The Art of Manliness - What a Man With 60,000 Books Can Teach You About Lifelong Learning and Building Your Home Library

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now, Gary Hoover

00:00:11.460 loves books. Among the nine companies he founded was the bookstore chain Bookstop,

00:00:15.720 which was acquired by Barnes & Noble. He has a personal collection of, get this,

00:00:19.120 60,000 books, which he had to purchase in an abandoned strip mall medical center to house.

00:00:23.960 And he's the author of his own book, which is about books, called The Lifetime Learner's Guide

00:00:27.640 to Reading and Learning. Today on the show, Gary shares how his fascination with books was born

00:00:31.280 in his youth, why the collection he amassed over the decades is almost entirely nonfiction,

00:00:35.300 why he prefers physical books over eBooks, and why getting your hands on old books can be

00:00:39.060 particularly beneficial in enhancing your knowledge of the world. From there, we turn to Gary's method

00:00:42.960 for digesting a book, which allows him to glean its most valuable nuggets in just 30 minutes

00:00:46.980 without having to read it cover to cover. We also talk about whether Gary takes notes on the books

00:00:50.980 he reads and how to incorporate more serendipity into the way you do your own reading and build

00:00:54.840 your home library. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash hoover.

00:01:10.320 All right, Gary Hoover, welcome to the show.

00:01:12.880 Hey, it's great to be here, Brett. Thanks for having me.

00:01:15.320 So you got a book called The Lifetime Learner's Guide to Reading and Learning,

00:01:19.580 and you're an expert at this because you have been reading your entire life. In fact,

00:01:24.300 you live in a house. You've got a 33-room building. 32 of them contain your personal

00:01:30.440 library of 60,000 books. So we got to start there. I thought my book collection was out

00:01:36.640 of control. How did you end up with a collection of 60,000 books?

00:01:41.400 Boy, you know, I think it really started when I was a little kid, and I remember I bought,

00:01:47.140 there were books called The Golden Guides, The Guides to the Birds and Guides to the Mammals and

00:01:52.020 Rocks and Minerals and little paperback books. I've still got them. And I thought it was so great

00:01:57.100 that I could look out and see something or observe anything in life and then go look it up and find

00:02:02.780 out what it was and where it came from. And over time, I know at one point as a kid, I said, well,

00:02:08.260 I'd like to compile a list of everything, everything that exists. And I remember this sounds really weird.

00:02:14.080 I went to a boat dealer and they had brochures about the different kinds of boats they carried.

00:02:19.660 And I was a little kid on a bicycle that lived in the neighborhood. And I started picking up all 1.00

00:02:24.380 their brochures. And they said, oh, kid, you can't have those. You know, they only had so many

00:02:29.160 brochures or whatever. They were jealous of them. And I said, well, I just want to learn about whatever

00:02:34.500 the name of the boat companies were. And they said, well, I'll get an encyclopedia. And I said to

00:02:38.920 myself, well, stupid guy, you know, the boat companies aren't in encyclopedias. And I lived 1.00

00:02:43.740 in this GM factory town, Anderson, Indiana, had like 27,000 General Motors workers in a town of 60,000

00:02:50.220 people. And, you know, when I went to look up General Motors, it wasn't in the encyclopedia either.

00:02:56.480 And so I'm like, well, there's all this stuff. And where do I find out about it? And I got especially

00:03:01.640 interested in companies because I want to know about General Motors. You know, how did it work? Not

00:03:05.780 if I asked my teachers, they said, oh, it makes, they make Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile,

00:03:11.040 Cadillac. And I said, no, no, I know that. But, you know, who started it and where did it come from?

00:03:16.300 Who runs it today? Is it a good company or bad company? And, and I found out in the library,

00:03:21.840 there were great big books called Moody's Manuals that told about every company in America,

00:03:26.260 every company you could buy stock in, every public company. And I started going through those. I still

00:03:31.300 have my notes. I would bicycle down the library. I conned the librarian out of giving me his

00:03:35.660 old set, new set comes out every year. And he gave me the old one, great big heavy books. Now they

00:03:41.660 sell for thousands of dollars, the, uh, the new ones. And I just, you know, the idea books to me

00:03:48.420 opened the whole world. I could study Brazil. I could study lizards. I could study General Motors.

00:03:54.060 Everything was there somewhere in a book. And I started collecting them and, and my real, uh,

00:04:00.600 my first love, well, one of them trains and geography, I guess, are my first loves.

00:04:04.600 And so I started reading chains magazines because magazines have also always been very important to

00:04:10.640 me and learning in a lot of ways beyond books. But I got into geography. My dad was a traveling

00:04:16.640 salesman and then a sales manager. And he used to love to drive all over the country with the family.

00:04:21.320 And I got to be the guy with the road Atlas, the Rand McNally road Atlas, which was one of the best

00:04:26.820 selling books in America for decades and learned how to use maps, which are really works of art.

00:04:32.160 And, and so actually Atlas is, I think the first book I bought with my own allowance.

00:04:36.700 Well, one was on trains and the other was a world Atlas for like 50 cents in the late fifties when I

00:04:42.660 was, I don't know, seven or eight years old. And now I have pretty much every Atlas you can buy. I,

00:04:49.840 I have frequent shopper cards from bookstores in Tel Aviv, Moscow, Chiang Mai, Singapore, where I've only

00:04:57.620 been in once, but I walked in and I spent like a thousand dollars. I cleaned out all their Atlas

00:05:03.040 and map sections and business sections and birds. And so, and, and I estimate, I think when you read

00:05:10.580 my book, I think when I reread it, I had three, two or three different numbers in there, but I would

00:05:15.120 guess over 70% of what's in my massive library is not available online. And that shocks people,

00:05:21.380 especially younger people. When I tell them that they think anything about geography or about travel 0.92

00:05:26.440 or about birds or about companies you can look up online. And yet, you know, a lot of the great

00:05:32.160 stuff, the classics, they're still under copyright there. They haven't been digitized, even if they're

00:05:37.400 off the copyright, there's so much in books. That's it's the only source. So not to me, books are a form

00:05:44.760 of magic. So I've never regretted buying a book, you know, and I bought some that I really disliked or

00:05:49.960 disagreed with, but still I helped the publishing industry and I helped the author and, um, you know,

00:05:56.320 so, um, my life has just been, I've been a bookseller, a book publisher, a book author,

00:06:01.380 but above all else, a book collector. Uh, okay. So, uh, basically you just from a young age,

00:06:07.660 you've had this fascination with, with books, started with atlases, magazines, as you, as you

00:06:14.820 got into adulthood and, you know, teenage, young adult years, was there a particular type of book

00:06:21.700 you were looking for to add to your collection or was it just any book that sparked your interest

00:06:25.900 fiction, nonfiction biography, you were going to buy it? Uh, no, I'm interested in understanding

00:06:31.960 the way the world works. I always said that if I hadn't become a retailer, which is really my

00:06:37.140 profession, most of my life in the field I love the most, I would have been a social scientist, but

00:06:42.100 psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, understanding how society works,

00:06:49.120 how you can make life better for people. And I was blessed to go to the university of Chicago,

00:06:53.960 which has real strong social sciences area for my economics teachers later, won Nobel prizes.

