Educated by Tara Westover

One of the more searing memoirs I’ve read. Westover grew up in a fundamental religious and disturbingly abusive home. Her story begins in childhood, prevented from attending school, overcoming lack of education to attend Brigham Young University, Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, eventually earning a PhD. Courage and curiosity are words that come to mind in light of a painful childhood. With self-awareness, Westover shows the need for both as she discovers how to create a more fulfilling life.

Letter to the Father by Franz Kafka

As the story goes, while Franz Kafka and his father had been estranged, Franz penned a letter to his father to reach out. He then gave the letter to his mother to deliver to his father. Instead, she returned the letter to the author rather than grant the wish of her son. Kafka’s letter is an attempt to find some recognition and common ground with his narcissistic father. Unfortunately, Franz died five years later. It is intensely heartbreaking and a worthwhile read for anyone who has travelled through the suffering of such a relationship.

Draft No. 4 by John McPhee

If you’ve heard of McPhee, you already know he’s a magician with words. If you haven’t, this is the perfect book to start with as it does provide a nice overview of his work. McPhee is a professor of journalism at Princeton, for the past 50 years, and a Pulitzer Prize winning author of narrative nonfiction. This particular book is a series of essays that details his writing process and wonderfully weaves in relational anecdotes, travels, and general research from his past writings. If you are interested in reading about the writing process, this book, next to Bird by Bird and The War of Art, would be right at the top for me.

Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger

I put this book off far too long considering how much I enjoyed it. Arnold chronicles his childhood and his life as a bodybuilder, actor, and governor of California and shares his successes and failures alike as a guide for living with purpose and being useful to ourselves and others. What you might not know about him is the struggle he went through early in life and what he had to overcome to become who he is. It’s even better than you think. I also watched his Netflix docuseries, “Arnold,” also fantastic.

Inward and Clarity & Connection by Yung Pueblo

I characterize Yung Pueblo’s writing as self-healing and creating better relationships through a collection of poetry. While you can read his work straight through, it asks for a more meditative and reflective experience. This is really what makes his writing so great. His prose, simple and short, leaves a lot to think on. I liked both books equally and can’t recommend one over the other.

As always, thank you for reading. I hope you will read whichever of these books grabs your attention.

If you have any recommendations on similar topics, feel free to leave a comment or simply hit reply.

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I had no idea who Betty Ong was until an hour ago. During a phone conversation with a friend, I looked her up and realized her birthday is today. Betty was an airline attendant on Flight 11 and happened to be the first person to notify American Airlines operations that her flight had been hijacked. Flight 11 was the first plane to strike during the September 11^th attacks.

In Betty’s early life, she was held at gunpoint during an armed robbery at her family’s beef jerky factory. And then in 1987, she witnessed a car hit by a speeding truck. The car proceeded to roll over twice. She ran to the vehicle and found a woman who she had previously met just a month before. In these respective situations, her actions had been described as “never panicked,” by her family, and “a miracle,” by the survivor from the car wreck.

As I’m furiously scrambling to put something on a piece of a paper, I’m faced with the realization that there is no real way to convey who this person is short of telling you to spend time reading about her. There are names worth remembering and stories worth telling. We tend to forget the people that have real importance and remember the names and stories that aren’t justifiably worth mentioning. Sadly, Betty Ong will get few mentions on social media or in the news today. Not because nobody cares, but because we don’t remember. Maybe it’s too painful to remember. Stories like this are hard to hear and harder to find. The kind that are gut wrenching. Shedding tears seems to be the only way to read or listen to such a story. And you become grateful this person lived, despite never knowing them.

Ong spent 23 minutes on the phone inside of a capsule, existing closer to death every minute. 23 minutes. She did everything she could in those minutes. Betty relayed information, calmly and professionally, as it was described by the operator on the other end of that line. (If you can stomach it, I would encourage you to read the transcript here.) It didn’t save her life, but maybe it saved someone else’s life. Maybe it prevented another plane from entering airspace that had hijackers aboard.

The vast majority of us are not in such high stakes situations in life, but at least, while we scroll through our world, it’s worth understanding who people can become and what stories are worth remembering. It’s because she died that we can share her story, as sad as it is. But death should not get in the way of finding what good exists in the people around us or in the people we don’t even know.

Regret is a theme we as people are not particularly keen on studying because of the inherent pain that is attached. You are more likely to hear the blind expression, “No Regrets!” (which is horrible advice) instead of having a sober conversation with a friend about an actual regret and a subsequent action to take. Emily Dickinson was a masterful poet, her two favorite subjects being death and pain. “Remorse—is Memory—Awake” is not necessarily one of Dickinson’s more widespread popular poems (although it is one of my favorites), but it is a poem that shows how powerful the pain of regret is:

Remorse—is Memory—awake—
Her Parties all astir—
A Presence of Departed Acts—
At window—and at Door—

Its Past—set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match—
Perusal—to facilitate—
And help Belief to stretch—

Remorse is cureless—the Disease
Not even God—can heal—
For 'tis His institution—and
The Adequate of Hell—

Our imperfection is why regret exists. Without mistakes, regret would have no life force. The reality is regret is a living, growing entity in our minds. As we see in Dickinson’s first stanza, it is not one we live down. “Her Parties all astir—” is beautiful imagery of a seductive yet uninviting party we throw for ourselves that is “awake,” or is persistent and unending. Much like an actual party is seductive, we do tend to wake up with a bad hangover. Hence why regret often accompanies an actual hangover. Our “Departed Acts,” though they are past mistakes, continue to influence our thoughts. Until we make amends in some form, we allow our past mistakes to pile up and overwhelm us.

