I like to read a lot of books, and at any other point in my life,
it hasn't been as acceptable to stay inside and read all day,
but I am taking full advantage of this situation in the world
to do just that and not feel guilty about it whatsoever.
So I've been reading a lot lately - more than usual -
and more than I will once things go a little bit more "back to normal,"
but like I said, taking advantage of this situation -
what little good can come of it.
Um - and I'm going to go over some of the books that I read in the
past couple of weeks.
It's not everything that I've read, but this is most of it.
I did return some of them to the library, so I don't have physical things
to show you for all of them, but actually, to start off,
maybe talking about audiobooks makes the most sense.
No, I'm not about to sell you any kind of subscription service,
I promise you, I won't do that,
but I took notes, because I do read a lot of audiobooks -
listen to a lot of audiobooks - as I am doing other things in my life,
and I do count that as reading, because you are
absorbing the information.
Some people don't like it because they find that
they can't multitask - they can't listen to the book and
do the activity all at the same time.
I don't have a problem with that - in fact, I like to distract myself
from the thing that I'm doing oftentimes,
such as cleaning or exercising.
I use audio books as a way to make repetitive menial tasks more exciting.
So my list of audiobooks is a bit extensive,
just because I do a lot of menial tasks and daily exercise and walks,
so that's when I get this reading done.
I feel like it'd just be easier for me to list out all of the books that I've read,
so I'm gonna put them around the screen.
I would say out of all of these, the ones that I would recommend most
would be Greenlights, which is written by Matthew McConaughey -
just came out, it's super entertaining and a little bit philosophical,
but it's funny and it's surprising in a way that I didn't think it was going to be -
highly recommend to anyone who has any interest in Matthew McConaughey whatsoever.
The second one that I would recommend? I would say Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins.
I thought it was going to be very hustle-culture-y and motivational in a very negative way,
but it actually felt inspirational in a way
that - I didn't think it was going to be applicable to my own life,
I have no aspirations to be a navy seal or anything of that sort,
and I do like to find hacks and automation systems and ways to not have to do "slogging"
through difficult things - um - and he's definitely a lover of the slogging.
And I guess I would probably also recommend Feeling Great by David Burns.
If you're not going to listen to Feeling Great, I would also recommend
getting THIS guy, which is The Feeling Good Handbook.
I read Feeling Good, Feeling Great, and I did this handbook -
like actually, I filled it out - there's my writing in it.
Um - because I wanted to make sure I - kind of - really understood fully,
all of the concepts.
It's about CBT: cognitive behavioral therapy.
Really interesting stuff.
I heard this guy on a podcast, and I thought he was really interesting
in the way he talked about things, was in a very logical way,
and it made sense to me.
And I've always been interested when I've heard other people I know
who have gone to get cognitive behavioral therapy -
the fact that it's only a few sessions for you to - kind of - figure out
how to deal with a problem rather than classic talk therapy,
where you go pretty much maintenance-wise on a weekly or monthly basis,
um - it's attractive to me, so I wanted to learn more about it.
I feel like if you like "book - books," I would get this - it's the handbook.
If you would rather just listen to an audiobook,
Feeling Great would be the one that I would recommend out of those three.
A lot of the audiobooks that I listen to are kind of self-help-y.
They're very "Hoorah! Let's go get it and accomplish your dreams!"
And I find that to be helpful, again, when I'm doing menial tasks,
but they do tend to get very repetitive, and I would say that the War of Art, for example,
had a lot of overlap with - uh - Obstacle is the Way, and also Relentless,
and the Talent Code, and I would say out of all of those books, I would instead
read Peak by Anders Erickson, and then read Grit by Angela Duckworth.
That would be my recommendation.
I would say skip all of those other ones, unless you're really into stoicism,
then The Obstacle is the Way is a good introduction into stoicism,
but if you're really trying to get something done,
if you have a project that you want to work on,
I would say start with Peak, finish up with Grit, and just go get em!
Next genre! Let's talk about comic books.
I finished the Umbrella Academy, volume one - it was good.
The art was really cool. I actually like the tv show better.
I don't know if it's because I saw the tv show first, so I had that kind of cemented in my mind,
and then when you go to the book version, which came before the tv show obviously,
it wasn't up to the same level that I had imagined things at,
so it was kind of a letdown, the book was...
Don't know if i'm gonna keep reading the series.
The other book that I already returned to the library was Swamp Thing.
Alan Moore wrote that in - I think it was the 80s, maybe?
Highly recommend Swamp Thing - classic comic book.
He does get a bit too flowery with his language at times, it gets to be a bit
ridiculous and... self-congratulatory? Shall I say?
But classic nonetheless, for a reason.
Other classics I got:
Ronin - Frank Miller.
He's the guy who wrote 300 and Sin City and - gosh...
Other things... Batman, I think?
The Dark Knight Returns was Frank Miller.
And then I got Will Eisner's Spirit, which I thought was actually the classic Will Eisner's,
but this is "the new adventures," so this is written and drawn by
creators past Will Eisner's run on The Spirit.
Besides Batman, I'm not really a big superhero or masked avenger or any kind of story like that fan.
I think that they're oftentimes just so irresponsible in a way, to think that
some superhero's going to come save everyone, but to each their own.
I would recommend Ronin - very good - kind of - classic, one-hit graphic novel.
This is all that exists of the story - so it's an easy one to
sit down and read for a couple hours and then be done with it.
I did buy myself THIS - which is the compendium of Saga.
I have read a couple volumes, but I didn't get to all of them, and
the ones by me are always not available in the library, so I thought,
"Well I might as well just get this," and this is all that exists of Saga right now -
it might look a bit intimidating if you're not familiar with reading comic books.
This would take about six hours to read - it's really not that intimidating.
