Podcast Review: Books of Titans

October 10, 2019

Creator(s): Erik Rostad & Jason Staples

Genre: Book Reviews

# of Episodes: over 80

Rating:

Having my IG account curated to show me only things I am interested in is sometimes beneficial when I get distracted and start randomly scrolling. The other day, I was doing just that when I came across a post from Books of Titans. It was giving a monthly update on a reading project. I’ve seen their posts before and always had intentions of checking out what exactly they were doing but always put it off for when I have time. But I realized randomly scrolling on IG means I have time. I went to their profile and started scrolling through, and it appeared they have been counting books from 2017 for this “project.” I saw they had a website, and I decided to check it out and get some background information. What made me write this review is because I love the overall concept of what Erik and Jason are doing. Sharing their love of reading with others and making it easy for people to find great books with their recommendations. Erik goes pretty hard for having a reading list, and for me, I don’t think I could not have the flexibility of being able to read what I want when I want, but I may try it for a month or two and see if it works. I’ve also never been into tracking my stats like pages read (Goodreads shows this, and I’m at 11,500 for the year) but his page made me look into Bookly for their infographic because I thought it would be interesting to see how many pages I read a day or my reading speed. Not sure if it’s something I will keep up with, but we will see.

Books of Titans Website

Their website is very well organized and eye-catching. I found out that Erik is a website developer, so it makes sense. I love the way that right on the home page, you have the count of books and pages that have been completed under the project. Then you have a copy of the cover for every book on the 2019 Reading List. Going to the About section, you find out that the project, Books of Titans, is based on Tim Ferris’ Tools of Titans books. Erik read the book and made a note of all of the book recommendations. He decided to read 52 of those books in 2017 and created the website to document his journey. After talking with his friend Jason, who wanted to do it with him and recommended they do a podcast, the Books of Titans Podcast was born. You have some quick blog posts from Erik that explain his reading journey, gives you his reading lists along with other’s top 10 lists, and some background info on how and why he reads so much and ways to double your reading. My absolute favorite part of the website is the book lists from Tim Ferris. Books of Titans documented every book that was recommended in Tools of Titans (120 books) and Tribe of Mentors (278 books). They also keep an ongoing, consistently updated book recommendation list from The Tim Ferris Show (currently at 2, 336 books at the time I am writing this). Their site also offers the ability to share/house your reading list on their website for a fee.

Books of Titans Podcast

It looks like their podcast was started almost from the beginning of their project going back to 2017. Per their website, they release a new episode every Friday. Most of the episodes are book reviews (one review per episode) where initially they discussed books that they have both read. They go back and forth, talking about the synopsis of the book, give their favorite quotes, and what they learned. The length of the episodes is pretty much all over the place, with some being as short as less than 20 minutes, and one is 2 hours and 30 minutes long. I personally don’t like to listen to in-depth reviews or possible spoilers for books that I have not read yet, so I went hunting for a book that we had in common. Episode 25, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I was pleased that we pretty much shared the same opinions on this book (check out my review here), which let me know that I most likely can trust their recommendations on books. Although I haven’t read it yet, I decided to listen to episode 30, Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss. This was around the beginning of where their format changed, and it turned into an interview format. Where Erik had read this book, Jason had not, so he was the one asking questions. I was a bit shocked that they don’t appear to have an episode on Tools of Titans, which is the book that started all of this. But overall, the website and podcast are great resources for people that are looking for an already created reading list or in-depth recommendations. I plan on keeping an eye out for future episodes.

My Takeaways

I’ve downloaded the Bookly app and have started to use it for a couple of days. Tools of Titans by Time Ferris has been on my currently reading list for a while now. But after listening to this podcast, I decided to pick it back up as my daily reading. I want to plan a month of reading using a reading list and will probably try and build that into my Year of Healthy.