Maxi Danger Uncut

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Book Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

Book: The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort.
Rating: Average. Don't go out of your way to read it.
Review (Spoiler Alert): Ok so initially I thought this could be my kind of book, given that within the first ten pages there were numerous references to coke and high class hookers. However, after a solid start this book just got repetitive. Written by Jordan Belfort, it details his own escapades on Wall St during the '90's, while he manouvered his way into being a young multi-millionaire scamming wealthy investors and doing shonky deals with his buddies on Wall St. Wouldn't say it was a bad book, but wouldn't recommend it either, mostly because it's single faceted. Every chapter pretty much tells a slightly different version of the same story - he pulls some swifty making himself and his crew a couple of million bucks, goes out and does a lot of drugs to celebrate, hooks up with skanks, while professing how much he loves his wife and daughter. His 'banker-wanker'/'big man on campus' attitude comes through a quite a bit, most of the stories are about how he was crazier/did more drugs/blah blah blah than anyone else. Turns out that this is the first in a trilogy, the next one being 'Catching The Wolf Of Wall St', but I certainly won't be rushing out to get the sequels.

Goal Tracking - Mar '11 Status Report

Ok so the first three months of 2011 have fucking flown by.
Here's a summary table of where I'm at with my goals. Overall March was a bit rubbish, going nowhere with work life balance and contributing, however one positive is that health and fitnessing is on the up:


Goal Category Performance
Feb Mar
Writing G
Reading G -
Listening G -
Saving G ↓↓
Contributing R -
Healthing and Fitnessing R
Work/Life Balancing R -


  • Writing: Amber (from Green last month). Didn't do a lot this month. This entry plus one book review pretty boring really.
  • Reading: Green. Smashing through the books. Got through The Wolf of Wall St (as book reviewed) and Saturday (review pending). Haven't really read any 'thinking' books this year so I'm having a crack at Hamlet this month.
  • Listening: Green. Target for the year was to get to 15 gigs, kept the scoreboard ticking (up to 3) this month by going and checking out Avalanche City at the Toff. Decent gig, especially because it was free, however not a lot of people went so the vibe wasn't as good as it could've been.
  • Save: Amber (down from Amber). Have to mark this one as red, as I didn't get around to doing a rough budget this month. I still saved some cash but it's not really planned so need to work on this.
  • Contribution: Red (down from Amber). Did nothing to help my fellow man in March. Need to lift my game.
  • Health and Fitness: Amber (up from Red). Punched out around 36km's in running during March and went to the gym about 5 times this month. Much better than Feb however still room for improvement.
  • Work-Life Balance: Red, still getting crushed at work. Getting promoted isn't all it's cracked up to be, workload at the moment is massive. That said outlook this month is better, Easter's coming up so will definitely chill out for a week or two and get my relax on.