Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking today, Mike? We are smoking another factory smokes. This time it is a Maduro. And it's a Robusto size. Nice. Robusto size. Back to the favorite size. Yes. Of the podcast. Yes. Yes. How much fun was it to have the Midwest shenanigans girls on? It was wonderful. It was wonderful. It was a good time. It was a good time. It was a good time. It was. They didn't like the cigars as much as we did. But that was to be expected.
We reached out to them actually and they expressed interest on coming on our show. And we tried to pick of the cigars we had queued up for season three, the one that they would enjoy the most. And they're not cigar smokers. So I guess we kind of, you know. Failed. That's okay. We're swallowed by our own hubris or something like that. But that's the whole point of the show is we're not gatekeeping. We want people to try cigars, enjoy cigars.
If they don't enjoy them, I'm sure there's one you might find that you would enjoy. And if not, that's okay too. It doesn't matter. It's just fun to talk to people. Absolutely. Not everything is for everybody. So there we go. Indeed. And they were very good sports about the whole thing. So that was awesome. And if you haven't checked out their podcast, go check them out Midwest Shenanigans. They're on Spotify. Yes. But we're going to light this bad boy up. It's a Maduro.
I remember we did two episodes ago, we did the factory smoke shade and it was a longer one, the Toro, I believe. And it was sweet. It was sweet. But we both liked it. Yeah. Now I'm kind of looking forward to this one. Famous last words. Hey, it's got a pretty pleasant start in my opinion. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. I toasted the foot and it's pretty good. My wrapper is not perfect on this one. It looks like a cheap cigar for sure.
There's a little bit of flaking and some like smudging and it doesn't look perfect. Let's put it that way. Okay. Outside of the giant kind of meme font that they chose to put factory smokes on these things, my wrapper would be indistinguishable from any other cigar in my humidor. So I don't have the same wrapper that you were describing, but we've talked about this before. We've got different humidor even if they're from the same badger box.
Who knows slight variations in this or that or the other thing. Mine looks fine. Yeah. But just something to point out because these are more budget friendly options of cigars that we're smoking. So you might get some differences. Very budget friendly. Very budget friendly. Full disclosure to everybody, they did a big sale for Christmas or New Year's. I can't remember. Okay. I bought one or I bought two of every cigar they have that costs less than $5 after the discount.
I think it might've gone up to six. I can't remember. We are going to be very budget friendly this year because that's kind of the theme of the show so far. Yeah, it has been. I mean, every once in a while we smoke something. I don't know if we ever smoked anything above $18 a stick. No. For $15 to $20, you're going to get a stick that's going to be good pretty much no matter what. We're generally sub $15. We're generally sub $15. Consistently.
A lot of the cigars that we smoke are, I don't know, let's say with tax, let's just say like three to 10, three to 12. I would say five to 10. Five to 10. Mostly five to 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Most of the sticks we smoke are five bucks a piece, not including tax because I buy them. I wait for the sale and I buy a bunch, but if you were to get them at a cigar shop, they'd be $8 to $13 usually. They would still be among the cheapest cigars in that store. For sure. Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I know I talked in episode one about the gift card and going to the cigar shop and I had a $50 gift card and I bought, I think five cigars and it ended up being about $68 all said and done with taxes and everything. I wasn't buying super expensive sticks, but I was buying sticks that were good, like that they were recommending to me. They weren't recommending to me the $30, 20, $30 sticks.
So, I mean, it can be a very expensive, but the whole point I think, or the theme of a lot of our episodes and of our show is we're not gatekeeping. We want to smoke affordable sticks that anybody could smoke. I mean, if you have a hobby, you have a hobby, right? If it's video games, are you going to buy the $60 game? Are you going to buy the $10 game? Are you going to wait for it to go on sale? Whatever, whatever.
We're trying to smoke the lower, not lower end in quality, but the lower end of the price spectrum and let you know which ones are worth the money. Basically. Yes. And some of them have been not good. Don't make me say it, Mike. Don't make me say it. I think that's a, I think there's two of them. There's probably three cigars, maybe even four that are on the board, the square board, the bingo board. I'm not going to list them off, but we all know what they are. So indeed, indeed.
So this is a Nate knows kind of a modified, a nose. Yeah. It's a, uh, everybody's done it. Most people haven't done it to the extent that Nate has done it. I'm talking about the, uh, I don't know what you would call it. The rife market for self-help books. If you've breathed the breath, you could probably write a self-help book that people would buy and love and want to interview you on other shows for, but we're trying to do a best of the best of self-help books.
I guess, uh, I'm trying to, I went through, I track all of my, my reading. I know there's other apps and this app is not a sponsor. Use whatever thing you like. If you like to track things, I don't know why I like to track what I do. I like to track the movies I've watched and I rate them and I like to track the ratings and I like to track the books I read and what I've rated them. And I use Goodreads for tracking that. And I use I am to be for movies.
I've got one friend that uses letterbox for movies and I've tried, but I just, I can't keep up with two and I've got all my ratings already on IMDB. It's just, I'm not going to change. And I know there's other apps for tracking books and ratings and things and new ones are popping up and whatever, whatever. But I use Goodreads. You don't have to. I'm not saying you have to, but I did go through my Goodreads and I've read a lot of self-help books because tell you what, I need a lot of self-help.
I need a lot of help. I don't know how I'm still out in public and functioning. Well, you function better than a lot of people. So well, you were supposed to laugh, but I guess thank you for that. I was trying to make a joke, but now we know I'm committable. So just kidding. But I'm sure you've seen them. And a lot of these people that write self-help books have their own churches perhaps or corporations or whatever, whatever you may have.
But I tried because there's so many self-help books, so many, so many. And I tried to break them down and I told Mike these different categories so he could kind of prepare. I've got interpersonal as one kind of sub-genre. I have finance, productivity, leadership. And then I also, because I have small children at home, I also have a parenting genre or sub-genre. So I don't know, Mike, if you went through and kind of like put them in different categories or not.
But Nate, I have like 10 books total and most of them are borderline not really self-help books. So. Okay. I mean, that's fine. It's as close to a self-help book as I could think of. And I have a list of all the books that I've read in the past. Oh, I don't know. Three or four years. And these are all the ones that I've read in the last three or four years, plus one that I read in college that I remember reading. Okay. Sure. Sure, sure. That's all good.
So I was just going to start with interpersonal because that's the one that ended up at the top for me. And I've got a lot of books there. So you know what? And there's books that I have read that I for some reason didn't put on my Goodreads, but I can't remember when I started the Goodreads, honestly. And I can't remember when. I know that between when Mike and I first met and now, I had read quite a few books on how to control my anger. And this was all because of Mike. No, I'm just kidding.
It wasn't because of Mike. It's because of other reasons. But I had one instance in my life where my now wife, she wasn't my wife at the time, had said something to me along the lines of, you know, you're so angry all the time and it doesn't make any sense. And for some reason that kind of stuck with me and I wanted to then fix it. You know, like what could I do? Not go to therapy, of course. And at that time, it wasn't as easy as our podcast. So I had to do something else.