00:07:00.020 And to me, retelling is really just applied social sciences. So you're applying geography,

00:07:04.980 you're applying economics, psychology, sociology, all that jazz. So, and, and really trying to

00:07:11.000 understand how the world works led me a couple of things. One is to study the classics, the basics.

00:07:17.360 Like if you're going to study business, you've really got to start with Peter Drucker,

00:07:21.000 the great business thinker. There's all this stuff, all these new books published, but most of them

00:07:26.380 are the fad of the month or of the year. They're totally forgotten in six months or two or three years,

00:07:33.100 whereas the basic lessons are timeless. So, and I, and I'm interested in facts. I'm interested in

00:07:38.960 data. I prefer books that have charts and tables in them. I love big government reference books.

00:07:44.780 And I, I can't tell you how many books I have, but all they are, are books full of numbers and data.

00:07:50.460 And I prefer that to reading somebody's opinion. I'll read people's opinion later, but you know,

00:07:56.360 I read so much of the current books and it's, they're really trying to use emotion to tug on your purse,

00:08:02.420 your strings, heartstrings, I say purse strings, but sometimes purse strings. Yeah, no, no,

00:08:07.780 that's true too. But you know, sometimes I remember one book and the tables, the maps and stuff in the

00:08:17.320 book said the opposite of what the author said of the whole premise of the book. And they couldn't

00:08:22.660 even read their own data. Right. So I want to draw my own conclusions. I want to be a skeptic,

00:08:27.780 a skeptic, not a cynic, where a skeptic is from Missouri, you know, show me, let me double check

00:08:33.200 the facts. I don't really believe what you're saying until I double check for myself. A cynic

00:08:37.460 is somebody who distrust your motives and thinks you're up to evil and all that. So I'm never

00:08:42.260 cynical, but I'm always skeptical. So my library is nonfiction. My library is full of books, full of

00:08:49.420 facts and data, encyclopedias and dictionaries on every subject you can imagine. It's really,

00:08:55.580 I always say, I pretty much cover every subject except cooking and sports. I don't cook,

00:09:01.100 but I do have a lot of books about food, the history of foods and vegetables and fruits.

00:09:05.500 And I have, I coming from Indiana, I love auto racing and I love basketball. So I have sections

00:09:10.700 on them. I kind of got into a world cup, but I'm, my baseball friends would say, oh, you have a

00:09:16.240 terrible library at the same time with 60,000 books. Somebody will say to me, well, you have a much on

00:09:22.220 this subject. I say, no, no, not much, only 12 books. So sometimes what to me is insignificant or was

00:09:29.460 just a brief interest for a few weeks. Although I usually keep every interest. I, I gain new

00:09:35.460 interest every year and then I keep everything, but you know what to some people would be a big

00:09:40.480 library to me. I tend to, when I'm interested in the subject, like the nine books that came today,

00:09:45.960 well, four of them are on the same subject. Well, I said, well, I really want to get my head around

00:09:49.780 that. And I want to compare what different authors are saying, but I especially want books with data,

00:09:55.060 facts, and information. So my attention span is just too short for a big fat novel. I've always

00:10:02.300 said, Hey, if I ever really got into literature, it would cost me a fortune because I'd have to buy

00:10:06.240 another 40,000 books or whatever is 60,000 books, you know, but I do enjoy short stories and I enjoy

00:10:12.360 movies, but I mean, real life, nonfiction, nothing could be more amazing. You read the biographies of

00:10:19.060 these great people, these great business people that I study and write up on the websites and stuff.

00:10:25.060 And, you know, no, no fictional story is more dramatic or heart wrenching or whatever.

00:10:30.760 So no, my library is really, and selective as when I had the bookstore chain that I started,

00:10:36.460 my friends and I did, I got free books from the publishers and I would turn them away or I would

00:10:41.600 put them out on the front desk to say, anybody wants these, take these because they would give me

00:10:45.800 books that I didn't really want in my library. On the other hand, I have other places in my library

00:10:51.020 where there's a gap on the shelf. I keep a list of important books that haven't been written yet

00:10:56.000 where I say, nobody has written X. For example, there hasn't been a good history of the general

00:11:01.380 electric company written since like the 1940s. And that's crazy, you know, as important as that

00:11:07.080 company is and all the changes they've been through. And so I've got a gap waiting for somebody

00:11:12.040 to write that book. In a sense, mine is, is a very selective approach, even though it's come to

00:11:17.720 60,000 books now. I'm going to talk, I want to, I'd like to talk about how you select books and also

00:11:22.680 how you organize your books. You said you have spots available, but before we do, I think the

00:11:26.120 question some people might be thinking right now is like, why physical books? Like why use 32 rooms

00:11:31.240 when you could just get a lot of these on a Kindle? Yes. Yes. I books, the, the portability,

00:11:41.640 the ability to read them on a beach or on an airplane or in bed and everything. I use a tablet.

00:11:47.680 I love my tablet, but it just doesn't hold the same way. But for me, the, and the durability,

00:11:53.840 these books now they're made on acid-free paper. So they're going to be around for hundreds and

00:11:57.640 hundreds of years. I've already got, you know, some books that are 200 plus years old.

00:12:02.420 But the main thing is that the way I, what I call digest a book, that was the best word I could come

00:12:08.060 up with. I don't read a book sequentially. I don't open it up and start at the front and read it to the

00:12:13.660 back end. I have my own system because I really believe in efficient learning. I want to learn as

00:12:18.740 much as I can and understand as much as I can as efficiently as the best use of my time.

