Best Book Recommendations for 2020

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:   Today's episode is sponsored by me. Did you know you can now shop my favorite remote work tools, video production equipment, and travel accessories directly from your Amazon account? It's true. Just go to TravelingwithKristin.com/amazon to check out all the products I use and love.  

Kristin:     00:00:49    Hi guys, I'm Kristin and welcome to my channel, which is about working online location, independence and travel. This video is also in podcast format, so if you wanna check it out, look up Badass Digital Nomads and to all of you podcast people who are listening, what's up? I have next to me a very large stack of books. If you are watching the video, you'll see them. And um, I read 30 books in 2019. So the purpose of this video is to tell you my number one main takeaway from each book. This is not a book review video because that would take way too long, but this is just one takeaway from each book that I read, what it's about, and do I recommend it? Would I read it again? Should you read it? That's the purpose of this video. So let's jump right into it and I'll display each book as I go along and all of the books will be linked in my, um, Amazon account.  

Kristin:     00:01:48    You can purchase at TravelingwithKristin.com/Amazon. So in the show notes and in this video description, I will link to every single book that I read <laugh>, in case you wanna read it in 2020. So let's get into it. So the first book that I read in 2019 is not actually a book, but it is a a journal. It's the Daily Stoic Journal and this Daily Stoic Journal was written by Ryan Holiday and Steven Hanselman. And it is 366 days of writing and reflection on the Art of Living. And I am counting it as a book because you can read it at the end of the year and you can read all of your insights. It gives you a prompt every day. And it also gives you basically like a one page to read per week that has a topic. So this week was week 31 and it says A Week without com complaining and it gives some quotes and it gives a little analysis and I definitely recommend it for anybody who wants to start a morning routine or an evening routine.  

Kristin:     00:02:57    If you spend five minutes per day in reflection each morning and each night, I guarantee you your life will be different by the end of the year. You almost not recognize yourself. And a good litmus test for if you are making progress in life and if you are challenging yourself is if you are embarrassed by who you were a year ago. So check it out, we'll flip over to the screen share. This is my Amazon store Traveling with Kristin. You can just click on recommended books to get every book that I talk about today. Here is what the Daily Stoic Journal looks like. And as you can see, it has four and a half stars on Amazon, so it's highly rated. And next up the book that we have is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which is right here. I have some stuff marked into it and I've read this book three times now.  

Kristin:     00:03:54    It's a book that I recommend reading every year. And my main takeaway from this book is that the Roman Emperor 2000 years struggled with the same things that you and I struggle with today. So whether it's getting out of bed in the morning or relationship problems or work, whatever it is, the main takeaway is basically do the work. And life is a series of practices and steps. So every day we get to start over, every moment we get an opportunity to start over. And this book is his journal, basically, that he never thought that anybody was re would read. He definitely didn't expect for anyone to publish it in 2000 years ago, people to be studying it. So it's very personal, very private and insightful. Basically, you should just do your best every day and you need to remind yourself of what's important every day.  

Kristin:     00:04:49    And it means that you should walk the walk, not just talk the talk. You need to do the work. And I recommend it. As I said, it's my third time reading it. This is what it looks like. I recommend the Gregory Hayes version of Meditations, which is a new translation and it's about nine or $10 on Amazon. Anyone seeking a meaningful life, check it out. And in this video we're gonna have books that are fiction, non-fiction, health related, and also personal, uh, self-help books. So there's something for everyone here. The next book on the list is The Obstacle is the Way. And I don't have it with me because it's actually on my uh, Kindle, but The Obstacle is the Way was written by Ryan Holiday has almost 2000 reviews on Amazon, almost a five star rating. And this is a great book for anybody who's feeling frustrated or stuck in life.  

Kristin:     00:05:52    And my main takeaway from this book, it's one of my favorite books of all time, but it's basically, if something is hard, good <laugh>. So what? Keep going. Go through the obstacle. Go around the obstacle. Don't overthink it, don't over analyze it. Don't get stuck. Just keep going. And I've read that book two or three times. I'll probably reread it again because it's just full of great reminders. And that is another book that I recommend. I think it's my favorite book of Ryan Holiday. So highly recommend. The next book I read is called Seeing What Others Don't, um, by two authors called, uh, named Gary Klein and Christopher Lane. It's a book about insights and how we come up with epiphanies and aha moments and great ideas. And it's also a book about how to solve problems. My main takeaway from this book is that coincidences and synchronicities are happening all of the time around us, but it depends on how present we are if we notice them or not.  

