Last Years Reading List

English: Open book icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I mentioned in my post about the goals for next year, last year I read a total of 87 books after after seeing a posting from speaker and friend Rich Hopkins that he was going to try to read a book a week and decided to do the same.

My reading list included fiction, urban planning and design, motivational/self-help, business, history, biographies and politics. The fiction category comprised mainly of Star Trek books and the Tomorrow, When the War Began series which is a Australian version of Red Dawn but because they comprise a seven book series are much more details and character development than the Red Dawn movies.

Except for the Star Trek books most of which I purchased since they are not available in our local library, all the books I read came from the Multnomah County Library.

Here is a listing of the books by category:

Category/Title                                         Author:                                      Recommended?

Motivational/Self Help

The 5 Love Languages                           Gary Chapman                           Yes
Barefoot Executive                                 Carrie Wilkerson                        Yes
Raising Positive Kids                             Zig Ziglar                                    Yes
Think and Grow Rich                             Napoleon Hill                             Yes
The Millionaire Next Door                     Tom Stanley/William Danko     Yes
Be the Miracle                                         Regina Brett                               Yes
Hijacked By Your Brain                         Julian Ford, Jon Wortmann        Yes
How Full is Your Bucket?                      Tom Rath, Donald Clifton          Yes
Life Without Limits                                Nick Vujivic                               Yes
Break Out                                               Joel Osteen                                  Yes
Wishes Fulfilled                                     Wayne Dyer                                 No
Life Reimagined                                     Richard Leider, Alan Webber     Yes
How to Win Friends and Influence...     Dale Carnegie and others            Yes
100 Ways to Motivate Yourself             Steve Chandler                            Yes
How Successful People Think               John Maxwell                              Yes
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind             T. Harv Ecker                              No
E-Squared                                               Pam Grout                                   Yes
The Butterfly Effect                               Andy Andrews                            Yes
Better Than Good                                  Zig Ziglar                                     Yes
Outliers                                                  Malcolm Gladwell                        No
Relentless                                              Tim Grover                                   Yes
Power of Your Subconscious Mind      Joseph Murphy                             Yes
The Purpose Driver Life                       Rick Warren                                  Yes
Instant Influence                                   Michael Plantalon                          Yes
Drive                                                     Daniel Pink                                    Yes
Finding A Way to Win                         Bill Parcells                                   Yes
Top Performance                                  Zig Ziglar                                       Yes
Take The Lead                                      Betsy Meyers                                 Yes
Motivation Manifesto                           Brendan Burchard                          Yes
Get Motivated                                       Tamara Lowe                                Maybe...

Fiction: 

Daybreak Zero                                       John Barnes                                   No

Star Trek: 

From History's Shadow                         Dayton Ward                                 Only for Star Trek Fans
The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms              Dayton Ward                                 Yes
Voyager: Protectors                               Kristen Beyer                                Only for Star Trek Fans
No Time Like the Past                           Greg Cox                                       No

Tomorrow When the War Began:

Tomorrow When the War Began          John Marsden                                Yes
The Dead of Night                                John Marsden                                Yes
A Killing Frost                                      John Marsden                                Yes
Darkness Be My Friend                        John Marsden                                Yes
Burning For Revenge                            John Marsden                                Yes
The Night is for Hunting                       John Marsden                                Yes
The Other Side of Dawn                       John Marsden                                Yes

Urban Planning/Design:

Zoned Out                                             Jonathon Levine                           Only to Planning Nerds
Planning a New West                           Abbott, Abbott, and Adler            Yes
Ethical Land Use                                  Timothy Beatley                           No
Planning and Diversity in the City       Ruth Fincher, Kurt Iveson            No
Planning With Complexity                   Judith Innes                                  No
Portland Edge                                       Various                                         No
The Seaside Debates                             Robert Davis, Tod Bressi,           Yes
American Urban Form                         Warner, Whittemore                     Yes
Living Over the Store                           Howard Davis                              Yes
Principles of Ecological Landscape
    Design                                              Travis Beck                                   Yes
How to Study Public Life                     Jan Gehl, Birgitte Svarre              Yes
Design for an Emphatic World             Ryn, Hawken                               Yes
Cities for People                                   Jan Gehl                                        Yes
Death and Life of Great American
    Cities                                                 Jane Jacobs                                   Yes
Walkable City                                       Jeff Speck                                     Yes
Urban Design                                        Cuesta, Moughtin, Moughtin       Yes
Living Streets                                        Bain, Gray, Rodgers                    Yes
Happy City                                            Charles Montgomery                   Yes
Urban Design Handbook                      Urban Design Associates             Yes
New Urban China                                 Laurence Liauw                           No
Toward Sustainable Communities        Various                                        Yes
  
Politics/Social:

