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THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE

David Keenan

Summary​

  • This book is from my book club. Out of respect, I prefer not to rate these books publicly. The book is a fictional collection of stories from the 80s punk scene in Airdrie, Scotland. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Later I saw her getting off with some guy who looked like he was in his thirties with a bald patch on top of his head. I'm not even bald, I thought. What's wrong with me? Eventually, the band played. It was Patty's new band, Occult Theocracy."

  • "But I think there is something fulfilling for Lucas and for all of us in being able to make ritual use of forgetting and remembering. And of course that's how I came up with the name Memorial Device. To me it was like Shakespeare."

  • "When I woke up it was already getting dark and I had one of those daytime hangovers that can only be remedied by a session of furious masturbation."

  • "Paddy from Ireland goes on Mastermind. His specialist subject is the history of the Irish Republican Army."

  • "Duncan would act embarrassed and say that his dad was pretending to be drunk again. He would pretend that he was just having a laugh and that it was all a big joke on his mother. I felt sorry for him."

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CHATTER: THE VOICE IN OUR HEAD, WHY IT MATTERS, AND HNOW TO HARNESS IT

Ethan Kross

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Another home run from the University of Michigan Department of Psychology. The book deals with the concept of 'chatter' - which is when our inner voice works against us. The author explains what causes it and provides practical solutions for us to stop it.

Memorable Parts

  • "Our verbal stream of thought is so industrious that, according to one study, we internally talk to ourselves at a rate equivalent to speaking four thousand words per minute out loud. We can theoretically be treated to about 320 State of the Union addresses each day."

  • "In families, our parents model self-control for us when we're children, and their approaches seep into our developing inner voices. Whatever they keep telling us, over time, we repeat these things to ourselves, and they begin to shape our verbal streams."

  • "I keep those negative feelings alive, and the more likely I am to act aggressively against you as a result. Chatter also leads us to displace our aggression against people when they don't deserve it. Our boss upsets us, for example, and we take it out on our kids."

  • "They found that distancing by adopting and observer perspective shortened the duration of people's negative moods after they experienced events that led them to feel angry or sad."

  • "Psychologists have shown that when you place people in stressful situations, one of the first things they do is ask themselves (usually subconsciously) two questions: What is required of me in these circumstances, and do I have the personal resources to cope with what's required?"

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THE UNIVERSAL SPORT: TWO YEARS INSIDE BOXING

Thomas Hauser

Recommended

Summary​

  • Thomas Hauser is one of the few writers who were inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame. He was personally selected by Ali to write his official biography. Every year, his writings are compiled and published as books. This particular one spans two years given Covid-19.

Memorable Parts

  • "I couldn't sign more than a hundred autographs at a time. Any more than that and I can't connect the letters properly. Something starts misfiring in my brain. 'Now you know, Muhammad Ali told me, it wasn't the punches. It was the autographs.'"

  • "Deontay Wilder is a professional athlete who fights like he's insane. Tyson Fury is an insane man who boxes conventionally."

  • "Archie Moore: 'I would rather see Ray Robinson punch a speed bag than watch the average guy go out and fight. There was nobody more beautiful than he was."

  • "'It is difficult to prepare for life after boxing.' As Sugar Ray Leonard said, 'You'll never accomplish anything like you did when you were fighting. But you have to accept that, have to stop chasing the spotlight.'"

  • "The last thing a fighter loses isn't his legs, speed or power. It's his ego."

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THE SIMPLE BUSINESS MODEL: A SIMPLE WAY TO UNDERSTAND ANY BUSINESS

Adrian E. González Reyn

Skip

Summary​

  • The primary reason I rate this book as 'skip' is because it should not be a book, it should be a blog post. The model is very similar to what can be found in Porter's Five Forces book. I also had an issue with the illustrations - they look like they were done in a few minutes using PowerPoint. 

Memorable Parts

  • "This becomes a significant management challenge: how do we measure the impact of the team's doctor if he doesn't score goals?"

  • "The sum of the four times [Promotion, Sales, Delivery and Collections] shows that this company takes an average of 300 days from initiating contact with a prospect until it deposits a payment for its purchase ('full cycle')"

  • "A well-done work plan answers questions such as: Where is this organization going? What do my team and I need to do? How much time do I have to prepare? What do I need to deliver, and when?"

