Jeremy B. Blevins: Bookmonger

You may have noticed that I've added a new feature to my blog: the Book Shoppe. The goal of this endeavor is simple: for every book you buy through my site, I'll be a few cents closer to buying the next book I want to read. I figure it will take me years to ever generate enough revenue to actually buy a book, but every penny counts.

So when I reference a book that I have pulled useful information from, I'll link to it from my store. If you want to read more, please buy it from the link I provide. The books listed in my store are either books I own or want, so they will all be relevant to the content of this blog. I won't add books for the just sake of having a great selection; think of it as a dusty little village bookstore that doesn't have everything you want, but it just may have what you didn't even realize existed.

Given this, I may also from time to time attempt to write a cogent book review. I was struck recently by a statement attributed by Niccolò Machiavelli to have been uttered by Castruccio Castracani:

To a person who was boasting that he had read many things, Castruccio said: “He knows better than to boast of remembering many things.” 

I had to stop for a second when I read that, because I like to read important texts, but how much of it do I actually retain? I realize that modern society disregards rote learning, but of what value is reading something and then not being able to make application of it? My goal is that I learn from the texts I read, and possibly share a golden nugget of information that maybe you hadn't considered.

If you are an Amazon customer, you'll notice that your wish list is also displayed. This information is not stored on my site, but is loaded via the Amazon plugin. I cannot see your wish lists. This way, if you see something that I mention that you want to purchase, you can also add other books from your wish list to the order, in case you want to hit the free shipping threshold or what-not.