Kristin:     00:07:05    So he gives some really interesting examples of how people came up with business ideas and how they solved really critical problems in life, including, um, firefighters who got stuck in a forest fire and why only one or two of them survived out of everybody. So it kind of talks about everything from fight or flight to analyzing a situation to how our instincts come into play when something happens in life. So I did find it very valuable. However, it was dry <laugh>, like it was a bit of a hard read. It took me a while to slog through it. It's quite a short book, but it's dense. So if it appeals to you, if it resonates with you, then check it out. But it's not an easy or a light read. And um, that's possibly why it doesn't have as many reviews. It didn't go as viral.  

Kristin:     00:08:07    It has about 160 reviews on Amazon and it looks like it has four stars. So it was probably tough for some people to get through, take it or leave it, but it's cheap. So the next book that I don't have, uh, with me, because I read it in Bulgaria, my friend John who's a computer programmer in Bulgaria and in Digital Nomad, I sublet his house and he had this book and the Seeing What Others Don't book in, in his house. So, um, so I read it there. So it's still in Bulgaria, but in honor of Tim Ferris, the author of the Four Hour Work Week and the Four Hour Body, I have the Four Hour Body down here at the bottom of the list. I can't even get it out 'cause it's at the very bottom, bottom of my stack of books. But Tools of Titans was a very useful book.  

Kristin:     00:09:02    This book has 3,291 ratings on Amazon, even though it's a massive book, I don't know how many pages it is. I could, I could see here in the details, it was very easy to read because of how the book is organized. I loved this book. I feel like this is a book that you can open it to any page depending on something that you're having a problem with or that you're curious about, or if you just need some motivation or inspiration for the day, you can just open the book to any page and get something good out of it. And my main takeaway from Tools of Titans is that all these successful people that we look up to and gurus and and famous people or anybody who's accomplished a lot in life or who we see as a successful in 2020 in in our society today, they're all just normal people.  

Kristin:     00:09:58    They all started somewhere. They all still have struggles, they all have self-doubt, they've all failed. They all struggle with mental health, with physical health, with productivity, and they all have tips, but they're all mortals. You know, they're all human beings. And some of the things that I saw in that Tim Ferris also observed among everyone is that they all read, they all try to take care of themselves physically and eat healthy and have some type of self-care routine. They all meditate, they all have some type of structure or some type of daily routine. And they all realize that once they got to a place of financial success, they realized that that wasn't necessarily the holy grail in life. And so they realized kind of what is important. And a big theme that I saw throughout that was just people like helping people, having good relationships, having a a good community.  

Kristin:     00:11:00    And so yeah, service helping people, money isn't everything. So if you haven't read Tools of Titans, um, I recommend it. Definitely. The next book that I read is called Life Changes Quick by my friend, uh, Johnny Fd, who's a fellow digital nomad. So both Johnny and I have been traveling around the world for like more than 10 years. And this is a short easy read, very inspiring about how Johnny quit his nine to five and moved to Thailand <laugh> and, and he succeeded. Spoiler alert, he succeeded. So I read this book because he gave it to me because I spoke at his conference at Nomad Summit and because he's my friend and because I was interviewing him for my podcast, Badass Digital Nomads. So I read this book and I really liked it. I actually highlighted a lot and I thought that because I've been traveling and working online for more than like 15 years now, that there wouldn't be that much that I would learn.  

Kristin:     00:12:03    But I did, I learned a lot. I recommend it if you are interested in working abroad or traveling a lot or becoming a digital nomad because he's just very candid and you know, it's not gonna win like some kind of liter literary award or prize. But it was interesting. He tells a lot of stories and he shows that you can go from having nothing to having a life that you've designed. He was inspired by Tim Ferris in the Four Hour Work week. And um, you know, most people don't do they, they're in a situation that they don't like about life, but it can be hard to change that. So if you wanna get motivated to do something about it and learn how to live on a very low budget in a foreign country to start your own business or do something outside of the nine to five grind, then I recommend it.  