  • "Not all businesses are the same. However, the SBM makes it possible to evaluate enterprises with very different characteristics because of its simplicity and flexibility."

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL BABY: WHAT CHILDREN0S MIND'S TELL US ABOUT TRUTH, LOVE, AND THE MEANING OF LIKE

Alison Gopnik

Recommended

Summary​

  • Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley. This is the second book I have read from the author. I enjoy the mix of research/facts and what cannot be explained by science (love, awe, etc.)

Memorable Parts

  • "There's a kind of evolutionary division of labor between children and adults. Children are the R&D department of the human species - the blue-sky guys, the brainstormers. Adults are production and marketing."

  • "Anyone who tries to persuade a three-year-old to get dressed for preschool will develop an appreciation of inhibition. It would be so much easier if he didn't stop to explore every speck of dust on the floor, pull out all the drawers in turn, and take off his socks just after you've put them on."

  • "Counterfactuals are the woulda-coulda-shouldas of life, all the things that might happen in the future, but haven't yet, or that could have happened in the past, but didn't quite."

  • "All that reaches us from the world are a few rays of light hitting our retinas, and a few air molecules vibrating at our eardrums - images and echos. So how can we really know anything about the outside world?"

  • "I can't determine what will happen to my son when he grows up. But I can determine what will happen to him when he is a child. I can determine that he will get to go to a leafy playground and a preschool full of sandboxes and pet fish and toys. We can't ensure that our children will have a happy future - there, all we can do is move the odds around. But we can at least try to ensure that they will have a happy past."

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YOU'RE TOO GOOD TO FEEL THIS BAD: AN ORTHODOX APPROACH TO LIVING AN UNORTHODOX LIFE

Nate Dallas

Recommended

Summary​

  • I guess I've reached the point where I've read so many of these types of books that they have all merged in my head. Reading these types of books now serves more of a reminder that we already know what hurts us and what makes us better. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We simply need to put them into practice.  

Memorable Parts

  • "My chronic back and neck pain started to subside as I became consistent. I can only assume this was because I wasn't raising my chest and shoulders to breathe anymore. Diaphragm breathing eliminated 20,000 mini muscle repetitions per day."

  • "McKeown says that the optimal time for a well-trained, healthy person who is breathing well is forty seconds [BOLT Body Oxygen Level Test]."

  • "When paramedics load someone into an ambulance, they immediately start fluids and oxygen. Amazingly, these two simple supplements arrest, reverse, and prevent many ailments by themselves."

  • "Becoming more open-minded became more comfortable as I reflected on just how stupid I was a few years back. I knew that a few years from now, I would feel that same way about today."

  • "He challenged me as a man and told me to keep showing up. He said, 'When we wake up in the morning, all you can do is put your two feet on the floor and give it all you've got. Your vocation as a husband and a father never changes. Your calling is the same every day. Keep showing up  and doing your job.'"

  • "You are the one who benefits the most from practicing the act of mercy. An old familiar saying states that harboring unforgiveness and resentment is like drinking poison but expecting the other person to die."

  • "We make purchases similar to people in our social circles, wondering how they are affording it. We rarely consider the fact that they probably can't afford their lifestyle either. It's all backward."

  • "Stand up. Poke out your chest and flash a big grin, showing as many teeth as possible. Clench each fist tightly and pump both arms quickly and powerfully into the air three times. Do it as if you just sank a long putt to win the Masters."

  • "Remember: If you run into a jerk in the morning, you ran into one jerk. If you run into them all day, every day, you are the jerk."

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THINKING BETTER: THE ART OF THE SHORTCUT IN MATH AND LIFE

Marcus Du Sautoy

Average

Summary​

  • The author succeeds in narrating an entertaining history of mathematics but, even though he tries, falls short in helping the reader apply mathematical shortcut concepts in real life.

Memorable Parts

  • "The world's population is estimated to be 6.7 billion.  Each month the population of vampires doubles. Such is the devastating effect of doubling that within thirty-three months a single vampire would end up transforming the world's population into vampires."

  • "But there is still something rather inefficient about the Egyptian system. If a scribe wants to record the number 9,999,999 then they would need sixty-three figures. Add one more to the number and someone has got to come up with yet another little picture to represent 10,000,000."