The second stanza is a beautiful act of self-examination. “Its Past—set down before the Soul / And lighted with a Match—” is powerful reverb, or we could say an echo of how our “Soul” can transmute the “Past” into a more useful form. Implied by Dickinson is the process of self-examination leading to our growth of a better self. The “Match” acting as a spark towards “Belief” in a better self.

What feels like an uplifting second stanza, our growth through examination of our souls, turns sharply to the divine’s creation of this wretched and hopeless “Disease” called regret. “His institution” is a marker of our folly, which reminds me of the lines from Homer’s Odyssey:

This is absurd,
that mortals blame the gods! They say we cause
their suffering, but they themselves increase it
by folly.

-Book 1, Lines 32-35, Emily Wilson translation

Our propensity to repeat these mistakes becomes what Dickinson calls “The Adequate of Hell—,” or we might say those that bury themselves in their own version of hell. Whether the Biblical hell or the Inferno of Dante is in fact reality, we can at least say that us humans are impeccably good at living inside our own hellish landscapes because of our actions.

Emily Dickinson likely wrote this poem in the 1860s when very little was known about psychology, especially regret or remorse. Any one of us could write a poem or an essay on regret today and we have not only our own experience to draw from, but countless psychology texts on the subject depending on how deep of a dive we want to make. Dickinson, I surmise, is drawing singularly from her own experience, which is what makes her poetry so impressive. For another point of reference, William James, the father of American psychology, did not become a Harvard professor until the 1870’s. His most prominent text on psychology was not released until after Dickinson’s death.

Another interesting point, today’s view between regret and remorse is thought by some to have differing qualities. Although they are generally the same concept, some view us humans as capable of regret with things that happen outside of our control. Whereas remorse is essentially regret with responsibility attached to it. From a philosophical perspective, I question our ability to feel regret for much of anything outside of our control. Regret exists predominately because of an action we took, or more likely an action we didn’t take. In either case, it was our decision that accounts for our regret.

If one of the reasons we read poetry is to better communicate with ourselves, then Emily Dickinson is one of the best we should seek to understand. Reading a poem like “Remorse” helps us to discover a more complete voice.

I will have more on regret in a future post.

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Ulysses (Odysseus in ancient Greek) has been a part of our literary world since Homer’s Odyssey and carried forward into Dante’s Inferno and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, among others. Even in our modern world we meet Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, who is the modern day version. Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses” is a graceful reading, yet we are still filled with the same questions as to what kind of hero Ulysses really is.

Tennyson wrote this poem shortly after the death of his closest friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. What we can gather is not just a take on the extraordinarily complex nature of Ulysses, Tennyson’s writing is also an elegy—a lot of his best poetry happens to be elegies—and simultaneously pushes the reader to acceptance of life’s hardships and strive forward. But not before Ulysses’ contradictory monologue starts us on a journey through his own self-importance and malaise. The opening of “Ulysses” paints a bleak picture of life as the king of Ithaca:

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

These first five lines are beautifully written and provide a deep view into his own discontent with life that is his experience: the Ithacans who “know not me.” An aging Penelope, who he leaves at any chance for adventure. And finally the desire to “mete and dole / Unequal laws” without what seems to be any desire to improve them. (Sounds like a world at least most of us are familiar with.) The hero’s fixation on his own restlessness and boredom is a powerful image and one that I think is particularly relatable to men as they age where regret festers. As Ulysses continues with his monologue, there are still layers to uncover, no matter the judgments we might make.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

One thing we love about literary characters is our self-identification with heroes. This is handed to us on a silver platter to grasp here. With any literary version of Ulysses we might read, this is generally the case. “I am become a name / For always roaming with a hungry heart / Much have I seen and known,” feels like it is piercing the reader with self-importance, but it also feels expected from the Ulysses we know. What follows paints a more complex picture than an egoistical hero.

“I am part of all that I have met” is really an interesting line given to us by the quester. Emphasizing the double “I” will bring out the egoist, but it is really the quester telling the tale and the “all” emphasizes how experience and his voyages have shaped him. We see this play out through the rest of this stanza as we see Ulysses attempting to fight off old age. “As tho’ to breathe were life!” is a firm rejection of old age begetting wisdom and stillness. Now moving forward into a final voyage for Ulysses.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

The penultimate stanza is rather unconvincing of his love for Telemachus. His son’s virtue is something he shuns. It feels like a sour projection of his own inability to enjoy stillness. “He works his work, I mine” is the proverbial nail in the coffin of what contents him to “leave the sceptre and the isle” to his son and sends him on his final voyage. This is actually comfort to the reader.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The final stanza clearly expresses the most loving gaze from Ulysses. “Death closes all” is not only Ulysses’ forecast of how this final voyage will end and who he would rather die with, but an expression of Tennyson’s grief for his friend. The final line, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” reflects Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, “And courage never to submit or yield / And what is else not to be overcome?” While we may have our own conflicting views of Ulysses and his heroism, Tennyson’s writing is unmistakably extraordinary.

Great poetry is not something we should take for granted as there are profound lessons to be learned and a beautiful way for us to communicate it to ourselves. As Harold Bloom writes in How to Read and Why, “Poems can help us to speak to ourselves more clearly and more fully, and to overhear that speaking… We speak to an otherness in ourselves, or to what may be best and oldest in ourselves. We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strange than otherwise we could hope to find.” Being content with solitude and stillness are in fact great lessons to be learned from “Ulysses” and is there a better form of living to speak to ourself and find our own full, strange self?

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to read. If you have been forwarded this or have randomly stumbled across it, please feel free to subscribe below.

