A Life Less Ordinary

This post is not something I was originally going to create, but was pushed to do so at the request of a one Melanie Moore. She writes her own blog at “Altitude Sickness,” but that crap is  mostly a rudimentary look at the ancient Nepalese and Tibetan cultures that will be her home for the next few months. J.K. Rowling wrote better stuff on toilet paper. That said, I’m sitting her writing this blog while I should be packing. I’ve gone through a ton of my clothes and I won’t lie it’s sort of fun having virtually all of your worldly possessions sitting on the floor of one’s living room. It gives you perspective. I’ve even made a pile of clothes to be given to my (future) step-sister (This title is easier than “my mom’s boyfriend’s daugher”) Erin who will be delivering them to needy children in Guatemala this month. Awesome.

Mostly though this blog is to simply appreciate my new Amazon Kindle. It is actually a pretty cool device, letting one keep thousands of books on a piece of metal no thicker or bigger then Readers Digest. I’ve downloaded a bunch of samples from Amazon to help me fill out my Kindle a little before going abroad. The one bummer is that I can’t download onto it while abroad, so I’ve got to fill it up now. At $10/book it’s sort of a financial pain, but I’d read these books at full price at some point, so what the hell.

So far, I’ve got

• Are you there Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea by Chelsea Handler, which I heard was hilarious.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, a murder mystery told from the point of view of an autistic 15 year old boy. Supposedly ground breaking.
• Both Free and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, studies of new online and free marketplaces
• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow who wrote a great biography of JP Morgan, so this should be good
• Roma a fictional timeline of the entire history of Rome, by Steven Saylor
• A Bull In China by Jim Rogers, an investment banker which I thought was appropriate given the next few months
• Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk who wrote a great book called Snow, but this is more a story of a city through a network of people
• And three non-fiction geopolitical/globalization/money books; One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch, The Second World by Parag Khanna, and The Emerging Markets Century by Antone van Agtmael

There will be more. I’ll let you know how they go. FYI: I actually think Melanie’s blog is hilarious.