Kristin:     00:13:02    And um, you never know, you could become a full-time digital nomad and financially independent because of it. So hey, like the title says Life Changes Quick, anything can happen, boom. The next book actually I also don't have in print with me, I think I had it somewhere else maybe in like my Kindle or something is called Lead the Field by Adam Witty. It's a very short book <laugh>, it doesn't have much love on Amazon, it only has five ratings and like three and a half stars, <laugh>, I haven't even read his reviews yet. What did people not like about it? Um, but it's about authority marketing. Ah, yeah, here we go. Sales ad it's about authority marketing and personal branding. But as this person, this reviewer on Amazon points out that this is a long sales <laugh> letter that does not deliver real value. It's all about getting you to purchase an expensive program, but it also has a lot of five star reviews.  

Kristin:     00:14:06    It's pretty surface level. But the main takeaway that I got from this book is that creating a personal brand and becoming a thought leader in your field is valuable. There's a process to it, there's a science to it. And if you wanna put in the work, then you can get a lot of benefits out of it. You can reach more people, you can help more people and you can make more money. So maybe creating a personal brand isn't for everyone, but in this new gig economy and freelance economy, it can be quite valuable. Would I recommend that book specifically? It's very short. So if you wanna get an overview over what it takes to create a personal brand, then it could be worth it. But you could also get the same information if you just Google personal branding, but it was kind of motivational and gave good examples.  

Kristin:     00:15:02    A more in depth book on this topic would be Entrepreneurial You by Dory Clark, which is not the most interesting book either, but it's a very practical book on personal branding. Um, I also recommend if you're interested in that, uh, Youpreneur by Chris Ducker is very similar. So Google those people and make the decision <laugh>. And next up we have The Right to Write, which is by Julia Cameron, I loved this book and I recommend it because this book gives you permission to write. The main takeaway of this book is that everybody is a writer, even if you think you suck at writing. So if you like to write, you should read this book. If you hate writing, you should read this book because it just shows how we all have this ability inside of us. And it talks about all of the benefits that you get from journaling and writing, but also it shows it in a very candid way and it gives you a lot of examples and inspiration and writing prompts.  

Kristin:     00:16:14    So everyone should check this book out. I think it's very useful, a very practical, um, whether you like to write or not and if you ever suffer from writer's block. So really helpful, really useful book, uh, recommend. Another book by Julia Cameron that I recommend to everybody on the Planet is The Artist's Way. This is a book that many famous writers and artists, Hollywood script writers, um, Brian Kopelman who has The Moment podcast and he is the writer of Billions that TV show. He talks about Julia Cameron's work all the time and The Artist's Way. I actually stumbled across his work after I read the book. But um, The Artist's Way basically says that every person is creative, every person is an artist. And if you think that you're not, it's because those hopes and dreams and and aspirations were squashed at some point as a child.  

Kristin:     00:17:12    So it is an actionable practical book that goes week by week with a set of different steps and questions. I think it's eight weeks. It's actually a lot of work, but if you do the work, you will come out the other side feeling more empowered and more confident and more creative and ready to like take on the world. Whenever I'm procrastinating on something or I feel like I have a block, like a creative block or something with work or anything, I flip to a specific section of this book that is specific to the problem that I'm having. I do some of the exercises and I get through it. And before reading this book, I also thought I wasn't very creative. I thought I was bad at art because I was bad at painting and drawing and I didn't realize that creativity permeates every aspect of life.  

Kristin:     00:18:08    So yeah, I just recommend that book to everybody. It will change your life and it has brought people, very famous writers and thought leaders today from the brink of despair and depression to succeed in their creative work. So even if you don't make money from your work, recommend, uh, next up are two books by Seneca. So I, I read all of, uh, Seneca's letters. So Seneca was a famous stoic philosopher around 65 ad I started with his letter On the Shortness of Life, which my main takeaway from this book is like, kind of obvious, but it's that life is short and we squander our time so much. If you need a wake up call into how you're spending your time, you could read this. If you hate philosophy, then you might find it kind of slow to read, but it's also written quite in a quite straightforward way.  

