Friday Challenge Three – Book Time

This Friday how about an educational challenge that might take you a little longer than a week to do!

The challenge this week is Book Time – and the specifics are that I offer the challenge of picking one of the books listed on my new Recommended Reading page of this blog and reading it! (The link is at the top of the page.)

You could either pick one deliberately through the catagory section or trust to luck, chance or maybe even fate by asking a friend to pick a random number between one and ninety three!

Once you have that number simply see which book is listed against that number in the Complete List section, obtain a copy and read it!

Well after all the nights have gotten darker and colder so how better to spend your time than developing your life with a good book!

Happy reading!

Until next time;

Stephen

Stephen Hart

Picture from Melissa Banks who’s other work can be found at http://tehlissness.deviantart.com/gallery/ with thanks

Only Books

Only Books

The story I am about to relate happened about seven years ago and is as clear today as when it happened. It was a bright summer’s day and I was strolling down a high street doing a little window shopping with my fiancée when we saw a woman walking towards us with a young boy, about six year of age, in tow. Because the pavement was narrow at this point, my fiancée and I stepped back and waited for them to pass us. As they passed the boy made a move to go into the shop in whose window we had been looking. The woman, his mother I guess, pulled him back by the arm saying, “You don’t want to go in there. It’s only books.”

And that is the phrase that has echoed in my head these seven years hence. “It’s only books”…now she was right as it was a bookshop the boy had tried to enter so it was indeed only full of books. Books on business, on sales, on poetry, on love, on war, on indeed every topic that has delighted or plagued mankind since the dawn of time. The findings of the greatest thinkers, poets and dreamers recorded for the benefit of all of us so that we might succeed where others have failed, triumph were others have been defeated and maybe laugh when others have cried.

So once the woman and boy had gone up the street my fiancée and I went into the bookstore and what did we come out with? Only books – or an armful of adventure, entertainment, and learning. And that was fine with us.

And seven years after that story took place let me ask you a question; when was the last time you read a book that could help you with your career, your personal life or your financial freedom? When did you last read a book to make you think, to challenge your beliefs or to stretch your mind? When was the last time you took a lesson on business, or sales or life directly from one of the experts in those fields?

Or are they ‘only books’ to you too?

Until next time;

Stephen

Stephen Hart