 key points used to judge quality of life.

Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which provides advice to multinational companies on international assignments, has come up with a global ranking of the world’s most livable cities based on 39 key quality-of-life issues.

check out the full list