Note: The following review is of a internet marketing book that I requested from Hay House UK, which they kindly sent me.

With the book ”Launch: An Internet Millionaire's Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your Dreams”, internet entrepreneur and marketer Jeff Walker, who’s one of the world’s foremost expert in the online marketing industry, clearly outline the steps you have to take to bring your business successfully online.

Jeff Walker started ut in the online marketing industry back in 1996 when he began to publish a newsletter teaching people about the stockmarket. It was a modest beginning, but since then his Product Launch Formula that’s been developed through extensive testing, has drastically changed the way we’re doing business online.

In "Launch", you’ll get all the essential information and tools you need to turn your vision of an online business into reality.

The Product Launch Formula process

In an easy-to-follow approach, Jeff Walker takes you through the Product Launch Formula process, and by that significantly increases your odds of being able to build a solid and profitable online business.

What You'll Learn

After you’ve digested all of this valuable information the book contains, you’ll know more of how to build an mailing list from scratch, how to write engaging sales letters, find out which the mental triggers are that turn prospects into paying customers, the important role of social media and email and how to use these tools productively in your online business, and how to work with pre-launches prior to the big launch.

Inspiring Case Studies

To help you put all of the information into practical use, the book is filled with inspiring case studies of people who have started or turned their online businesses into successful ventures by using the information you find in this book.

You Can Sell Almost Anything

This sounds all great, but what if you don’t have a physical product to sell, but are eager to bring your business online? Good news – Jeff Walker has covered this as well – you’ll learn how to both sell non- or physical products and services, and how to build an online business from scratch. It’s all here!

Get Additional Free Resources

”Launch” also comes with free resources – these include a four-part training video with Jeff Walker, a 30 minutes full-length case study video presentation, a special questions and answers session with Jeff shot on video, and finally, a video presentation in which Jeff takes you through his own strategies when launching this newly updated version of ”Launch”.

"Launch" - A Wealth of Inspiration and Assistance

Whether you already are running an online business or thinking about it, "Launch: An Internet Millionaire's Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your Dreams", will be a tremendously valuable source of inspiration and assistance on your way forward.

Note: The following review is of a leadership book that I requested from Harvard Business Review Press, which they kindly sent me.

”Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading” by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linksy is a book that urges you to seize opportunities for leadership on an ongoing basis, in your everyday life and working environment.

More written like a novel and a page-turner than a "dry and technical" manual, the book discusses the beauty of leadership and its importance, but at the same time highlights some of the common pitfalls that a leader or manager should look out for, especially in times of great change.

Below are some of the many key points that the book covers of which I took to heart.

1. Look out for clues in your working environment

With lots of different case studies from the area of business and politics, the authors describe how to look for clues in your working environment to get a clear sense of when to push forward or when to pull back. These are clues that otherwise might go unnoticed and get missed entirely or simply being overlooked by a leader that finds himself/herself in a demanding work situation.

2. Observe your closest allies and take note of the signals

To me, the book paints the picture of a work place that is like a living organism, an organization when experiencing too much pressure and strain in one area, risks of breaking apart in a whole different part. Things can quickly take a turn for the worse when someone who's taking on a leadership position doesn't notice the worrisome signals coming from their closest allies due to the pressure they themselves are experiencing in conjunction with the work of change.

Here, the authors do a great job of shedding the light on something that otherwise can result in major negative consequences for someone who's in the forefront.

3. How to reduce the risk of getting emotionally injured

Another important part the authors bring to surface, is how to avoid getting emotionally injured when leading. Just by changing how you, as a leader or manager, interpret the reactions and feedback you’re receiving from your team and colleagues can save you lots of unnecessary emotional pain – here Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linksy provide a great deal of information on how to do that, drawing from their wealth of experiences working for themselves and with others.

4. Leadership isn't a one-person operation

An aspect in regard to leadership the book covers is that leading isn’t a one-person operation. Instead, it is of significant importance to seek out and have allies, but also to seek out and work closely together with your opposition. For leaders, these are crucial steps for navigating through the sometimes harsh waters they find themselves in.