00:12:25.140 And so my method is, is set to do that. And I, when I get a new book, I'll spend 15 to 30 minutes

00:12:31.920 with it to really understand it and get the key ideas. And I can go into details on that. And

00:12:36.620 that's all covered in, in, uh, in my book, the lifetime learner's guide, but Kindle and all that,

00:12:43.460 they're wonderful. And I totally understand the appeal, the lightweight and have a thousand books on

00:12:47.660 the gadget and all that, but you can't really do my non-sequential reading method and you can't do it

00:12:54.600 fast with an ebook. Some of my books will have 30 to 40 bookmarks in them, places I've noted

00:13:01.300 important pages. Most of them have three or four or five. I use little origami paper, a little like

00:13:07.280 two inch by two inch squares. So it doesn't bend the book and it's easy to find. And I, in my method,

00:13:14.400 I make heavy use of the index. So I'm looking up things that I know something about, because that's

00:13:20.280 what allows me to remember pretty much everything I read or all the important ideas because I like,

00:13:25.980 okay. So I know a lot about the history of general motors, having grown up in a general motorist

00:13:29.580 town. I know less about Ford. They were the evil enemy when I was a kid. And so when I buy a book,

00:13:35.920 a biography of Henry Ford or a book about the Ford motor company, which is an amazing company,

00:13:41.040 I go to the index and I look up general motors. I look up Alfred Sloan. He was the man who really

00:13:46.220 ran general motors and built it into the great company that it was, but before it went into

00:13:50.800 decline in the last 30 years. And then I read and I find, oh, they knew each other or they hated each

00:13:56.280 other or they liked each other or they never met, you know, or they competed, you know, when Ford

00:14:01.140 brought out the V eight in the thirties or whatever, and how did GM react? So I'm always using that index

00:14:06.420 and I can be in a position where I'll have literally have like six or seven of my fingers in pages in

00:14:14.040 between them and I'll be flying back and forth between the way this table says this and this

00:14:19.600 paragraph says that, or, you know, this section says this and this says that. And you just can't

00:14:25.140 do that with an ebook and I can move very quickly. Yeah. You know, a kind of a parallel thing is the

00:14:30.840 use of paper maps. I did a blog post once about why we need paper maps when I'm doing a Google map

00:14:37.380 or a map on my tablet or on a smartphone or anything. It can tell you how to get from here to

00:14:43.640 there, but it can't tell you what detours you might make. It can't tell you about that jazz

00:14:49.360 festival. You've always wanted to see that's only 10 miles off the road or that cool museum or,

00:14:54.540 you know, and the thing is, if you take an old fashioned big paper map or a road atlas,

00:15:00.180 you can zoom in and out at incredibly high speed. If I take a big folding old gas station map of Texas,

00:15:08.060 I can zoom in and look at everything right around the little town, Flatonia, where I live.

00:15:12.880 And then I can just by moving that map and moving my eyes, I can get the whole scope. I can understand

00:15:18.600 how it fits into its context because I'm always looking for context. You know, whatever subject

00:15:24.680 I'm looking at, what is around it, what happened before it, what happened after it, what competed

00:15:31.380 with it. And so the kind of things I do, you just, you can't do with an ebook. It would take

00:15:38.580 much more time and much harder to fly back and forth because I'm not, I'm not reading

00:15:45.040 from the front to the back. I just don't have a time or patience for that. I want to understand the

00:15:50.160 book, get my head around it. And I spent a huge amount of time on the table of contents. I'll stop

00:15:55.280 10, 15 of that 15 minutes. Half that time might be on the table of contents. If it's well constructed,

00:16:00.520 it's basically an outline of the book. And I can look at those chapter headings and say,

00:16:05.280 wait a minute, why on earth is that in this book? You know, I don't understand that. And I'll go read

00:16:10.960 the first and last paragraph of that chapter, whatever. Understand, well, why is it here?

00:16:15.480 Or I'll say, ah, that chapter is exact. I was trying to figure out why the oil industry moved

00:16:20.600 from Pennsylvania to Texas. You know, what was Spindletop? Ah, there's a chapter about the history

00:16:26.160 of Spindletop, which was the first big strike in Texas and got the, all the big oil guys to start

00:16:31.540 looking down here instead of just in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And yeah, so those are some of the things

00:16:36.720 I do. Yeah. And another, that's the reason I like physical books too. It's a lot easier to manipulate

00:16:42.000 and you go back and forth really quickly. Like on the Kindle, it's designed to read sequentially,

00:16:46.160 which is really frustrating. The other benefit to physical books and keeping a library of physical

00:16:50.980 books, I've noticed with my, I've got hundreds and hundreds of books on my Kindle, but once I read

00:16:56.160 a book on Kindle, like I forget about it. When I have a physical book, for some reason, I pass by it

00:17:01.900 and it allowed, having that library allows me to like, well, I want, I'm looking for this topic. I know

00:17:08.120 I have a book and I, something about the physicality of it, I can locate things or it allows for

00:17:13.560 serendipitous, like, well, I'm going to, oh, I'm looking for this book, but I, ah, here's this book

00:17:17.660 that's sort of connected to that idea. Maybe I'll dig into that. I can open that, flip through the book

00:17:22.060 really fast. You can't do that with a Kindle. No, absolutely. And, and, and also there have

00:17:27.760 been some studies that indicate you learn differently when you read electronically. And,

00:17:34.020 and the other thing too, is I, I do spend a huge share of my life in front of a screen. I'm in front

00:17:39.840 of a screen right now, you know, and I, I write and I, and I do read, I read a lot of PDFs. I'm

00:17:45.800 probably on Wikipedia 30, 40 times a day. I'm Googling all over. So at, at some point, you know,

00:17:52.520 your eyes get tired and, you know, you get old like me. And so I think there's a limit to how

00:17:57.640 much time you should spend. And especially when I say, especially young people doing it in dark

00:18:02.040 rooms and stuff and the contrast between the bright screen and the darkness around you. I don't,

00:18:08.340 I don't think to do that long-term. I mean, I guess these movie critics that sit there and watch 15

00:18:13.640 movies in a row, they figured out how to adapt to it, but no, no books are just, and, and I don't

00:18:19.980 know if you've looked at the numbers, but you know, print books are growing faster than eBooks and have

00:18:24.820 been for several years. Bookstores, which have really been through the ringer with Amazon and

00:18:29.060 everything, they've bounced back. The best independent bookstores in the country now are

00:18:32.620 doing pretty well. The ones that are allowed to open people, people understand and, and get the

00:18:38.860 idea of books. And I see more and more websites about books, the best books to read fiction and

00:18:43.500 nonfiction. So I think the trends are going the right direction and, and books are going to be

00:18:48.360 around forever. Cause I think about, Oh, what are all these books going to be worth when I die?

