So the full title of the book is Don't Tell Me I Can't: An Ambitious Homeschooler's Journey
Where I found it
You may have noticed the incredible number of ads that Facebook dumps in your feed over the past few years. The vast majority that I see are just annoying, but every once in a while there will be a link that looks like it might be worthwhile. This was one of those instances. I clicked on a link for a story about this author in the Deseret News which is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you don't pick up the book itself, this article is also excellent and it's free to read.
Plot
This book is an autobiography about Kevin Cooper who used the name Cole Summers for his social media accounts. Kevin was born to disabled parents who opted to homeschool him. Early in their homeschooling journey, they let Kevin take the reigns and make his own decisions about what to learn. Kevin spent his schooling learning about business and approaches to thinking from powerful oligarchs like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Instead of looking through comic books, playing video games and watching TV, he spent his time reading articles and watching videos on YouTube. He used YouTube to learn about things and promptly put those things to use. He started farming rabbits and making $1,000.00 per month when he was 7 years old. He bought a 350 acre ranch when he was 9 and went on to flip a house. At age 14 Kevin had a plan to slow the environmental disaster developing in his part of the world.
There's a certain idealism that comes with youth and inexperience. The most famous example of this that I'm familiar with is Greta Thunberg who became famous in her teens for challenging political leaders to pass legislation to improve our environment. I'm much more impressed by the youths who decided to fix environmental problems themselves. Kids like Kevin Cooper and Boyan Slat who founded The Ocean Cleanup.
Favorite parts
It's often noted that experience is the best way to learn things. In this book Kevin points out the wisdom of learning from others experiences before suffering the personal consequences of poor decisions.
Rating 5/5 stars
I would highly recommend picking up this book. It's a quick and easy page turner. I think that I finished it in just 2 or 3 hours. Before I was able to finish my wife asked me to start reading out loud, so I read the last few chapters out loud.
I am hoping to share plenty of book reviews. What sort of information do you like to see included in book reviews? I’m hoping to keep them fairly short and sweet. What do you think of my format for this post?
I love reading, but don't completely love writing. That being said I would like to improve my writing. If you have any recommendations for ways to improve my posts, please share them. I hope this post has been helpful and informative. Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows.
Lastly, I'm hoping that this book club will be interactive. I would love to hear your comments and considerations if you happen upon a review for something that you've read yourself. I'll try to do the same for you when I stumble onto a book review for something that I've already read.