When we can celebrate and truly own what it is that makes us different, we are able to find the source of our greatest creative power.
— Aimee Mullins

Aimee is a double below-the-knee amputee who lost her legs before her first birthday. She is talented and beautiful and doesn’t take “no” for an answer. Learn more about her story on You Tube.

Of the fourteen books in the stack,

• Twelve were non-fiction, two were fiction.
• Two were paperback
• Twelve were on the Kindle
• Two were audiobooks from Audible
• One was both Audible and Kindle
• One was both paperback and Kindle

And now for the list, in the order consumed:

1. Freedom: A Novel
   — Jonathon Franzen
   Interesting, but I don’t understand what all the buzz was about surrounding this book.
   Rating: * * * (out of 5) | Fiction | Kindle
2. The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles
   for Breakthrough Success
   — Carmine Gallo
   Great insights into making your dent in the universe.
   Rating: * * * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
3. The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel
   — Michael Connelly
   A delightful page-turner.
   Rating: * * * * | Fiction | Kindle
4. What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There: How Successful People
   Become Even More Successful
   — Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
   Important book for leaders and executive coaches. Learn from the master.
   Rating: * * * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
5. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
   — Michael Lewis
   The better of the two books I read on the financial meltdown. Michael Lewis is brilliant at weaving a narrative. Malcolm Gladwell says that Lewis is the best story teller writing today. I couldn’t agree more.
   Rating: * * * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
6. The 4-Hour Workweek
   — Timothy Ferriss
   Important concepts for earning a livelihood in the 21st century. Overlook the fact that the author can be less than appealing at times.
   Rating: * * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
7. Green for Life
   — Victoria Boutenko and A. William Menzin M.D
   Trying to eat healthier. This blend of science, passion, philosophy, and recipes is a great help.
   Rating: * * * * * | Non-Fiction | Paperback / Kindle
8. Under the Tuscan Sun
   — Frances Mayes
   Wonderfully written with vivid images that appeal to all the senses. Do not see the movie of the same name — the book and the movie bear almost no resemblance to one another.
   Rating: * * * * | Non-Fiction | Paperback
9. All The Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
   — Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
   A well-written account of the near apocalypse created by the recklessness in the financial industry.
   Rating: * * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
10. Steve Jobs
    — Walter Isaacson
    Jobs was an iconoclast and a personal hero. Recommended.
    Rating: * * * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
11. Crush It!: Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion
    — Gary Vaynerchuck
    Gary is an Internet sensation who has worked hard for his success. He is also an extrovert who has played very well to his strengths. Good insights but not as universally applicable as he would like to believe.
    Rating: * * * | Non-Fiction | Audible
12. One Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value
    — Marc Effron and Miriam Ort
    An important book for human resource leaders and organizational change agents.
    Rating: * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
13. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms To Fail
    — Clayton M. Christensen
    Blew my mind! Best book of the year. Very important concepts for people in business, those aspiring to be, and anyone who wants to make sense of the rapidly shifting landscape in our lives.
    Rating: * * * * * | Non-Fiction | Kindle
14. The Sociopath Next Door
    — Martha Stout
    Four percent of the population (1 in 25 people) lack a conscience. This very well-written book helps you understand where they come from, how they work, and how to deal with them. Martha Stout sculpts with characters and stories the make a potentially dark and technical topic extremely interesting and understandable.
    Rating: * * * * * | Non-Fiction | Audible / Kindle

• 1 Tsp. Sugar
• 1 or 2 Quarts of Rum
• 1 Cup Dried Fruit
• Brown Sugar
• 1 Tsp. Soda
• 1 Cup Butter
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1 Cup Baking Powder
• 3 Juiced Lemons
• 1 Cup of Nuts

1. Before starting, sample rum to check quality. Good, isn’t it? Now proceed.
2. Select large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc.
3. Check rum again. It must be just right. To be sure rum is of proper quality, pour one level cup of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can. Repeat.
4. With electric mixer, beat 1 cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.
5. Add 1 seaspoon of thusar and beat again.
6. Meanwhile, make sure rum is still alrighty. Try another cup. Open second quart if necessary.
7. Add leggs, 2 cups of fried druit and beat til high. If druit gets stuck in beaters, pry loose with drewscriber.
8. Sample rum again, checking for tonscisticity.
9. Next, sift 3 cups pepper or salt (really doesn’t matter).
10. Sample rum.
11. Sift 1/2 pint lemon juice. Fold in chopped butter and strained nuts. Add 1 bablespoon of brown sugar-or whatever color you can find. Wix mell. Grease oven. Turn cake pan to 350 gredees. Pour mess into boven and ake.
12. Check run again and bo to ged.

..ADN HALPIE HOLIGLAZE TWO YA’ALL!

————————————-

Beware the irrational, however seductive.
Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself.
Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others.
Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish.
Picture all experts as if they were mammals.
Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity.
Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

— Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Your time of silence has come too soon. Thanks for the valiant fight.

(Thanks to A.Word.A.Day for the reference.)

Choose the experiences in life that offer the most anecdotal value — that is, look for the opportunities that have the most likelihood of producing a cool story.

At the The Moth Chicago Grand Slam this year Peter Sagal (yes, that Peter Sagal) relayed these words of wisdom, passed on to him by a theater professor at Lewis and Clark College many years before.

With a tip of the hat to The Moth, make it a story-worthy life.

These people aren’t protesting money. They’re not protesting banking. They’re protesting corruption on Wall Street.

When you take into consideration all the theft and fraud and market manipulation and other evil shit Wall Street bankers have been guilty of in the last ten-fifteen years, you have to have balls like church bells to trot out a propaganda line that says the protesters are just jealous of their hard-earned money.

Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.

— Matt Taibbi, Blog post at Rolling Stone

Matt Taibbi finally articulated what I have been trying to find words for. I don’t begrudge Wall Street, or anyone, their good fortune. (I seek the same good fortune.) I just begrudge the way a few people have rigged the system in their favor.

We have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know — and those who don’t know they don’t know.

— John Kenneth Galbraith, economist

Both destiny’s kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person’s basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.
— David Foster Wallace

Listen to that still, quite voice in the back of the mind. It might be your destiny trying to get your attention.

ur•gen•cy
1. importance requiring swift action
2. an earnest and persistent quality; insistence

The difference between a productive day and a non-productive day is a sense of urgency. Today was a good day.

… in the last ten years or so, there’s been a major economic resurgence for introversion—the “geek” economy. The prototypical geek is really good at thinking, has superb powers of concentration (which tends to be an introvert trait), and works very well independently. They’re often pretty awesomely brilliant people, and they’re fairly defiant about being geeks. They’ve turned this word “geek” into a term that’s almost romantic in some ways, and through the Silicon economy, they’ve been massively innovative and economically important. A lot of them are running circles around the extroverts who are selling shoes. So I think part of what’s happened lately is that the digital economy is giving introverts a new place in the sun.

In 2003 Jonathan Rauch wrote a short essay for The Atlantic called Caring for Your Introvert: The habits and needs of a little understood group. The reaction was overwhelming.

In 2006, The Atlantic followed up with Jonathan in an article and interview titled Introverts of theWorld, Unite!

In 2011 it is as true as ever. It’s a good time to be an introvert.