00:18:52.740 You know, and are they going to be worthless and they just take them and put them in a dumpster

00:18:56.600 or are they going to be worth a fortune? Uh, I hope the latter, cause the money will go to my

00:19:01.620 favorite charities. So how do you organize your books? Do you like Dewey Decimal System or do you have

00:19:05.620 your unique Gary Hoover? In my head, in my head, um, each of my rooms here, this, I found just

00:19:13.500 a bargain on a, a community health clinic with like 30 some little exam rooms that had gone broke

00:19:20.180 and was sitting here vacant for a couple of years in this little historic railroad town,

00:19:24.260 Flatonia, Texas. And, uh, and I said, wow, that's the place for me to, to move to. So each room is a

00:19:31.260 different subject. There are a couple of subjects that take up two rooms and the rooms are of different

00:19:35.360 sizes. Took me about three months to plan out all 200 bookcases, all 60,000 books. What went where,

00:19:41.960 how many did I have of each subject and, uh, fit them in small rooms and big rooms. I've been told

00:19:48.680 I'm on an advisory council of the graduate school of information at the university of Texas at Austin.

00:19:54.320 And that used to be the library school. We still train librarians, but we, uh, the school also does

00:19:59.340 a user experience and how to use the web and all that. But they told me that when a big library gets

00:20:06.580 a gift of some big private library, one like mine, that they often find that the owner has had their

00:20:13.220 own system. And they usually learn from that. They see a different way of connecting things. And,

00:20:18.660 and I learned, I haven't developed with my friends, a bookstore chain. I learned, man, there are a lot

00:20:23.580 of books. I never realized, but a lot of books can go into two subjects. You have books that are like

00:20:28.580 about philosophy and physics. So it's go in philosophy or is it going physics? Bookstores

00:20:33.640 have a biography section, but if you have a biography of George Gershwin or Igor Stravinsky,

00:20:39.520 does that go in the music section? Does that go in a biography section? And it's very difficult to

00:20:44.100 put a book in two different sections and keep track of that. That really challenges, uh, technology

00:20:49.880 to make that all work. And, you know, if you sell out in one area and forget to refill it,

00:20:55.260 so you pretty much have to put them in one place or the other. So no, I, I essentially have my own

00:21:01.800 system, but, but I think when, when, when I move on to the big library in the sky, my house will become

00:21:08.500 a used bookstore. And I think most good book collectors will find it great because, uh, oh,

00:21:14.940 that's the railroad room. Oh, those are the two architecture rooms. Oh, that's the nature room.

00:21:18.980 That's the bird book cabinet, cabinet or bookcase, you know, the tree book section. So for most people,

00:21:25.880 I think it'll work and be pretty straightforward. We're going to take a quick break for your words

00:21:30.280 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay. So let's walk through your process on how

00:21:36.640 you digest a nonfiction book. You say you can do it in 15 to 30 minutes and this is, you're not,

00:21:42.000 you're not reading the entire book. You're, you're doing sort of a, you're manipulating the book.

00:21:45.620 So you figure out, I mean, this is how, this is how you screen books, whether you should hold onto

00:21:48.780 it and dig deeper into it. Correct. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And you know, most of the books that I buy,

00:21:54.220 I have checked them out enough on Amazon or read reviews online or whatever. So I already know I'm

00:22:00.400 interested in the book and, and want to learn from it. I think the first step is, and I've talked to a

00:22:06.940 lot of people about these subjects and I think some people have trouble with this, but the first thing

00:22:11.320 is to realize the book is mine. Okay. The minute I paid for it or borrowed it from a library, I

00:22:17.460 believe in libraries and been very supportive of libraries. The minute I get it, it's mine and I can

00:22:23.360 read it if I want. I can not read it. I can read it backwards if I want, you know, I can just stare at

00:22:30.580 one map in the middle of it for an hour and ignore the rest. It's my book and I can do what I want with

00:22:37.320 it. And it, and it's, and it's got to interact with my mind, you know, in the way my mind works.

00:22:43.860 So, you know, first of all, I want to look at what's the basic thesis of this book, who is the

00:22:51.120 author and where are they coming from? What are their credentials? And I'm not obsessed just with,

00:22:56.760 okay, they've got a PhD from Harvard. They got four PhDs from Harvard and Yale and whatever.

00:23:01.560 And therefore they're smart. No, but I, but that is worth knowing and say, well, at least they spent a

00:23:07.520 lot of time going to school and those are supposed to be pretty good schools. But, you know, if I

00:23:12.400 studied philosophy, there are a lot of old Greeks that didn't go to Harvard. And, and there's a guy

00:23:17.800 named Eric Hoffer, H-O-F-F-E-R, who was as good as any of them. And he was a, like a bee picker and a

00:23:23.560 longshoreman who didn't have any, any degrees of any type, but I still want to know. And if I'm reading,

00:23:30.100 I love what I would call political economy where politics and economics, uh, interrelate and

00:23:36.240 people come from the left, people come from the right. Well, I want to know that. And before I

00:23:41.320 start, uh, so I do, I read the biography of the author. Um, this sounds strange, but I even look

00:23:47.640 at the publisher because I've been in the book business long enough and collected enough books

00:23:51.980 to know that if it's a railroad book from Indiana university press, or if it's a book about Western

00:23:57.120 history from the university of Oklahoma press, or if it's pretty much any book from the Oxford

00:24:02.640 university press, one of their, uh, handbooks, they call them on all kinds of different subjects.

00:24:07.340 I know, Hey, that's, that's going to be pretty darn good book. Those editors know what they're

00:24:12.160 doing and know that subject. So I will even glance at the publisher, but I'll really study that table

00:24:18.040 of contents, that outline of the book. If it's, if it's done right, it'll really tell me,

00:24:22.560 you know, watch what the chapters are saying, what order they're in, what ones I'm most interested

00:24:27.620 in. And then I delve into that index. I look for things I've already heard of. If I'm,

00:24:32.460 I studied under Milton Friedman at the university of Chicago and economics. If I'm reading a book

00:24:36.520 on the history of the car industry and there's an entry in the index or Friedman, I'm like,

00:24:40.580 what's that doing in here? Why, why could he relate to the car industry? Both subjects. I love

00:24:45.800 economics and the history of the auto industry. And, and I look and say, well, why isn't that in the

00:24:51.040 index? I won't, won't buy a book. If I, if there's something important, that's not in the index

00:24:56.140 that I think should be there, you know, a history of the auto industry that doesn't mention Henry

00:25:01.180 Ford, you know, that's nuts. I don't think a book like that exists, but, but I've seen some pretty

00:25:05.960 bad examples. So, you know, and, and then I read the sections, depending on the type of book,

00:25:13.720 I'll read the first paragraph of the book, the last paragraph, I might read the whole first chapter.

