This blog post has a couple of parts to it, so please take the time to read it all. In the first part, I’m going to talk about a few subtle changes I’m starting to make and then in the second part, the first of those changes gets introduced.
First up, one change I’m going to be making to Casual Marketer is that I’m going to be introducing a weekly book review. I read a fair bit already, but I want to read more, so I’m putting in place systems to make that happen. Part of that system is to commit myself to doing a weekly book review post on my site and send you a link to read it.
What I’ve found with my writing is that if I commit myself to doing something like these daily emails I do it. I’m taking the same approach to these book reviews – I’m committing myself to publishing a review every week, so that will force me to take the time to read/listen to at least one book.
Now, in that vein, I’m going to be reviewing a wide gamut of books. Part of what I want to do is broaden my own mind, so I’m going to be reading books on a variety of topics. Some of them may interest you, others maybe not so much, but that’s ok, we’ll all learn something along the way.
My recommendations and comments are going to be in my unique style. If a book sucks, I’ll tell you about it. If a book is awesome, then I’ll suggest you jump on over to buy it. The bottom line is that these reviews are going to be honest.
I’m also going to post a short comment in Casual Marketer Academy each week with a summary of the book review where we can discuss your thoughts if you’ve read it or just want to comment about the topic. It will kind of be like a virtual book club without the pressure of participating if you don’t want to! If you haven’t joined the Casual Marketer Academy group on Facebook, just click here to get access, no cost or anything like that.
Ok, so on with the second part of this post, the first book review.
Last week I read “The Obstacle Is The Way” by Ryan Holiday. I’ve had a couple of his books recommended to me over the years, but I’ve never gotten around to reading any of them. Strangely enough, I had bought this book months ago when it came into my inbox from Amazon on special. In fact, the Audible version was only a couple bucks extra, so I bought both.
While I was on the bus home from work the week before last I noticed the guy sitting in front of me was reading it on his Kindle app. I took that as a sign that I should probably invest the effort to dive into it since it was sitting on my phone collecting virtual dust.
It’s certainly an interesting book and skews heavily to the type of things that I like to read for a bunch of reasons. It is well researched, it looks at big, high-level concepts and it uses figures of history to get ideas across with context.
But that probably means it’s not for everyone.
I enjoyed the book and I think you might too. I suggest you check out my review and see if you think this might be something you’re interested in.
Sean’s Update, January 2018 – As I mentioned in a previous update, the book review thing just didn’t work out. It sapped my enjoyment from listening to the books, so I stopped. I may create a “recommended reading” list in 2018.