1/17/24 post
A book review and other things
One of my goals this year is to seriously up my money. There’s a video game I want to buy. And to help in that endeavor, I decided to read How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
How To Win Friends is a self-help book that has sold over 30 million copies worldwide (putting it somewhere around The Great Gatsby and War and Peace in sales numbers). It’s one of the New York Public Library’s top check-outs of all time. It’s a favorite amongst the business and entrepreneur elite which I am desperately trying to break into. Charles Manson also was a big fan. So I thought I’d give it a go.
The basic structure of the book is a series on principles that Dale Carnegie gives and then elaborates on by giving real world examples of how said principle works in getting people to do things for you. Most of the principles are things like “be nice to people” and “be a good listener” and “be sympathetic” which are all good things to do but aren’t really helpful in terms of upping my net worth. The main idea I got out of it was that you should smile at people more and they will then like you enough to give you their money.
The book was based on a long running lecture series that Dale Carnegie gave that had such luminary students as Warren Buffett who said the lecture series was the “biggest impact” in terms of his success. There must be something there, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe more people just need basic people skills. But anyone who’s met me knows I am already amazing at handling people’s emotions and leading them to great heights (increasing the company revenue), so I didn’t get that much from it.
The book reminded me a lot of Machiavelli’s The Prince which was basically just Machiavelli telling future princes that they should rule with an iron fist when conquering foreign lands, but also be cool. From what I can tell, there’s a lot of crossover in fans of The Prince and How To Win Friends and all the fans are a little weird. Maybe one day How To Win Friends will get a Penguin Classics release.
Grade: 2/5
Other things:
COACH CHRISTMAS was a roaring success.
I discovered Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy newsletter which I’m really enjoying reading and you might too if you like space.
I deleted Twitter off my phone and realized how useful it is for live news updates. Like I didn’t realize the Emmys or the Iowa Caucus were this week until after the fact. How did people keep up with the Emmys and the Iowa Caucus in the 19th century??
I saw another Texas Public Rest Area Bathroom Mural.
GOODBYE.