And that was read books about anger management kind of thing. And I don't remember what those books were called that I read. I could try and look them up. But I know that those helped a lot because I still get angry. You know, you still have emotions. These books are not going to get rid of your emotions or your bad feelings. I guess I mean, if we're going to do kind of a disclaimer at the top, you know what I mean?
But like these aren't going to be the end all cure all because it's a giant, giant industry. And if you know one thing, you can write a self help book about it and make millions of dollars, I guess. So that's that for that. Oh, go on, Mike. Oh, no, I'm nothing. Nothing. It's just a tick. Nate's been talking a lot. I must get in word in edgewise. No, no, no. Just teasing. I talk a lot and I shouldn't because that's really not who I am in the grand scheme of life. I'm like an introvert.
But which was funny that my friend the last episode from high school did not believe that. Anyway, I'm going to start with the interpersonal. And I think I'm going to start with kind of the the OG of interpersonal books. Right? This is the book that a lot of people will say, like, if you ever read this book, then you don't know what you're talking about. That's not my philosophy on this book.
This book is a very good book on, I think, even karma to some extent, which is weird because karma is not really something you can control. But maybe it is. You know what I mean? And I don't believe in karma necessarily. But I believe I guess maybe I do because I believe if you're a good person and treat people well or good, you'll be treated well and good in the future by other people. But who would know how you treated so and so from 15 years ago?
But if you're trying to be the best you you can be, then maybe karma is a thing because you'll know. And maybe maybe nobody else knows. I don't know. Anyway, enough for play. The first book I want to talk about is, and I'm sure, Mike, you've heard of this, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I have heard of this. This is an older book.
But basically, the title doesn't translate well to modern times because influencing people doesn't translate well to a social media, influencers, got to get the TikTok likes or whatever the fuck kind of society. But that's not what this book was about. This book was about mostly winning friends. The influencing part was more about being heard than it was about influencing people for nefarious ends.
And one of the one of the stories is that Dale was walking to go pick up his girlfriend or something. Maybe he was driving. I don't remember. It's been a little bit since I read the book. And somebody cut him off or he bumped into somebody. And instead of saying, hey, watch where you're going, asshole. He said, oh, hey, I'm sorry, my mistake. Are you okay? Blah, blah, blah. Like nice, just general like niceties. Right.
And he found out that that person was the father of the girl he was going to pick up. Right. And so he spent a whole chapter describing how had he been an asshole to this person, it would have not gone well for him in the end. Right. And the point wasn't really to get into a girl's pants as some people in 2024 might be thinking. It was more about, you know, before you burn that bridge, before you shout that shout, before you call that name, before you do these things, just do the nice thing.
Win friends. Everybody's a potential friend. Everybody's a potential ally, you know, in the broad spectrum of maybe like 1950s, hopeless, optimistic sense. Right. But it's, but it's, it's more a common sense book than it is how to influence people. You know what I mean? If the whole thing is that if people like you, they'll listen to what you have to say. And that's the kind of the, the influence part. Right. Right. Never read it. It's a short, quick read.
You know, if you, if you haven't read it, it doesn't matter. You know, I mean, that's the whole point with these self-help books. Some of this stuff you, Mike, already have, you, the listener already have, you don't need to be told about it. But if you find yourself where you're like, gee, I wish, you know, more people will listen to what I have to say or this or that. I mean, I'm talking about from my perspective and my personal struggles and my things.
I grew up in a household that was fairly totalitarian and angry. You know, that was what I had modeled for me. A lot of anger. And so reading something like how to win friends and influence people, even though it's old and from a long time ago, it helped me out. It was something I didn't get at home. So you know, and it's one of those kinds of classics when, when people say self-help book or something like that, you know, like that's one of the top 10 people think of probably, I would imagine.
Yeah. I mean, that's, I would imagine that everybody listening is at least heard that title. Yeah. So do you, do you want me to just go through my list? Do you have, do you have them separated out and interpersonal? Do you want me to go through mine and then you do yours or how do you want to do? Yeah. Why don't you go through yours? I have the feeling that you've probably read all of the books that I'm going to say minus one or two.
And like I say, like half of them are probably not really self-help books, but they are related. Yeah. I mean, I took, I took some liberties too, because you know, is it really self-help or is it really something different? Like it's hard. It's hard to kind of quantify these. The next one is one of the most amazing books I've ever read in my life. And this is still in my interpersonal category.
And I put it here instead of the parenting, because this is really not to do with parenting, but it's to do with being a child of a parent and how to interact with that. And this book is called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. And this one is by Lindsay, Lindsay C. Gibson. And this is one of the most life-changing or life-affirming, my struggle-affirming books I've ever read in my entire life. Really?
But you know, being not a Mike person with my situation, this basically accurately to a T described both of my parents and what had happened in my life. And this isn't to say that this book is blaming your parents, but it's explaining their actions so that you can kind of like reconcile them as an adult.
This isn't, you know, like, hey, I'm a 12 year old and my parents suck and they won't let me go on TikTok or watch what... I don't know what the kids are doing these days, but this is more of a, I feel like I'm fucked up from my childhood, but I don't know why. And this book is basically like, hey, they tried their best, but here's why everything kind of sucked. You know? Yeah, I've never read it. I added it to my list.
Okay. I mean, you know, if you feel like you have a need to read it, they go through the spectrum of emotionally immature parents, you know, and they have checklists kind of at the head of each chapter where they're like, yay, if your parents did any of these things, like even two of them, they were emotionally immature, which is fine. Like I get it. I am emotionally immature and I'm a parent and I'm trying not to do a lot of the things that were done to me when I was a kid.
Not that anything was nefarious or terrible necessarily, you know what I mean? But there are things you have to kind of come to terms with as an adult from your childhood. Right. So it's not really a blame game book. I just want to make that clear because if you're alive and able to read and better yourself, your parents did an okay job. You know what I mean?
Like we're not trying to throw any parents under the bus or do anything like that, but this is more of a maybe why your parents are the way they are or why they might be the kind of the way they are. So it's not really a anti-parent book. You know what I mean? It sounds like the title can sound like, oh, adult children of emotionally immature parents. Like that sounds like a terrible thing, but it's not really like a name calling book at all.
So I just want to make that clear because sometimes people are like, well, my parents were fine. And it's like, yeah, all parents were fine. Like if you're still alive and you're doing things, you know, like, yeah, they did a good job. It's fine. It's all good. But if you have issues internally, like this is probably a good book to read. It doesn't matter. You know? Yes. Related to this, I have a book. It's called Narcissistic Mother's How to Handle a Narcissistic Parent.
I have not read that one. That is not my book. I was recommended to read it to understand somebody else's parent. And I found it to be illuminating. Very interesting. Nice. It's like a very explained kind of behavior patterns that are recognizable, let's say. Okay. Yeah. I'll have to check that one out. No, not, I don't. I mean, that's the hard thing about these books is some of the titles are like, oh, I'll have to check that out. Why?
Because you have a narcissistic mother or narcissistic mother-in-law? Well, I don't know. I don't know. Probably not. You know what I mean? Like I get along with everybody now. There were some rough times for sure, but you know, understanding is understanding, I guess. Right. You have a narcissistic mother, so maybe it'll just be another tool in your tool belt, let's say. The next book I have on here is called You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy.
