I know, I know. Conventional wisdom is that you should finish reading a book before you write a review of it. But since what follows should not be taken as a “book review” per se, I’m going to write it anyways.
Have just started reading Douglas Crockford’s new-ish book, Javascript: The Good Parts. In it, he states his intention to cover a functional sub-set of the Javascript language which he calls “the good parts.” The thesis is that you can program in Javascript using only The Good Parts, and that you’ll have a better time if you do.
So far, I’m really liking this book. So, for whatever that’s worth… yeah. No, the NYT will not be hiring me to do book reviews any time soon.
In a nutshell, the book mainly advocates aggressive time management to delegate as much of your responsibility as you can elsewhere, entrepreneurship to free yourself from the 9-to-5, and taking small “mini-retirements” throughout your life rather than working like a animal for forty years until you hopefully have enough to retire at sixty. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but that’s the meat-and-potatoes of the content. Ferriss refers to it as “Lifestyle design,” and I’ll be the first to admit, it’s a very appealing concept.