5. Delegate – put the work where it belongs

A good trait of a leader, the authors tell us, is knowing when to step back and delegate in some work related situations and let those involved take full ownership – to put the work where it belongs so as to avoid the recurrence of the issue and instead get sustainable results and achieve progress.

In closing – a great investment

The book makes for lots of reflection besides gifting you with valuable tools for making your work as a leader a more fulfilling one.

”Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading” is well worth your time and investment if leadership is something you’re already involved with or aspiring to explore.

Like the authors tell us – there are opportunities for leadership presenting themselves every day in every walk of life. You just have to seize them!

The 900-page coffee table book "Beyond the Wall: Art and Artifacts from the GDR" by Justinian Jampol and published by Taschen, features over 2500 items from the the Wende Museum's East German Collection.

This encyclopedic volume features over 2500 items from its extraordinary collections. Never before has a book included this full a spectrum of art, archives, and artifacts from socialist East Germany: official symbols and dissident expressions, the spectacular and the routine, the mass-produced and the handmade, the funny and the tragic. Packaged in a slick, portable box, the book also comes with a facsimile of a GDR family scrapbook, documenting real and imagined travels both within East Germany, and across the border.

You can order the book on Amazon here.

H/t Umbrella Magazine.

It doesn't come as a complete surprise to learn that investor Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett's longtime business partner, are avid readers, but nevertheless is Farnam Street's article "The Buffett Formula — How To Get Smarter" an inspiring read.

Warren Buffett says, "I just sit in my office and read all day."

What does that mean? He estimates that he spends 80% of his working day reading and thinking.

"You could hardly find a partnership in which two people settle on reading more hours of the day than in ours," Charlie Munger commented.

When asked how to get smarter, Buffett once held up stacks of paper and said "read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge builds up, like compound interest."

[…]

"Neither Warren nor I is smart enough to make the decisions with no time to think," Munger once told a reporter. "We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that's because we've spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking."

I have written about journalist and author Claire Hoffman's memoir "Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood" in an earlier post, in which Hoffman talks about her upbringing in the Transcendental Meditation community in Fairfield, Iowa.

The Cut has published a lengthy passage from this well-received book entitled "Growing Up in Meditationland":

One day, I emerged from the afternoon meditation at school and found Jiten waiting for me. "How was your meditation?" he asked, mimicking the prissy voice of a teacher. "Was it easy? Was it smooth?" I laughed and said I'd been imagining the sex life of our rather shrill meditation teacher, barely remembering my mantra. "All the mantras are the same," he told me, snickering. I laughed, but the idea felt like a missile going through my head.

"I thought they were all different, like snowflakes," I said, trying to sound sarcastic.

But I was serious; the idea that my mantra was like anyone else's was until that moment inconceivable.

"No, tell me yours. I'll bet it's the same as mine," he said.

He leaned in close to me, his hand on my arm. His breath warm on my ear, he whispered my mantra to me. My mind moved slowly as I looked up at his mischievous grin. I hadn't heard my mantra said out loud for years. What had felt special for so long was not.

One day, I emerged from the afternoon meditation at school and found Jiten waiting for me. "How was your meditation?" he asked, mimicking the prissy voice of a teacher. "Was it easy? Was it smooth?" I laughed and said I'd been imagining the sex life of our rather shrill meditation teacher, barely remembering my mantra. "All the mantras are the same," he told me, snickering. I laughed, but the idea felt like a missile going through my head.

"I thought they were all different, like snowflakes," I said, trying to sound sarcastic.

But I was serious; the idea that my mantra was like anyone else's was until that moment inconceivable.

"No, tell me yours. I'll bet it's the same as mine," he said.

He leaned in close to me, his hand on my arm. His breath warm on my ear, he whispered my mantra to me. My mind moved slowly as I looked up at his mischievous grin. I hadn't heard my mantra said out loud for years. What had felt special for so long was not.

