Do books even work well at transmitting facts? I recently read an interesting essay making the case that they don’t. After all, how many individual lessons or facts do you really remember from the history book in your senior year […]
Today I was fascinated by one woman’s biography of 40 years of a German family’s life under East German rule. Forty Autumns is mostly about the small (heartwarming as well as heartbreaking) stories of family members trying to stay connected […]
Good fiction is a lot like case law. Stick with me here. You’ve probably been in moral dilemmas before that are harder than some court cases. And you’ve had to play the judge. Should you cover up a friend’s misdoing? […]
Today I finished reading The Odyssey, that complex, brilliant, violent, old, relevant epic poem about the journey home of Greek hero Odysseus. I have many thoughts about this book (“why is the ending so abrupt?” “Wow, Odysseus is wily and […]
I read a lot of books when I was younger. I read books in restaurants, in the car, at school events, even while deer hunting. Books and I were inseparable. But for all the adventures and risks and decisions and […]
If you ever for a moment feel bored with your existence, you need to start reading more biographies and autobiographies. Humans have a breadth of potential beyond what you can appreciate day to day. Through the stories of others, you get […]
In Mastery, Robert Greene paints a thorough picture of apprenticeship and the power it has had to shape great creative careers throughout history. In one form or another, apprenticeship has been part of the path for masters from Leonardo da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin. Apprenticeship […]
It seems that so many fantasy stories center on the relationship between death and life – and the various ways in which it can go wrong. From Tolkien’s Numenoreans to Rowling’s Deatheaters, the villains in many stories become villains because […]
We’re now well into Q2 of 2018, and I’ve gotten a surprising amount of reading done by way of audiobooks from Scribd and Audible. I’m still dipping into the paperbacks and hardbacks, too, but the listening format is letting me keep […]
Tim Ferriss said it was one of his favorite audiobooks. Neil Gaiman writes great, original-yet-grounded fantasy stories. That was enough for me. I recently finished an audiobook version of The Graveyard Book, read by the author in all kinds of wonderful […]
I’m a big believer that good mythology and stories can teach us how to live well. In the past year or so, that has led me to thinkers like Joseph Campbell and Jordan Peterson, who both have left a big mark on […]
I’m anything but monogamous in my reading. And that hasn’t changed in 2018. I continue to read some (too many at once) great books in favorite topics like personal development, spirituality, or fantasy. I don’t expect that I’ll finish all […]
I love physical books, and I love large, curated libraries. But the minimalists have some pretty good arguments against accumulating stuff, and books are no exception. How often are you really going to go back and reread (or even just […]
There is great power to being a geek. Our Star Wars fandom, Game of Thrones viewing parties, Wheel of Time reading sprints, and Lord of the Rings rewatches aren’t just weird passions. They’re an important part of how we see the world. Our passionate love of story […]
I’m not a fan of retreading old ground where knowledge is concerned. Once I know something, I want to use it. I don’t want to just read it again. There are a few books that get an exception to that rule. […]
If you’ve had a Spotify account for more than a week, you’ve probably come to take it for granted that you can play just about any song ever recorded with a click of a button, anywhere you have WiFi or cell […]
This week I came across a popular Reddit thread exploring how Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin created his fictional land of Westeros. It looks remarkably like England. Landmass shape isn’t the only thing Martin borrowed from the British Isles. The […]
HAMLET: “What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The […]
Earlier this year I set a goal to read 100 books by the end of 2017. Now you can track my progress and see an abbreviated selection of what I’ve been digging into this year so far. For a very good […]
“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” That’s what *they* all say. And usually *their* advice is aimed at people who choose books with engaging titles or cover art. I think you should judge a book by its cover, but […]
I’ve made the case that reading fiction is one of the most practical things a self-improvement-minded person can do. As promised, here are the books or series that stand out in my memory as powerful, interesting examples of transformative fiction. I’ll […]
When I talk to other young people about what it’s like to work in a startup environment, I often get asked about the books that have helped me most. As anyone who has received gifts from me could tell you, I […]