The year 2012 viewed in the eyes of books

I always like to note down the books that I've read and note down the ones that I might want to re-read again. By looking at the books that you've read, I'd like to review the year that had passed in 2012 too. It's a bit late, I know, but better than never, haha!

I've read a total of 35 books, way lower than the usual 52 books per year. I know I've said that I no longer want to count the number of books that I've read, but the funny thing is this: when I stopped counting, I stopped reading. Or reading as much. Sometimes the target to always read 1 book a week just makes me scrimp and collect all the weird pockets of time to do some bit of reading. To finish reading a book, you need discipline. As simple as that. A good book will help you to finish it in double quick time, no doubt. However, I realised that before you start to like a book, when the characters are strangers to you and you don't give a shit whether they are alive or dead, you just need to hit that psychological milestone pages before you can get 'into' the book. That requires discipline.

For those parents who dish out ipads and multi-media tablets to kids, beware of raising a generation of kids who can't delay their gratification and who wants instant rewards, especially when it comes in visually appealing graphics and nice sound effects. When you're reading, your mind creates all these itself and there's no need for external stimulus to make reading enjoyable. I feel this is very important to train in the youth these days, especially when it's so easy to get our kicks from the ubiquitous ipads. Something to think about.

Anyway, here's the list of books that I've read in 2012:

Alien Interview - Lawrence R. Spencer

Writing Tools: 50 essential strategies for every write - Roy Peter Clark

Fengshui for the classroom - Renee Heiss

Thick face, Black heart - Chin-Ning Chu

The elements of Persuasion - Richard Maxwell & Robert Dickman

Courage to teach - Parker J. Palmer

The truth about teaching - Coleen Armstrong

Influence - The psychology of persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini

The 22 immutable laws of branding - Al Ries

Guerrilla Marketing for Free - Jay Conrad Levinson

Secrets of building multi-million dollar business - Adam Khoo

The Night Eternal - Guillermo Del Toro / Chuck Hogan

Advertising for Dummies - Gary Dahl

The Fall - Guillermo Del Toro / Chuck Hogan

The Strain - Guillermo Del Toro / Chuck Hogan

I am Legend - Richard Matheson

The Last Colony - John Scalzi

The Ghost Brigades - John Scalzi

Old man's war - John Scalzi

The bed of procrustes - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The sea of swords - R.A Salvatore

The Silent blade - R.A. Salvatore

The spine of the world - R.A Salvatore

The end of days - Zecharia Sitchin

A Thousand Orcs - R.A. Salvatore

The Cosmic Code - Zecharia Sitchin

Wool Omnibus Edition (1-5) - Hugh Howey

A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin

The Chaos Curse - R.A. Salvatore

The Fallen fortress - R.A. Salvatore

Night Masks - R.A. Salvatore

In Sylvan Shadows - R.A. Salvatore

Canticle - R.A. Salvatore

Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Those at the bottom of the list were books that I read in the earlier part of the year, and it's arranged chronologically. The ones I've highlighted are the top 5 worth re-reading again.

Let's see:


1. Wool omnibus (1-5 books)

This one is by Hugh Howey. I don't really buy physical books, but I will buy his books for keepsake. That's how good his works are. I recently also bought another omnibus, a series of 3 books by the same author from Amazon. If you like wasteland, fallout, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it kind of apocalyptic books, this is for you. That song from Fallout by Inkspots kept playing again and again in my head when reading this...tsk tsk... By the way, my list of books to re-read seldom include fiction. This must be one of the rare ones to appear in the list.


2. Secrets of building a multi-million dollar business

I don't usually like Adam Khoo's books, but I think this one is quite a easy read. It's good for people who wanted to have a brief overview of starting a business. If anything, Adam Khoo is a successful businessman located in Singapore. It's good to see what sort of viewpoints or advice he can give to someone starting out in Singapore too. That's plenty of general advice in other books, but this one is local and so it's more tailored to our unique context. I've read this twice already, and I'll probably read this again. It's still in my list of books to read in the future.


3. Guerrilla marketing for free

A marketing guru - Jay Conrad Levinson is the authoritative voice in this aspect of business. It's good for everybody because we're all salesman in one form or another. It gives you ideas - plenty of it - to think about and to use as you see fit. It's very readable, not like those textbooks for formal studies and I'm pretty sure some of the techniques work good too, because I've tried it myself. Definitely a good book to re-read in the future.


4. Influence - the psychology of persuasion

Oh man, I can't recommend this book enough. I've read this for maybe 2 times? Remember this name "Robert B. Cialdini"...if you see his books, just read it lah, can't go too far wrong. If you notice my books list for this year, I've already read another book co-authored by him, called 'Yes!'. If you ever need to persuade people, and we need to do it on a daily basis, then you should read this book. You should read it per year like me, just to remember the lessons learnt.


5. Alien interview

Usually this isn't a book that I'll recommend...I'm quite sick of reading about aliens. But this book is special because it's about an interview with an alien that survived the crash in the Roswell incident. You can take it as fiction or fact, it doesn't really matter. It's the ideas that count. The theory that is explained by the alien is so mind blowing that I think it can explain all the sort of things that I'm puzzled about. It's like the encompassing theory to tie up all the loose ends about the different religious beliefs regarding life on earth. Mind blowing, I repeat. It's a very short read, so I will recommend this to anyone interested in the mysteries of life on earth, about reincarnation, about aliens and ancient astronaut theories...very very refreshing read. Again, I stress that there's debate on whether this is real or just a work of imagination...it doesn't matter to me. Either way, I treat works of facts like fiction and fiction like works of facts. The essence is what is important here.


Special mention: Cleric Quintet (Canticle, In Sylvan shadows, Night masks, The fallen fortress and the chaos curse) by R.A Salvatore

The author should be a familar name for those who love fantasy books like the Drizzt series. Having read many books on Drizzt already, I found it pretty repetitive. There's only so much adventure with the infamous dark elf ranger. That's the reason why the Cleric Quintet is so refreshing. It's a very engaging series of 5 books, following Cadderly, the prodigy cleric and his monk wife Danica. If you like the style of writing by Salvatore, this is going to be a great journey for you. Prepared to have nights where you just spent reading so deeply that time seemed to fly past.