So at the start of January there was a sale off a few books in peoples wishlists/ recommended books.  2 books for 1 credit.

And these are the books that I chose. 

1. Critical Failures has been on my wish list for ages, it’s a Dungeons and Dragons dice role playing game kind of book.  This story has been explored before, for example Drew Hayes with the NPCs series.

But still looking forward to listening to a different version of it.  Plus, all the reviews seem to say that its very funny.

It’s also the only fiction novel that I bought in this sale.   I’ve been listening to too many ‘learning’ books recently, and while I find them all very interesting.. they really take a lot of time, because you want to take notes and everything and really learn something.  Whereas a book like Critical Failures is something you can just listen to and just enjoy.

2.Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers, was a book recommended to me after having finished History’s Greatest Military Blunders.  And its by the same group – The Great Courses.  So I imagine I can learn a lot from that too.

After the Greatest Blunders book, I also bought a book I’ve been wanting to have read.  Not actually read/ listen to.  Just called Strategy (a history).  Its 32 hours long, and I’m not looking forward to actually listening to it and taking notes.   But… I am looking forward to adding that knowledge to my own.

A bit like knowing a language and learning a language.  Most people just want to be able to speak it, but don’t like the journey of learning it.  Same as me for this Strategy book.

A bit the same as this History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers I guess… luckily its shorter.

3. Inside Delta Force is a book a bit like The Pentagon’s Brain – a book that I’m currently listening to, and it’s very, very interesting, a huge history lesson as well, all about the History and products of DARPA. But something that takes a bit of time to go through as well. Delta Force is meant to be the top secret …really best of the best kind of United States special forces.  This book is meant to outline their training and selection requirements as well as some examples of missions etc., written by a former member.  Sounds pretty interesting to me.

4.Customs of the World, well click on the title and listen to the sample.
I did, and that’s why I go the book.  It goes through many different cultures and points out many different things that would be different to our own culture, and explains the reason behind it.  I know many things about Chinese culture and customs for example by travelling and living there, plus many things from travelling quite a few different countries, but of course not all because I didn’t live in those countries.   Just being in Thailand for 10 days or so, I realise that not everything translates and that even a country that was slightly influenced by China has very different customs.  This book is meant to point out those things easily so you can keep them in mind so next time you travel there / do business there, you can be aware of them and incorporate it into how you interact with those people.

Before I get to any of these books, I first need to finish a couple of other books.  Namely The Pentagon’s Brain, The Pattern-master series by Octavia E. Butler (currently I’m on the 2nd book out of 4), and if I can be bothered…Strategy.  But in reality, that might be a book that takes me a good 6 months to finish.