  • "Napier capitalized on the local belief that he was a sorcerer. To catch a thief among his staff he told them that his black rooster could identify the criminal."

  • "As the nineteenth-century American psychologist William James wrote: 'The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.'"

  • "The Mercator map fell afoul of postcolonial politics, and an alternative map called the Gall-Peters map was adopted by UNESCO."

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THE BOOK YOU WISH YOUR PARENTS HAD READ: (AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE GLAD THAT YOU DID)

Philippa Perry

Recommended

Summary​

  • With more than +9,000 reviews on Amazon, and such a catchy title, how can you resist not reading this!? If this is your first parenting book it will be beneficial. If you have a couple 'under your belt' then it might be a bit repetitive but the message is worth repeating and remembering.

Memorable Parts

  • "This is a truth that should be universally acknowledged: when you try to block out a 'negative' feeling, you remove positive feelings too. As therapist Jerry Hyde says, 'Emotions don't have a mixing board - they just have a master volume. You can't fadeout sadness and pain and fade up happiness and joy.'"

  • "Think back to your childhood: were you made to feel 'bad' or even responsible for your parents' bad moods? If it happened to you, it is all too easy to try to repair your feeling of being wrong by making someone else feel wrong, and the victims of this are, far too often, our children."

  • "A counsellor recently told me a story about working with a refugee family. He was trying to empathize with them and to understand what it must be like to have no permanent home. One of the children piped up, 'Oh, we've got a home, we've just got nowhere to put it yet.'"

  • "The distinction between 'silly' and 'not silly' is so clear to us we assume it is to a child as well. If you tell them they are being silly to complain when Granny makes lentil stew, they may feel they can't tell you when the creepy piano teacher puts his hand on their leg. The difference is clear to us but, for the child, they can both be filed under 'something icky'."

  • "It isn't possible to be scolded, or even distracted, into happiness. The more you fully accept your child no matter what their experience is and how they feel about it, the more capacity for happiness they will have. This goes for you as well as for your children."

  • "I often see parents thinking they can treat children as things to be efficient about, to deal with and fix. It's usually because the parent is busy, life is busy and this is how the parent has learned from their parents to deal with children. It is a dominant ideology that promises you can slot parenting into your busy life. But too often there is a price. If you don't treat your child as a person, if you have dealt with them rather than felt with them, you might find that when the child grows up they won't be very forthcoming with you."

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THE DAILY LAWS: 366 MEDITATIONS ON POWER, SEDUCTION, MASTER, STRATEGY, AND HUMAN NATURE

Robert Greene

Average

Summary​

  • I can not recall if this is my 3rd or 4th year reading this type of book - you read a page a day for the 365 days of the year. This one comes from Robert Greene, the famous author of The 48 Laws of Power and the series that followed it. My two complaints about this book are that some laws contradict each other and I wish he had included more historical anecdotes. 

Memorable Parts

  • "When we try to manufacture happy moments, they tend to disappoint us. The same goes for the dogged pursuit of money and success. Many of the most successful, famous, and wealthy individuals do not begin with an obsession with money and status."

  • "Make people depend on you. He who has slaked his thirst, immediately turns his back on the well, no longer needing it." - Baltasar Gracián.

  • "Find out who holds the strings. As Richelieu discovered at the beginning of his rise to the top of the French political scene during the early seventeenth century, it was not King Louis XIII who decided things, it was the king's mother."

  • "As in pool, so in life. Suckers and beginners are locked into the single-ball-at-a-time mentality and get all excited when they knock one in on a clever shot, but leave themselves nowhere to go."

  • "You must see your emotional responses to events as a kind of disease that must be remedied. When you have success, be extra wary. When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face."

  • "You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire." - Seneca

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THE HAPPIEST TODDLER ON THE BLOCK: HOW TO ELIMINATE TANTRUMS AND RAISE A PATIENT, RESPECTFUL, AND COOPERATIVE ONE- TO FOUR-YEAR-OLD

Harvey Karp, M.D.

Skip

Summary​

  • The issue I face when reading these 'classic' books is that they seem repetitive. Ironically, because I first read all those books that spurred out of them! This book was 'revised and updated' but lacked a feeling of innovation (research, techniques, etc.)