00:25:18.260 I, and, and the other thing, if you look at current business books, and again, that's an area where I

00:25:22.960 say, well, I don't really collect those. And yet I probably have, you know, a thousand that were

00:25:28.420 current business books at the time over the last 50 years, a lot of them, they should have been a

00:25:33.260 magazine article, you know, they should, they should have been 30 pages or whatever. And they take a,

00:25:39.340 and they say, here's my big idea. And here's an example of it. And here's another example. And here's

00:25:44.700 another example. And I'm like, well, if I don't get your basic idea by example, number two, maybe I

00:25:50.340 should stop and slow down and think about it and read that example again, and maybe even do more

00:25:56.720 research, look it up online or Wikipedia or whatever. You know, I don't need you telling me

00:26:01.740 the same thing over and over to fill up a 250 page book. So it makes a fat book that you can charge money

00:26:08.440 for, you know, and an awful lot of it is about slowing down. I'm not a speed reader. They gave

00:26:14.580 me remedial reading in seventh grade or whatever. I didn't do very well. I have to stop each sentence

00:26:21.080 or each paragraph. If, if it really has something to say, if it didn't just fluff, I need to stop and

00:26:27.260 think about it. I remember as a kid, it always took me forever to do homework, especially in the

00:26:32.120 social sciences, which I love because I'd read something about history or geography or about Brazil or

00:26:37.560 Indonesia. And I would go off daydreaming about it for 30 minutes. And then, oh, now I got to answer

00:26:43.780 the stupid question in the homework, you know, and I took longer than anybody else that I know of 0.98

00:26:49.960 sitting there doing homework because I would be off thinking about, wow, what's that really mean? And 0.99

00:26:55.460 is that really true? Can I look it up somewhere else? So I'm, you know, I'm, I'm really engaged with,

00:27:02.680 with what I read, but I don't want to be reading the fluff. So, so I have once in a while read a

00:27:08.900 cover to cover, but I find it kind of a painful. Right. Okay. So, so you're 15 minutes, you're

00:27:14.500 looking at the, the, the biography of the author, their credentials, their history, why they're writing

00:27:19.240 this book. You're gonna look at the table of contents, which is really useful. I don't think

00:27:22.320 a lot of people do that because you're gonna see the general outline. Then you might read the first

00:27:26.860 chapter, maybe a little bit of the last part of the book to see the conclusion. Then you also

00:27:31.540 mentioned the index, you're going to make use of that index to see, you know, what are they hitting

00:27:35.800 on stuff that I, that I'm, that I think should be in this book. If it's not in there, this is

00:27:39.100 probably not a good book, et cetera. Yep. Yep. No, the index is huge. And I also, if a book has footnotes

00:27:46.560 in a bibliography, if it's subject, I know something about, I'll look at that bibliography and say, okay,

00:27:52.740 have they looked at the books I know are good in this field, you know? And sometimes I'll find a book

00:28:00.000 and say, wait a minute, they didn't even read that book. And they're writing this book about

00:28:03.720 the same subject, man, this is not a good sign. Other times I'll say, wow, they have, they've,

00:28:08.680 they've read all these other books I already have. And then I got to tell you, over half of all the

00:28:14.080 books I buy are triggered by a bibliography or a footnote where I've got a book. And I said, wow,

00:28:20.140 this looks like a great book where they got this information or this data. I need to order that.

00:28:25.940 So an enormous share of the books I buy are at least 30 years old. I mean, a lot of the best

00:28:31.820 stuff that I have is that I learned from is from the twenties and thirties, but certainly the seventies

00:28:37.100 and eighties. And, and what's interesting is those older books, certainly anything over 20,

00:28:43.280 30 years old can be very difficult to find on Amazon. They're on there, but their search system

00:28:49.220 is so focused on the more recent books that I find it's 90% of the time is faster to type in the

00:28:56.300 author's name and the title in Google search. It'll show me an Amazon link, hit that and the book will

00:29:02.720 show right up. Whereas if I try to use the search box on Amazon, some of them are buried like 30 pages

00:29:08.460 deep. You know, even when you type in the name of the book and the author there, Amazon search has

00:29:13.220 really gone downhill over the years. So somebody is not paying attention there. And yet, of course I,

00:29:19.080 I use Amazon every day and I wouldn't, wouldn't be able to have my library without them.

00:29:23.240 Oh, so this sounds like this, this 50, this literally takes 15 to 30 minutes. This sounds

00:29:26.960 like the sort of the inspectional reading of Mortimer Adler. Yes. How to read a book fame.

00:29:32.960 Absolutely. How to read a book. That's a great book. And you mentioned another benefit of

00:29:37.260 paperback or just like physical books is that the older books that you can, I've noticed this too,

00:29:42.980 is like, I, I get more out of an older book that was written 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago compared to

00:29:50.180 a book that was written just recently. And it's amazing. And then of that stuff, a lot of these

00:29:56.220 books, like the information in there aren't, isn't online. So if you didn't read the book, you never

00:30:01.360 would have known about this stuff. No, absolutely. And, and the other thing too, is especially I'm

00:30:07.300 studying organizations, business governments, you know, economies. When you, when you have an old

00:30:14.120 book, you can see the full arc of, you know, whatever the idea or the organization was or a

00:30:21.680 technology, like I've been studying the history of the telegraph, you know, which was really the

00:30:25.720 beginnings of telecommunications. Well, with old things, you can see how they rose up, how they

00:30:31.580 prospered, how they peaked, how they maybe made a bunch of people rich, you know, or a lot of people

00:30:36.520 tried to get rich, like the gold strikes in California in the 1840s and stuff, the gold rush.

