Weekend Reading #8

It's Friday so you know that means it's time for some Weekend Reading (and in this case Listening and Watching) goodness. Every week I like to share a couple of my favorite pieces of media from the last few days. Let's get to it!

How to Take Control of Your Indie Work Career - Sam Spurlin on en*theos

I hope you can forgive the self-promotion inherent in my first link. en*theos is a company that is all about optimal living. They asked me to write an article and record a class for them awhile ago and it's now live! In it I share my top 10 ideas around improving work when you work for yourself. I then riff on these ideas via video for a little over thirty minutes. I start a little nervous but I think I hit my stride a few minutes in. Anyway, you can get a 10-day free trial to check out the enirety of the site and after that it's $9.95 per month. It's kind of like Netflix for personal development. Pretty neat, right?

The History of Rome - A podcast by Mike Duncan

This is an old podcast I was just introduced to thanks to a starter pack in the new podcast app, Overcast. Mike does an awesome job breaking up the history into bite-sized chunks that are easy to take in during little breaks throughout my day. I've always been a huge history fan but I never really learned as much about ancient Rome as I should have. This podcast is helping fix that. And considering there are well over 100 episodes I think I'll be occupied for awhile.

Oyster - "Netflix for books"

I recently did a one month free trial of Oyster (thanks for the nudge Robyn!) and decided to actually pay for the service once the trial ended. A true rarity for me when it comes to entertainment outlets. Anyway, I've been pretty impressed by the available library and very impressed by the iPad app. I'm currently reading Michel de Montaigne's "Essays" as well as the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (I'm in some kind of weird essay mood, I guess). Anyway, I highly recommend the service as well as both of those books.

A Band Called Death

This is an excellent documentary about an all-black punk band from Detroit in the early 70's. It's a story about a band well ahead of its time, falling into obscurity, and then suddenly rocketing to critical acclaim nearly 40 years after recording a single album. Perhaps I'm biased because of my Michigan/Detroit connection, but I thought it was definitely worth my time. It's available in lots of different places online (I caught it on Netflix).

What have you been up to this week? Read/watch/listen to anything good?

Photo by Melanie