Memorable Parts

  • "Your toddler is NOT a miniature child. Toddlers are not simply miniaturized versions of older kids. Their brains are much more immature, which makes their whole way of thinking more rigid and primitive."

  • "'A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.'" - Seinfeld

  • "A parent's job is to set smart limits, and a toddler's job is to push those limits. Toddlers literally can't stop themselves from exploring, touching, and pulling on everything. That is how they learn about the world. So while you may feel that your little friend keeps defying you, she may feel you're unfairly blocking her greatest joy - discover."

  • "The Fast-Food Rule: whoever is most upset talks first; the other person listens, repeats back what they're told, and only then do they take their turn to talk."

  • "Karp's law of succesful parenting. Pay attention to what you like and ignore or discourage the rest."

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FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING: USING THE WISDOM OF YOUR BODY AND MIND TO FACE STRESS, PAIN, AND ILLNESS

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Skip

Summary​

  • 600 pages. It just kept repeating over and over the benefits of mindfulness in different areas: body, sleep, stress, and relationships. It definitively made the point that it works but I am not sure we needed a 600 page-book for that. I would have enjoyed it more if it focused more on techniques rather than results.

Memorable Parts

  • "I have come to see the cultivation of mindfulness as a radical act of sanity, self-compassion, and love. A willingness to drop in on yourself, to live more in the present moment, to stop at times and simply be rather than getting caught up in the endless doing while forgetting who is doing all the doing, and why."

  • "They say in India there is a particularly clever way to catch a monkey. Slip a banana inside a coconut through a hole. The hole is cleverly crafted so that the open hand can go in but the fist can not get out. All the monkey has to do to be free is to let go of the banana. but it seems most monkeys don't let go."

  • "The most valuable thing people get out of their mindfulness training is the realization that they are not their thoughts. This discovery means that they can consciously choose to relate (or not) to their thoughts in a variety of ways that were not available to them when they were unaware of this simple fact."

  • "If you are unsure of whether you are practicing 'correctly' or not, here is a good litmus test. When you notice thoughts about getting somewhere, about wanting something, or about having gotten somewhere, about 'success' or 'failure', are you able to honor each one as you observe it as an aspect of present-moment reality?"

  • "Our doubts about our own abilities become self-fulfilling prophecies. They can come to dominate our lives. In this way, we effectively impose limits on ourselves via our own thought processes."

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THE COW IN THE PARKING LOT: AZEN APPROACH TO OVERCOMING ANGER

Leonard Scheff & Susan Edmiston

Average

Summary​

  • We're coming off the holidays. Everyone is happy and traffic is light. However, this will all end. Traffic will begin to pick up and the holiday spirit will fade away. This short book will help you stay calmer during this rough period of readjusting.

Memorable Parts

  • "On the surface, the search for a meaningful life might sound exemplary but, he continued, the problem arises when we insist that it be the meaning we choose."

  • "As the Buddha says, 'We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.'"

  • "The cause of anger is simple: Anger arises when we have an unmet demand."

  • "The process of becoming less angry and more aware is a two-way street. Reducing anger creates a self-reinforcing cycle: As we become less angry, we become more aware of what is actually happening as opposed to judging what is happening. As we become more aware, we become less angry."

  • "Buddhism takes the view that it's foolish to take the opinions of the outside world, which may fluctuate daily if not from moment to moment. As the Dalai Lama once famously said of himself: One day Nobel Prize, next day pile of shit."

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RAISING OUR CHILDREN, RAISING OURSELVES: TRANSFORMING PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS FRMO REACTION AND STRUGGLE TO FREEDOM, POWER AND JOY

Naomi Aldort

Average

Summary​

  • This book reminds us what parenting and love are all about. The purpose is not to mend our children into our image but rather to support them in finding their own. It also reminds us that all feelings are OK and we should let our children know that. All actions are not OK but all feelings are.

Memorable Parts

  • "Instead let us adopt the attitude expressed by Mary Haskell in her poem: 'Nothing you become will disappoint me; I have no preconception that I'd like to see you be or do. I have no desire to foresee you, only to discover you. You cannot disappoint me.'"

  • "You have to choose between growing up or limiting your child. Any time your limitations stand in the way of love and generosity, you have an opportunity to set yourself free. Can you love yourself enough to push yourself out of your own emotional prison? Just as you support your child to act in spite of her fears, so you can do for yourself. When you choose love over your old painful story, your child will learn to do the same for herself."

