Book reviews from shoes, to satire, to success

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

• the story of how Phil Knight started Nike with minimal resources when he was fresh out of school in his early 20’s and built it into the most well-recognized sports brand in the world
• interesting story of the typical challenges that most start-up businesses encounter and how they prevailed for decades
• the book provides a good background on the evolution of the name, the growth challenges over several decades, the various key players in the company, and a number of sporting celebrity relationships
• I felt the book dwelled on the financing and production challenges more than it needed to as I would have liked to have heard more of the stories around the interactions with members of the sporting community and various sporting events

 

Me talk pretty one day by David Sedaris

• this book is about David’s life and is broken up into two parts: growing up on the East Coast of the U.S. and then his life living in France with his partner Hugh
• I struggled with the book initially as I was not particularly enjoying the circumstances of his upbringing but I kept reading as the friend who had loaned it to me had raved about it, as do many of the reviews
• once I settled into the book, I quite enjoyed the second half and his satirical take on life which mirrors a lot of my observations on people encounters

 

The GO-GIVER by Bob Burg and John David Mann

• the story of an ambitious young man who yearns for success and seeks the advice of a legendary consultant who introduces him to a series of ‘go-givers’ and a connector who teaches him the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success
• it is a short, easy, and fun read with very practical advice that I think would benefit any person, business or otherwise
• I enjoyed this book and felt that it was similar to a lot of the methods that I had unknowingly followed for my business career
• the last message on receiving, that my brother Jim taught me years ago, is so true and one I will pass along to a lovely young lady named Morgan