When I first studied Shakespeare, I learned the literary concept of a “fatal flaw” — the idea that a heroic character has a single personality trait that brings about his or her downfall.

I think my fatal flaw is lack of self-discipline. I will never be great unless I develop self-discipline. I shall spend my life as the slightly overweight woman who lives in the somewhat messy house and writes somewhat interesting journal entries but never publishes a finished story. I wallow around in the land of mediocrity living in the pain of my unrealized talent and potential.

And I’m 37-years-old this year. I’m running out of time.

But my life isn’t over yet, is it? We’re not at the end of my play yet. There’s still hope that I shall overcome my fatal flaw.

» From amawahibiki who got it from miou_vicioso who got it from sen_ichi_rei who got it from smokingredmoon

1) Total number of books own:
Probably about 50. I once owned more, but I move too much and I got tired of packing and carrying them. So now I keep only the ones that I will use for reference or re-read frequently.

2) The last book I bought:
“Rich Dad Poor Dad.” I’m responsible for the health of the family and for the finances. I was reading “Energy Addict” (very good, by the way) and it suggested “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” so I bought that one since I really like financial books as well. If you look at the comments on Amazon for “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” people either hate this book or love it. Well, I bought and read the book and I’ll tell you why people love it or hate it with not much ground in between:

Why people hate it:

a) This is one of the most poorly written books I have ever had the misfortune to read. It made me realize that if this piece of tripe can get published, then anything can get published. It is repetitive, has egregious grammatical errors, is not tightly written, and even has typos! It is just a sloppy sloppy book. It made me angry that I paid $16.95 for such a sloppy piece of work.

b) It has some very bad (even dangerous for the novice) financial advice. Much of the advice is far too risky.

c) His support of anti-government capitalism is scary and a bit creepy. If anyone needs a reason not to support complete capitalism without control, look what capitalism has done to the environment or how companies market to our children to make them mindless consumers. It’s chilling.

Why people love it:

a) It does have some very good information. He does a good job of explaining, in layman terms, how money is not a tangible thing like a desk or a computer. That’s a hard concept to understand because money can buy real things, and bills and coins are real things. But money, itself, is not real — not tangible anyway. Say, for example, your 1000 shares of Widget Inc stock increase from $1 per share to $1.50 per share. Poof! $500 appeared as if out of nowhere. That’s because money is a concept — a set of rules that we all agree upon. It’s math, numbers on a spreadsheet, a concept, even an emotion. But it is not a tangible object. And the author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” Robert Kigosaki, explains this.

b) He explains the very important idea of making money work for you instead of working for money. This idea in a nutshell: “It’s not what you earn, it’s what you keep. Each dollar you keep then becomes your employee working for you to earn more money.” These ideas are not new. He just reiterates them.

c) He does a very good job of illustrating how working from paycheck to paycheck will you get you absolutely nowhere.

How I feel about it:

It had some very good ideas but you have to sift through pages and pages of poorly written bullshit to find the nuggets. I would not buy this book simply because I wouldn’t suggest to people to support such a sloppy piece of writing. Borrow it from the library, read it once, and you’ll get what you need out of it and never have to re-read it again. It’s so badly written it’s actually painful to read.

3) The last book I read:
I just finished “The Millionaire Next Door” and I’m currently reading “Affluenza” and “The Millionaire Mind.” These three books, interestingly enough, all have a similar theme: hyper-consumption and the problems it leads to. The two Millionaire books talk about how spending every bit of money you have and then spending even more on credit is extremely bad for you financially. “Affluenza” talks about how Americans shop and shop and shop, and how our consumptive lifestyle hurts ourselves, our communities, and our environment. Interesting books.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me:
Golly…. hmmm… I like Lord of the Rings and Jane Austen’s books for the same reason: these books are poetry in the narrative word. I’ll re-read paragraphs from these books simply because of how beautifully they are written. Oh, “Memoirs of a Geisha” is also very very well written. I like Suze Orman’s financial books. I like a lot of what Dr. Andrew Weil has to say.

Hmmm…. but books that have changed my life? That’s hard to say. Books are ubiquitous in my life. Each book changes me a bit, each book presents new ideas that I incorporate sometimes without even knowing it.

5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out in their ljs:
Lol :)) I don’t know five people in LJ. I know grieve and jmgregg but they haven’t written in their LJ’s in over a year. 🙂 I just know one other person other than amawahibiki:

1. prezzey Go for it, prezzey! 🙂
2. There is also Kelsey. She is part of another Live Journal community, but I can still “tag” her, can’t I? Heh heh, the online journal communities are cross-pollinating. (BTW, Kelsey, if you read this, jmgregg is Justy. 🙂 But he hasn’t updated his journal for awhile, I think because he doesn’t have an internet connection at his new apartment. grieve is Dudley, the fellow we all went indoor rock climbing with. And amawahibiki is Daniel, my online Jewish friend who I always talk about.)
3. Can I also “tag” Thomas? He hosts his own online journal, not being part of an online journal community. But it still counts, right?