hlau's reviews
115 reviews

I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi

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5.0

There's a lot of financial hokum out there and because we treat money management and financial matters as a taboo subject people never get sound advice. Moreover, financial management comes from our parents more often than it comes from school or society. Ramit takes this one step further and demonstrates how absurdly moronic it is to ignore your financial well being because you are scared, uninformed or intimidated. He walks people through six very easy, very basic steps to peace of mind and stability in managing your money.

The truth is, being rich has very little to do with massive amounts of money (okay, just a little to do with that). It has alot more to do with doing what you want, minimizing spending on the things that bring you no joy and automating it all so you don't worry about it.

This is right up there with Juliet Schor's "The Overspent American" as a must read for college students and twenty-somethings.
Dauntless by Jack Campbell

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5.0

Military science fiction can be hard and cold. You can be detached from it about as quickly as Star Wars fans decided they didn't like Jar-Jar Binks. But Campbell writes a fast-paced novel that forces you to use your head. The subtle psychology of leadership in the book is a good detour and a continuing theme that continues to impress me as much as Orson Scott Card's work in the Ender series. There isn't endless talk of weapons, ships schematics or technology (sorry to the Star Trek and John Clancy fans out there). But you will have to wrap your head around battles in space...not that easy.

You're not going to get into endless discussions on humanity and rigorous speeches (ok, there's one). The characters aren't one dimensional and you might actually laugh out loud or root for them at some point. But the true test of whether it's good is whether I want to read another one.

With fifty pages left to go on this first installment, Book 2 was sitting on my desk.
Fearless by Jack Campbell

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4.0

Truthfully, when you read this writing you assume 'Black Jack Geary' to always win, with a few obstacles shoved in the way that are somewhat easy to overcome. But the honest truth is the writing appeals to more than the military fiction fan as Campbell commits to writing about the ethical considerations and leadership problems that face good people. Moreover, alot the lessons have more to do with ego, building coherent teams and being able to think out problems.