Doors to Anywhere

Completing and Reviewing Books, Albums, and Movies. Inspired by @NomadicNarratives on IG

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114. The Simple Path to Wealth - JL Collins

JL Collins is a Bogle-ite investor and author who shares his investing tips/letters to his daughter with readers.

It is becoming more and more clear to me. Invest in index funds and your chances of becoming wealthy over time skyrocket.

I have been pondering why anyone does anything different, and it seems that there is almost a cultish devotion to believing and hoping they are the ones or working with the advisors that found the secret sauce. However, as Collins writes, if someone truly had the secret sauce...they would be as famous as Warren Buffet and just as rich (or richer - Buffet began investing at a very young age and therefore had a huge advantage).

Remember - Only 6% of "experts" beat the market (aka the Index).

I suggest all young people read this book. I am not personally responsible for any decisions you'll make...but its a great way to at least START and build.

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113. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

I started this book a few years ago and never finished. I re-listened to the entire thing and I must say it is up there in my favorites now.

I always thought we care way too much about about the fame and success of those who rose to the top in their respective fields, but we don't enough times ask how, why, and what.

How did they learn to work the way they did? Why did they get the opportunities they did? And what cultural and environmental circumstances allowed them to become who they were?

- The Beatles got lucky enough to play in Hamburg and train constantly

- Bill Gates had had one of the luckiest breaks of all time living walking distance to a computer terminal he could access 24/7

- The "Chinese are good at math" stereotype is true, but not for the reason you think - cultures with wet rice agriculture tend to work harder and longer on problems than western cultures do. Additionally, their language helps children understand math more easily (3/5 becomes "5 take 2 Parts) at a younger age.

I would give Outliers a 10/10, and I don't even rate books.

What's more important for success?

Innate Skill

Culture & Environment

Voting ended onJun 15

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112. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - John C. Bogle

So far one of the best business Books I have ever read. The creator of index funds, John C. Bogle, was of course bias in writing this book. For someone who was wealthy and the former CFO of Vanguard, I did not expect him to be as honest, reflective, and scientific as he was in this book.

Bogle created a product that he both believed in and is mathematically the most sensible and reliable investment. By investing in every stock on an index, you almost cannot lose over time. Index funds are safe and low-moderate risk, but may have lower fees and offer safer long term returns.

I highly recommend this book!

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111. The Essential Bukowski: Poetry - Charles Bukowski

I am newly obsessed with Bukowski. His raw bitterness and his feverishly masculine writing tone is a hard kick in the butt.

He can turn you on your side, chew you up, and spit you out like a piece of bubblegum.

Poems that spoke to me most clearly were...

- The Loser: A boxer who loses a fight and begins to write poetry, realizing the real fight has started.

- Bluebird: A man uses an allegory of a Bluebird being inside him, representing repressed emotions and sadness, that he does not want to let out.

- Do You Want to Enter the Arena?: Charles tells us if you aren't being urged so badly to start and complete something that it is not life or death to you, don't do it. And if it is, it will happen on its own.

- $$$$$: A worker finds money and keeps it. He is very happy and his coworkers are jealous, so he realizes to keep it to himself.

- I Met a Genius: A boy on the train says the Beach isn't pretty. The author says he never heard anyone say that before.

In the words of Charles Bukowski, marked on his Gravestone...don't try.

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110 - I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream - Harlan Ellison

AM the supercomputer is often considered part of the Big Three of Fictional Evil, which often includes The Qu (All Tomorrows), Judge Holden (Blood Meridian), and AM itself.

This is a scary short story about five survivors of the Earth's apocalypse after AM destroyed everything. AM hates humanity for creating it, so in a god-like fashion, keeps five humans alive to torture them for eternity.

The torture isn't just painful, it is sadistic. AM warps the humans' minds and features...sending them on impossible quests wherein weeks at a time they will be starving and tortured - god-like winds pushing them through glass and rust.

Interestingly, there is a video game where there are multiple endings that serves as a direct sequel, where AM is voiced by the author in order to show his true evil.

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109. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

A slight tear jerker at the end. At times, this famous novella is too childish for my taste...which is essentially the purpose - it is a children's book written for all ages.

*SPOILERS*

The end is heartbreaking. The Little Prince's physical body dies and his spirit goes back to the sky, with the possibility of returning. This is meant to symbolize how our inner child may die, but it is always out there somewhere.

The Little Prince never loses his childlike wonder and this book basically asks the question - is it better to only care about numbers and be an adult or to keep your childhood wonder, ultimately its a mix of both. A great book for all generations.

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108. The Age of Extraction - Tim Wu

In a world where big tech is becoming ever more scary, this book does not illustrate a hopeful outlook for society.

Tim Wu had previously written about how tech could grow so much it would make equality a natural evolution (almost how Adam Smith thought about the free market). However, after seeing increased monopolilization, Wu realized that big business seeks to continue extracting and extracting everything they can; data, money, and attention.

