“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”

– Miyamoto Musashi

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has become a cliché. Every businessman and adventurer has read it to death. It’s not a bad book, it’s simply a book that’s been over analyzed and copied so many times that you’re better off reading one of its imitators.

In contrast, Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings is a work that’s more informative and more obscure than The Art of War. As such it’s done a much better job withstanding the test of time.

While originally written for students of Kenjutsu, Musashi’s work is still applicable to those outside the martial arts realm. In fact, The Book of Five Rings reads like an incredibly quotable, and militaristic, self-help book with swordplay and samurai. This is Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss, minus the “we’re all winners” attitude.

One of the reasons that I really enjoyed The Book of Five Rings is because of the fact that it doesn’t sugar coat things. This is a guide to training hard and learning self mastery, there are no shortcuts or magic ‘hacks’ that can be preformed. As Musashi explains:

There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.

At a concise 95 pages and costing less than a dollar, The Book of Five Rings is the perfect read for any aspiring conqueror.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that traveling makes you better than anyone else. Going abroad for a holiday is neither difficult nor uncommon.”

– English Teacher X, How To Survive Living Abroad

After a late night of delivering pizzas you return home to your mother’s basement. Before loading up your favorite porn, you decide to check a forum you frequent. On the forum some guy named bonerman900 has written up a massive post about how awesome Moldova is. According to him, the country is cheap to live in and filled with slutty women who harbor overweight-middle-aged man fetish. In a frenzied rush, you pack your bag, wish your mom goodbye, and race to the airport. After your flight, you finally land in Moldova and discover two things. The first being that bonerman900 is really an autistic twelve year-old named Kevin who lives in Albuquerque, and the second being that Moldavia looks like this:

In the era when any moron with an Internet connection can dupe desperate men into expatriating to backwater nations, English Teacher X has taken it upon himself to keep would-be adventures out of harm’s way.

How To Survive Living Abroad is English Teacher X’s manifesto on staying overseas for an extended period of time. It covers everything from obtaining passports and visas to drug usage and sex. How To Survive Living Abroad is also a book I wish I’d read early in my own life, as it’s chalked full of valuable information.

Throughout the book, X dispels a lot of the myths that accompany traveling (like the idea that everything is better outside of the West). He also gives honest insights into the world of long-term travel. Although X’s tone here is more cynical than in his other works, his writing speaks the truth. I can personally vouch for most of the points that he makes. I was also glad to see that X took the time to dispel the oldest and most common travel myth of all: every foreign girl is both super hot and down to shack up with a Western guy.

As X explains:

“Contrary to popular belief, I have to say that being a foreigner in another country is NOT an automatic route to easily banging loads of hot chicks.

…

It seems to me that most guys end up banging girls who probably don’t look much better or worse than the caliber of babe they could score at home – although perhaps they do it more often, and as mentioned there are probably hotter – or at least thinner – girls to choose from.”

While traveling is a lot of fun and something that I highly recommend doing, I don’t think it’s a magic cure-all for personal problems. If you’re a loser at home, you’ll be a loser whatever country you expatriate to. Before you decide to emigrate to Rwanda in search of authentic culture and loose women, I highly recommend picking up a copy of How To Survive Living Abroad. It will save you the disappointment.

“Every other day there’s a new crusade that all Right-Thinking, Moral People must support. Crusades are popular because they allow the average moron to think he’s important.”

– Matt Forney, When Good Men Do Nothing

The following review will be the most controversial post to have ever appeared in the history of this site. Read at your own risk, you’ve been warned.

Matt Forney is by far the balliest blogger that I’ve ever read. Writing under his real name, he’s managed to incur the wrath of groups such as Anonymous, and have all of Portland declare a Fatwa on him (seriously, it was like the Salman Rushdie controversy but with hipsters substituting in for radical Muslims).

The reason that Forney is so controversial, is due to the fact that nothing is too sacred for him to satire and criticize. Feminism, Men’s Rights Activists, voting, and other bloggers are all fair game for Forney to call out and lampoon. Because of this, you will get offended by some of his writings.

Because his latest book, Trolling for a Living: The Best of Matt Forney, Volume One, is a compilation of Forney’s various blog entries, it contains a lot of controversial material. I found myself unable to objectively review this book. It’s well written and interesting, but there were several points where my own personal biases overtook my ability to objectivity critique certain articles. As such, I’m simply going to list my likes and dislikes about Trolling for a Living:

Good

• I really enjoyed Forney’s articles on masculinity, especially Why I’m Manning Up which is one of the best social critiques I’ve ever read.

• You’ve Got Bigger Problems Than the Game and How to Start a Game Blog are both hilarious satires of the pickup culture.

• Anatomy of a Hater is a fantastic article that any blogger can relate to. It also contains this gem of a passage:

“Because I’m open about my identity, I get angrier and more deranged haters than the average manospherian. I haven’t achieved my goals of being ripped and accomplished yet, but I’m working on them, a crucial step most people can’t even take. I’m doing something epic and incredible that few have the balls to attempt. If you think I’m just a fat bum with delusions of grandeur, I ask you a legit question: what do you think I should be doing? I mean, since you’re so much cooler than I am, clearly you can point me in the right direction.”

• The two essays on social interactions for introverts are insightful and useful.

• There’s some great humor throughout the entire book. Almost every article has at least one memorable joke, my favorite being:

“She’s war booty, and you’re Genghis Khan.”

• All articles, including the ones I disagreed with, are still well written and contain valid arguments.

Bad

The following complaint applies to the entire manosphere, which is a blogging collective that both Forney and myself are associated with, in essence this is a criticism of the entire genre, rather than a single work: there’s too much negativity and too many complaints about women. I personally don’t really like reading about how society is going down the tubes and how [insert group] is to be blamed. Because of this, I didn’t find the book’s articles on Men’s Rights and Feminism to be all that interesting.

Conclusion

If you like his site, which I actually do, I recommend supporting the Forney by picking up a copy of Trolling for a Living. The good far outweighs whatever nitpicks I have, and I found the majority of the book to be quite entertaining and interesting.

As an added incentive, Trolling for a Living is available for half it’s regular price from now until Sunday.