And it mostly talks about, and I kind of hate this phrase because it's a corporate lingo thing where I work, but it's the be here now. Sure. You know, like be present. If somebody's talking to you, don't be checking your Instagram or your phone or whatever. It's just a good eye opening kind of, you know, giving people attention or getting attention from people and things like that. I read it a little bit ago, so I'm not as remembering of everything in there other than I read it very highly.
So it's just one of those things. If you feel like you're not, if you're not getting kind of the feedback you want from people or people aren't getting the feedback they want from you, it is especially important now where we have social media in our pocket all the time and notifications and all this stuff. So this next one is, I don't know if you've heard of this one, Mike, this one's a downer for sure. It's a huge downer. It's called The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow.
And this professor has a terminal illness. And so he soldiers on to prepare basically his last lecture and tell people what he wished he would have known at their age and stuff like that. And it's, I don't know, I don't know how to describe it. It's like a once in a lifetime look into this sort of situation. Would you recommend it? Yes. Oh, hell yes.
It's a very short book, but it's one of those things where it's like you've got the person who has the audience because they're a professor, they have a terminal illness and they have somebody else who wants to help capture that and put it into book form. So it's kind of a perfect storm of the ultimate sad. It's not an ultimate sad book. You know, it's an uplifting book, but you know that the person delivering the last lecture, it was in fact their last lecture. You know what I mean? Right.
I would definitely recommend that one. Another one I recommend, well, I'm just working down my list here. So they're all ones I'd recommend. I wouldn't put something on my list that I wouldn't recommend. The next one is called The Art of Asking and it's by Amanda Palmer. And she is a musician, a solo musician. And she was also, she's also part of the Dresden Dolls. So if you remember Coin Operator Boy, probably their biggest hit.
And she was at least through the pandemic, but shortly after the pandemic they got divorced, but she was married to Neil Gaiman, the author, the fiction author. And I do know who that is. Yes. And she's very, very, very, very, very liberal. And I actually met her briefly before one of her shows, but not the point. The point is that, you know, musicians or performers are typically very egotistical and don't want to ask for help.
And so The Art of Asking is basically her going through her life and highlighting all the times that she asked for help and how much it actually did help her. So for those of us, especially in the Midwest, where you're supposed to be polite and you're supposed to be self resilient and you're supposed to be all of these things, The Art of Asking can ease you into asking for help because how do you get better outside of asking for help? That is very true. That is very true.
I've been in multiple workplaces where asking for help was frowned upon, which is foolish to say the least. Yeah. I mean, I've heard it said, and I don't know if this is true, but I've heard psychologically, if you ask somebody for a favor, they are more likely to like you than if you don't ask them for a favor. Of course, there's people that will manipulate that and yada yada, but I don't know.
I feel like asking somebody for help and bring somebody else into your sphere of concerns at any rate, and you could potentially learn something that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. All right. The next book I have is called Mindset and it's by Carol S. Dweck. Have you heard that one, Mike? No, I have not. I don't remember much about it.
And this kind of thing is like, you can read a lot of these self help books and little things kind of stick out to you or you remember them, but you don't necessarily remember where you remember them from. But mindset is all about mindset, of course. So talking about how you perceive things that are happening and then what you do with that perception.
And it's very easy to overreact to things you don't know, as evidenced by Mike and myself's origin story, where we were both of the incorrect mindset. And now look at us. You know? It's just one of those things where it will kind of enlightens you on how you kind of take things in and perceive them and how to maybe circumvent some of those initial predilections, predilections, whatever. Yes. First impressions can be very misleading, to put it that way.
Yeah. And it's weird because there's a saying like, there's no impression like the first impression or something like that, or like the first impression is the only impression you get. And that's not necessarily true. No, not if you're talking about somebody who is conscientious. If you're highly conscientious, then that is certainly not the case. Yeah, for sure. I'm about halfway through my cigar. Me as well. Me as well. I like it. I'm surprised with how good it is. I like it as well.
It is very good. I'm not saying it's as good as an Edge. No. I'm not saying it's as good as a Series R. No. But it's better than a Dark Shark, which is kind of our, I would say, dark shark. That's a baseline for like minimum level of goodness, right? If you're worse than a Dark Shark, then you're not good. I would not consider the Dark Shark to be good. It's acceptable and it's good if you put tequila on it. It's decent. You know what I mean?
Like it's one of those ones where it's like, well, I don't have anything else to smoke, but I got a Dark Shark, or I might only smoke half of this, so I got a Dark Shark. Right. So I, yeah, I think this one's good so far. All right. The next one, and you might have heard of this author. Have you heard of Brene Brown? No. Okay. She's written a lot of books, a lot of books.
I've enjoyed all of her books, but for me, the standout book of hers that I've given to other people is called Braving the Wilderness. I like the title. The title is fantastic and it has nothing to do with how to build a campfire or things like that, but the wilderness is kind of things that maybe you're afraid to do or feelings you're afraid to have or whatever, and I would highly recommend it.
I feel like we're over halfway in the cigar, and so I kind of want to speed this along a little bit because I have a lot more books than Mike has on my list. But just know that all of the books that I'm listing out, I thoroughly enjoy and recommend to people based on what they are looking for. The next one is one of my... So these are all interpersonal relationships, interpersonal books. This next one here is one of the two on here that I have that are specifically related to...
They're not necessarily a married couple books, but they are intimate partner books, if that makes sense. This one is called Love is Never Enough by Aaron T. Beck. It's a little bit older, it's a little bit older, but I've read a lot of books from even just the beginning of this subsection, Dale Carnegie and stuff. So a lot of older books sometimes have contrary values to modern society, but I didn't find this one to be that.
This one is basically saying just because you love somebody, that's not it, that's not the end of it. You can't just say, I love you, I'm going to go snort lines of coke off of a stripper's ass and love should be enough. You know what I mean, it is kind of talking about the very different interpersonal relationship you have with somebody that you are in a romantic relationship with. It's still not... It's my number two for marriage or romantic relationship books. So this one's number two.
Number one for me is How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It. That one's by Patricia Love and Stephen Stoesnay. But that one is phenomenal because it basically... The whole premise of the book is it's not your partner, it's you. Which in my opinion, because my parents divorced when I was 25, my whole take on that is 50-50 split. They're both responsible. Maybe it's 60-40, maybe it's 55-45, whatever it might be. I don't know, who knows?
I'm not the person that assigns those values, but it's both of them. It takes two people. But a lot of these books are like, well, your partner is dumb and you just keep doing what you're doing. If they don't see it, then get a divorce and blah, blah, blah and do this or break off the relationship or whatever it is. But this one's kind of like, look, man, you're not doing enough. You could be doing more. If you want to be treated a certain way, treat them a certain way.
I mean, it's very common sense and straightforward and it didn't make me feel bad. You know what I mean? It didn't make me feel bad. I was just like, oh, I'm kind of in my own head and this is getting me out of my own head and getting to see some other people's perspectives. That's my number one kind of like marriage serious relationship book, how to improve your marriage without talking about it.