From Healthcare conglomerates to online marketplaces, those with more assets and wealth can ultimately assert themselves into a new technology, creating new barriers for entry and buying up competitors.

Amazon, as great of a service they provide, will continue to grow and grow and grow. They started as a book store, then became a third-party market, then became an entertainment company, and now...they are even getting into Healthcare. Extract. Extract. Extract.

Extract from the user's their data and money and extract from the sellers their ability to sell without Amazon and cut into their profits.

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107. All Tomorrows - C.M. Kösemen

A speculative, science-fiction body horror from Kösemen that has gained an immense amount of popularity, in part due to the main antagonists of the the story, the alien species, the Qu.

*SPOILERS*

After mankind tries to reach its full potential, the jealous and god-like alien race, the Qu, disfigure the entire human race into myriad, experimental creatures, as to rewrite rhe universe in their own image.

They even make a species of human-cells who are destined for eternity to serve as floormats and waste disposal. All of this was done out of jealously.

After hundreds of millions of years, the ancestors of the human race, along with another species from a neighboring galaxy, are able to defeat the Qu.

But ultimately...everything comes to an end and in a billion years, humans are fully extinct.

I really enjoyed this book enough to read it in one day. It was unique, interesting, and a scary way to tell readers no matter how advanced we get...it cannot last forever...or can it?

Love Today, and seize All Tomorrows!

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106. Dumbing Us Down - John Taylor Gatto

JTG was a teacher of the year recipient and someone who was also very critical of the American education system.

Our system, which was based on the Prussian system, was designed, according to Gatto, to turn students into pavlovian workers. A bell chimes, we go to lunch, another bell chimes, we go back to work.

I think the book, and others have criticized it this way, is a bit reductionist. Schools changed from schoolhouses to districts so our country could compete with the changing workforce of the world- but we also value Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the needs of students, IEP's, 504's, the wellbeing of students, socialization, community service, school and town spirit, and choice of learning (electives).

While many of his points are true, in that school may serve to confuse students because they wake up go to different classes of varying difficulty, and wonder why they need to do it for 18 years. However, I ultimately think that education has likely changed for the better and it mostly depends on the school culture and teachers.

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105. It's Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism - Bernie Sanders

This is a great book about the problems with capitalism. In the United States, I think their is a cult of personality surrounding capitalism and any criticism of it is seen as heresy.

Bernie Sanders IS a market capitalist. He makes money of books and in any other country he'd be seen as a centrist politician. That's why this book is so powerful - Sanders discusses all of capitalisms pitfalls with pure objectivity, or so it feels.

- Our healthcare system is being destroyed by corporate greed.

- The ability to own property is being destroyed by corporate greed.

- This country is being held back by corporate greed and paid for politicians.

These are all objective truths. But to a true believer, these facts are heresy.

This book is a great, for the masses, anyone can understand deconstruction of how America is falling behind the rest of the modern world.

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104. Erasing History - Jason Stanley

Erasing History is about how fascists use various tactics to rewrite History the way they want to.

Ultimately it starts and ends with education. The first step to influencing a nation is to change the way we teach the youth.

The Tulsa Massacre, for example, was covered up for years due to deliberate cover-ups and record erasure. Likewise, the victors write history.

It's easy to say that Thomas Jefferson was this Dietized figure who wrote these amazing works but it is often omitted that he was a brutal SA'er in addition to a PDF file.

These are small examples, and its been a month or so since I finished this book - the message is a powerful reminder of how we ourselves may have been or can be bamboozled throughout history.

One criticism I have is that even though I agree with many of Stanley's point, he has a clear left-leaning bias, which I tend not to like when discussing objective truths.

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103. The Lorax - Dr. Seuss

The last time I did this challenge, I did not allow children's books. This time, I am allowing Children's Books if they were banned AND had significant cultural impact.

The Lorax was banned for its alleged anti-logging themes and also was discussed for banning for its apparent anti-capitalist and environmentalist themes.

In my opinion, this book isn't anti-capitalist. Dr. Seuss was nearly a hundred-thousandaire while he was alive. This book is pro-ethical business...had The Once-ler planted a tree for everyone he cut down, there wouldn't be a book (Truffula Trees are a renewable resource).

This is a powerful book all adults should read so we can question how businesses affect our global and local environments. UNLESS we care...no one else will.

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102. War is a Racket - Smedley Butler

This is my third listen to this audiobook. Butler was a WWI General and assisted in the US campaigns in Central America and Haiti. While he was in Haiti, he helped reinstate the practice of corvée, which is a forced labor system (which is a nice way to say slavery).

After his military service, Butler deeply regretted what he had done and believed his service was not to the American people, but to large corporations. Some interesting things you might discover in this book...

- WWI Soldiers often made $0 after sending money home, paying for accident insurance, and buying Liberty Bonds, which paid for their munitions.

- Woodrow Wilson ran on a campaign of not getting into war (which seems familiar) and then 5 months later, went to war after European powers met with him saying they couldn't pay back their debts to the United States if they lost.