[…]

I had to admit: It did work. As much as I rolled my eyes at the Movement, meditation was still a touchstone for me. For years I used it only sporadically, when I needed it. If my plane ride was especially turbulent, I would close my eyes and start meditating before I even consciously realized what I was doing. If I had a houseguest who was staying a little too long, I'd retreat to my bedroom and meditate for an hour — to be in a space that was all my own. When I had my daughter and became perpetually exhausted, meditation became something I looked forward to. It was then that I started to realize that meditation didn't have to be everything for me — it didn't have to be a Movement or a philosophy or the cure-all that I'd been raised to think it was. Just because the waters had been muddied didn't mean I couldn't still hold on to that which still felt real for me. After a lifetime of meditating, the quietness had become who I was. So what if my mantra wasn't a secret special sound made just for me? If it worked, why would I let it go?

Featured image: Audiobook cover via AudioBookStore.com.

Inc. Magazine's columnist Glenn Leibowitz shares some of the best nuggets of writing advice found in best-selling author Stephen King's memoir "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft" (2000).

Update: Do the following Google search to read the article without having to registrate.

16 years ago, King shared everything he knows about writing in a book that instantly became a bestseller: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Part memoir, part codification of his best writing strategies, the book has become a classic among writers.

I discovered -- and devoured -- it a dozen years ago, when I was trying to take my writing to the next level. I recommend it to all of my writer friends.

[…]

4. Write for your Ideal Reader.

"Someone -- I can't remember who, for the life of me -- once wrote that all novels are really letters aimed at one person. As it happens, I believe this.

I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking, 'I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?' For me that first reader is my wife, Tabitha... Call that one person you write for Ideal Reader."

5. Read a lot.

"Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books -- of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john."

Featured image: Stephen King at his home in '85 photographed by Raeanne Rubenstein. Via Dish Magazine.

Journalist and author Claire Hoffman grew up in Fairfield, Iowa, where the Transcendental Meditation movement had located in 1975. Her new book, "Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood" tells the fascinating story about how it was growing up and live in a Midwest meditation community.

The following essay published in Vogue is part of the book:

The idea of living in Iowa thrilled me. I imagined an existence somewhere between Little House on the Prairie and Charlotte's Web. Barnyard animals would dance, and I would roll through lush meadows and learn to ride a bike. At long last, I might also finally have friends who, like me, meditated twice a day.

I tried it for the first time when I was 3 years old, in the back room of the Transcendental Meditation Center's Manhattan office. Incense burned in front of a framed painting of Maharishi. My teacher, a young man in a butter-yellow suit, whispered my mantra to me. By the time I was 5 this secret sound had become an essential part of who I was, and I'd taken to repeating it to myself to push away the chaos of my rupturing family.

A few other related and great reads worth mentioning include Hoffman's article "David Lynch Is Back … as a Guru of Transcendental Meditation" and Grace Bello's article in Papermag called "Growing Up in Fairfield, Iowa – America's Transcendental Meditation Mecca", in which Hoffman is interviewed.

Psychiatrist and author Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal who wrote "Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation" (2012) is due with another book dealing with the effectiveness of Transcendental Meditation. Its title is "Super Mind: How to Boost Performance and Live a Richer and Happier Life Through Transcendental Meditation" and will be released in May.

I enjoyed "Transcendence" and after having watched the following video with Rosenthal speaking about the book, I think it will be well-received as well.

Image credit: Via the website of Norman E. Rosenthal.

I do yoga at home and all other exercise such as bodyweight workouts, step, aerobics and lifting weights as well. For me, it's perfect and currently I don't want it any other way.

With her new book "Yoga At Home: Inspiration for Creating Your Own Home Practice", former editor, writer and yoga teacher Linda Sparrowe has put together a guide to help us create our own home yoga practice, something that even a yogini like Sparrowe sometimes struggles with.

