Books. I’d like to say I love them but I don’t. What I love about them is the content – the ideas, the concepts , the lessons, the philosophy and all the other constructs within them that help me to think, learn and grow mentally, spiritually and socially. I like books. Kinda like I like money. Not for what it is in and of itself, but for what it can do for me, or, more precisely, what it can help me to become and experience. Books, like education, open doors. They are a path.

One of you asked me about which books I think they should read. The following are some of the ones I think are important. Just remember these are my opinions and my favorite observation about opinions is that they are like elbows – almost everyone has one and they often need cleaning up a bit.

The Bible: It’s a great piece of literature. It has influenced the world in inconceivable, as well as very explainable ways. It’s a history. It’s an ethical and moral guidebook. The New Testament is a great story. I think my two favorite works to help you to understand how I personally feel about Christianity are The Catholic Church: A History and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. I don’t necessarily think you should read these two works now. But, if you ever get an itch to explore some concepts of religion, and in particular Christianity, these are two media that I feel do an excellent job of helping you to understand that religion isn’t simply blind dogma. Just don’t forget that I’m a practicing Catholic although not a dogmatic one. I have this book in my Audible library.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind: I have a university degree in the field of history for a reason. It’s a passion of mine. While I do not agree with all of the concepts in this book, I think everyone in the world should read it. When I’m in one of those dazed and confused, bored out of my mind moods and I’m driving down the road with the Mind Monkey driving me crazy I pull out my MP3 player and this is the book I listen to for the ?? time. Why? Because I need to understand the world I live in to help me understand myself and this book goes a long way to help me with that. I do not know what happened 100,000 years ago. I wasn’t there. No one alive today was. It’s all speculation. No one really knows what life was like eons ago. No one. Never forget that. But, I feel we have a pretty good idea based on our ability to decipher reality. Just remember, Sapiens, from an absolute time perspective (theoretically) are probably still in the “shitting in their diapers” stage of existence. Hopefully they’ll get better and stop shitting all over themselves. I have this book in my Audible library.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change: There are some great concepts in this book. It is one of the classics in personal development. It’s a book about having great character. It’s sold 30 million copies over 25 years. I have this book in my Audible library.

50 Self-Help Classics: While we are on the subject of character building let me throw this one out at you. My reasoning for doing so is that this book does a short synopsis of 50 of the world’s best self-help classics. A very short synopsis. You get the meat of the book and the direction of the author in terms of subject matter. You get exposure to a lot of great concepts all in one place without a lot of fluff to go along with the concepts. It’s a great place to find more books that might interest you. I have this book in my Audible library.