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During the Civil War, as this particular legend goes, General Robert E. Lee was marching his troops through a Confederate occupied Frederick, Maryland. Confederate General Stonewall Jackson arrived shortly behind Lee. As he and his troops marched through town, Jackson ordered all Union flags to be pulled down. Until finally he arrived at the house of devout Unionist, Barbara Fritchie, who had hung a Union flag from her attic window. Jackson ordered the flag to be shot. And so it happened. As the flag fell, Fritchie opened her window, poked her head out and picked up the flag. She proudly held the symbol of freedom and responded with force, “shoot if you must this old gray head, but spare your country’s flag.” Fritchie was 95 years old at the time.

Details of this interaction are disputed as to what actually conspired, especially the likelihood of Stonewall Jackson being present in Frederick at this particular time. But whether the interaction is only half true or even real doesn’t bear much importance. Legends of this nature are powerful battle cries against the immoral and become immortal. Barbara Fritchie was a real person. In fact, if you found yourself in Frederick, Maryland today, the home where she lived has been rebuilt, as it was, and converted into a bed & breakfast where you may choose to stay overnight.

The voice of Barbara Fritchie was forever immortalized in John Greenleaf Whittier’s famous poem “Barbara Frietchie” (Frietchie was another way to spell her name).

“Barbara Frietchie” by John Greenleaf Whittier

Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep,

Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall,—

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced: the old flag met his sight.

“Halt!”— the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
“Fire!”— out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman’s deed and word:

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.

Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;

And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!

Today, September 7th, marks the anniversary of John Greenleaf Whittier’s death.

Whittier was not just a remarkable poet, he was a force for moral good; he was a voice of freedom through the abolition of slavery. When you think of great poets during the Civil War, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are generally the first that come to mind. But Whittier’s war time writing was as powerful, if not more so. Whittier spent 30 years of his life as a vociferous opponent of slavery; he became one of the more influential voices. Giving up his first job as a newspaper editor due to ill health, he started to devote himself to his own writing in the 1830’s. Whittier ultimately sacrificed his own desire to be a politician for a cause that was extremely unpopular in the 1830s. Some of his most compelling work was written in this 30 year period including “Ichabod,” which is an incredible poem in response to the defection of a Massachusetts Senator from abolitionist to supporter of the South prior to the Civil War.

“Barbara Frietchie” starts as a serene, quiet visual over the first nine lines, but quickly transforms into a tormented town by the realities of war. You need not read far past the “meadows rich with corn” or “orchards… fruited deep” or the fair “garden of the Lord.” This sounds like an idillic place you want to be. Until Lee arrives in the fifth couplet and you are forced to contend with the potential fate of all who live in a peaceful place. We are quickly introduced to Barbara, “bravest of all in Frederick town,” the sharp as a tack, intransigent person we all have been around before. Rustling for the flag to hang in her window “to show that one heart was loyal yet.” But soon comes Stonewall Jackson to wreck her day.

Stonewall gives the order and then the blast. “It shivered the window, pane and sash; / It rent the banner with seam and gash”. Barbara grabs the “silken scarf” and releases words that force Stonewall to reckon with his “nobler nature.” What concludes in the last ten couplets is a victory for the virtuous and what we might presume as some admiration from Stonewall Jackson for the person willing to not be swayed by a “rebel horde” with guns. “Let a tear / Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier” finding its way into “Peace and order and beauty draw / Round thy symbol of light and law;”.

Whittier’s poem was published in October of 1863, a little over a year after the event in Frederick, Maryland. In the time between the event and the poems publishing, both Barbara Fritchie and Stonewall Jackson died.

Again, we don’t know what of this story is real or not. But much like any great legend, myth, fable, or Biblical parable, there is basis for the story. Courage, not giving into oppression, and, most importantly, a heroic wont to maintain character in the face of death are traits that a lot of people fall short of on a day-to-day basis—I certainly have my moments. Not Barbara Fritchie. Not the 95 year old with an iron will.

After John Greenleaf Whittier’s death on September 7, 1892, Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of Whittier’s co-founders of The Atlantic honored Whittier in verse (full eulogy linked):

      Death reaches not a spirit such as thine, —
      It can but steal the robe that hid thy wings;
      Though thy warm breathing presence we resign,
      Still in our hearts its loving semblance clings.

      Peaceful thy message, yet for struggling right, —
      When Slavery’s gauntlet in our face was flung, —
      While timid weaklings watched the dubious flight
      No herald’s challenge more defiant rung.
      ...
      In the brave records of our earlier time
      A hero’s deed thy generous soul inspired,
      And many a legend, told in ringing rhyme,
      The youthful soul with high resolve has fired.

You can read a poem such as this without the slightest clue of how rich the background story is. Before this week, I had read this poem multiple times, but I had no idea who Barbara Fritchie was and I knew very little of John Greenleaf Whittier’s life other than him being one of the more powerful abolitionists of slavery prior to and during the Civil War. History is something to be revered and studied. Not cast aside as delusion that times are different now. We are more than capable of making the same mistakes twice.

Sources:

Poetry Foundation - John Greenleaf Whittier bio

"Barbara Frietchie" by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Atlantic - In Memory of John Greenleaf Whittier by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Barbara Fritchie bio and the history of Whittier's poem

Library of Congress - Robert E. Lee bio

Britannica - Robert E. Lee's Maryland campaign

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“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all of the sorrows of familial and passional life… Reading well is best pursued as an implicit discipline; finally there is no method but yourself, when your self has been fully molded.” -Harold Bloom

The great editor and the great literary critic have one thing in common, they are both great readers. For Robert Gottlieb and Harold Bloom, this is particularly the case. Their breadth of worked crossed into each other’s arenas. The two New Yorkers, born a year apart, were both authors and editors and both central figures of the modern literature era.