"To be completely truthful, for years home practice was a challenge for me, even as a longtime practitioner and teacher," admits Sparrowe. "How can I possibly practice if I don't have my own yoga room…if I can't commit to 90 minutes or an hour…if I can't figure out what to practice?"

For her latest book, "Yoga at Home: Inspiration for Creating Your Own Home Practice", Sparrowe sought to answer those questions by profiling the at-home routines of renowned yogis like Seane Corn, Rodney Yee, and Elena Brower.

It's part yoga guide, and part yoga voyeurism, since in a lot of cases you're looking into their living rooms.

"[Photographer Sarah Keough and I] were interested in showing how people really live and all the different ways they find moments of stillness and times for practice within their great and messy and beautiful lives," Sparrowe says.

Featured image: Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga in New York City. Photography by Sarah Keough.

"Consequence: A Memoir" is written by Eric Fair who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2004. The book is released tomorrow, but Vice has published a longer excerpt.

Stefanowicz [Steven Stefanowicz, civilian interrogator] takes me to a windowless cell where he and an analyst have been working on a detainee. This detainee is from Yemen. The cell is long and narrow. I hear muffled music from inside the cell. There are two doors, one behind the other. Both doors are covered in plywood and spray-painted black. You can close the first door before opening the second. That way, you ensure no light enters the cell. Today, Stefanowicz opens both doors. The music is louder. Stefanowicz shuts it off and has a short conversation with a naked detainee. He tells him he will see him tomorrow. In Arabic, the detainee says, "Please, please, spend more time, no music, a little more time." The translator turns the music back on.

Stefanowicz says,"Annoying stuff, right?" He closes both doors and says, "We'll let him stew for a few days."

I tell Stefanowicz about System of a Down. I say, "Deafening crap, just total crap." Stefanowicz tells me that is exactly what he's looking for. I tell him I'll talk to Kutcher and Henson.

[…]

I never go back inside the hard site. I try not to remember the things I didn't like. The smell is something I try not to remember. The sound is something I try not to remember. The naked man is something I try not to remember. The dark cell is something I try not to remember. I gave Stefanowicz a copy of the deafening music. I try not to remember that, either.

Darius Foroux short piece in the Observer, gives you some useful advice on how to get on with your reading and read more books.

Simple advice really, but I usually read just one book at a time, which actually doesn't make sense. If for example, I read a book about personal development, it will take time to process the book, so then reading something like a novel alongside seems only logical.

But, eat when your eat – that's my two cents.

There are no rules to reading so you can do whatever you want. At times, I'm reading 5 books at once. I might read 50 pages of one book in the morning and then read another book in the afternoon.

That's how I prefer it. Others like to read a book cover to cover and only then read something new.

If you're reading something that's complicated, you might want to read something that's easier for the evenings. I like to read biographies before I go to sleep because they are like stories. Fiction also works well in the evening.

The Kickstarter project and coffee table photo book "Faces of Yoga" by Jonah Sargent, consists of uncomfortable photos of people in strange positions.

Sargent told Mashable, that he got the idea for the book after having observed something at an upscale yoga studio in Minneapolis:

"While cleaning at this studio I occasionally overheard yogis being up-sold expensive yoga pants, mats and designer headbands. One day a woman came in and bought nearly $500 of yoga clothing because the yoga instructor was telling her she looked sexy in it. During class the instructor kept complimenting her, and the yogi kept looking in the mirror and readjusting to look more picturesque. It all just made me feel like there was something funny with the glamorisation of this ancient discipline."

I find this book to be interesting for yet another reason – this book conveys the message that yoga can be tough exercise – and yoga teacher Bryan Kest sums it up in a good way by calling Power Yoga for the ultimate cross-training.

Watch Kickstarter video:

Image credit: Via Metro (UK).

In the book "The Transcendental Meditation Technique and The Journey of Enlightenment" (2015), Ann Purcell digs deep into the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought the technique to the West.

