Books Read in August 2019

August was a busy reading month for me. I was able to read 10 books. One of the 10 I read twice, so technically I read a total of 11 books. I signed up for Deseret Book’s Bookshelf Plus program and read a few Latter-day Saint themed books, which I won’t be ranking (they are all good) but will list them below.

Here is the list of the books I read. Ranked in order of how much I liked them:

1. Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton and John Huey. I liked this book so much I decided to read it again immediately after I finished it for the first time.

2. Driven: An Autobiography by Larry H. Miller and Doug Robinson. I wrote a review about this one which you can read here. This is the second time I’ve read this book and it will always be one of my favorites.

3. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall. I wrote a review of this book too. This was the first “running” book I ever read. I was reading running themed books for months after reading Born to Run for the first time.

4. Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon’s Legendary Coach and Nike’s Cofounder by Kenny Moore. This was a great book and I mention a paragraph or two about it in my review of Born to Run. Bowerman was an interesting man who led a very full life. Check this book out to read all he did.

5. Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. This will be a book I read again. The book details many algorithms which computers use to handle complex tasks and how humans could learn from the way they are implemented.

6. Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch and John A. Byrne. This is the second time I’ve read this book. It didn’t have the same magic as the first read-through. Jack Welch was an amazing leader and I love the details the book shares about General Electric.

7. Star Wars: Specter of the Past: The Hand of Thrawn, Book 1 by Timothy Zahn. I spent this summer reading through the Star Wars “Thrawn” books by Timothy Zahn. I’ve enjoyed them. However, this is the seventh book I’ve read in the series and I was feeling a little burnt out. I still enjoyed the book. It’s hard to call it a true “Thrawn” book because Thrawn had died the book before, and the Hand of Thrawn series is about an imposter Thrawn.

I also read the following Latter-day Saint themed books:

Write to me: sam@samuelpedro.com

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