Steven D. Ward's Blog, page 9
January 20, 2014
Review: The 47 Ronin Story
The 47 Ronin Story by John Allyn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had seen the trailers for the upcoming film version of this story featuring Keanu Reeves and wasn’t overly enthused about it. When I saw the book on sale for Kindle via Amazon though, I thought I’d check it out.
I found the premise interesting enough and it’s a smaller book so it wasn’t a huge commitment so I got it for a song at $1.99 and it was worth every penny.
I am partial to non-fiction as well as the occasional revenge story. Th...
January 19, 2014
Norman Mailer
Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.
-Norman Mailer
December 26, 2013
The 50 Books a Year Challenge
Sometime about a year ago I stumbled upon a concept called the “50 Books a Year Challenge.” I have no idea where I originally saw it, because when I google it now I get roughly 1.36 billion results and I’m too lazy to sort out which one of those it might be. And also because I read it once and totally forgot about it until a couple weeks ago when I was looking back over some of my recent book purchases and remembered it.
That prompted me to actually go back and count my purchased books over th...
December 23, 2013
How I read 50+ books in 2013 without trying
As I was reviewing my invoices for book purchases this past year and noticing that I’d made it through many more books than usual, I suddenly remembered a random blog post I saw somewhere around the first of this year advocating something called the ’50 books in a year challenge.’ I don’t think I even actually read the blog post, but I remember thinking, “Gee, that’d be nice to actually have time to read again,” and promptly forgot all about it. After counting up the books on my Amazon and Au...
December 22, 2013
What a difference two decades make
I’ve been making pretty good time on my Udacity College Algebra course and it occurred to me tonight how different the whole experience has been since I first got a taste of Algebra roughly twenty years ago, as a High School student.
Back then, I looked at my peers and compared myself to them. I saw that everyone else was busy writing things down and flying through the assignments and just magically understanding it all. And I wasn’t.
Why is it so easy for them?
Why is the teacher moving so fast...
December 18, 2013
All things old become new again
My rusty personal blog is in the process of being dusted off and cleaned up. And there’s a reason.
I’ve always been a bit of a polymath, autodidact, renaissance man, or whatever you want to call it. My entire life I’ve considered this a burden more than a blessing, as I generally find myself literate in an unusually broad number of topics, but not being able to hold up a conversation in most of them past a certain level.
A time has come in my life where I had to decide to continue down the same...
May 24, 2013
Robert A. Heinlein
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
May 7, 2013
Friedrich Nietzsche
Give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely–in which the muscles are not celebrating a feast too.
May 1, 2013
Bruce Lee
How can there be methods and systems to arrive at something that is living? To that which is static, fixed, dead, there can be a way, a definite path, but not to that which is living. Do not reduce reality to a static thing and then invent methods to reach it.
April 25, 2013
Robert Pirsig
You want to know how to make a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence.