Kristin:     00:19:06    And it's pretty practical because Seneca's letters were written as letters to his friends. So even though he assumed that people would save them and publish them into books later, he still wrote them in just a very candid way. So Letters from a Stoic very long, like 400 pages, 500 pages, I don't remember. But I like this book because I would read about one letter per day or sometimes every other day if it was a really long letter. But there's a letter on everything. So there's a letter on travel On the Shortness of Life, on time, on service, on friendship, on like there's a letter for any possible life situation. So you can just open the book to any letter and get something out of it that day. So it's like a book that you should just have for life that you keep referring back to because stoicism is a practical framework for living and it's um, it's all about achieving the good life.  

Kristin:     00:20:07    So I do recommend that book. Next up we have The One Thing by Gary Keller. I actually just listened to a podcast with Gary Keller and on the Tim Ferris show and I thought it was really boring. So I was disappointed because I really loved this book. This book has almost 4,000 ratings on Amazon and it's like four and a half stars. Uh, Gary Keller is the owner of Keller Williams and he's a very successful businessman. And this book is about choosing one priority, not a bunch of priorities. So I feel like I need to read this book like once a month. My main takeaway is to just pick one thing and follow through with it, which for me is easier said than done. But if you have a problem with time management or feeling like your attention is spread too thin across multiple things, you read this book because there's some kind of old story or proverb about digging a hole for a well looking for water.  

Kristin:     00:21:11    Do you have 10 holes in the ground that are 10 feet deep with no water in them or do you have one hole that's a hundred feet deep that's full of water? I have like a hundred hole that are one foot deep. So if you need to go deep on one thing and get good results, then uh, read this book. The next book I read is called Choose by an Entrepreneur named Ryan Levesque. And like Adam Wit's book, it is a bit of a sales pitch <laugh> because Ryan Leveque is quite a successful online entrepreneur. I think I learned more about his sales strategy from like how he made this book than like the content of the book itself. But there's one, there's mixed reviews on this book. But my main takeaway, which is very helpful and very practical, is that most businesses fail because they're in the wrong market either, either in a market that's too big or too small.  

Kristin:     00:22:12    So there's a lot of fluff around this book in different chapters that don't necessarily need to be there. But if you get to the nitty gritty and you go straight to his tool that he uses with um, Google keyword analysis to figure out the size of your market, you can apply that to any of your business ideas. And I have yet to find a market in the sweet spot. Everything I look for or everything that I have an idea for is either too big or too small. You wanna be a big fish in a small pond, but not too small <laugh> and you don't wanna be a little fish in a big pond. So he has one technique on how to do it and it is very practical. Also, if you're an online business, you'll wanna check out this book. It's called The Copywriter's Handbook.  

Kristin:     00:22:56    My main takeaway from this book is that copywriting is extremely important in business. And if your copy sucks, then it's easy for your business to fail. So I don't know why we were never taught copywriting. I was never, I went to business school people, I went to grad school, I was never taught copywriting. This book is very hard to read. It's just very boring, it's very dense. But I feel like by the time I got to the end I needed to reread it <laugh>. So that's how important it it is. It's not a fun read, but it's an important read another book on productivity. Are you sensing a theme this year? I read a lot of books, <laugh> books about that is Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book is the highest rated of all the books that I read. And it has five stars on Amazon with 3,400 reviews.  

Kristin:     00:23:51    Atomic Habits Main takeaway is that to succeed at breaking bad habits or forming good habits, start small. You can't start too small. And that's basically it. So read this book, reread it, read it every year. No one's perfect. We all have bad habits. We all struggle to form good habits. Also follow James on Twitter and maybe sign up for his newsletter 'cause he has a lot of really good advice all the time. So definitely recommend. Next, I read two books by a guy called Jonah Berger. He is a marketing PhD and professor. Um, I read two books by Jonah this year. I read Invisible Influence and Contagious, um, both very highly rated on Amazon with like four and a half stars, thousands of reviews. I don't know why I didn't hear about this guy before, but his Contagious book is about why things go viral, why people share stuff, and it's a really important business book.  