This next book here I read because I'm an introvert and a lot of people don't understand what introversion is. They think an introvert is shy. They think an introvert can't public speak. They think different things, right? And I have no problem public speaking. I would rather not do it, but I'm not nervous about doing it. I have no problem talking to hundreds or thousands of people. That's not a big issue for me. I would rather not do it, of course, but it's not an issue.
But given the choice between smoking a cigar, drinking some booze and talking with Mike versus going to a frat party, I'm going to pick Mike. You know what I mean, or I'm going to pick reading a book at home, obviously, because I've got a thousand books on this list here for our episode tonight. But this next book really explains kind of introversion. And if you're an introvert, you'll love it.
And if you're an extrovert, it will give you an insight into what the introvert in your life is feeling. And it's called Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking by Susan Kane. And I thought that was the most, there's a lot of books kind of about introverts, but this was the best that I've read. I don't think we're going to get through your whole list. We will. We will. This is my biggest section. I'm going to speed it up.
The next one I have on here, you might have heard of this one, Mike, you might have read it. It's Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Nope, I've heard of it. Yeah. He's a Holocaust survivor and he wrote this book or conceived a lot of the ideas for this book while he was in a concentration camp. So I think it's one of those books that shouldn't be uplifting, but it is. I'm not saying it shouldn't be, but it could very easily be not an uplifting book, but it is. I don't know.
I think of all the books we talk about this episode, this one is probably one you should read. Give it a go. It's a very unique perspective because he was a psychologist before going to the concentration camp. So he had a very unique perspective well there. I've got another Dale Carnegie book here, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living for People That Like to Worry About a Lot of Things. I used to worry about everything all the time.
This book isn't necessarily what cured me, but this one's a good kind of look at that mindset and how to stop doing it. The next one I have is called Grit by Angela Duckworth and it's Persisting Through Hard Times. This next one is another older one, but I really enjoyed it and it sounds like a complete like 1920s like caricature of the 1920s, but it's called Life is Tremendous by Charlie Tremendous Jones.
It's a very short book, but basically kind of the having a positive outlook on life and things and whatnot. And in terms of a self-help primer, this book is big. It's a long book, but it's got excerpts from a lot of the books that we just mentioned or that I just mentioned and it's Og Mandino's University of Success. It's not written really by Og Mandino, but it's edited or curated by him. And so one of the chapters in there is from Life is Tremendous, which I just mentioned.
So it's a good kind of, you don't know where to start, give it a read and whatever you jive with or gel with or whatever the cool kids are saying these days, then read more of that author. But that's it for my interpersonal. Do you have any more interpersonal books, Mike? No, I don't think so. Okay. I wish I wasn't talking as much, but God damn it, here we are. Oh, I do. I lied. I have one. It's How to Work with Anyone, which is a lecture.
It's not really a book, but it's a business lecture about working with difficult people. Not that I necessarily work with difficult people, but it's always good to know how to deal with people that are not cooperative. Yeah. And you might get that even if they're not difficult, like you said, they may not be cooperative or they may not buy into your vision or what have you. I strive to be the difficult person that other people have to work with.
I woke up and I'm going to make it everybody's problem. Yes. I try not to do that. I'm just kidding. I try not to do that, but sometimes I can't help myself. I have one book in the finance subcategory. I don't know if you've read this one, Mike. I had some career or job roles in the retirement department of a couple of different companies. This one is called I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi.
Okay. I don't know if you've heard of it, but he's kind of like a young millennial author who writes for other young millennials, but he kind of explains how you want to structure your 401k and rebalance it every year, which I haven't done. I need to go in and do it.
I'm not following the instructions, but basically I don't know that he can promise that you'll be rich, but he's basically giving you an insight in how to be a little bit more knowledgeable in some of your retirement 401k stuff, rudimentary budgeting, things like that. It's a primer on what you don't know and what you should know. You can always look up more stuff on the things you don't know that he's talking about. I thought that one was very well written. It was very accessible.
You don't have to understand what a hedge fund is to read this book. All right. My next category is, I don't know if you have any finance books, Mike. Nope. Okay. The next category is productivity. This one, I'm sure you have read or were mandated to read or whatever. I got away with not reading this one in high school. I did not read this one in high school.
I did not like the teacher that was suggesting these books, this book, and I never took his class, so it worked out for me, but I read it then as an adult and I really liked it. It's really good. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I was mandatory. It was mandatory reading when I was in college, so I have read it. Do you have any thoughts on it? I mean, by the time I had read it, it seemed like old hat type of stuff. I didn't quite understand why it's such a phenomenon.
Yeah. I mean, that's part of the trouble with the self-help books, right? You write The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and then all of a sudden you have the eighth habit, the ninth habit, the tenth habit. He's got all these other books out there, but I think in terms of if you're trying to start somewhere, it's a good read. Even if you're already doing the stuff, it's affirming to what you're doing, kind of like the Augmanditos University of Success.
If you read Augmanditos University of Success and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you're going to be ahead of a majority of people in life, I think, with the inner thoughts and figuring out things for yourself. I don't know. I was impressed with it. I didn't read it in high school or college. It was never mandated to me to read. Sometimes books that you're forced to read have less impact than the books you choose to read.
Right. I mean, I see posters of The Seven Habits all over the place. That's sort of like it's entered the cultural zeitgeist. Yeah, it's a cliche now. It's a cliche now. It was probably very influential and important. You don't become a meme of yourself without having a good point or two. Yeah, for sure.
And everything's kind of a meme or a cliche these days, like the cat hanging off the thing, like hang in there, that motivational poster or those other motivational posters you see in corporate office spaces where it's like live to work and work to die or something like that. You know, like that's not... These aren't the kind of books I'm trying to recommend. It's just if you want to better yourself in different areas or certain areas, that's all we were trying to do with this.
This next book had a profound impact on me and I've kind of drifted away from it because, I don't know, sometimes these things are a lot more work than they're worth. But this next one is called Getting Things Done by David Allen. The basic premise is if there's something that comes across your desk that needs to be done, if it can be done in, I don't know, if it's like two minutes or less, do it right then. Just do it. Just do it and get it done.
If it takes more than that, then schedule it out. But put it... Like have a system. Like have a system to schedule things out. You know, have a reminder system or, you know, like Google Calendar, you can set reminders. A lot of different apps will do reminders and things or things you need to do for each day.
So it's just kind of a very strict system of if you have a lot of things coming in, which at the time that I read this, I had a lot of things coming in because I was doing a different job than I'm doing now. I had a lot of different things coming in. I had a lot of different people to kind of make happy. I had a lot of different goals to meet. This book helped me organize all of that stuff. And it was fantastic.
I don't follow it to the T anymore because I don't have that same need I had previously. But if you have a lot of stuff on your plate, you got a lot of requests or asks for your time, this is a good book to kind of manage those. I don't know if you've heard of that one. The next one is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. And this one I feel... And I haven't read Atomic Habits, but I feel this one is kind of the...
In the similar vein is that one where the power of habit, this one's basically saying, if you find yourself wanting to eat less sweets, you need to... He breaks down what kind of makes a habit. You've got the motivating factor. I'm bored at work. What do I do? I go eat some candy from the vending machine or whatever. You know, whatever it is. And he's basically saying, when you get the trigger, then change the outcome. So you get the trigger that you're bored.
