scott stonehouse

Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy (Non-Fiction)
Well… I remember liking this book, but I didn’t take any notes and don’t remember many of the details. That doesn’t allow me to provide a helpful book review. But I don’t think these are really reviews. More a list of what I read and a quick comment.

Water from a Deep Well by Gerald Sittser (Non-Fiction)
This is a look at different streams of Christianity over time. It is humbling, encouraging, and challenging to me to see how different Christians have worshipped God throughout history. Plenty of lessons to learn, because all of these various streams involved imperfect humans, but also plenty to emulate. I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club) by Rich Osman (Fiction)
This is the second book in the Thursday Murder Club series, a series about a group of older people in a retirement community/nursing home who solve cold-case murders. I really enjoy the characters and the writing. I am looking forward to reading the next one. The first two books were two of my favorites last year.

The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel (Non-Fiction)
This is a follow-up to Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money which is one of my favorite books on money, period. If The Psychology of Money was, generally, about saving money, this one, as the title states, is about spending money. Humans are weird beings. We think we are being very rational when it comes to money, that it is a math equation. Money isn’t a math equation and we rarely act rationally when it comes to money. This book isn’t prescriptive (do this, don’t do this). Rather, it is a book that provides a lot of good things to consider and then decide on your own.

A few ideas from the book I will highlight briefly.

• “All behavior makes sense with enough information.” This is the first chapter and is a really good reminder to be humble. We often think other people are being foolish with their money. Maybe they are, but if we have more information – all the information they have which we don’t, it might make more sense to us and not seem as foolish.
• “The most valuable financial asset is not needing to impress anyone.” True.
• “The rich and the wealthy.” He makes the distinction that the rich are people who have a lot of money, but no freedom. The money owns them. The wealthy are people who have money and freedom. They own the money.

I recommend it.

Winning the War in Your Mind by Craig Groeschel (Non-Fiction)
I like Craig Groeschel’s writing a lot. He is clear, organized, and always helpful. One of the things I took from this book was a handy use of language. He was talking about how we can believe lies and fixate on unhelpful thoughts. This can lead to creating negative ruts in our minds. To combat them, rather than saying we need to create positive ruts, he called them “Trenches of Truth”. I like that! Recommend!