Robert Gottlieb, the famed editor of Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker, edited books by John le Carré, Joseph Heller, and Doris Lessing. Toni Morrison and Chaim Potok. Robert Caro, Bill Clinton, and Bob Dylan. John Cheever, Salman Rushdie, and Ray Bradbury. If only to name a few. Gottlieb was not fond of writing, though somehow still managed to write eight books. As I started to draft this post last week, Robert Gottlieb was still alive. But the luck of the world was painted black, as he died last week.1 The literary world lost an ardent supporter and champion of the great world of books and we are better for his contribution and indefatigable work ethic.

For much of Harold Bloom’s professional career, he was a professor of the Yale English Department. He would also teach at New York University while he maintained his Yale teaching post. However, he is most well-known for his profound literary criticism that still reverberates through the literary world. Bloom loved books, probably more than you or I love anything. He was a devotee to the idea of the Western canon, or a series of cultural classics viewed as must-read books.23 He also wrote more than 50 books and edited hundreds more. Bloom was an enthusiast of memorizing and reciting poetry including all of Shakespeare’s sonnets and the entirety of Milton’s Paradise Lost. His level of enthusiasm to bring his excitement of reading to others transpired by teaching people how to read and understand that there is no single way to read any type of writing. Bloom died in 2019.4

Their literary accomplishments are no small feat. The idea of reading deeply and broadly are what these two championed and what follows is a thinking of why we read and how they achieved this level of consciousness.

There are many reasons we read, but some, I believe, are more merited than others. Reading “as an implicit discipline,” as Harold Bloom writes in How to Read and Why,5 is the most important habit of reading. But why do we read?

Reading is not only a solitary pursuit, but it is self-invested and self-interested. It is the basis of our development of self. This all sounds quite selfish; I assure you it is, as we do this not as a public service but of our own desire of self-improvement. You may take a moralistic approach by reading for others (or what others want you to read), but you will find a lack of enthusiasm in your motivation to read. It is through this, for lack of a better word, selfishness that we can become better people. As Bloom adds, “if you become an authentic reader, then the response to your labors will confirm you as an illumination to others.” Not all selfish acts are evil as some lead to betterment of self, which in turn helps us understand each other.

As we read, we come to understand characters, which are variations of people. While some writer’s imaginations are remarkable, the basis of characters is what we know about people. Our understanding is limited to our own experience and that experience may not be the best marker. Reading to know more people, in fact, becomes a more interesting approach to reading a novel, for example. We become more invested in the characters and read to understand their being rather than for the plot alone. In his memoir, Avid Reader,6 Robert Gottlieb describes how he viewed reading: “From the start, words were more real to me than real life, and certainly more interesting.” While I am making my own assessment as to what his words encompass, reading through his memoir, he was a studier of people and it stands to reason that it is hard to understand humans as we hide parts of ourselves. We can find a deeper understanding of people through books than without.

Finally, you may decide the educational merit of reading is worthy. This, however, implies a blind acceptance of the message the writer is trying to convey. Ultimately, we want to read to be challenged, both intellectually and philosophically. Much like we exercise to challenge our mental fortitude and physical bodies. As Bloom writes, “One of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change, and the final change alas is universal.” The universal being death. Time being the only thing that stands between us and our eventual extinction of self. We should read to prepare ourselves for death just as we should read to understand how to best use our time, which are one in the same.

Gottlieb describes reading as “like breathing.” And so is this wondrous act that can shape our lives in a myriad of ways that few activities can. What follows is a deeper dive into each of these reasons of why.

Reading as Education

Consistently, there is one educational realization I come to with reading and that is how little I know. I don’t say this as a humble anecdote. I could stand to be slightly less conceited. It’s how little all of us collectively know and understand about the world we live in. Wisdom is a nice philosophical concept, and it is important, but there is some fallacy to the idea that we can attain this fleeting yet undefinable thing. Fleeting because we continuously find new information that proves our held beliefs wrong. Undefinable because what we categorize as wisdom are not things we all agree with.

Our hard-nosed ideologies that we believe as true wisdom, we continue to disagree and fight verbal and physical wars over. This includes religious views, philosophical views, political views, economic views, educational views, etc. This is the forum in which we cohabitate. If we had a true sense of what is real versus what is dictated to us by the powerful, we would not continue to fall for the same traps. If we take a step back, we can agree, as an understanding, that wisdom is the grasp of both education and experience. This definition of wisdom is given to us by the dictionary. However, our view of wisdom coincides and is weighed down by our own dogma. This isn’t a recent phenomenon; the light is cast throughout history. We only have to look at our bigotry to see how our dogmatic views have shaped history. Wisdom is not an established act in the moment, but a rearview mirror of understanding.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” This is the same Thomas Jefferson that owned slaves (and even fathered children with one of them)7 and would eventually change his views away from Christianity,8 as many people continue to be surprised to hear since some are adamant that the United States was founded only by Christians. This is not an effort to ridicule who he was, what he did, or what his beliefs were. It is simply an illustration that we are all almost certainly wrong about something and there is more life to challenging our beliefs than with haphazardly accepting them as truth.

If you choose to seek education, I believe the most honest approach is in understanding what those outside of your own limited range of experience hold true, which in turn will help us make a real assessment of what we actually believe. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird,9 Atticus Finch tells his daughter, Scout, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” Otherwise, your blind acceptance of what you believe to be true will never hold the water from where it came. Reading history, philosophy, and religious texts (not just our own) becomes especially important.