Kristin:     00:24:57    Um, my main takeaway from this book was that there's a science behind what makes people share things and there's a pattern to it and you can hack it, like you can figure it out. He breaks it down for you, he gives you a process. And when I was halfway through this book, I stopped what I was doing and I created a new show, <laugh> on my channel, uh, called Digital Nomad News. And I learned a lot through that through this book. So recommend, um, Invisible Influence is this other one that basically tells you why you do the things that you do. And the main takeaway is that you basically do things because other people are doing them. So even if you think that you're autonomous and you think that you are making decisions on your own, you're more influenced by other people than you think.  

Kristin:     00:25:49    So it will help you be more aware of that. And then also if you look at it in a business context, it can help you with influencing other people, but in a good way. So this is the Hidden Forces that shape human behavior. And he wrote this after Contagious and it's based on, uh, behavioral economics and social sciences. He talks about things like why successful athletes have older siblings, why married people look alike, and all kinds of really weird examples around motivation. So I, I recommend anything he writes because it's very good. I liked Contagious more though. If you're gonna read one, read Contagious. The next book I read was Theory of War by Joan Brady. And this is a novel about the granddaughter of a slave, but it's based on true stories. So this book I read on a recommendation from Ryan Holiday <laugh>. I put my main takeaway is that America was really fucked up in the 18 hundreds.  

Kristin:     00:26:59    I did not know that after the Civil War slavery continued, but because it was illegal to have black slaves, people started buying white slaves and a lot of them were orphans from the Civil War. It was a very sad book, but it was a very important to better understand the context of daily life during that time period of the us And it goes through like how the railroad was built and what people lived like. And it was crazy. I'm so glad I wasn't born during that time. Should you read this book if you have time, if you're interested in it. It's not like a must read, but it's very well written and I found it interesting. Moving on to a different topic, <laugh>, the whole 30 book. This is the 30 Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom by Melissa Hartwig and her ex-husband.  

Kristin:     00:28:02    And probably you guys have heard of Whole30, I have been interested in health for a really long time and I love experimenting with things like fasting and all sorts of stuff. So I read Whole30, I've tried doing Whole 30 before without reading the book and I failed. So I think if you want to do Whole30, it is imperative that you read the book so that you can really get the theory of it and the concepts behind it. My main takeaway is eating, you've been doing it wrong and also that we're all super addicted to food. So if you wanna fix your relationship with food, this is a good place to start. It's not a weight loss program, but I did lose like six or seven pounds in a month, um, doing it. And I just started it again this week. So I did it in summer of 2019 and now it's January of 2020 and I'm doing it again.  

Kristin:     00:28:57    I think I'm on like day four or something. Also in the health realm is this book by David Wolfe, who is a really interesting person and a raw foodist and super food expert. It's called Eating for Beauty. This is an old book, I've had it for a long time and I just reread it, uh, for the second time. And he's approaching food as an art form <laugh> in a way. And the main takeaway from this book is that you are what you eat and what you eat either enhances your inner glow and makes you look better or it makes you look worse. No food has a neutral effect on your appearance. So this is a very unique book on food. I've never read anything like it. And it also gets into the nitty gritty of different compounds in the food and different vitamins and nutrients. One of the biggest takeaways is that silica is one of the building blocks of beauty in the foods that you eat.  

Kristin:     00:30:05    And he also has these really cool photos, uh, kean photos here you can see the energy, the force field of an apple compared to a piece of meat. So if you want that inner glow, you got to eat more raw foods, <laugh> and more of the compounds that promote beauty. I recommend it if you care about these kinds of things. If not, then skip it. But you'll definitely learn a lot of new stuff about food and a totally different, um, <laugh> level. The next book I have on the list is The Book Thief, which was made into a movie. And now I know Why. The Book Thief is a novel that's based on a lot of true stories about World War 2. And it looks at, uh, what happened in World War II from the perspective of local German citizens. And I think it's in Munich or yeah, in a town near Munich.  

Kristin:     00:31:04    And I could not put this book down. It was really sad. I definitely cried. It's quite a big book, but very interesting. It's an international bestseller and the New York Times says it's the kind of book that can be life changing, deserves a place on the bookshelf with a di The Diary of Anne Frank. If you're interested at all in History or World War II or novels, then I recommend it. It has 20,000 ratings on Amazon and they're like mostly five star reviews, so definitely recommend. Next up we have Stillness is the Key also by Ryan Holiday. He is a master at launching bestselling books. This one has almost 500 ratings and 4.5 stars. And after completing my first 10 day Vipassana meditation course, which is a 10 day silent meditation, just a few weeks ago or a few days ago, like one week ago, I finished, I understand this book much more because it parallels Buddhist philosophy with stoic philosophy.  