00:30:41.940 And then you see, well, how they died. And so if I read a book about, oh gosh, you know, I can find

00:30:48.980 books in my library that are how the Japanese are going to take over the world. I probably would 1.00

00:30:53.560 have been what the seventies or eighties. Japanese companies are buying American movie studios. They were

00:30:58.300 buying other American companies. The Japanese were just beating us to death. And oh, all the U S 1.00

00:31:03.940 companies are going to be owned by the Japanese. Well, that's a really interesting book to read 1.00

00:31:08.240 because then I can look and think, well, what was their logic and what did they think? And why did

00:31:12.120 that not turn out to be true? And then a few years later, I can find you another book or two or three

00:31:18.180 or four. That's the Saudis are going to own the whole world and they have all the money in the world 1.00

00:31:23.000 and they're going to buy up everything in America, you know, and the Gulf States countries and

00:31:27.280 everything, Dubai and Abu Dhabi and all that. And that hasn't quite come true. You can, I can read

00:31:33.060 books about, oh, there's a great company. Look at it. They're all, all going to set records and

00:31:36.700 everything, a book from the fifties. And then that company's bankrupt by 1975. And I, and sometimes I

00:31:42.800 have to go outside the book, go to Wikipedia or, or Wikipedia is really spotty on business history.

00:31:48.000 Sometimes awful, sometimes good, but there are other places I can dig. If the company still exists,

00:31:53.000 I can pull their annual report or I can look at their stock chart on Yahoo finance or something

00:31:57.400 like that. So those old, old books, you know, you, you can learn so much if you're willing to

00:32:03.460 take the time to stop and think on your own and really think about what you're reading, why they

00:32:09.180 wrote it, why they felt that way, where they went wrong and where they were right.

00:32:14.780 So you're using this inspectional reading process and trying to extract the information that you think

00:32:19.520 is the most useful by using this process. How do you take notes on book? Are you, do you have like

00:32:25.420 a notebook that you use to take notes and keep track? Yeah, no, you know, I'm afraid my answer

00:32:30.780 there may not be very satisfying. I don't take notes. I take notes in my head, but at the same time I do,

00:32:38.440 I put bookmarks in these books, these origami paper, little two inch by two inch sheets. And anytime I

00:32:46.020 see an important table or chart or a quote, or, Oh, this was an event in this person's life, anything

00:32:52.060 I think, man, that's something I want to, if I come back to this book, that's one of the pages I want

00:32:57.260 to look at. And so I I've got books that have 30 or 40 or more of those little origami bookmarks in

00:33:02.920 them, usually just four or five or six or seven, but, and those stay in the books, they go back on the

00:33:08.640 shelf with those bookmarks in them. So that's probably the closest I come. And, and then a lot of the

00:33:14.200 ideas, cause I really believe in what I called in my book, getting in the flow that information, the more

00:33:20.240 you use it. So if I learn something, I feel I have a, I don't know if it's an obligation or a duty, but I feel

00:33:27.020 I need to share that, right? I can't keep my mouth shut about it. And that in my case takes a form of writing.

00:33:33.200 Well, I make speeches and I teach classes too, but most of it I write and I have two websites and have all this

00:33:38.880 stuff I've written over the last several years and, and books. I like Peter Drucker said, the best way

00:33:44.320 to learn a subject is to teach it. So if I can take what I learn and either write it up or talk about

00:33:52.120 it to somebody, anybody, you know, as that just pounds it deeper into my memory. And so I think

00:33:58.640 most important stuff and draw on conclusions, but, but I do, I write to myself a lot. I can't tell you

00:34:04.800 how many word documents I have that nobody but me has ever seen where I'll just go off on a riff,

00:34:11.180 you know, say, well, what about that subject? And I'll just write up my thoughts and put them away.

00:34:15.620 And, and, and so that is a form of note-taking and sometimes I won't look at it for four or five

00:34:20.080 years and I'll look back at it and say, oh man, I was, I was full of it. You know, I had it all wrong

00:34:25.540 or wow, you know, I'm smarter than I thought I was. Okay. So yeah. So it sounds, I mean, that's been my

00:34:29.860 experience too. I don't have a note-taking system either. I just, I read and then I typically

00:34:34.300 have to write something about it. I synthesize it and produce it on the blog or for the podcast.

00:34:39.520 That's how I remember stuff. You're always synthesizing in your head or, or in notes or,

00:34:43.320 yep, always synthesizing. And another thing you do that I, I, I've done intuitively,

00:34:47.860 but you make it explicit is you, when you, as you're reading and you're taking in new information,

00:34:52.900 you, you think about what you're reading this or the information you, the new information in terms

00:34:57.760 of concepts, clusters, patterns, and chains. Yeah. And this also helps you kind of organize in your

00:35:02.660 head. I mean, briefly, you can't go too deep, but I mean, briefly, what does that look like

00:35:06.440 thinking in concepts, clusters, patterns, and chains? Yeah. Well, you know, a few basic things,

00:35:12.160 you know, I go into depth on all that in the book and there's a lot in there, but one thing is I'm

00:35:17.140 always trying to get on a higher Hill than other people. I'm always trying to walk a little further

00:35:23.800 up the mountain to get a little better view of the landscape of the context of the countryside.

00:35:30.400 When I look at something, I always ask, what is this a component of and what are its components?

00:35:36.180 That's part of something you might call systems thinking or general systems theory. I recommend

00:35:41.300 a great book about general systems thinking, but it's, it's understanding that some nuclear

00:35:47.400 particles are part of a nucleus or part of an atom or part of a molecule or part of a cell or part of

00:35:52.680 an organism or a being or part of a community or part of a city or part of a state or part of a

00:35:58.220 country or part of a nation or part of a world or part of the globe or the world or part of the

00:36:03.540 solar system or part of the galaxy. You with me? It's a chain that extends and that's true of

00:36:10.880 everything. So I'm always looking, what's this a part of? What's the, if I'm studying the island of

00:36:16.820 Java, which I visited a couple of times, a wonderful place that has more people on it than any island in

00:36:22.500 the world? Well, I can't understand it unless I understand it's part of Indonesia. I can't 1.00

00:36:28.120 understand stuff unless I understand the context, what's around them. There's no way I can understand

00:36:33.420 General Motors and how it's done if I don't understand Toyota. When I was a young planner and

00:36:40.720 analyst at a big department store company, we were looking at companies to buy, to acquire, and they

00:36:46.180 said, well, go look at the shoe store chain. And I did, but I brought them a report that none of my

00:36:51.600 bosses asked for. I was just a kid in my late, mid, late twenties. I brought back a whole report on the

00:36:57.940 shoe store industry and who are all their competitors and how they fit in because I didn't want my bosses

00:37:04.000 having this abridged understanding of what they might be getting into. And they ended up buying the

00:37:10.980 shoe store chain and it was the most successful acquisition in the history of the company I worked

00:37:15.140 forth. But so I'm always, you know, I'm always trying to step back, see further, knit together

00:37:23.340 more. If you study Peter Drucker, the great business writer and thinker, he's one of the very few people

00:37:29.560 who understood demographics, sociology, psychology, business, economics, geography, and everything he

00:37:37.900 wrote. He had that all kind of in his head. I mean, I, I call it wisdom that, that understanding of

00:37:45.680 kind of how the pieces fit together. So those are kind of some general thoughts on that.