Democracy and Populism                    John Lukacs                                 Yes
That Used to be Us                               Friedman, Mandelbaum               Yes
Planet of Slums                                    Mike Davis                                   Yes
New American Militarism                   Andrew Bacevich                         Yes
To Serve God and Wal-Mart               Bethany Moreton                          Yes
The Metropolitan Revolution              Bruce Katz, Jennifer Bradley        Yes
Bowling Alone                                     Robert Putnam                              Yes
Rise of the Creative Class                    Richard Florida                             Yes
Collapse                                               Jared Diamond                               Yes
The Elusive State of Jefferson             Peter Laufer                                   Yes
Convention Center Follies                   Heywood T. Sanders                     Yes

Business: 

Retail 101                                            Nicole Reyhle, Jason Prescott       Yes
Supply Chain Strategy                        Edward Frazelle                             Yes
Retail Doctors Guide to Growing
        Your Business                             Bob Phibbs                                    Yes

History:

They Got it Wrong: History               Emma Marriott                             Yes

Biography:  

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive                  Walter Isaccson                             Yes
Jim Henson                                         Brian Jay Jones                              Yes
Thomas Jefferson                               John Meacham                               Yes
Albert Einstein                                                                                           Yes
Elizabeth Smart                                  Elizabeth Smart                              Yes
Neil Armstrong                                  Jay Barbree                                     Yes
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos
       and the Age of Amazon              Brad Stone                                      Yes
Steve Jobs: The Man who Thought
       Different                                      Karen Blumenthal                          Yes

Misc: 

Frontiers Past and Future                    Carl Abbott                                   Yes

Sorry about the formatting but it is a Blogger thing.

It should also be noted that while I recommend all the books in the Politics/Social category I may not necessarily agree with everything that the book has to say.

I still have many books on loan to read plus I also received some for Christmas that I plan on reading soon also.

Happy Reading Everyone...            
                       

Are your goals set for 2015?

It is that time of the year that we start thinking about what has happened in the past year and start thinking about the new year to come. This is also the time that people think up New Years resolution's that get forgotten by January 2nd, I have already discussed the importance of setting goals and how to set them.I  also talked about a good planner to keep track of what you need to be doing. Today I am going to discuss putting them together to set your yearly goals and to make plans for the year to come.

Last year I had a small planner that was about 5X7 but it just did not work out the way I wanted it to. I found that I liked to have more room to put hourly schedules in and have room for important dates. This year I purchased a planner that measures 9X12 but is still convenient to carry around. This planner is an weekly appointment book that is broken down by 15-minute intervals 7 days a week and runs from 7am to 8pm.

In addition at the there is a monthly calendar at the beginning of every month. One feature that attracted my attention to this particular planner was that both the monthly calender and the weekly appointment sections have an area for notes that I can write my goals for that month and week into and see them every day as a reminder of what I am going to accomplish. I will have to say it sometimes scary to see how fast the calendar is already filling up and we haven't hit the new year yet.

Now that I have a planner that I like that allows me to put in my monthly and weekly goals there is the job of getting the yearly goals done. As I mentioned on the posts about setting goals there are long range (life) goals, medium range goals and your yearly goals with the yearly goals set up as stepping stones to those big life or long range goals.

Last year I accomplished several of my goals a lot sooner than I had planned for which means I set the bar too low so this year I am raising that bar. For example I hit my weight loss goal by the first of September and even though I do not have that far to go I want to hit my final weight by the time I attend an importance conference from April 17th to April 21st. While this is a tight deadline it creates a challenge to overcome especially since I want to buy a nice new suite for the conferance and don't want it to be too big after a few months!

Another goal I set up was to have an update set of life goals by April 1st. While I already have a set of life goals, they should be reevaluated every few years to ensure that you are on the right track or when you have major life changes that cause you to reevaluate your priorities in life. An example using a medium range goal is that I have a picture of a Ford Raptor on my desk as it was something I wanted a few years ago. Well life has changed and that Raptor no longer appeals to me so that goal has changed.

On the other hand there is also times that you may reevaluate how aggressive you are with a goal. I have mentioned previously that I added a goal during the year to read a book a week after seeing the that my friend Rich Hopkins was doing it. Well not only did I meet the goal I blew it away by reading 87 books this past year. While I could say I want to be even more aggressive this year instead I am actually sticking with the 52 from last year. While I love to read there was times last year that reading became a choir so I am going to work on enjoying it again instead of worrying about how much I am reading.

Now is the time to get those goals in order and ready for the challenges the of the new year.

Hitting the Books...

Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. ~AuthorUnknown (Photo credit: Nick Kenrick .)

Last time I talked about goals and mentioned that about a goal that I originally didn't start off with but was influenced by an acquaintance. That person is Rich Hopkins who is an outstanding public speaker and motivator who set a goal of reading one book per week for the whole year and gave a list of some of the books he was thinking of reading.

At first I didn't think that I could even come close to reading a book a week but I decided to put my one hour back and forth to school on TriMet Route 44 to good use. While we still have a couple of days till the half way point of the year, I have actually read 28 books so far this year and am currently working on one although I don't know if I will have it done by Monday.