Well, instead of getting candy, go eat a carrot or go walk around or do some jumping jacks or whatever. So it's basically getting into how humans form habits and then how to... I don't know if hacking is the right word, but like how to hack or intervene or circumvent some of those triggers and make them work for you. It's eye-opening. It's interesting, human psyche. Yes. Do you have any productivity books, Mike? I wouldn't call them productivity. They'd be more self-development.
Okay. Maybe that's under the leadership because that's the next section I have. Sure. I guess productivity would be the creative act by Rick Rubin. And it was... It's mostly autobiography about Rick Rubin and how he does his artistic process. And it's kind of about how to set up your environment and how to set up a mindset that leads to productivity, artistic productivity. That's interesting. I don't know if it was really a self-help book. It's borderline.
Well, a lot of these are kind of borderline anyway. What does Rick Rubin do for art? Rick Rubin's a music producer. Oh, okay. Yeah. He produced a lot of the famous albums from the late 20th century. So like Beastie Boys, he produced for almost every major band, it seems like. Okay, yeah. He hit it big and then had a slump and then he kind of revived their careers. He worked with Johnny Cash. He was one of the founders of Def Jam Records back in the day. Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's had a very prolific career in the music industry. So yeah, yeah. Super interesting. I'll have to read that one. Yeah. He's an interesting cat, you know, real weird guy. Yeah. You know, you got to read those ones that are super interesting. He's like a weird, like just a really interesting guy. Like he was more really obese for his entire life. So he went to these dieticians because he was super wealthy and he had like a super model wife and all that, you know, but he's like a fat ass.
And basically it came down to he just drinks protein shakes and that's all he lives on now because that's his metabolism is so fucked from years of sitting in a office. Yeah, for sure. Like he's just a weird guy. So interesting to learn his process. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. And then I read Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins, which is also mostly autobiographical. And the moral of that story is like just creating using your own hatred to like get tasks done. Yeah. Kind of.
Yeah. Like turning your negative inner emotions on the problem instead of yourself, basically. Yeah. So. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to quantify or categorize a lot of these books because they kind of touch on a lot of different things. What was your next book, Mike? Oh, it's The Art of Living, which is like a by a Buddhist monk. I've heard of that one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then Mindfulness. And his big promotion is that you should practice mindfulness in your daily tasks.
He's really anti not anti cell phone, but he's anti the sort of over busy society that we've created, you know? Yeah. Where he wants people to calm their mind and like have a conversation with themselves on a daily basis. Yep. Yep. I do enjoy mindfulness. There was a book that I read and I can put it on this list, but it would fall in my next category under leadership and it was creating the space to lead.
I can't remember who the author was right now, but I'm sure if you look it up, you'll find it. But it was all mindfulness principles where, you know, leaders are leaders, but if you don't have the space to lead, you need to create that space as a leader to lead. So I do enjoy the mindfulness. I've read a lot of mindfulness things. Not many of them made the list for, I don't know why, maybe because I didn't rate them on Goodreads when I was researching this stuff, but I do enjoy that.
Well, there's downsides to everything too. Like David Goggins is very open about the fact that his style of thinking has led him to have a very successful career, but it's also led him to have like three divorces, right? Like he's very difficult to live with. Being somebody who uses his inner hatred to get tasks done. Yes. Yes. Okay. Leadership. Yeah, leadership. The next one is How to Win at the Support of Business by Mark Cuban. And this one is a very, very short book.
I feel like a lot of the leadership stuff, I don't know that winning at the support of business isn't necessarily leadership because a lot of corporate entities believe that being a manager or supervisor equals being a leader. And that's a hundred percent not true. One hundred percent not true. Leader and manager are not synonymous at all. You can be one without the other or the other without the other. You know what I mean?
This book was a very good insight, you know, kind of business leadership, I guess. Let's just say that. The next one I have on here is called Extreme Ownership by Jaco Willink and Leif Babin. And it's basically the premise of that book is if you are a leader, you own everything. Everything. So somebody on your team fails, that's your failure. But that's the leader. That's not manager. That's leader. So managers will pawn everything off on somebody else.
But a leader takes ownership over the failures of their team or the successes of their team or, you know, the successes of their team. They will give the individual credit to those that succeeded. You know what I mean? But the extreme ownership is you can't just take the good and pawn off the bad. It's you own everything as a leader.
And that could, you know, a lot of these things, a lot of these premises and philosophies and things like, I don't know, man, the parenting and the leadership books are almost hand in hand. The same thing in my mind. Sure. They have similarities. Well, what's the goal of a leader, Mike? To lead successful missions or something like that, I'm guessing. No, no. The goal of a leader is to create more leaders so you don't have to do all this stuff. You want to create more leaders.
What's the goal of parenting? You want to raise other adults. You don't want to raise a three year old. You want to raise an adult that can do things on their own. You know, so it's very similar. I mean, they're cross purposes or whatever. They're similar. They're the Venn diagram. There's an overlap, I guess. And then I put on here as my last leadership book, I mean, there's so many leadership books.
There's one written by a Navy general, like Make the Bed or something like doing the small tasks every day kind of thing. I didn't put it on here. I wanted to mention it though. But this next one is called Failing Forward. It's by John C. Maxwell. John Maxwell has written a thousand books. Like anything you can think of with leadership, he's written on. You really can't go wrong with a John Maxwell book because he's very conversational in tone with everything.
And you get the feeling he genuinely likes you as a person. You know, like if you're reading his book, you want to get better. So therefore you're a good person. You know what I mean? It's not a condescending tone at all. And anything you might want to know about, like if John Maxwell has written about it, you're probably getting a pretty good start on that path, I guess. If that makes sense. Do you have any other leadership books, Mike?
This is kind of classic literature, but I put it on here anyway. The Prince by Machiavelli. Because it is kind of like how to be a conniving backstabber and strategies for not getting caught. It's interesting. It's not necessarily would be considered positive today's society, but it's definitely about leadership in a certain way.
Well, and the whole point of leadership is you have to understand opposing leadership styles, or even if you are maybe not in a position of power, but you still are a leader, how to understand those other people in power. So I would put it in there. There's a lot of other books I could have listed, but I had a pretty long list to begin with. I put the Art of War on as well, which is kind of strategy, like old timey strategy. And people find it inspirational. I didn't find it to be inspirational.
Maybe there's something wrong with me. I did not find either one of those books to be particularly inspirational, which apparently people do. I haven't read Art of War. I wanted to put, and I didn't put it on here. I wanted to put Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. But I didn't quite know where to put it. It's just more of a general kind of, it's more philosophy than it is self-help, I guess. A lot of philosophy is the leader, the precursor to self-help.
And I think, if we're going to go into philosophy, just briefly, maybe philosophy is not quite the right word, maybe ideology. Some people have religion, that's what they try to base their life around. Some people have philosophy. Some people don't have anything. And I think, find people that think like you want to think, or think like you think, or live the life you want to live, or treat people the way you want to treat people. And then read more about that.
