It's called work for a reason by Larry Winget

This is a reread but I figured I might as well give it a review because I enjoy it every time. Yes, in a way it's a motivational book, but it has a twist. Larry goes for the no-bullshit approach and calls you on your own B.S. We all are lazy people and during a work day we keep idling and losing productivity, this reflects bad on us and in the end might prove fatal for our career path.

Yes, this book is about work - how to keep your job, how to get into the right frame of mind to do your job better and how to act at your job in order to satisfy your bosses and your clients. Read or listen the book and you will definitely find yourself in it. We all idle at work from time to time, we all do mistakes but getting good results and owning your mistakes makes you a good employee and, theoretically, a respected employee. 

I like the concept of "superstar employees" - they are the ones that get the job done and get some slack from bending the rules. They are the top dogs in a company and, as long as they are kept satisfied with their work place, they stay at that job. At the opposite side of the company, are the one who don't do much and cost the company money or image (we all know a few of these - the colleague who stays all day on facebook and always has a reason for not finishing the work on time). 

In a way, this book opened my eyes about certain things regarding my own career. I am one of the "superstar employees" in my company, because I work hard, I do whatever has to be done and I rarely complain. The greatest perk is the respect of the colleagues and not having my paycheck cut by 20% when the company hit some rough times. When things got rougher, it happened to me too but this happened to everybody in order to keep our jobs in this bad economy. I highly recommend this book, because it has balls to say the truth without wrapping things in shiny paper with ribbons and sparkles, like most motivational books or seminars. There is no higher power and no secret, it's just you, your choices and the results of your actions that guide your career and your money-making success.

Dies the fire by S.M. Stirling

It seems like the end of summer caught me really busy with work and school so I had less and less time to read. But I come with a review of a new book, actually half of a book. Yes kids, I had found another book I cannot finish. Why? Well... Read on.

Dies the fire has a good premise: electricity is gone due to a weird storm. Also gone are all batteries, generators and explosive devices ( read guns) from a chemical change. I am not going to go into the technical details of the entire implications of chemical changes but let's just say it is possible that only that thing happened. So I liked the idea and I had great expectations from the story because, after all, it's a trilogy and a highly rated one by modern survivalists. 

Ok, so the idea was good. It started fine, there was plenty of action in the first 100 or so pages. You has planes crashing, city fires, thugs fighting police, people escaping the cities, friends trying to reach each other, black people saved from slavery to white supremacists etc.  ...And then it jumped to boring descriptions on how they made weapons from car parts or how they milked cows, weeks after the incident. These details are probably appealing to survivalists but if you are into adventure books, this might be a bit of a let down. I think the writer had a time with lack of inspiration and started chapters without connecting much to the past. I stopped reading it when the action kinda faded. I assume that there will be plenty of actions further in the book but it kinda gotten on my nerves and I didn't feel any kind of connection with the characters. Apart from Havel - the pilot/ex military/leader of the pack, I couldn't remember any of their names and honestly I didn't really manage to care for any of them either.

Maybe it was the style of writing, maybe it was the story,  maybe I was not into the right mind frame or maybe the book simply sucked. It started good but then I realized I was wasting my time with a book I didn't care for. Give it a try, maybe it'll touch you, more than it did me.