Kristin:     00:32:12    And he gives a lot of really practical examples of how sto or of how stillness is important in anyone's life, whether you're an athlete or a business person or whatever it is that you do. And so my main takeaway is just that we need to slow down <laugh> and um, if you feel like life is passing you by and and you're always rushing around, then Reid's Stillness is the Key. It's a really short book, but you can tell that it took him three years to write it. So it's a very well researched and um, he gives a lot of examples throughout his of how people can integrate stillness more into their lives. I have to say I still like the obstacle as the way more, but I think that Stillness is the Key, is a good read. And I would, I would probably reread it just so that it sinks in more, but it was a really good short chapters, so easy to digest.  

Kristin:     00:33:16    And next up is this book, it's in my thumbnail, How to Get Rich. Uh, one of the world's greatest entrepreneurs shares his secrets and this is by the founder of Maxim Magazine. His name's Felix Dennis. I loved this book. I've read, if you've read, think and Grow Rich or other books on Getting Rich, sometimes they're kind of boring or kind of repetitive. Felix Dennis, he's hilarious. He's a British guy and he just gives really practical tips. My takeaway from reading this book is that if you wanna know if you have what it takes to become truly wealthy, you will know after reading this book, he doesn't mince words. What else was I gonna say about this one? He gives sound advice and he gives a lot of funny and engaging stories. So if you're interested in making money, you should read it. I mean, if you just wanna make six figures a year, then maybe it's more entertainment than anything else.  

Kristin:     00:34:22    But if you want to truly be like, have a hundred million dollars or more, then you should read this. The next book I read, oh, I actually didn't finish it. Which isn't saying much is called Time and How to Spend It  and it doesn't have that much love on Amazon. And now I know why it was a bit basic. I had high hopes for this book. I saw it on a shelf in my co-living space in Norway and my friend gave it to me 'cause he had two copies because somebody else gave it to him. But it was pretty boring guys. I didn't finish it. I wouldn't recommend it. What did I even have a takeaway from this book? I just put that it's wasn't very engaging, it was too broad and, and kind of too general. Moving on, I read this really funny book called Managing Ignatius by Jerry Strahan and it is about the manager of a hot dog cart in New Orleans.  

Kristin:     00:35:28    It was a really weird book and I now know a lot about the French Quarter in this time, like from the 1950s into the 1980s. And the guy who wrote this book was a history. He, I think he got a PhD in history and he also wrote a book about the some type of boats that were used during World War I. And he was a speaker. And my main takeaway from this book is that even if you're an academic or you're following a traditional path in life, sometimes taking an alternative path could be more fulfilling. And so this is an academic who basically never pursued that path completely. Instead, he decided to manage these crazy hotdog vendors in New Orleans and he had a lot of fun doing it. So should you read this book? It was entertaining and it was interesting. It's not like a must read <laugh>.  

Kristin:     00:36:26    It's like if you have extra time and you wanna delve into it, you could because he actually wrote two books about it. And um, then there's another novel, like a fiction book that was written about the same time period. So the reason I read this book is because my dad's friend mailed it to us and he read it in like two days. And so then I got hooked on it and uh, I was looking forward to reading it 'cause it was just so weird. And at the end of the day, it was so different from my daily life that I found it intriguing. Um, another book that I read that actually I've been reading for two years is Principles by Ray Dalio. And my biggest takeaway from that book is that if you aren't cognizant of your principles or if you don't have a set of principles for living life, then you will inevitably get lost.  

Kristin:     00:37:19    And this is something that I learned also from Ryan Holiday and from reading Stoic Philosophy, you need to have some sort of guiding life principles or yeah, you'll just kind of get off the path more often. And um, he provides a lot of really good advice for work and life. It is a classic book. It has thousands of reviews on Amazon, very positive reviews. It's a dense <laugh> book to read. It's long, it's a long read, but if you just read it once in life, I think that that would be good. He's a billionaire, so it's good advice. I loved this next book. It's called Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. And my main takeaway from this book is that you should just go for it. You should just, if anyone says you can't do something, then they're probably wrong. Anything's possible. And if you just go for it and you ignore your own limitations and, and get creative, you can accomplish a lot more than you think in life.  