00:37:51.180 Yeah. Big picture. You just seen, make sure when you're reading, make sure you see how it fits into

00:37:55.340 a bigger picture. So it has, gives you context and gives you more information. So another thing you

00:38:01.320 talk about in the book in depth was the importance of adding some serendipity in your, in your

00:38:07.060 reading and your learning. Why is that important to incorporate serendipity and how do you do that

00:38:11.780 with your own learning? Yeah. You know, at this stage of the game, I think my mind has just gone

00:38:20.020 serendipitous, you know, because I'll sit here. Well, I'm well known. I'll be driving down the freeway

00:38:28.780 and I'll see a billboard for a company I've never heard of. And I'll have to pull off onto the shoulder

00:38:34.020 of the interstate and pull out my tablet if I've got a connection and look up the company. So I'm

00:38:40.700 just, you know, I talk in the book about a book learning is critically important. So key to my

00:38:47.440 life, but also observation, conversation, experimentation, travel, all these other ways

00:38:54.960 that we learn. So it just doesn't take much to distract me. I remember this was some years ago

00:39:01.280 that I watched TV ads and I say, what can I learn from them? And you see new products introduced,

00:39:07.340 you know, and all that. But one time I saw an ad and it was for these Ram trucks. Well, Ram was a

00:39:13.540 brand of Dodge. It was called the Dodge Ram when they came out with a Ram truck. But I noticed that

00:39:19.260 TV ad, they never once used the word Dodge. And I said, wow, that's, that's within the history of the

00:39:25.320 auto industry. That's big news because what does that mean? That means that the Chrysler Corporation

00:39:31.160 is going to break Ram out as its own brand. And that means that they're going to have separate

00:39:37.520 dealerships at some point. And that means maybe they have too many Dodge dealers or they have Dodge

00:39:43.340 dealers that want to give up on the cars and just do trucks. Or they have new dealers saying, look,

00:39:48.840 we want to sell your products. We just want those Ram trucks. And I, I, it's a safe bet that very,

00:39:55.280 very, very few other people who saw that ad responded to it the way I did and thought about

00:40:00.600 it in that context. And I still meet people that think they're Dodge Rams. Well, no, not really

00:40:06.100 anymore. You know, and Ram has been hugely successful. Dodge somewhat less so. And now it's under a whole new

00:40:12.680 management. They've overall done a great job with it. They also own the Jeep brand. But so I'm

00:40:18.820 always, but, but the example I was used on serendipity is, you know, when I learned words

00:40:23.440 and vocabulary, I looked them up in a physical dictionary and on the way to look up any word,

00:40:28.000 I would stumble across five or 10 or 20 other words or words right next to it on the same page

00:40:32.440 that I never heard that word before. What's that mean? Well, now if I go online and I look up the

00:40:37.660 definition of the word, all I do is get the definition of that word. It's just like the map issue

00:40:42.380 where, Hey, this is only going to tell me how to get to Dallas the fastest way. It isn't going to tell

00:40:47.780 me anything about what's interesting just off the road or where there's a good diner, a good barbecue

00:40:52.840 place a few miles away, you know, or a state park that's cool or a music event or concert or whatever.

00:41:00.000 And, and so, you know, a lot of it is, is about kind of being chill about relaxing. The answers to

00:41:07.680 most of your questions are not going to be found where you're looking for them. I mean, I have all

00:41:13.100 these friends that read book, whatever they want to learn. I want to learn to program in Java or

00:41:17.700 whatever. And they read book after book after book. And, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong

00:41:21.400 with that. When I want to learn a subject, I buy, I get the most basic classic book. If I want to,

00:41:27.840 if there's a subject I know nothing about, particularly in the sciences or math, I'll get

00:41:32.000 one of those for dummies books. And I'll start at that. Cause I want to build a foundation of

00:41:36.860 understanding before I try to go deeper or understand, but you know, just grazing and having

00:41:43.140 your eyes open, I think, and, and, and being, and cause you meet people say, Oh, I won't go to that

00:41:49.100 concert. I don't like that kind of music. I don't, I don't like those kinds of movies. I won't go to

00:41:52.880 that movie. And, you know, I don't want to visit that country. I don't like the people that, Hey,

00:41:56.720 you're just cutting yourself off. That's sad. No. In my experience, the way I inject certain

00:42:02.780 deputy with my reading is I like, so I buy most of my books from online on Amazon and Amazon has

00:42:09.340 that feature, like, you know, readers who bought this book also bought that. And I've used that,

00:42:13.000 but you end up just seeing the same things over and over again. But the way, if you want to get

00:42:17.400 out of that loop or that bubble is you go to a physical bookstore or the library, the best place

00:42:22.980 to go that I found for you. If you want to find just pleasant surprises is a used

00:42:26.680 bookstore though. Cause that just has stuff from 50, 60, 40 years ago that you would never come

00:42:32.620 across in a Barnes and Noble. It would never come up an Amazon and you stumble upon in some weird

00:42:37.300 section of the used bar. Like, wow, I never would have found this if I hadn't been just sort of

00:42:41.740 wandering around this used bookstore. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. To both of what you say. And you know,

00:42:47.500 the use of bookstores, whether it's a Barnes and Noble or, or are many great independent stores.

00:42:53.300 When I, when I go into a Barnes and Noble, I live out in the country now, so I'm like 45 minutes or

00:42:58.800 an hour away from one. But when I travel, I always stop in. I go to dozens of them every year.