A TM teacher since '73, Ann has lots of experience under her belt. In the book, she blends written poems with everyday experiences that she and other meditators have encountered through the practice of Transcendental Meditation, together with a thorough explanation of the different elements and stages that are closely related to the technique, elements that you very well might encounter on your own meditation journey.

Ann's book differs somewhat from the books related to TM that I've previously read. While the others are a great read in their own way, this book deals more with the fundamental and spiritual stages and concepts that you associate with the technique, and less with scientific findings and personal accounts, although you'll find these as well.

In her work, Ann includes the writings from some of our most beloved authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Helen Keller, and scholars of today such as Craig Pearson and Robert Keith Wallace, connecting their work with the concepts of Transcendental Meditation.

A few of those concepts are:

• the natural state of enlightenment
• the growing sense of belonging
• bliss
• God and cosmic consciousness
• the experience of flow
• love
• the blossom of creativity

Towards the end of the book, I particularly enjoyed the part when Ann talked about the importance of taking better care of our nature, e.g., grow and eat more organic food, the use of renewable energy, and the creation of more stress-free environments in schools and workplaces around the world, and how your own meditation practice contributes to more peace in the world, not just within yourself.

The book is easy to read, from cover to cover if you'd like, and will inspire you to maintain your own meditation practice, growing yourself and the world at the same time.

Image credit: Via publisher Green Dragon Books.

Which book are you when having your morning coffee? Here, book titles on mugs from the Penguin Collection.

"A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf:

"The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler:

"Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens:

Via Sunday Morning.

By using an old-fashioned typewriter, artist and designer Álvaro Franca has made detailed portraits of five of his favorite authors in literature in a series called "Typewritten Portraits".

"During my exchange period at Cambridge School of Art, I developed a technique for creating grayscale images on a typewriter and from it I was able to create portraits of five of my favorite authors in literature who worked on typewriters.

This is an ongoing series and there are plans for five other portraits to be concluded this following year."

American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac:

Brazilian writer clarice Lispector:

Years before Pantone Color Guides existed, a Dutch author by the name A. Boogert wrote an extensive color guide by the title "Klaer Lightende Spiegel der Verfkonst" (1692), containing nearly 800 pages, all handwritten and painted.

[…] In over 700 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author, who identifies himself as A. Boogert (Pic 2), describes how to make watercolour paints. He explains how to mix the colours and how to change their tone by adding “one, two or three portions of water”. To illustrate his point he fills each facing page with various shades of the colour in question (lower image). To top it he made an index of all the colours he described, which in itself is a feast to look at (Pics 1 and 3). In the 17th century, an age known as the Golden Age of Dutch Painting, this manual would have hit the right spot. It makes sense, then, that the author explains in the introduction that he wrote the book for educational purposes. Remarkably, because the manual is written by hand and therefore literally one of a kind, it did not get the “reach” among painters - or attention among modern art historians - it deserves.

For more images visit Colossal.

Photo credit: Images via Open Culture.

Via @ellaing

Penguin Books is known for its great design when it comes to book covers. Someone came up with a brilliant idea and translated all of these great looking book covers into the shape of postcards. The result is the neat little box "Postcards from Penguin" with 100 different postcards, perfect for framing, mailing or just for inspiration.

Photo credit: Images via Amazon.

Via @LuaLunera.

Writers At Work is the go-to Tumblr page to see the workplaces of just writers, and to spur some inspiration into your own work.

Ernest Hemingway in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940, photographed by Robert Capa (image via):

A list of 25 books that are read by the Mad Men charachters throghout the series has been compiled by The New York Public Library.

Featured image: Don Draper reads "Meditations in an Emergency" by Frank O'Hara. Image via The Bygone Bureau.

Via Boing Boing.

Kira Nichols creates some wonderful funny bookmarks that she sells through her Etsy shop. Have you ever bought a bookmark that includes a pair of witch legs before? I just love these!

Can't remember where I found this, sorry.