The Richest Man in Babylon (1) book review

I’ve made it my goal recently to read a few self-improvement books every month. Today I picked up an old copy of The Richest Man in Babylon lying around the house and dug in. It’s very short, less than 150 pages, and packed with common sense advice. On one hand this is all stuff any finance-savvy person would know, seeing as the ideas in it appear in just about every wealth-making book to date. On the other hand, this book was published in 1926, so it’s likely they all copied The Richest Man in Babylon.

I’m only about halfway in so far, so this is just the first part of the review. The writing style is interesting, if archaic, and all the ideas are simply and lucidly presented. The major ones: save 10% of your income, invest only in sound opportunities, only take financial (and other) advice from people in the know, own your own home (easier said than done) and improve yourself so you can earn more. All sound, solid advice. So far, so good.

So boring

Remember last years Kohaku that I complained about a few posts ago? I rewatched a bit of it just now and I couldn’t remember half of the acts. It was that boring. Geez. Luckily I’ve got a lot of other things lined up to watch now. Toradora! is finally finished, so I can sink my teeth into it all at once. I even found a low-spec torrent of all the episodes raw, which should save me a lot of time downloading. I hear the light novel series is complete too, more things for me to work on.

Radio stations to check out

I came across live365.com by chance just new. Input “japan” in the search string and it came out with 300+ results! I don’t have the time to check them all out right now so I’ll just save that URL here and check them out when I’m ready. One of the results is a station with Japanese gospel. Gospel!? In Japanese!?!?! I’m listening to it right now, not bad. Just that they alternate with Japanese and American music, which isn’t really good for me. Still, having fun with that right now. It’s all good.

Polyglot: How I learn languages book review

I spent two days last week reading Polyglot: How I Learn Languages by Kato Lomb, a Hungarian interpreter who at her peak could interpret 16 different languages. It was…disappointing, but encouraging. Encouraging because it made me feel that it’s possible to learn that many, possibly not all to the same level of proficiency but well-enough to enjoy the culture and literature of other countries. Encouraging also because most of her language learning started as an adult, which is great for those of us who missed the so-called “magic age” of learning.

But it was disappointing because despite the title, the book was pretty skimpy on the details of how and when and where she did it. She gave a vague hypothetical example of how she would go about learning a language: buy a dictionary, buy a book, listen to news, read newspapers, etc, but I would have been happier if she had delved into a particular language more showing her method at work. She mentioned learning Russian by studying a book with a dictionary and figuring out the grammar rules…how? How did she do this? She also mentioned a writer who learning English by reading a poem by Shakespeare…how? How did he do this? Step by step, what, then what, then what…

It was very light on the details. It’s always like “I decided to learn Chinese, so I bought a book” Two or three lines later “So when I was translating Chinese to this group of tourists…” There’s a world of information missing in there. What did you buy first, how did you study the hanzi, how long did it take you, how much time did you spend on it, what did you listen to, what did you read…gahhh. It was frustrating.

Her anecdotes were fairly interesting though, and I felt quite pepped up after reading it, so I guess it was worth the time – and breaking my All Japanese All The Time for that. I broke it some more by listening to French radio yesternight, just to prove I’ve still got it. I might take it back by reading the book’s reviews on online in Japanese or something. Anyway, that’s all for today!

Zzzzzzz….

I’m trying to watch the latest Kohaku Uta Gassen, but it’s BORING! Oh, so boring. At least I got one or two songs out of the last one, especially Hirai Ken’s “Elegy”. I’ve listened to that one about 6 times today alone. But this latest Kohaku looks to be a complete wash. In fact I’ve stopped watching it and I’m now surfing the net while I listen to them talking. What a waste of 4 hours. Bleh.