I’ve spent just over a year in New York City up to this point. Moving here was a big deal for me. I’d lived in or around larger cities like Austin or Atlanta before, but when you’re a small town Texas kid that comes from a town of 400 people, moving to NYC is a pretty big deal.

Many people who are far better at stringing words into sentences than I am have written about New York City, so I won’t bother to write a love letter to the city. Though, I do feel it’s deserving of one. And at the same time, I feel that New York City is deserving of some of the most visceral hate mail imaginable.

2017 was a mixed year of learning and consuming content for me. I put a more concentrated effort into consuming audio content than ever before since living in NYC lends itself to that. I still don’t know if I retain audio information as well as reading it (my hunch is I don’t) but it was fun to play with.

It’s been a little while since I last published a reading romp to update the world on the books that I’m reading for a few reasons. Primarily because I’m juggling a couple of projects right now, so there’s less time to write. Which is really just a prioritization problem on my end. Also, I’ve been consuming more information audibly as of late.

That’s not to say I’ve crossed over to the dark side and listen to audiobooks. I’ve spent quite a bit of time listening to and marinating on one of my favorite people in the world, Dr. Jordan B Peterson. The info is incredibly heavy and requires a lot of mental work. And on top of that, I’ve been digging into some of the older episodes of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, and since each episode takes about 4-5 hours, that’s quite a bit of time that would otherwise be spent reading.

However, if you know one thing about me, you know that I’m a reader. And that’s something I won’t ever stop doing. And looking back on the last two months, I read quite a bit more than I thought. Especially about heavy topics like morality, even though going with a theme like that wasn’t a conscious choice. So, without further ado, here’s the list.

I used to hate bodyweight workouts. This is totally me admitting that I was a fitness snob for awhile, and I still am in some respects. But for a very long time I really just hated the idea of bodyweight workouts. I felt like they were pointless and didn’t do any good whatsoever.

Last week I published a big article about how to melt fat without counting calories, which is something that clearly quite a few people enjoyed since the article got shared around a couple of hundred times and plenty of you sent me messages about it.

But not one to leave all of my tracking brethren out in the dark, I wanted to get something together for those of you who like to get all granular and play macro tetris. And that’s exactly what we’re doing today. Except this is all about helping you learn exactly how many calories you should be eating.

The person responsible for the first three books on this months list is my friend Aadam Ali from physiqonomics.com. He was in New York City for the better part of 2 and a half months, which meant that we got to hang out a ton and do what we normally do on the Internet. Which is primarily talk about books.

Aadam had bought these three and I was determined to read them before he left and had to take them to London. Though I actually didn’t finish the Sinclair Lewis book in time and sneakily kept it. Sorry, Aadam.

Okay, onto the books.

I’m a big fan of calorie counting. There’s no doubt about that. I talk about it in a number of sites that I write for, and I extoll the virtues of counting to my clients all the time.

When you work in the fitness industry there are typically swing periods, just like any other business. For some businesses, these swing periods are seemingly unexplainable. In the world of fitness it’s pretty damn obvious.

Much like the title says, this is the books that I’ve read in the months of January and February. In the interest of full disclosure, I admittedly forgot all about publishing my January reading list. I’d like to blame moving to New York City, being busy with work, and getting wrapped up in the whirlwind that is this great beast of a city. But really, I just forgot.

Oh well. We’re here now. And for those of you who care about these things, 2017 is the year of great fiction. Why? Well, because I think that stories hold all of the answers that we consistently find ourselves searching for throughout history.

We can read all the self-help we want, but typically the greatest truths of the world are contained within a story. It shouldn’t seem like a huge coincidence that we have legitimately evolved to accept and understand information more effectively and efficiently when presented in story format. Plus stories are just far more entertaining and make you a more interesting person.

Because let’s be real, you’d much rather hang out with someone who can talk about Harry Potter vs. The Secret.

Alright, enough is enough. Here’s the list.

On July 21st in 2007 I sat in a park in a wealthy Dallas suburb watching a Harry Potter movie. It was almost like being at a drive-in theater, except me and the 4,000 other people sitting in the lawn didn’t care about the actual movie. It wasn’t the main event of the evening.