Kristin:     00:38:21    So don't take no for an answer. Surprise people. Planning is overrated. And the more chances you take, the more you're, you'll inevitably run into some good luck. It's an easy read, it's a fast read and this guy was a musician, taught himself how to computer program. He did so much and um, he has great advice. So definitely read this book. Another really easy read is this book called Rhinoceros Success. It's super short, I don't know why it's so expensive. <laugh>, it has over 500 reviews on Amazon, but it's basically comparing achievement and success to being a rhinoceros. Just charge through and embrace the adventure that is life and just keep going. Embrace uncertainty, embrace failure. I read this book because somebody recommended it on YouTube and he said it changed his life. It didn't change my life, I could take it or leave it. I was like, yeah, okay, cool.  

Kristin:     00:39:23    But um, for some people it does completely change their life and motivate them. So if you need a little kick in the pants, then check it out. Another writing book is On Writing Well by Williams Zinsser, freaking loved this book. Main takeaway is write how you talk, don't overthink it. Good writing is very simple and I need to read this book again, <laugh>. It has over 1,004 and five star reviews on Amazon Worth it. If you do any writing, then you'll start seeing how bad at writing everybody else is. Let me see if I missed any. Oh, Digital Nomad. This book is $50 and it's pretty boring. I don't recommend reading it unless you're so interested in the history of technology and remote work. But Digital Nomad is a book that was written, it was published in 1997. So if you have any aversion to the term digital nomad, then get over it because it's not just about people who, uh, are Instagrammers and stuff today or backpackers digital backpackers.  

Kristin:     00:40:33    It's about, um, the technology behind the digital nomad movement through the lens of people who were experts in technology in 1990s and 1980s. So I enjoyed it 'cause I'm writing a book about digital nomadism and how to become a digital nomad, but I don't think that anyone really needs to read it unless you're interested in that kind of thing. But my main takeaway from it is that people have always been nomadic throughout history and technology is allowing us for the first time to roam the world rather than a one mile radius around our houses. And it's opening up the opportunities to travel and to create businesses to almost anyone in any country. So really take advantage of this time in history and this is like unprecedented. So we're really so lucky to be living at this time, despite all the pros and cons. The next books up on my list are Skin in the Game, which I by Nassim Taleb, which I've started reading, uh, based on recommendations from Naval on the Naval Podcast, N-A-V-A-L for those of you who don't know him, um, the founder of Angel List and oh, it's dense, but I'm getting through it.  

Kristin:     00:41:53    Um, also a book that my friend wrote called Real Help Ayo, the author, he is one of the top writers on Medium. It's brand new and it's an honest guide to Self-improvement. So I'm reading that book right now. I'm supposed to review it today actually. And he's a very straightforward writer, so I think it's gonna be good. The reviews look really good. I'm also going to be reading on Writing by Stephen King. So those are the next books that I have up, I've been trying to write more in the past year or so. And so I find that reading books by experts on writing and seeing their struggles with writing, even though they're so wildly successful, is so motivating. And Stephen King's on Writing book has over 4,505 star reviews <laugh>. So I think that it's going to be a very practical and useful book. So there you have it guys.  

Kristin:     00:42:51    These are some of the books that I read in 2019. There is one takeaway from each book and whether I give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, any of the books from today's episode, you can buy on the links in the show notes or in this video's description, help support this channel and learn some stuff. So good luck with you with your reading this year and let me know in the comments below what books are you reading right now, or what's on your reading list, what are some of your favorite books that you've ever read that you would recommend to others, or that you'll be rereading another time? Let me know in the comments of this video and see you next time on another episode of Badass Digital Nomads or on my YouTube channels Traveling with Kristin and Digital Nomad TV. Bye-Bye. Thanks so much for listening to help support this podcast and help it grow. Please leave a review in the Apple Podcast store and send this or your favorite episode to a friend for weekly travel videos, live streams, and even more interviews. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channels at youtube.com/digitalnomad and Traveling with Kristin. See you soon.