Reading in Solitude

With so many distractions living inside and outside of us, I like to refer to Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, who once said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”10 I will admit that I like my solitude a little too much. Some people refuse solitude out of fear of being alone with his or her thoughts. So, what do we do? We reach for distractions: phones, television, alcohol, drugs, porn, video games, food, social media, etc. For me, it has been my phone lately. I can find whatever distraction I want on it. Crossword puzzles and social media especially. These may seem harmless, but I don’t believe in the harmless nature of addictive distractions. Our drugs get progressively worse as we age into them.

Fearing our voice renders us incapable of understanding our mind. Without an understanding of our mind, we can’t expect to be of any use to another person. The less we understand how our mind operates and the less willing we are to engage in solitude, the less we will know who we are, what we are made of, and the world we inhabit. Solitude is maligned by some as isolated and reclusive, but this practice leads to a brighter discovery of the world. If you cannot be alone with your thoughts, then you cannot properly adhere to the path that is a requirement of reading well. Your relationship to everything taking place outside of your inner being becomes too much of a deterrent to reveal a life of improvement.

Unfortunately, our current culture has reduced this practice to just the occasional, as needed approach. This is problematic because we see less people participating in real thinking through reading and prefer the fast-paced, bloody 24-hour news cycle. Again, I will reference this, “reading as an implicit discipline.” It is about discipline and our willingness for the slow, methodical approach to what is important. The fast, dopamine-laced approach wins our brain time and time again.

Another way we lack discipline is in the stories we tell ourselves. The psychotherapist and author, Lori Gottlieb, describes this in her TED talk as, “the way we narrate our lives, shapes what they become.”11 We narrate our lives by how we communicate with ourselves. One question is, how complete is our information (or, what are we allowing to be withheld from ourselves)? A second question is, are we giving ourselves adequate distraction-free time to understand the entire story? And a third question, and perhaps the most important, are we willing to do what is necessary to understand the complete version of our story?

These questions do not evade the act of reading. Reading is necessary to understand ourselves and, in turn, other people. And without adequate time of solitude, we cannot possibly hope to understand why we tell ourselves the stories that we do. Reading poetry is a wonderful tool in learning how to communicate with ourselves, as Bloom shares.

Reading to Know More People

Books not only help us learn how and why to think and challenge our own mind, but they help us understand people. As Bloom wrote, “you can know, intimately, only a very few people and perhaps you never know them at all.” People are not shy of hiding who they really are, what they really think, and why they really believe what they do. Perhaps they don’t even know. Or, maybe they believe in their own false narratives that aren’t serving them. We all have these narratives.

Writers write to think, and thinking is, if nothing else, an act of discovery. Great novels and plays have something in common: their literary characters are rich and they grow through discovery of their own being. They can also despair into their own hatred. Both sides form a basis of reading as it helps to understand how circumstance leads to the road taken. Cormac McCarthy, who sadly passed away last week, penned this beautiful dialogue between a man and his son in his haunting novel, The Road:12

--You have to carry the fire.

--I don’t know how to.

--Yes you do.

--Is it real? The fire?

--Yes it is.

--Where is it? I don’t know where it is.

--Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.

The Road is the horrific story of a dystopian world full of cannibal bandits destroying all that is sacred. The story revolves around the man and his son’s journey through this world. This is the typical profound darkness and beauty of McCarthy’s writing. The fire is a symbol for humanity. While I could go on for paragraphs about “the fire,” this is about the boy’s discovery of who he is and the kind of person he is becoming in an ugly world. As beautifully orchestrated as the plot is, it’s the character development that makes this novel what it is.

Reading for plot, especially when reading fiction, can be entertaining, but reading to understand the people inside and what they are about is a vastly more interesting exercise. We come to understand how we fit into this world. I believe it also helps us to have richer relationships when we do step out of solitude and understand the person sitting next to or across from us.

Bloom believed that Shakespeare’s plays and Cervantes’ Don Quixote were the supreme entities in character formation and how we understand people.

Reading Against Time

Like me, you have probably heard the same excuses against reading. “I don’t have enough time,” or, “it’s just so boring.” If you are one to embody such excuses, then I question whether you have actually tried. The reason you think it’s boring is because it’s challenging your brain in a way that hasn’t been challenged. The reason you don’t have time is because you make no effort. Every human has the same 24-hour period to work with. And yet there are people who find a way to read more than one hundred books per year despite having a job, spouse, and kids. The problem isn’t that there is no time. The problem is we waste it frivolously and it’s easier to make the excuse of time than it is to swallow our ego and accept that we just don’t care enough.

The word leisure originated from the Latin word schola, which means school. In Ancient Greece, this did not literally mean attending school, not as we think of it today anyway. In those days they used it to contemplate a higher purpose of the mind. They would spend time in activities like philosophical conversation, reading, playing sports, playing music, and creating art.1314 Time permitted away from work was not used to crack a beer and watch the game on Sunday. I’m not suggesting you can’t watch the game, but it’s rarely just one game. It is the beginning of a lifestyle that turns into mindless negligence as we become more deeply entrenched.

Seneca, the Stoic philosopher spent much of his leisure time writing letters. One such letter is an essay titled “On the Shortness of Life,”15 in which Seneca writes, "No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly… You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that." There is urgency here. We are guaranteed nothing. As the clock ticks, we have the option and ability to put our mind and time to better use. We see our negligence as pleasure, but we are left with nothing to show for it. Real pleasure exists in the difficult. We are better for destroying our ignorance at home.