00:43:04.280 And when I, when I go in, I come out, I buy as many books as my budget or, or credit card will allow

00:43:10.720 at Barnes and Noble. Cause I want to support retail stores and the bookstore chain. I started

00:43:15.040 sold out to Barnes and Noble. So I have friends there, but I also come out with a list of about 30 other

00:43:21.060 books that I write down. I carry little tablets in my pocket. That's, that's my ultimate note

00:43:25.600 keeping system. And I come out with a list of like 30 books that I want to buy later when I have the

00:43:30.860 money that I never would have discovered without that. And then you're right. Used bookstores take

00:43:36.180 that to a whole nother level, especially a really great one. You know, two of my favorites would be

00:43:42.300 Powell's bookstore, city of books in Portland, Oregon, probably the best single bookstore in America,

00:43:48.360 the strand in New York city. And then in Dallas, half price books is a giant chain of used bookstores,

00:43:55.220 a great company all over America, but they're big. I call it the mothership, their main store where

00:44:00.180 their headquarters is in the North side of Dallas is just a wonderland of books. So yeah, no, you,

00:44:07.920 you can't be a physical bookstore for stumbling across the things you didn't think you would be

00:44:13.740 interested in things. You didn't know anybody ever wrote a book about things you were interested in,

00:44:18.840 but didn't know there was this book about them because a lot of that stuff gets buried on Amazon

00:44:22.640 and it's hard to find, even if you're searching for a subject you like. And again, you can do this,

00:44:27.940 this process we talked about that inspectional reading as you're, you know, just, Oh, I'm very

00:44:33.220 quickly. And then I'm going to buy this book so I can delve deeper into it. Oh, absolutely, man. I,

00:44:37.500 I, in a bookstore, I opened that book. I go straight to the table of contents and the index

00:44:41.500 stand there as long as I need to and either put it in my basket or put it back on the shelf.

00:44:48.000 Well, Gary, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:44:51.160 and the rest of your work? Uh, yeah, well, uh, the easy way on the book is it's on Amazon,

00:44:56.360 the lifetime learner's guided reading and learning. And the other thing is I wrote a book many years

00:45:01.720 ago about how to start businesses and include some of the same ideas about how to dream up ideas and how

00:45:06.800 to think, but has a lot more about business. It's called the art of enterprise, but it's only

00:45:11.000 available as a PDF. I did the heart. The book itself is out of print. So I did a PDF version.

00:45:17.040 I added some chapters. And if you go to my, my website is called hooversworld.com. And you'll

00:45:24.320 see a link there for the classes I teach and the books I have for sale. But that also has everything

00:45:30.980 I've written, but most of my energy these days, I'm always in anything I study. And certainly when I

00:45:37.600 started companies, if you count all the ones I did in college, I think I started nine companies

00:45:42.040 too, which were very successful, had some big failures too, but I'm always looking for

00:45:47.320 gaps and vacancies and, and where, where is something the world isn't looking at that they

00:45:53.620 should be. And that led my friends and I to create a website called American business history.org.

00:46:00.360 And that we tell a story of a great business, an industry, a company, or a great business leader.

00:46:07.580 And we also have data demographics, where are Americans moving to and moving from, because

00:46:12.860 that relates to the history of the economy and business. And we do a week free weekly newsletter.

00:46:18.740 And that's where I put the vast majority of my energy day, because when I Googled business

00:46:23.440 history or American business history, there was like nothing. I mean, you know, there's not a species

00:46:28.380 of a breed of dogs or a species of bird or a rare type of mineral that you can't find 10,

00:46:35.660 15 websites about, but there was no website, a central place where you can go to learn about

00:46:41.640 the history of American business. And, and as part of that context, always, I'm always asking,

00:46:47.280 what's the history? Who invented this idea? How did this develop? Who invented this technology?

00:46:52.420 Who started this company? Whatever the subject, who founded this nation? You know, I want to know

00:46:59.140 the history first, where did it come from? And in the business world, you know, other fields, law,

00:47:05.160 economics, law, medicine, they study history. All they do in law is study history, precedents and

00:47:12.060 everything. But I can tell you, I meet more people with MBAs that they don't even require you to study

00:47:17.240 business history at even our greatest business schools. And so people are lost. They aren't

00:47:23.260 learning the lessons of the past, but the successes and the failures. They aren't, there's no better

00:47:28.260 way to learn entrepreneurship and business than to study the biographies of the great, how they thought,

00:47:33.560 how they acted, how they overcame obstacles, that they were human. They weren't a bunch of geniuses.

00:47:39.300 And so that was a huge gap, I believe, in American business and business education. And one that,

00:47:45.300 to be blunt, I was the ideal person to fulfill because I've been fascinated by it since 1963,

00:47:52.320 the history of all these. And we cover every industry, every type of business, big, small,

00:47:57.000 family-owned, giants, mergers, Amazon, Sears Roebuck, you name it. And so AmericanBusinessHistory.org

00:48:04.320 is my main passion these days. But between American business and the Hoover's world, I publish

00:48:10.540 occasional newsletters that'll deal with things that are less historical. But I do a weekly one

00:48:16.700 for AmericanBusinessHistory.org. And just another quick plug for the Lifetime Learner's Guide to

00:48:21.680 Reading and Learning. You've got a reading list there of 160 books. And I found that really useful

00:48:27.340 because you kind of organize it in big topics like thinking, psychology, world history, cities. And

00:48:34.320 I've added a whole bunch of books to my Amazon list.

00:48:36.720 And most of those books are ones nobody's ever heard of.

00:48:39.380 Yeah. No, a lot of them I've never, never heard of. And so what I like about it, it's all that

00:48:42.540 high-level stuff, right? So that you can, I don't know, I think it's useful for anyone to check that

00:48:46.880 out. Gurry, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:48:50.580 Hey, Brad. I've really enjoyed it. And if anybody goes to either of my websites and clicks on contact,

00:48:57.240 go to Hoover's World. They can always email me directly. I answer all my own emails as fast as I can.

00:49:02.600 And I love meeting people, talking and thinking about ideas. I do a lot of emails. My friends

00:49:09.020 can tell you way too many. I'm a night owl. So you can email me at three in the morning and I'll

00:49:13.440 probably answer you pretty quickly. And so, yeah, it's been a pleasure. And I hope all the listeners

00:49:19.720 are always learning. Every night, ask yourself, what did I learn today? And then later, you can ask

00:49:25.940 yourself, how can I apply it? But the first thing is the learning.

00:49:29.680 My guest today was Gary Hoover. He's the author of the book, The Lifetime Learner's Guide to Reading

00:49:34.620 and Learning. It's available on amazon.com. You can find out more information about his work at his

00:49:38.240 website, hooversworld.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash hoover, where you can find

00:49:42.800 links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:49:52.120 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

00:49:55.600 artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written

00:49:59.180 over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

00:50:02.000 episodes of the AOM podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,

00:50:06.240 sign up, use code MANLINESS at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up,

00:50:09.640 download the Stitcher app on Android, iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM

00:50:13.300 podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review

00:50:16.700 on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:50:19.880 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it.

00:50:23.480 As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to

00:50:26.960 not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - August 18, 2021

What a Man With 60,000 Books Can Teach You About Lifelong Learning and Building Your Home Library

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