  • "Communicate using S.A.L.V.E. Separation, attention, listen, validate and empower."

  • "There is no right or wrong behavior. The only meaningful choice is between fear and love. It is our own mind-talk that prevents us from understanding the child and from knowing how to respond. A child's actions are not bad or good; they are simply expressions of emotional and physical needs or innocent play."

  • "We don't water a flower if it blooms; we water it so it will bloom. Likewise, a child needs to feel secure in your love for who they truly are. By contrast, when love is used to control the child, he ends up doubting it."

  • "In our effort to raise children who don't cry, we may be denying a need that is as basic as love, food, and air. Like a river that was dammed, these tears will find other outlets through aggression, tics, sleep, and other difficulties. Powerful people are not those whose life flows with no pain, but those who have the strength to move through pain and come out richer on the other side."

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ADHD NATION: CHILDREN, DOCTORS, BIG PHARMA, AND THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN EPIDEMIC

Alan Schwarz

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • A crash course on how Big Pharma creates a billion-dollar market out of a disease that exists but in no way at the levels it is currently being prescribed by doctors. A warning for parents on how pressure for children to perform academically can lead them to these types of medication.

Memorable Parts

  • "The American Psychiatric Association's official description of ADHD, codified by the field's top experts and used to guide doctors nationwide, says that the condition affects about 5 percent of children. However, fifteen percent of youngsters in the US are being diagnosed with ADHD."

  • "One of Richard Fee's doctors tried to rationalize the quick appraisals to children by stating 'I hate to say this, but when you put in five hours and get paid for only one, it's hard to make a living'. You wouldn't tolerate your mechanic saying to you, 'Well, I skipped some steps on your brakes because Ford doesn't reimburse me.'"

  • "Dr. Visser had discovered that more than ten thousand toddlers - kids ages two and three, still in diapers - across the United States had been diagnosed as ADHD and put on Adderall, Concerta, and the like."

  • "Ritalin is methylphenidate, a central nervous stimulant with properties similar to amphetamines. The doctor nods and says, 'Let's try Ritalin and see if it helps'; when it does, and the child's schoolwork improves, the ADHD diagnosis appears confirmed. Yet the doctor might as well have said, 'Try these platform shoes, see if they make him taller.'"

  • "In the mid-1940s he wound up with a formulation that did all this and more - turning Marguerite, known as Rita, into a tennis-playing machine. She loved it as much as he did her. So he named it Ritalin."

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WACO: DAVID KORESH, THE BRANCH DAVIDIANS, AND A LEGACY OF RAGE

Jeff Guinn

Recommended

Summary​

  • I vividly remember my father talking to a man in McAllen, Texas while the events of the siege were unfolding. That was the first time I heard about the city of Waco and that strange name has stuck with me. The book was published in 2023 and does a fantastic job of explaining how the situation escalated so quickly. 

Memorable Parts

  • "After eight months, accumulated evidence indicated that the group was illegally altering guns from semi- to fully automatic, with the intent of either selling them or else using the fearsome weapons as part of a plot to bring about the end of the world."

  • "The religious origin of what happened in 1993 in Waco extended back over 170 years to upstate New York. Farmer and Baptist lay minister William Miller, based on intense study and personal interpretation of the Bible, determined that the return of Christ and the destruction of the world by fire was imminent."

  • "Her father threw Vernon out. Denied contact with the girl he loved, for a time Vernon hung around Dallas and lived in his pickup. There seemed no solution to this daunting impasse until, he believed, God came to him and declared his displeasure: 'For 19 years, I've loved you, and for 19 years you've turned your back and rejected Me.'"

  • "Koresh knew how to get their attention. 'God hates Black people.' And there was this shock. Then he said, 'And God hates yellow people. And God hates white people. God loves people of light. Are you people of light?'"

  • "'When I was about seven David took me for a ride down a mountain ski trail. That was when David said to me personally that one day, I would be one of his wives. When I told my mother Sherri she was thrilled. Three years later, Koresh moved forward with Kiri."

