– XXIV
Week 48: The Tao Te Ching
He who tiptoes cannot stand; he who strides cannot walk.
He who shows himself is not conspicuous;
He who considers himself right is not illustrious;
He who brags will have no merit;
He who boasts will not endure.
Week 47: Read ‘Em and Reap
This week I read Phil Hellmuth Presents Read ‘Em and Reap: A Career FBI Agent’s Guide to Decoding Poker Tells. It was really good.
Right after finishing up the book, I loaded up Youtube and watched some pro poker. I was immediately able to spot tells in the first couple of hands. Now, I’m not saying that I could sit at the final table and win, but I’m convinced that making a concerted effort to learn how to read these tells will improve my poker game.
A book that’s been on my reading list for a while is a book by Ed Miller about “playing the player instead of the cards.” You hear about that a lot in poker, but I’ve never really moved up to that stage. Having read this book, I’m a lot more confident in my ability to predict my opponents’ moves and try to play one move ahead of them. Continue reading →
Week 46: Spies Among Us
This week I read Spies Among Us: How to Stop the Spies, Terrorists, Hackers, and Criminals You Don’t Even Know You Encounter Every Day, which incidentally wins the award for longest book title so far this year. It’s a nonfiction spy book. And yes, maybe I am on something of an espionage kick right now.
I remember reading Spies Among Us a few years ago and really liking it. It’s designed to help businesses and every day people secure themselves from crime and corporate espionage. The book is divided into three sections. In the first, author Ira Winkler draws parallels between the ways spies compromise government secrets (like troop movements), the ways industrial spies compromise corporate secrets (like an upcoming product spec), and the ways criminals compromise personal information (like your credit card information).
Is it worth it to sponsor a Facebook post?
I work in advertising. I’ve known about Facebook’s sponsored post product for a while, but I’ve never really given it much thought. Last weekend I figured I’d give it a shot and see how it went. I posted a link to my write-up of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold to Facebook with this ad copy:
Probably not the best creative, but good enough for a test post like this.
Buying the ad was really simple. I simply clicked “Promote” and Facebook charged my credit card $6.99. I got no choices about whom my ad would be served to or what metrics I was trying to optimize.
Week 45: Call for the Dead
I read another Le Carré novel this week, Call for the Dead. It was his first novel, but still a really strong showing. I’m not going to talk about it much because it’s genre fiction. Either you like it or you don’t. But I have to say that I love this stuff.
See the full list of books that I’ve read for this project here.
Week 44: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
I finished John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold about an hour ago, and I’m still kinda stunned by it. I’ve always liked spy movies and the like, but I’ve never been much for spy novels. This book changed that.
Spy is really unassuming. At first the short chapters breeze by, but as different, seemingly coincidental events unwind it all of the pieces begin to fall into place. The short chapters make for a fast pace, which suits the style of the novel so perfectly. Espionage is a game played with high stakes and very little information, and we don’t know the final score until the very last page. The short chapters also made this book very readable, and I think it’s much more approachable than another espionage classic, The Day of the Jackal.