I guess I'm not trying to say like, you need to read all these books and then this will make you a good person. I think just the act of reading a book to try and better yourself or make yourself better in certain areas is a win. It doesn't have to be the books that we list off here. It could be anything. But I know that the self-help book industry is rife for manipulation and people that are terrible human beings that just pump out these books.
I wanted to try and, I don't know, pull Mike and my collective brains and what we've read and what stood out to us as good books to start with. If you don't like them, don't like them. That's fine. There's other books and other things that you could read. So the next section on here is parenting for me. And I don't know if you have any parenting books. I do not. Okay. What have you ever touched on yet, Mike? Let's see here.
Five things that we cannot change, which is kind of a philosophy book, more about philosophy than anything else. And it talks about the five things in life that people have anxiety about that they need to just let the anxiety go and not focus on it. So it's plans going astray, things ending and changing, unfairness in life, pain in general and unloyal and unloving people.
And it kind of goes into that whole cross section of, you know, like I find On Liberty by John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill to be inspirational. The problem is that the real world acts a lot more like Machiavelli than it does On Liberty or whatever. You know what I mean? Utilitarianism is wonderful, but the real world doesn't operate using that philosophy, you know? So it should. It should, it should. A lot of things should behave differently, you know?
And I think that's one of my big draws to Stoicism is worry about the things that you can influence and you can change. And the things you can't influence and change, you know, like the big example is the weather. It was supposed to be sunny today, but it's rainy and I'm going to be all upset all day about it. Like you can't change the weather. Like don't worry about it, you know?
I mean, that's kind of the big draws is devoting that kind of energy to things that you can actually change your influence. Not that you can't be upset about the weather, you know, but like five things you can't change. Like there's a lot of things you can't change in life, unfortunately. Right. Yeah. You have to let it, let your desire to control it or be upset about it. You just have to, you literally just have to let it go. Face your feeling and then let it go. Don't push it down.
Yeah. Just like. Like roll off your back because it's not going to do you any good. So yeah, exactly. That I think, I don't know. I feel like having a philosophy, I guess, right in life to try and follow and aspire to is a good thing. I don't know how you feel, Mike. It is, but like I say, it's not the end all be all. It's not the end all be all. And it's not the real world. People don't believe in liberty. It's just a fact.
People even, especially the people that say that they believe in liberty, like they're just lying. Yeah. Because if you, they come face up with the freedom of others, then they don't want them to be free to do what they want. They want to control what they do and they feel that it's right. It's like, well, no, the whole idea. Yeah, the whole idea behind freedom is the freedom to do things that other people disagree with that doesn't affect anybody else. Right?
Yeah. Like, yeah, nobody is going to say, oh, you can't like puppies. Everybody likes puppies. Right. It's the other thing that some people do. I mean, Michael Vick doesn't, but... Well, I think that he does, just not in the way that other people do. Yeah. I guess like, in my mind, philosophy is more introspective than other things. Right? Like everybody should be nice to one another. You know, I mean, everybody, I feel like everybody would think that. Maybe not Hitler. I don't know.
I don't know what I mean, but like most normal people would say like, hey, everybody should have like common decency. But I think philosophy takes a step further where it's like, everybody's not going to have your philosophy, man. Like how are you going to look at things? Like it's introspective. Like philosophy is what I am going to do with the shit that is life, I guess, in some sense. Right. Right. Well, that's where like stoicism is important.
A lot of that is like facing what's unpleasant and then coming to a realization that you don't really have control over anything other than your own action. So yeah, or your own feelings, you know, that's some of the best lines in meditations is, you know, somebody feels this way. Am I going to let their feelings take my feelings? Or am I going to choose my own feelings kind of thing? Yeah. And this is all well before social media, but it's even more applicable now with social media.
So I always liked in meditations when he talked about other people's actions and whether or not he was going to allow that to make him angry or is he just going to focus on, you know, these are their good aspects and I can't control their negative behavior. So I gotta let it go.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, you have to make peace with what your day was and the decisions that you could make that would influence your life and the decisions that other people's made that influence your life that you can't control. But I want to get into this. I've got these last couple of books here for parenting.
Absolutely. And I want to get through those and I put them in parenting, but two of them for sure, two of them for sure are also leadership or philosophy books, but they're first and foremost the parenting book, but they can be extrapolated if you know what I mean. Right. So this first book is called The Gift of Failure. It's by Jessica Leahy and this book is my number two, my number two book, a parenting book. And basically The Gift of Failure says that your kids will fail.
They're children, right? They're trying things for the first time. And if you try and protect them from failure at an early age, they will then fail at an older age. And the older you get, the more catastrophic failures become because you basically have rubber bones when you're an infant. Okay. And when you get older, your bones are bones and will break. And you know, if you didn't learn the bodily restrictions of yourself, then the consequences will be greater later on. Right.
So as a 37 year old person, the things that I do to fuck myself up now have greater consequences than they did when I was 18 or 17. So the point of the book is in order to parent, also lead people, you have to allow people to fail and not fault them for failing. Like you want them to fail early. You want them to fail early because it's less detrimental to fail early than it is to fail later on because you were protected or shielded.
Yes. We, well, I don't want to bash the younger generation, but it appears to me that the Gen X parents who have children who are in their early twenties were not allowing their teenagers and middle schoolers to experience like the negative things that happen when you're a teenager and a preteen. Going to a dance and getting rejected or I'm not trying to say anything bad. Like that's not a bad thing, but it's good for you to be.
No, no, no, no. Yeah. There are a lot of them have been shielded from these typical failures. These are the people who are 20 that I know. Yeah. To their detriment later. Right. You know, falling on your bike at six is a lot better than falling off your bike at the age 25. Right. Which is a lot better than falling off your bike at 65. Yes. And you know, and that's kind of the thing is if the gift of failure, everybody's going to fail. And the point isn't you're trying to prevent failing.
The point is you're trying to teach them how to cope with failing. And the earlier they are introduced to failing, the earlier they can learn to manage that. And this is true of kids and of people that you that report to you at work. Even if you're working on a big project, do you want them to fail early at the early stages? Do you want them to fail like the week before you're delivering the final product? You know what I mean? Like do you want to create a environment where failure is okay?
And then you teach them how to deal with that failure and move on from it? Or do you want it to be like a last minute thing where then everybody's scrambling to cover up for it? You know? Right. And that goes into project management and getting a diversity of ideas. Oh, yeah. And you can avoid the pitfalls of let's say you have one idea that seems to be better that probably does have problems.
So if you have a diversity of opinions, you can at least flush out what the potential issues could be before they happen. Yes. And that's why this is a parenting book first and foremost. But you can read it from any lens you want. If you have any subordinates or if you are maybe a subject matter expert on something or whatever, like this is a great book to read. And just to not be afraid of failing.
It's written from a parenting perspective for sure, but you can easily apply it to almost any aspect of life. If you think you're like a worrywart and give input to other people's lives, that's maybe unsolicited. It's a great book. You know? Like you know what? They need to own this failure themselves. I'm here to help them afterwards. You know? I don't know. It's a very kind of mind, mind shift, mindset shifting book. Really liked it. The next three are pretty much strictly parenting books.