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WINNING THE WEEK: HOW TO PLAN A SUCCESFUL WEEK, EVERY WEEK

Demir Bentley & Carey Bentley

Skip

Summary​

  • Nothing new here. Perhaps a good reminder of why planning for a week (and not a day, month, or quarter) makes sense. A week is long enough to see progress and set ambitious goals but short enough that you can course correct. The book includes best practices but they will be reminders rather than mind-shattering new ideas.  

Memorable Parts

  • "The moment you get home there is a faint cloud of guilt and anxiety. You can't stop thinking about work. You begin cooking dinner as if it's yet another problem to be solved, another obstacle to overcome. The reason you feel this way is because there wasn't closure at work."

  • "Reason #2: you can't win every day, but you can win every week. I can have lots of 'bad days, and still win my week."

  • "A big part of it is mental. Planning sounds so neutral but is actually quite stress-inducing, forcing you to look at things you'd rather avoid. That generates resistance from the limbic system."

  • "Good planning is remarkably counterintuitive because planning requires seeing your world clearly and being able to face the consequences of your actions. But in our 'neutral' state, we are motivated by fear, plagued by bias, and highly resistant to facing the consequences of our actions."

  • "We all have contradictions built into our personality: a conflict between the things we say we value versus the real values that our actions and behaviors reveal. When we're not loyal to something we decided to do - like planning our week - we're still loyal to something underneath."

  • "The best way to change long-term behavior is with short-term feedback."

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MARRIAGE RULES: A MANUAL FOR THE MARRIED AND THE COUPLED UP

Harriet Learned

Average

Summary​

  • A lot of common sense suggestions but worth reading so you keep reminding yourself that marriage requires patience, love, compromise, etc. It also reminds you how lucky you are that you chose the right person to be married to =).

Memorable Parts

  • "'It's simple,' the other replies. 'Kids choose happiness over righteousness.' But about 85 percent of the time our best bet for relationship happiness is to remember the sandbox - and let those kids be our role model."

  • "When your partner makes a fair request, she needs to know that her voice can affect you. It doesn't matter how trivial the issue is. If you believe that the request is unfair, renegotiate the relationship contract around the 'who-does-what' question."

  • "No one can survive a marriage (at least not happily) if they feel more judged than admired."

  • "Make your point in three sentences or fewer gives your partner the space to consider it."

  • "A common problem I hear from couples goes like this: One person says, 'I'm feeling X' and the other person immediately says, 'Have you considered doing Y or Z?' Part of the problem is that we confuse our partner's sharing a problem with inviting us to take over. Or we may feel we have to resolve it in a single conversation, rather than recognizing that we can have several conversations over time."

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THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS: THE CLASSIC GUIDE TO THE MENTAL SIDE OF PEAK PERFORMANCE

W. Timothy Gallwey

Recommended

Summary​

  • [I don't play tennis]. I can't remember how this book got on my radar. It was written in 1974 and it is probably one of the best ones to explain how mindfulness and sports can be combined. This is a great book for parents who are coaching, formally or informally, their kids in a sport.

Memorable Parts

  • "It is the thesis of this book that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player."

  • "The next time your opponent is having a hot streak, simply ask him as you switch courts, 'Say, George, what are you doing so differently that's making your forehand so good today?' If he takes the bait and begins to think about how he's swinging, his streak invariably will end. He will lose his timing and fluidity as he tries to repeat what he has just told you he was doing so well."

  • "Self 1 complains. By thinking too much and trying too hard, Self 1 has produced tension and muscle conflict in the body."

  • "Clearly, positive and negative evaluations are relative to each other. It is impossible to judge one event as positive without seeing other events as not positive or negative."

  • "Why shouldn't a beginning player treat his backhand as a loving mother would her child? The trick is not to identify with the backhand. If you view an erratic backhand as a reflection of who you are, you will be upset."

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THE CHILDHOOD ROOTS OF ADULT HAPPINESS

Edward M. Hallowell

Recommended

Summary​

  • I keep trying to become a better father each day so I don't skip an opportunity to read a book on the topic. Rather than teaching you something completely new, I think the value in reading these books is that they bring you 'back to basics'. Love and your presence is what children want from us.

Memorable Parts

  • "I'm not much of an athlete; I'm not much of a carpenter; I know nothing about hunting; I can't fix cars; I'm not a cool dude - or whatever the right word would be. Being a father is humbling. The only equipment I have for being a good dad is my desire to be good at it. Thank goodness, that seems to be enough. The key to being a good parent is wanting to be a good parent strongly enough to make time to do it."