Robert Gottlieb was a passionate reader. As an editor, he made reading his life. But he disliked the difficulty of writing despite having written eight books. He wrote this about his reluctance, “The most horrible part was an almost unyielding resistance to sitting down at my typewriter—I could spend days avoiding it, while beating myself up for my recalcitrance. My only satisfaction was in having completed a difficult job.” Difficulty makes the work worthy of our time. Whether it’s reading or writing. Exercise or maintaining proper diet. Meditating or journaling. It is sober discipline. And it is necessary to live a fulfilling life.

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Writing is a lonely endeavor, but with a romantic air. The ability to sit alone with our thoughts is one of the most underrated activities we have available to us humans. For some, this is daunting—a looming of emotional bereft. Our thoughts get jumbled. Our words crossed. But there is a way through. When you dwell inside yourself and allow your thoughts to flow onto a piece of paper like a river cascading through the stones of a riverbed, you find who you are. You discover something about yourself and the world that you only sensed existed. You are becoming. You are living through your words. Allowing your thoughts to breathe all you have caged within.

Writing is hard. It is for me anyway. Words have meaning. Punctuation has meaning. The improbable perfection that is sought for in writing is what makes this work so brilliantly seductive and simultaneously painstaking. It is a great paradox: You find something you love only to realize how incredibly difficult it is. We get the feeling that once we find what we truly love, it will come easy to us. But this is life. It is through this type of pain that we find the best we have to give.

A writer writes because there is a truth she longs to hear. A story that doesn’t exist in a form she finds pleasing. I’ve had nights where I’ve woken out of a dream to grab my phone and type paragraph upon paragraph so I wouldn’t lose the thought that will disappear into a void if I don’t record it right then. You have no choice but to accept this. It is the path chosen. Otherwise, you find that these intricate, tiny thoughts will cease and you are left puzzled, "why, oh why, can I not remember the words that once pierced my mind?" This may sound dramatic, but it’s as if a trap door to your mind has been pulled, emptying out its contents.

I’ve spent hours trying to conjure up a broken thought that I chose not to record because I knew I would remember it at some later time, only to find that mystical presence will no longer return. It has been subconsciously wished away from existence. This is the art of noticing. Pausing to take in and ask yourself, "what is the meaning of this?" Without this simple act, we deny ourselves the pleasure of discovery. We deny our curiosities. Curiosity and discovery are the only things we have to fight away the demons of mind atrophy.

Our world is dangerous in this regard. Distraction reduces our attention to nothing more than a speck of dust. The working mind fills with an unquenchable sensation of wonder. Without the working mind, we can’t see life beyond the screen that sits in front of us; that screen will eat up our existence like a clock accelerating its way through time. We can attempt to turn back the clock, but it will always tick away until the end of our being.

If we start to think of time as a palette, it is imperative we find the right palette so we can paint the picture we want to see. By finding the right palette, we show meaning in existence. This palette will change over time, but what never changes is our need to use time in the best way we can. Otherwise, our being is decayed by the very seconds we waste.

Writing and researching are the closest things I have to pausing time. I start to appreciate my thoughts existing in a different realm than I am living. This realm is history. A history of being. A history of life. A history of those who have come before. And translating history into my own potential being. It is a form of peace; a painful peace of sorts. This peace flows into a rhythm and the rhythm becomes a vessel that carries our lifeblood. The moment I find this flow is the moment I realize there is nothing else I am meant to do on this earth. Words matter.

This post was in part inspired by a documentary about Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb. Caro is one of the great historian biographers, not just of our time, but in history. Gottlieb is one of the greatest editors in history with way too many major titles to list off here. This is one of the more phenomenal partnerships between writer and editor that exists and it’s been going now for 50+ years. The documentary is called Turn Every Page. I enjoyed it so much I watched it back-to-back days and I highly recommend it.

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The funny thing I’ve realized, the less writing I finish and put out into the world, the more likely I am to demand perfection out of my writing. Perfection doesn’t exist, but it’s totally backwards thinking anyway. It takes consistent practice to get better at writing, like any form of art. Or we could just say like any form of work, exercise, or anything that is beneficial to us.

So where does this put me now? Sitting here with a couple months of drafts and it's unlikely I'll finish most of it. I believe there is a moment when the muse is speaking to you and once that moment passes, it's nearly impossible to capture the moment again. So if you don't use that time the right way, it becomes a waste (maybe "waste" is a little drastic). We can attempt to push through, but this can be painfully hard. It's like reading a book you don't want to read. You just aren't in the right headspace to get anything out of it. How else can we describe when ideas come to us and disappear out of nowhere? I don't believe this is because we figured out we aren't all that interested in the idea. I think it has a lot more to do with our brain not accepting the idea. This can happen because we judge the idea. It can happen because we don't have the mental capacity to handle it. But it can also happen for the simple reason that we aren't open to it. And I think this shows a lack of care as to what the muse is whispering to us. This may be a little woo-woo for some of you, but all art has a mysterious presence to it and I think embracing the muse is how we create the closest version of the thing that we actually want to create. Otherwise we are forcing something out of us that isn't quite ready to be shared.

Let's dig into some books.

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

I love books on the creative process. Especially from someone like Rick Rubin who has spent decades mining the universe of creative discovery. For those that have read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, this has a similar appeal to it. This is one of those books you can pick up to read a chapter, which in most cases are no more than a few pages, and spend time pondering the message. This isn’t a “how to” book, although there are plenty of how to messages inside. It is a mediation on creation and the way in which we enrich our lives through the process. Pick up this book and read it. This is definitely one I will revisit again and again.

I highly recommend pairing this with The War of Art, as mentioned above, and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

Death-Bringer by M.S. Bourland

It’s hard to find modern novels that explore deep philosophical themes like death and free will vs. fate. That’s just one aspect of this that I enjoyed. The setting of ancient Greece wrapped with Greek mythology appealed to the side of me that loves ancient civilization history. What we get is a plot filled with power games - familial, political, and of the gods. This makes for interesting dialogue, relationship choices, and most of all where trust is placed. I’m looking forward to M.S.’s second novel in the series, which she is currently working on now.