There - there's a lot more pictures than words to read, so it's almost like watching a few movies.
Along the same lines, another one I bought - this is about anime.
It's not a story - it's like the history of anime.
I've been really into comic books for the past year or so,
and this is kind of foraying my knowledge from comic books into animation.
I grew up as a Disney kid, so I'm familiar with that realm of things,
but I'm not as familiar with the Japanese
and Korean side of things, so I'm interested to learn more about that.
It seems like a lot of this is Miyazaki with Studio Ghibli - which is kind of
the Japanese version of Disney - but I think there are other things,
other movies and whatnot that she covers in here, too.
Excited to read that one.
I saw a YouTube video of Ray Dalio interviewing
Jeffrey Canada, and I thought he was really interesting,
so I got this book because it wasn't available on audiobook anywhere.
I would have gotten it on audiobook, but it seems like a pretty easy read.
I haven't started it yet - can't tell you if it's good. Looked interesting:
Reaching up for Manhood - it's actually pretty old, it's from - I think -
the late 90's, so I don't know how relevant it's going to be anymore,
since - yeah, '98 - I don't know how relevant it's going to be anymore,
since the days of the internet are upon us,
and that wasn't so much a problem (or solution) back here.
So it's just kind of more a mark of the history of thought of Jeffrey Canada,
and it'd be interesting to see how his ideas have evolved since this book.
Similar lines: Ray Dalio. I have read this book before, on audiobook,
but I was interested in getting the book-book version, because there are
different kind of iconography
and ways that things are written out in the book itself.
It has fancy bookmarks and everything - but it has things like that, so I thought it'd be cool -
a better way to digest it - would be to
go through the physical copy and compare it to what I remember from the audiobook,
which I think I read late last year.
My last genre is art books - kind of like the comic books but more instructional,
because I am really teaching myself how to do digital art right now,
and the first one I got is this - I think it's Guweiz -
I'm not quite sure, but I saw this online and just really loved the way he did lighting.
I'll try to show you a couple.
They're very dark, and I'm not used to this kind of lighting, where it's -
it's very shadowy and colors are actually applied after he gets all of the gradation of values,
and I thought it could be a good challenge to get this book and kind of -
try to - not copy him, but play to the things that I enjoy seeing in his art in my own.
Try to emulate the things I enjoy in this, and see if there's some way that I can evolve
my style to include what I have found beautiful in his.
I'm so excited about this book, which is written by James Gurney.
He's the author of Dinotopia - I'm sure some of you are familiar with Dinotopia.
They are classic children's books - pretty much - but the art in those are gorgeous,
and I had no idea that he did all of these art books.
This one, I actually did get from the library, but I think I'm going to have to
buy it so that I can use each page as an exercise to go through.
So you can see, he goes over specific topics on each page, and then he has examples of
what he's talking about.
Lots of art books that I find are for digital art are more about the software itself,
and how to use the tools of the program,
and less about classic art training applied to those digital tools,
so I've gone back to more reading about just
classical art in general and trying to apply the knowledge
that I gained from things like this,
where he's talking about palettes and color and light in a different way than
I've had taught to me in different courses that I've taken,
and then trying to apply it myself to the artwork that I'm doing digitally.
His concepts are so great, though, and he has this amazing mix of historical and sci-fi and fantasy
that - you know - has combinations of sepia-toned photographs and futuristic boat cities and then
prehistoric dinosaurs - it's just an amazing mix.
Even if you're not into emulating the art itself,
you could check out his Dinotopia books and be entertained for hours.
This is the last book that I have today, and I only started reading it,
but I wanted to show you this little system that I came up with.
I don't know if you can see it,
but when I have a book like this one, The Digital Matte Painting Handbook,
that is extremely intimidating to me and starts off light but then ends up with
a bunch of things that I have no idea or experience with,
I - instead of reading it by chapter - will take the book itself and split it into equal segments.
This one - this one, I think, is eight... eight different equal chunks.
And then everyday, I'll just tackle one chunk,
and that makes this whole thing so much less intimidating.
I can always then, after reading the whole thing, go back
to the things that I wanted a second view on,
or I want to actually tackle and try to get some hands-on experience -
uh - myself, but this is just a great way to get through something that seems really intimidating.
Classic - classic, uh, way to tackle a goal that seems too big,
is to break it into smaller chunks and again, rather than say,
"I'm going to read a chapter a day, or two chapters a day, or four chapters a day,"
if you break your book into equal segments like this,
it's more likely that everyday, you'll be spending
the same or similar amount of time reading,
because the thing that doesn't change is your reading speed.
Not much at least.
The thing that WOULD change would be the length of chapters.
If you say, "I'm going to read three chapters every day,"
sometimes that might take you 30 minutes, sometimes that might take you two hours,
and it all depends on what book you're reading of course,
but doing it like this and splitting your book into even little chunks like that
is a good way to regulate -
every day, at this time of day, I'm going to sit down and read my daily chunk.
The daily chunk! Gross!
And that's it - that's all my books for the past couple of weeks
that I've bought and read, and that I am continuing to read, or yet to start.
And if you have any recommendations of things that you think that I should read,
maybe even talk about in a video, please put them in the comments!
I'm always looking for recommendations.
You can see here that my interest in different genres is pretty broad,
so don't think that there's anything too far out there.
I actually used to read a lot of classic literature, and I'd like to get back into that.
I think there's something great about exercising your mind in a way,
by reading something that's in a bit more historical prose or language,
- um - and it's also just great to get - kind of - culturally relevant books,
like some Orwell and Huxley in your vocabulary.
So if you have any favorite classic novels, that would be great.
Even if you have contemporary things that you think I should read,
maybe I'll be interested.
So - uh - I guess that's it.
'til next time!
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