  • "Above all else, enjoy your children. If you do, the rest usually takes care of itself. Don't spend all your time regulating them, fretting over them, controlling them, feeding and clothing them, doing what has to be done."

  • "Bruce Stewart, a teacher I have mentioned in this book, likes to quote an old saying that goes, 'We are warmed by fires we did not light'. A connection with the past teaches your children about the people who actually lit the fires."

  • "The TV-and-Nintendo child can turn into the beer-after-work adult. I have nothing against a beer after work, having had many myself. However, if the beer after work becomes the highlight of your day, your main pleasure and reward, you are not nearly as happy as you should expect to be. Life has more to offer, and so do you. Help your children find the birdcages and other projects that will introduce them to the 'more' they should expect to find in life."

  • "Sports out to be a place to learn about teamwork and team loyalty, cooperation, compromise, sacrifice, how to deal with people who are more talented than you and less talented than you, how to win and lose gracefully, and other life lessons."

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PONTIUS PILATE

Ann Wroe

Recommended

Summary​

  • There is very little archaeological information about this man who is front and center in the Catholic narrative. A remarkable achievement by the author in creating a 400-page book from little evidence. The book surprised me with how much of what we think we know about him comes from stories written centuries after his time and moral interpretations.

Memorable Parts

  • "For three years or so I did research on Pilate. There was almost nothing to go on. We do not even know his praenomen. The only physical evidence we have of this man is one inscribed stone and a few small coins. All the records he kept, as he was bound to keep them, have disappeared, and so have to chapters of Tacitus, covering A.D. 30 and 21, that might have mentioned him."

  • "It may have been during these years - if Pilate did not earn the name himself later - that the cognomen 'Pilatus,' 'Skilled with the Javelin,' became attached to his family."

  • "But a second, proposed with equal confidence, holds that he was a Spaniard. Giovanni Rosadi, an Italian magistrate, put forward this theory in 1908, though several sorts of Spanishness had been claimed for Pilate centuries before."

  • "The reason why the outer court was full of changing tables - tables soon to be upended by Jesus - was because no coin with a pagan symbol could be used, or even dropped in a box, in that holy place."

  • "'You and I will always be together,' Jesus tells him. 'Whenever people think of me, they will think of you.'"

​

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SALES MANAGEMENT THAT WORKS: HOW TO SELL IN A WORLD THAT NEVER STOPS CHANGING

Frank V. Cespedes

Recommended

Summary​

  • It has been a long time since I have read a decent book about sales. This book was published in 2021 and is one of the best ones I have read. For me, the ZS Associates books are top-of-the-line but this one came close. The only reason I did not rate it higher is that it has the HBR style - insightful questions to ask yourself but little in terms of implementation advice.

Memorable Parts

  • "Look at how most newspapers reacted for years to digital competitors: try to mimic the online firm, but with a much higher cost structure while giving away their own content online. This was a literal enactment of the joke about selling below cost but hoping to make it up in volume."

  • "This survey found what other research about sales indicates: on average, sales reps spend only about a third of their time (in this survey 36 percent) actually connecting with clients or prospects."

  • "Some now use a video-interview service called HireVue in which an AI program analyzes candidate's facial expressions and language patterns. (Hint: don't slouch or wave your arms, maintain eye contact, and use short declarative sentences.)"

  • "As the old saying goes, 'You hire your problems.' Effective hiring doesn't stop with recruiting. It's about building and allocating talent, and this has a temporal dimension in any growing company or changing market."

  • "By 2010, companies with more than a thousand employees already had, individually, more data in their CRM systems than in the Library of Congress."

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ANGER: WISDOM FOR COOLING THE FLAMES

Thich Nhat Hanh

Skip

Summary​

  • There are great nuggets of wisdom contained in the book but it was a painful experience trying to read it. The book did not 'flow' at all. The order of the chapters makes no sense. It seems they simply compiled many of Thich Nhat Hanh's speeches and writing on the topic without any thought on how to best present them in a logical way.

Memorable Parts

  • "Here we do not mean political freedom, but freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and delusion. These mental formations are described by the Buddha as poisons."