What's Our Problem? by Tim Urban

I'm a huge fan of Tim Urban and love his blog, Wait But Why. He typically tackles big concepts in long-form essay format accompanied with his own drawings. This is his first book and it is a long one at 700+ pages. But it is engaging, as is all of his work.

We tend to think about politics on a horizontal scale of left, center, right. Tim adds a vertical scale based on the level of thinking especially in our excessively polarized world. Lower level being less open to new ideas and challenging ourselves. The upper level being more open to questioning ourselves and our ideas. This is the echo chamber vs idea lab mentality. But I prefer the term Benjamin Franklin used instead of idea lab, Junto. Which for him was a place where people could meet, talk out their ideas, and share their honest opinions. It was especially important for Franklin in the political realm. This is not something we do well. We tend to ride hard on our side and not budge, whether it's politics, religion, or whatever. People have become religious about their politics when they should think more scientifically. You have a hypothesis (an idea) and you challenge the hell out of it to see if the idea can stand up to scrutiny.

For most of us, this is a scary proposition. The last thing we want is someone telling us our idea sucks. But this is what helps us form better ideas and it's how we can better use our brain. People who are unwilling to question their beliefs and ideas are unwilling to find out why they are wrong and how they can improve upon them. I’ll let you in on a secret: we’re all pretty much wrong about everything. That shouldn’t deter us to form opinions and ideas. It should free our minds to form a lot more. Fuck your batting average. Don’t sit on the sidelines with your ideas because you can’t handle being wrong.

It’s also equally important to have these conversations with the right people. Someone who isn’t open to a discussion with critical thinking more than likely won’t provide you with accurate feedback.

Whether you are right leaning or left leaning, you will find that this book is not one-sided. It is more of an argument to recognize and remove low level thinking, whether it’s right or left.

Speaking of procrastination, I also have to recommend Tim’s TED talk. If you are unfamiliar with his work, this is a good place to start. If you want to find out more about Benjamin Franklin’s Junto - The Leather Apron Club - read his autobiography, which has a lot more of value than just this one thing.

The Love Prescription by John Gottman & Julie Schwartz Gottman

It takes a certain kind of awareness to understand the type of person you are in a relationship. And I think a good chunk of this comes from understanding the environment where you grew up.

Enter John Gottman. Some of you have likely heard of John Gottman and possibly even read one of his books. The Gottmans are world renowned relationship experts and they've been doing this for more decades than I've been alive. This book is a 7-day step-by-step plan on getting more out your relationship with your significant other. These aren't big, lofty things that are hard to do. It’s also not about conflict reduction. It’s a proactive approach to connecting in the right way. This is whether you have a troubled relationship or a strong relationship.

If you want to find out more about the book or the Gottmans before diving in, I would highly recommend this podcast with Adam Grant (Apple, Spotify).

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

What I like about this book, it isn’t a step-by-step guidebook on how to run your financial life. It is a study of our financial behavior and Housel uses stories from all parts of history to explain our relationship with money - especially as it relates to greed, ego and happiness.

A lot of people have a fear of talking about and dealing with money. What I dislike about a lot of personal finance books is they don’t take steps to dispel that fear. Instead, they just give you instructions, which is theoretically supposed to make you comfortable with your money. But it doesn’t address the deeper psychology of what we all think. For example: if you are someone who has credit card debt, in a typical personal finance book you might find the instruction to focus on paying off your debt. What you likely won’t find is a psychological explanation on what creates that spending habit internally. And that’s what I like about this book. It focuses on the behavioral aspect instead.

Out of the 19 stories that Housel walks us through, one of my favorites is about the freedom that money creates. Controlling your time is a dependable predictor of happiness. Which leads me to the next book…

Die With Zero by Bill Perkins

I agree a lot with Perkins’ philosophy on money. As we age we tend to accumulate more wealth, but our health is in an ever declining state. So, at a certain age, we are no longer physically able to have some of the life experiences we might otherwise have had 10, 20, or 30 years ago. We are taught to work our butts off and save as much as we can, but by the time we have the wealth and we retire, we aren’t as likely to have the ability to enjoy it in the last season of life. Perkins makes a great case for using some of your money earlier to enjoy the experiences you truly value.

I highly recommend both of these books. They have sort of a yin and yang appeal to them, but they expound on similar points: Freedom and understanding what you value most.

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

You won’t see a lot of novels like this in this newsletter because I don’t usually read novels for entertainment. I went to my local bookstore and saw this as a recommendation by one of the staff members. The entire novel takes place inside of a corporate Slack chat. It’s a quick read and pretty funny. It will make you wonder why we are so tethered to all of our devices, apps, and social media. All of these things are built to drive us insane.

Other Reading:

• “How Do You Serve a Friend in Despair” by David Brooks. David Brooks wrote one of my favorite books, The Second Mountain. He’s a political commentator for The New York Times, although this piece is nothing of the sort. This is an important commentary about depression and suicide. Unfortunately, we still know little about depression and how to help people out of it as it can be a recurring problem. Depression is a dark dark road. Fortunately, mental health awareness has taken leaps forward over this past decade and it’s something we need to continue to improve and understand. This article is hidden behind a paywall, but I can gift a link to a couple people that would like to read it.

• The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. I discovered this from Tim Ferriss’ weekly newsletter, which, as an aside, is one of my favorite newsletters. The Last Question is a ~15 minute short story by Asimov and it is fantastic. I won’t say anything else because I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s worth your time. Just don’t spoil it for yourself by googling a synopsis.

