Are you looking for a practical how-to, what’s-it-like guide to becoming a rich entrepreneur, written by an expert and eccentric? If so, Felix Dennis’s How To Get Rich is probably for you.

I discovered his book through an excerpt published by the Times Online and decided to give it a try. Though I really liked his writing style — direct, bold, and funny in a self-effacing way– truth be told, with a title like “How To Get Rich”, I lowered my expectations a bit in case it turned out to be the usual drivel you usually find in the Business Profiles section of a bookstore. You know, the 18-point font, double-spaced, full-of-motivating-platitudes stuff that you get when flipping through Trump and Kiyosaki or worse. Those books have their use, but in general, once you’ve read one, the next one isn’t going to be much different. (Actually, Dennis has some pretty harsh words for all the authors out there who write how-to-get-rich books without actually having done so, except by selling copies of their how-to books!)

Enter Felix Dennis, a British publishing mogul who loves writing poems, outstanding wines, and telling it like it is. If you’ve never heard of him, he started Dennis Publishing in 1974, hit it big by publishing magazines related to the PC revolution back when no one else thought it would last, and nowadays publishes some of the most successful men’s lifestyle magzines in the US, like Maxim, Stuff, and Blender. By his own estimation, he’s worth about $400-$900M before tax.

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Bet you’ve been wondering what happened to this site? The simple answer: work. My new job takes up an inordinate amount of time (I worked most of this weekend), but I’m hoping that now that I’m into my 3rd week, I’ll have enough discipline to keep this site up and refreshed a couple of times a week while maintaining a full-time job.

So….the new job. It’s really different from my previous one in many ways. There’s one big downside, the time it requires, but that’s about it. I never thought I’d say this about a corporate job, but I work with some incredibly efficient and capable people in my group. (Not to mention that their Excel skills are downright scary.) The good thing about this is that things get done really quickly, and surprisingly, I find there’s no need to nag, remind, and micromanage projects or people. You ask for information via email, and people respond almost immediately with exactly what you asked for. But the downside is that there’s not much room for improvement in terms of just “working smarter”.

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