- Many large corporations with US Military contracts sold items in such a surplus they either couldn't be used or manufactured them in a way that only they could make the parts to fix them (thus, needing another contract). Many war supplies (like mosquito nets going to France) went to waste for there was no need for them other than to bolster the war economy.

Super interesting read and from a very reliable source. It makes you think about what is happening be behind closed doors during the wars and conflicts the world gets into in modern times.

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101. The War of Art - Steven Pressfield

I am back again. I want to read more, deleted my Instagram, and am trying to ween off scrolling, generally. I started this book last year and wanted to finish it since I was almost completed anyway.

The War of Art was a suggestion I heard Ryan Holiday give in an interview, saying he gave it as a gift to friends. The first half was quite interesting - suggesting a tangible war the self puts on artistic potential.

However, the more Pressfield wrote about God and Greek Godesses and Muses...the less interested I became. I felt like I wasn't reading a straight-forward, no-nonsense take on achieving goals anymore, but rather listening to a sermonic diary.

Regardless, there were some good points I gleaned from this book and I am happy I completed it.

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100 Books in a Year

In 2024 I started and finished 100 books. I read and listened to, in their entirety 100 books. I actually read a little over 100 in six months, but the primary books that comprise this challenge also includes one or two books I started at the beginning of 2024. Ultimately, 99% of this challenge was completed from May 2024 to October 2024.

Why did I do it?

I was inspired by my friend Nick (@nomadicnarratives on Instagram) who is doing this challenge as well and got me into it and by Lex Friedman, who posted on LinkedIn that his goal was to read 100 books in 2024. I wanted to challenge myself, grow, and learn as much as I could.

How did I do it?

By listening to audiobooks at the gym, while I played video games, and while I was driving. I also read physical books whenever I had spare time. This challenge consists of audiobooks, books, essays, poetry, a book from the Bible, ebooks and more. It was a lot of stress, time, and hard work, but I'm glad I finally did it. I say "finally" because i wanted to this a year or so ago, as well.

What did I learn?

What I learned during this challenge wouldn't be comprehensible and complete if I were to put it in a short paragraph. I urge you, if you'd like to know, to read through my posts and see what I've learned from each book. I can say, I learned how to be a stronger, wiser, and healthier person. I learned that there is more suffering in this world than you can possibly imagine, and that human beings are oddly strong enough to withstand anything that comes there way. I learned to be grateful, but also to take matters into my own hands when a situation isn't good. I learned that humans are a polarity of good and evil, not one or the other, and we need to constantly fight the bad to be truly good, if that's even possible.

This challenge was essential to my growth as a person and a man. It was imperative to my story, all these stories I've read. As some Stoics used to believe, when you read a book you bear a man's soul, you listen to his entire being, and you live his life...I have lived over one hundred in 2024.

Thank you to my friends, family, and my wonderful wife for putting up with and supporting me during this time. I needed it.

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100. On Love and Friendship

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finished: October 22, 2024

Format: Hardcover

I'm finished! I read and complete over 100 books in a year! In fact, if you count the shorter books I did not include in this challenge, and one long one that's more of an instructional white paper, I read and listened to over 100 books in six months (May - October). This post will be more about On Love and Friendship. My final post will be a reflection of the challenge as a whole.

On Love and Friendship is great, but suffers from the same ailments as other writing from the 17 and 1800's in that the form of English it's written in is hard to read. Like Self-Reliance, I was able to understand most of the key points but lacked a lot of the academic and studious points I'd comprehend from further inspection; one of the issues with a challenge like this.

Love and Friendship are next to Godliness. If you are lucky enough to have a woman and a friend, Heaven is nearer to you. I quite like the trancendentalists, and I see how they had an influence on The United States and new agism. It's worth reading a few of their works if you're into Literature and Social Studies. I appreciate Emerson's work a LOT more than I liked reading it.

PS - Thank you to my amazing and beautiful wife for making this, and other, bookmarks that helped me with this challenge.

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99. Cult Following

Author: J.W. Ocker

Format: Audio

Finished: October 21, 2024

Well, I'm almost done with my challenge. I may finish today or tomorrow, but definitely this week.

I did a lot of shorter books, but also did a good number of longer ones, this included. But man, it flew by.

This is the absolute kind of book I have been looking for on cults for years. It's a really mew book, just published in September, so a lot of the references are modern.

Ocker goes over many cults I knew, and some I didn't... and many i wish I had never heard of.

In fact, this book has some of the most gruesome and terrible stories about the most gruesome and terrible people ever. A few times during this book I became physically ill. That's not a knock on the book, it's actually a praise of how well the author could portray accurately what happened. A lot of times documentaries, reports, and books sugar coat things, Ocker doesn't.

Some people think to understand human suffering you should read books like the Gulag Archipelago (which I haven't read) or Man's Search for Meaning; they are right, and you absolutely should, but you should also read Cult Following.