So I'm going to go through those pretty quick. And then I'm going to go with my favorite parenting slash interpersonal slash leadership book. So the happiest kid on the block is by Harvey Karp, basically how to the colic, right? Like every parent, every parenting book is like, okay, the colic and get rid of the colic and I don't know, we haven't had colic. Like it's not a thing, you know?
But this book is kind of like if you, especially if you're a man, especially if you're a man, read happiest baby on the block, read it, read it right now. And when you have a kid or if you have friends that have kids, you will be like the magic baby whisperer. I mean, I, I, I shit you not magic baby whisperer. We didn't have kids. I read this book because we were expecting a kid and I calmed this kid down.
One of our friends kids down like instantly and they're like, holy fuck, like what's going on here? And I'm like, I don't know. I just got it, but I didn't just have it. I read this book. You know what I mean? It's strictly a kid parent book kind of, you know, if you want to calm down children. The next book is how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. It gives you a lot of insights.
Like when you're talking to a child, someone smaller than you get down at eye level, become their equal in that sense and a lot of other things too. But it's just kind of a good kind of how to talk to children or midgets, I guess. I'm just teasing. I'm teasing about the midget thing. And the next one is how to have a new kid by Friday by Kevin Lehman. And that is pretty much a crash course on if you have disruptive behaviors in your child, how to correct them.
I'd have to kind of reread it again based on the next book, which is my number one for parenting and leadership. But how to have a new kid by Friday is a pretty good crash course on how to kind of correct behavior that you don't like. And my favorite parenting book so far, I'm not quite done with it yet, but it's been fantastic. I've been implementing it as we're talking and I have seen a dramatic change, dramatic change. It's been crazy. Like this is nuts.
I don't want to oversell it, but this is crazy. It's crazy. Yo. Good Inside is by Dr. Becky Kennedy. This would work for anything, anybody who is a subordinate or a child or what have you, anybody even you're having an issue with, I think. So it kind of crosses all of the categories. But the basic premise is everyone is good inside. So if you start with that premise, you have a child's tantrum. They're a good kid. They're good inside. I know they're good.
I know I have a coworker who's not doing what you expected. Well I know they're good inside. Like you start with good inside. That's your starting point. Like you start with that. And then everything else is kind of like it's super, it's written as a parenting perspective. So it's written as kids have a lot of emotions that they don't know how to describe. And kids' emotions or kids' primary goal in life is to not drive people away.
So when other people will do a timeout, go and be alone, basically this author is saying you are taking them when they need somebody the most and isolating them instead of going and telling them, hey, it's okay to be upset. I understand you're upset. It makes sense you're upset. I would be upset too. I would be upset too. I couldn't have 15 cookies or something. But it's also a gray area book.
So if you're not okay with gray areas, you're not going to like the book because it maintains that two things can be true. Like the child can be upset. They're not getting an extra cookie and they're not getting an extra cookie, right? It's the dichotomy. Or you can be a good parent even if you fucking yell at your child. And then you can go and tell them that you were overwhelmed with your emotion because you want to model regulating your emotions, which kids can't do.
Like psychologically it's proven they can't regulate their emotions, which is why you have tantrums and things of that nature. Right. But the same is true of coworkers because if they grew up in a household that didn't do that and forced you to shove your emotions deep down and not acknowledge them, you don't know how to deal with emotions either. So I mean, it's all encompassing really.
Yeah. And if I would have read that book before Mike and I ever met, we'd have been smooth sailing from day one. Tell you what. Okay. Yes. That's my list where you at with your cigar, Mike. Do you got any other books you want to talk about? No, no, no. Most of my books like you say are like, I put Woodcraft in there, which I don't really know that's kind of a self-help book a little bit. It's a classic. Everybody should read it, I think. But we've read Woodcraft, haven't you? I don't think so.
Who's it by? Nesmuk, George Washington Sears. You had to have read it. No, I don't think I've ever read that one. It's pretty short. It's in public domain, so anybody can go out and get a PDF copy of it. But it's like the OG backpacking book. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's a little bit of how to guide, but now it's mostly like the thinking of outdoors people of the late 19th century, early 20th century. Yeah. He was like he was like an outdoor writer back in the day.
So they still have the George Washington Sears axe and they still have the Nesmuk knife. He was pretty influential for his time. Okay, cool. But I don't know if that it's on the edge of self-help. It all depends on how you look at it. I think it qualifies. Yeah, it all depends on how you look at going outdoors. I enjoy going outdoors. So yeah, me too. Yeah, I find it to be relaxing and gives you perspective on things, you know.
Yeah, I mean going outdoors is fairly simple depending on how well you prepare, of course. But you know, if you don't build a fire, you're going to be cold. Depending on the season, right? Like depending on the season and stuff like that. But like by and large, if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to eat delicious blueberries and die in a bus in Alaska or something, you know, like what's his name.
But I don't know, a lot of the books that I mentioned kind of have these common sense elements or what should be common sense, but maybe was forgotten through time or societal changes or shifts or whatever. Or at least with the Good Inside book, she talks a lot about how your parents maybe didn't do what she's talking about in this book. And that's why maybe you struggle with being angry about certain things or when your kids do something, it seems like they're defying you.
But in reality, they're just doing what their program to do or they're supposed to be doing, you know? Right. I mean, human nature is human nature for a reason through evolution or whatever, you know? So the quicker you can kind of understand that and then learn how to deal with it, the better I think. And whether that's through, you know, outdoor books or leadership books or parenting books or whatever, it doesn't matter. Like if you're getting that input, that's great. Like that's good.
Yeah, and that's a lot of the classics were like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as they call it. Yes. Yep. It's not really about Dr. Frankenstein creating a creature, right? It's about metaphysics and responsibility and the power of privilege and a lot of things that are... You could extrapolate that onto not that our modern AI is truly AI, but when it is, you can extrapolate that onto computer thought processing that mimics or adequately represents human thought.
Are they truly lesser beings or not? You know, I mean, that's kind of the whole point of Frankenstein, right? Just because it was created by a human, is it less than a human? Does it not have the same feelings and desires and hopes and wants? Right. And it's about abandonment and what that can cause, you know? And society's judgment about monstrosity and all sorts of things. That's one of the best parts about the Frankenstein novel, not that this is about Frankenstein at all.
No, but sometimes... In the modern world, we view Frankenstein's monster as like the thing. It's like, well, Frankenstein's the monster and not the creature. The whole point of the book, yeah, is that the creature is an innocent that was turned into a murderer by the monster. Yeah, it was basically radicalized by its own creator. Right. Yeah. And by society at large. Well, yeah.
Yep. Yeah. So, you know, and there's plenty of fiction books like that one that give you insight into human nature or different philosophical dilemmas that can arise. Right. Well, all the classics are about that because there was no television, there was no electricity. Yes. And then there's The Middle March, which is long as hell, but Middle March is all about human interactions in a small village and like the unlikely heroes and villains of these communities. Right?