• “Life’s Work: An Interview with Jerry Seinfeld.” This is a six year old interview that I recently discovered. It’s short and interesting, but I want to hone in on one thing that Seinfeld said about his eponymous hit sitcom: “If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way.” This was in response to a question if there was a better model or more sustainable way to write Seinfeld, which he and Larry David suffered from major burnout at the end. Burnout is the result of life revolving around one thing. Not having a range of relationships, work, hobbies, etc. Sure, you can make a lot of money being all about work, but there is a mental cost to it.

• This isn’t reading, but Ramit Sethi’s Netflix docuseries, How to Get Rich, came out a couple weeks ago. This is based on his New York Times bestselling book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He also has an awesome podcast where he works with people one-on-one to help them achieve their financial goals. The Netflix series is basically a deeper dive into this and is enjoyable to watch. So if you worry about money, are afraid to talk about it with your partner, or even not, this is a great watch.

Children’s Books:

• ABC’s of Art by Sabrina Hahn. (H/T to Katie Dozier.) We’ve been reading this one quite a bit. It’s been perfect for both of my kids.

• Nate the Great by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat. This is part of a 30-volume series that was first introduced in the 1970s. This was also our first chapter book that we read. Nate is the world’s greatest detective and each of the volumes centers around a different case.

• Nelly Gnu and Daddy Too by Anna Dewdney. My youngest is loving this one right now. The Llama Llama books, in general, have been popular in our house.

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And now, on to this month’s reads.

A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy

The daily reader format is one of the more underrated genres of books. When I feel like I’m out of my normal reading routine, it’s one place I know I can turn to jolt me back into my routine. I find that a page a day can go a long way when it comes to quality repetitive messaging.

This compilation of text by Tolstoy offers what I've found to be the best over the past several years of exploring this genre. I think of it as a daily spiritual and philosophical meditation from the great thinkers, teachers, and philosophers of Earth's short history. The themed message always seems to be on point for me. Tolstoy spent the last 15 years of his life compiling these thoughts and contributing his own and considered it to be his greatest contribution.

If you are keen on this particular genre of books, The Daily Laws by Robert Greene is another that delivers a ton of wisdom in a page a day.

Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor

Originally published in 1938, this is a short, fictional series of letters between two business partners during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One of them is sadly corrupted by the events happening around him, while the other can only question and watch it all unfold from afar. This is such a poignant portrayal of the dangers of fascism and letting ourselves slip into evil thinking. This slippage is a process. It doesn’t just happen. This is why it's so important to understand history and how events tend to repeat themselves over long periods of time. While misinformation continues to run rampant through our lives, we must cultivate what we allow into our brains in the same way as the food we put into our bodies. Much like bad food has a toxic effect, bad information has the same toxicity.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Easily one of the more hilarious and enjoyable novels I have read and New Orleans makes a delightful backdrop for the events in the life of Ignatius J. Reilly. Reilly is one of the great modern era literary characters conceived. His disheveled appearance and self-obsessed nature make this book the comedic masterpiece it is. This also shows in how Toole creates complete disorder in various scenes as the story unfolds. However, there is a sort of sadness in the story arc and with the backstory of the novel itself.

As John Kennedy Toole worked to get his novel published, he was universally turned down by every publisher and ultimately went into despair. Eventually it led to him committing suicide. His mother later found the novel and advocated on her son’s behalf with the help of another great author, Walker Percy. It was published 11 years after Toole’s death and he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize a year later.

As sad as this, there is something to learn from such a horrible event: too often we become obsessed with results over actions. To our own detriment. When the process isn’t the reward, it leads to disappointment, or worse

Reading for Our Lives by Maya Smart

As a teenager and young adult, I wasn’t much of a reader, which has all the more made me appreciate the benefit and importance of it in my life as I get older. And now as a father, I strive to raise my kids to develop a reading habit. I enjoyed the detailed and evidence-based approach to not only raising a reader, but helping kids enjoy a rich life in literary arts by, us as parents, acting as a guide through the art of letters, words, and language. All languages are amazing entities and there is power behind having a deep understanding of words, how they are formed, and what they mean. Learning language is a lifelong process, but it’s not something I have often stopped to consider when and how in the world this process started taking shape. It seems too easy to take for granted.

I also listened to Maya Smart on Ryan Holiday’s podcast, which was informative and a good precursor to the book.

Miscellaneous

I read Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson. I’ve read a few relationship psychology books and in this particular book, I like the toolkit provided on how to work through communication breakdowns with a significant other. Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway was a book I enjoyed on the science and political feud behind global warming. This book details how a small group of people used doubt creation tactics against the science of the harms of tobacco and how those same tactics by the same people have been carried out against the science of climate change. Growing up in a conservative home in the 80s and 90s, this is not something I had a great feel for until the last few years. But I strongly value the idea of challenging inherited beliefs. Lastly, I listened to Mark Manson on The Tim Ferriss Show. I don’t listen to as many podcasts these days, but Manson is one of my favorite authors and it reminded me to revisit The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

Children's Books

The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak (of The Office fame) has become almost a nightly bedtime ritual. It is comically preposterous and impossible not to oblige when my oldest wants to read it. Oliver Jeffers' great books have been on rotation, especially Here We Are, What We'll Build, and, his newest book, Meanwhile Back on Earth. My youngest seems to find Corduroy (Don Freeman) to put in my hands on a daily basis. And lately we've been reading A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson) as a family, which has been a good introduction to poetry.

Thank you for reading this month! If you have any book recommendations on similar topics, please feel free to pass it along via comments or email.

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