How to Protect Bookstores and Why by Danny Caine
Bookstores are foundational to community and representation.
How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine
Whether you’re an Amazon worker or an Amazon neighbor, you’re more likely to bear the brunt of Amazon’s environmental impact if you’re a person of color.
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do.
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
The Western funeral home loves the word “dignity.” The largest funeral corporation has even trademarked the word. What dignity translates to, more often than not, is silence, a forced poise, a rigid formality.
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered.
Hard Stuff, Easy Life: 7 Mindset Principles for Success, Strength and Happiness by Jay Alderton
Discipline is like knowing the rules of a game; once you understand them, you can play freely and even win.
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman
What is worry, at its core, but the activity of a mind attempting to picture every single bridge that might possibly have to be crossed in future, then trying to figure out how to cross it?
How to Be F*cking Happy by Dan Meredith
I'm a huge believer that, as long as you’re still alive and your heart beats in your chest, you can change, you can improve, you can influence, you can motivate, you can build, and you can do better.
The Danish Secret to Happy Kids by Helen Russell
We bring up kids to make their own choices. We don’t teach them to place all their trust in external authority - political, religious, or philosophical.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport
The relentless overload that’s wearing us down is generated by a belief that “good” work requires increasing busyness—faster responses to email and chats, more meetings, more tasks, more hours.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
The magic is not in the analyzing or the understanding. The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know.
The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter
Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.
Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May
There is no one predator from which to escape; there are many. We are in the business of running now. It is all so urgent. Every year, it seems we must run harder. There is no other solution. We can only run, and panic, and chatter out our fears to others, who will mirror them back to us.
Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point.
To Read or Not to Read…
Quit while you’re ahead or read a book you don’t love? I share some guidelines on when to read and when to quit books in progress.
35 Things I’ve Learned - A Birthday Post
I’m 35 and still getting better. Here’s another birthday list of things I’ve learned.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
The premise of Four Thousand Weeks is that an average person lives for only four thousand weeks. What will you do with that time? All of human history has taken approximately 310,000 weeks. We are but a blip, and knowing this, Burkeman asks the reader, how will you get everything done?
Best Books for a New Year and a New You
Reading is one of the quickest and most inexpensive ways to learn and improve. If you’re looking to make reading a habit or looking for books in specific areas, I’ve put together a list of the best books for New Year’s Resolutions.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
Written with women in mind, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle talks about the big and little stressors we experience daily – from the patriarchy (ugh) to the "second shift" most women have after work at home (house chores, caregiving). Compared to what it's like to be a woman, what's expected of women creates burnout without even realizing it.