A New Month, A New Book

Last week, I finished my July book - The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. What an amazing book. Where other self-help books focus on character skills to increase efficiency or popularity, Stephen Covey's book focuses on the principles a person needs to embrace to enjoy a highly effective, fulfilling, and valuable life. I recommend this book to anyone looking for ways to improve his or her life in any degree. As for me, I'm working on being a better listener and trying to prioritize. It's a great book.

This month, I'm reading a book which my siblings gave me for my birthday. The book's title is Undaunted Courage. It's Stephen Ambrose's book about Captain Lewis and President Jefferson and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The story is one of the most well known adventures in American history. Like I wrote before, I don't have a strong grasp on early American history, so it's very enlightening. The book is very long, so I hope to finish it by the end of the month (I was able to get about 1/4th of the way through, or about 120 pages, while we were in Agoura last week). So far, the book is interesting . . . a little slow . . . but very detailed, informative, and full of interesting facts (like the fact that there are trees in Philadelphia and the University of Virginia which grew from samples which Lewis sent back to Jefferson for inspection). I wonder what it would have been like to be one of the members of the Corps of Discovery, crossing the newly purchased American West, discovering that what they thought they knew of the continent was totally ridiculous (some even thought there were volcanoes and dinosaurs!), facing danger, excitement, and hard work at every winding bend of America's unexplored rivers.