Yeah. Written by a woman pretending to be a man, you know, and that's Jane Austen, which I've read all the Jane Austen novels. They're all about human interaction and different ways of looking at the same issue, you know, human misunderstandings and communication. Yeah. Yeah. Have you read American Bloomsbury? Yes, I have. Okay. That one's really good. It's a nonfiction, but it's about all these like transcendentalist authors in this one town that all happen to be there. Concord.
Yes. And also Nathaniel Hawthorne is there and he's not really a transcendentalist, but he was there. Very fascinating book. I had no idea. I didn't really know what to expect going into the book, but I really enjoyed it. I didn't know that all of the major American authors from the American Renaissance were basically neighbors. Even Melville. Yeah, I had no idea. All of them knew each other. Yeah. They were all fucking there. And they all fucking hated each other. Loved or hated each other.
Yes. Or loved and then hated each other. Right. And they were all basically failures in life other than Emerson who like slept his way to the top, you know? He's like Kamala Harris of the 1800s. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Interesting. And Thoreau was a failure. Very eye-opening. Yeah. They're all interesting. I mean, they were all failures, but they're all like the quintessential American authors. Well, they were failures in their lifetime, but they were.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hawthorne was the exception because he had some success in business, not in... I think he was what? A station master or something. Something like that. Something like that, yeah. Yeah. But he was a prick, you know? Yeah. I think most of them were, you know? Right. Thoreau was like an early stage hippie loser. Yeah. Yeah. He was like living off of other people's money. And he's like, oh, I'm in the wilderness at this cabin on this pond and I'm just all alone.
But no, he wasn't. It was there with everybody. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. He was squatting on a rich guy's land that was his friend. Yeah. He was like a melancholic person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had all these amazing handouts from people. It was just like, oh, it's tough. Life is tough. Right. Well, even like Mark Twain did not have financial success in his life, even though he was famous. You know, a lot of these guys back in the day were not... You're a shock in Samuel Clemens.
Yeah. One of the foremost American intellectuals was constantly losing money like mad, you know? Did I tell you, we went to his house? Oh, really? Yes. We went to his house in Connecticut. It was really interesting. Like, he had a lot of pertinent insights. Oh, yeah. He was ahead of his time. Now he's being censored for being, you know, what would you call it, anti-racist in the pre-modern era. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
His works are being censored because of the language that he uses in Huckleberry Finn mostly. Yeah, particularly. Particularly, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is, have you read Huckleberry Finn? I don't think so.
So the TLDR is, it's an adventure story, but the subtext is like exposing the racism and multi-tiered society of pre-war Southern US or like maybe post-war Southern US, which Mark Twain heavily criticized like their racism and their misogyny and the negative, the darker aspects of Southern society, kind of highlighting it and saying how crappy it was. But of course he did it in a way that a guy from 1860 would do, right? Which is not necessarily appropriate for modern context.
I mean, it is appropriate, but it's not, you know what I'm saying? He's saying he used words that would get him censored. He used words and situations that, yeah, would be censored today. Yes. It's a good read for those who haven't read it. Yeah, I've got some Twain on my reading list that I want to do. It's like Dickens, right? I'm surprised that they don't censor Dickens or try to like subvert it.
Not that he has any like cursing or anything like that, but the plots are all about how evil industrialists are and how they exploit the working class who are just as competent as their masters. That's kind of the theme. Yeah. They're no more wicked. Was Dickens American or was he British? He's English, yeah. English, yeah. Yeah. He's describing like industrialized England, which was pretty harsh, pretty brutal. Yeah, I feel like they give a little more leeway to foreigners in America, you know.
Yeah. He's talking about a different society and their problems has nothing to do with our problems that were exactly the same. Yeah. Just with the different accent or whatever, different town names. Definitely. So I am done, by the way. I've been done. Okay. Yeah. I'm done with the burning. I like this one too. I did as well. I thought it was very good. I don't know if I liked it better than the shade. The shade was unique. It's not something that I would normally smoke, probably.
The shade is not something I would normally smoke. I might now. Right. Yeah. The Maduro is good. It's a Maduro, standard Maduro. Yeah. Straightforward. Yeah. The shade is kind of got that zing to it. It does. It really does. It's like the least of my palette because I don't normally smoke shades. So there we go. Yes. But I would recommend them. Yeah. I think the shade is really good. The Maduro is good. There's probably better Maduros, but there's a lot worse Maduros too.
So... Right. The Maduro is like the dark coffee of the cigar world where they're easy to make, I guess. I don't know if it's easy to make, but it's very common. Yeah. It's definitely way better than the Bin Maduro we smoked. Way better than the Bin Maduro. I would say it's way better. It's way better than a dark shark. It's way better than a dark shark. That's what I was going to say. Is that if I had to buy a bundle of these or a bundle of dark sharks, man, I'd go with this every time.
Not that there's anything wrong with a dark shark. For sure. There's nothing wrong with a dark shark. No, there's nothing wrong with a dark shark, but this one is better. Right. This is better than an Odyssey for sure. I'm not sure if we smoked an Odyssey on the show yet or not. I'll have to look back into the catalog. I don't think yet. Okay. It's coming. Yeah. I think we've been talking about it for two seasons now. Yeah. Maybe we'll wait till season six, right? Yeah, exactly. It's there.
I think I'd rather smoke an Edge Fuma, but I really like those. So I'm biased. Yeah. It's in the zone though. It's in the zone. Oh, this is in the zone. What is the Edge Fuma price point versus this? I think they're about the same price. I think they're about the same price. I think the Edge Fuma's are like 45 for a 20 pack and I think these are 40, maybe 35. I can't remember. Yeah. I guess it depends on the sale too.
So I mean, I guess given the choice, I would do the Edge Fuma, but if the price was better on this, I would stock up with this. That's the point, right? Yes. If you want to stock up on a cheap stick that is good, you would do this one. And if the Edge Fuma was a similar price, then do the Edge Fuma, but I don't know. I'd have to smoke the Edge Fuma and this one back to back to really kind of tell. Yeah. They're pretty close. I can't tell a lie. They're both basically yard cigars.
They're not crazy expensive. It looks to be about 40 bucks for 25 of these. So yeah, they're a better deal than the Edge Fuma's for sure. Ooh, I just saw one and we don't have. Now I'm going to have to buy one. Here we go. I have a green wrapper. I got to try the green wrapper. Ooh, nice. Maybe we do have a green wrapper. I'll have to look and make an assessment. I can't remember. It's been too long. It's tough. It's tough. We've got so many cigars. Yeah, we do.
I have two humidor's full of cigars for the show. I have my biggest humidor dedicated to show cigars. Oh, sure. Sure, sure. My big humidor has got my non-show cigars. Yes. Which needed to get whittled down. We're rambling. We need to end. We're rambling. We're done with the cigars. It was a good cigar. The other one too was good. The shade. The shade was good. They were both very good, depending on what you want. So far I've enjoyed the factory smokes line. I know we're only two in.
We're only two in, but so far so good. Now I have expectations going into the next one. That is true. That's the blessing and the curse, right? Right, it is. It's a double edged sword. Indeed. Well, thanks for listening. Be sure to give us a follow, a like, share us with a friend, visit our Patreon or our website. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week. Be safe and have fun. I did it again. I did it again.