The Reading List - January 2023
Ray Bradbury's advice on reading and books for the month
Having kids is one of life’s great blessings, but it forces you to consistently re-evaluate how you spend your time. Maintaining a reading practice is a challenge with kids and it takes commitment and sacrifice, but not at the expense of the time I have with them. When I discovered the Ray Bradbury approach of one essay, one poem, and one short story (thanks to
for posting this), I knew this would be something I could add as a daily practice that wouldn’t infringe on that time. For those that are limited on available reading time, this takes all of 20-30 minutes per day. The subsequent outpour of ideas from your mind, because of the range of topics and how we can link them together, makes this one of the more beneficial reading practices I have taken on. At the moment, I’m reading Montaigne’s essays, Sylvia Plath’s poems, and, not coincidentally, Ray Bradbury’s short stories. I think this a great way to discover different authors you might not normally read.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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Currently reading A Confederacy of Dunces. I have never enjoyed a book more that had such unlikeable main character!
i've just bought A Calendar of Wisdom and Address Unknown. Need - but most importantly, want - to get back into reading mode. I usually do it in bed, but fall asleep too fast, so it takes ages for me to finish a book :) thanks for the recommendations!