购屋风水指南(室内篇)

这本书五年前在我当时的新屋上帮了我许多忙。近期，因为一些特殊原因，又有需要风水的时候了。于是，这本书又派上用场了。

这回，这本书，我读得很快。第一，虽然是五年前阅读，但记忆犹新。里头的点点滴滴还是影响很深刻的。这回，感觉上，复习多个阅读。重点是，这回肯定还是帮的到我。

老实说，这本书很实用。对于购屋者，它提供了基本的一些风水贴士。这些基本功至少不会让购物者买错或是买到一些不符合大自然力量和缺乏磁场的产业。当然，如果把它当作圣经来看，那风水师就得喝西北风了。因此，这本书只能做参考。但，参考的价值确实非常高。

这本书还有个特点。五年前阅读和五年后阅读基本上效果还是行的。基本上，大自然的定律无论岁月怎么摧残，毕竟还是大自然的力量。人类怎么伟大，人类怎么自私贪婪，毕竟还是得向大自然低头。因此，这本书的存在是有它的意义的。当然，不是市面上每一本风水书都能写的那么好。这本书对于不想对抗大自然的我已经是足够了。10分满分，上一轮给予8分。基于五年后这本书还是有它的作用，这一回我决定给足10分。这本书真的挺棒的！

Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets

While arranging my old books, i found this book. Damn, I forgot that I bought this book and I never read it before, hahaha...

This book is interesting. First of all, Jim Rogers's books are always interesting due to his very indifferent life and exciting way of leading his life. Secondly, this book is interesting as the author pointed out a lot of future progress in the world. As I am reading it late (after few years, oh my god!), some predictions by Jim Rogers either becomes reality or becomes irrelevant at the moment. Thirdly, this book is interesting to me as the whole book is not bored at all. After all, every human beings dream to have life like Jim Rogers. Hence, since we cannot make it, why not envy him? Haha... Finally, we got a book that travels all around the world. There is a Chinese idiom that says: A book holds a house of gold (书中自有黄金屋). Well, this book certainly meets that.

I read every book by Jim Rogers. Surprisingly, this book rates as one of my favorites. Perhaps, I am in the age of getting old. As such, I am no more the guy who is searching high and low for investment holy grain. I appreciate more on Jim Rogers's life journey. From there, I found the wisdom I want and I hope it will help to shape my entire life.

The small flaw in this book perhaps lies with the facts that there are some repetitions from his past book. Hence, a new reader may find this book perfect. But, old timers who had follows Jim Rogers for the past few years might get bored with the repetitions.

This book offered a lot of wisdom and interesting insights. To me, this is a book of Jim Rogers's life journey. The title itself tells the whole story. It is not only about how to be street smarts in the market. It is also about how to be street smarts as human beings. I highly recommend this book despite the small flaw as mentioned above. For a full rating of 10, I am going to rate this book at 8.

Last but not least... we just could not ignore the street smarts quotes from the book. Here we are:

Do not worry about failure. Do not worry about making mistakes in life. It is good to lose money, to go broke at least once, and preferably twice. But if you are going to do it, do it early in your career.

You can diversify, and you will be safe, but you are not going to be rich. Stay with what you know, do not jump around.

There are plenty of ways to make money on Wall Street, and just as in any endeavor, whether it is a music, art, or finance, you have to find your own way. 

The fact is that these politicians and bureaucrats, including the secretary of the Treasury, know little about currencies. They speak out of both sides of their mouths, often at the same time, and will say whatever is most politically expedient at the moment.

Plato, in The Republic, says that the way societies evolve is by going from dictatorship to oligarchy to democracy to chaos and back to dictatorship. The Asian way seems to suggest that Plato knew whereof he spoke.

The Chinese are among the best capitalists in the world. California is more communist than China. Massachusetts is more socialist than China. People would rather do business in China than just about anywhere else in the world, including South Korea, including Europe and certainly including United States.

All the growth rate figures are unreliable. It is stupefying to me that India could claim to have a clue what is going on even in India, much less in China or in the United States. America is always revising its numbers, and most of them are made up. I have learned over the years not to pay attention to them. They are mainly exercises in public relations.

Think and Grow Rich: The 21st-Century Edition: Revised and Updated

I am going to do a short (a very short one) review on this book. The main reason is: this book no more motivates me like those days, haha... In fact, 20 years ago, I love this book so much. However, I did not reread this book after the first read. After all, there is a long list of reread books pending my precious time, haha.

This is the revised and updated version. So, I thought might as well give it a try. At the end, the so called revised and updated parts offered nothing except trying to praise every single content in the book. Examples given in the book are so "lame". Imagine people like Steve Jobs being quoted in the context. Irrelevant, right? I thought the published trying their best to re-brand the whole book. However, the assumptions given just make the whole book worse.

Relatively, I still preferred the original version. At the same time, I decided not to reread this book again in the future. This book shaped my life twenty years ago. However... as the practices in this book become my habit, it totally lost its attractiveness. This book serves as a motivational stuff for youngsters and those who are new into the entrepreneurship. But, for oldies like me, I do not find it inspiring anymore. As such, for a full rating of 10, I am going to rate this book at 1.