  • "Anger is like a howling baby, suffering and crying. The baby needs his mother to embrace him. You are the mother of your baby, your anger. The moment you begin to practice breathing mindfully in and out, you have the energy of a mother, to cradle and embrace the baby."

  • "Our practice is based on the insight of non-duality. Both our negative and positive feelings are organic and belong to the same reality."

  • "In the Buddhist tradition, meditation does not mean you transform yourself into a battlefield, with the good fighting the evil."

  • "Without communication, no real understanding can be possible. But be sure that you can communicate with yourself first. If you cannot communicate with yourself, how do you expect to communicate with another person? Love is the same."

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ISLAND OF THE LOST: AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF SURVIVAL AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Joan Druett

Recommended

Summary​

  • Another gripping story of shipwreck and survival. It always fascinates me how in these stories leadership is crucial. How certain individuals with perhaps lower leadership roles in a ship (i.e. seamen vs first mates) rise to the occasion in different circumstances. 

Memorable Parts

  • "'Obeying a sentiment of humanity, this noble heart kept down his ardent desire to revisit his beloved family, and though just escaped the clutches of Death, was willing to confront it anew, in accomplishing what he conceived to be a sacred duty!'"

  • "Without realizing it, Dalgarno had navigated the ship onto one of the most dangerous coasts in the world, one that thirty years later a visitor likened to 'the Jaws of Hell.'"

  • "With the advent of warm sunshine, hosts of Austrosimulium vexans hatched in the sea wrack on the beach, and proved well named, being vexing indeed. Like mosquitoes, they sucked blood, but were even more maddening, because once they latched on to bare skin they would not let go, no matter how the men slapped or scratched."

  • "The sand flies were horrid enough, clinging to every inch of exposed skin and biting viciously, but more revolting were the huge bluebottle blowflies that burrowed in clothing. They polluted everything they touched because the female has to feed on decomposing organic matter - such as sea lion dung."

  • "The Frenchman, Francois Raynal, had spent the past eleven years prospecting in the goldfields of New South Wales and Victoria, until he had to give it up because of poor health."

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PARTNERSHIP PARENTING: HOW MEN AND WOMEN PARENT DIFFERENTLY - WHY IT HELPS YOUR KIDS AND CAN STRENGTHEN YOUR MARRIAGE

Kyle Pruett & Marsha Kline Pruett

Recommended

Summary​

  • A great book to read as a couple. Geared towards parents of kids 6-7 years and younger. Talking about differences between men and women is a tricky subject - some authors start pinning men and women in 'traditional' roles. I do not think that was the case with this book.

Memorable Parts

  • "There's a multibillion-dollar industry on the other side of this truth, waiting for you to try to speed up your child's brain development by buying a certain gizmo. You have better ways to spend your money. Children's basic developmental needs remain the same: they be treasured, loved, protected and enriched according to who they are."

  • "Kyle had a legendary cigar-smoking swim coach named Jim Clark who would bellow after a diver missed a dive or a swimmer missed a turn, 'There are no mistakes, only lessons...only lessons.'"

  • "As a divorce consultant, Marsha sees that many couples are not aligned on this crucial last point: one partner thought he was giving a lot, but it wasn't what the other partner wanted from him or needed at that point. So a lot of wasted effort results in feeling underappreciated: 'Why didn't she notice all that I did?' 'Why did he do so little of what I needed?'"

  • "'Maternal gatekeeping' refers to a mother's protective beliefs concerning the father's involvement in their child's life, and the behaviors that either facilitate or hinder the parent's collaborative child-rearing."

  • "What am I so angry about? Is my partner really deserving of this level of disregard? Why am I acting this way when I don't really want to? Using this kind of behavior with anyone so central in your life puts you at risk for doing it with others too. your child, as he acts provocatively, could be next. And that is somewhere you don't want to go."

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HOW TO CHANGE: THE SCIENCE OF GETTING WHERE YOU ARE TO WHERE YOU WANT TO BE

Katy Milkman

Skip

Summary​

  • Extremely basic and embarrassingly self-promoting. Yes, if you have never read a single book about habit formation and lifestyle changes, this book will be a great introduction. If you have read something, skip this book - it will be a repetition of basic concepts. Read Atomic Habits or Misbehave instead. 

Memorable Parts

  • "'Stop thinking about yourself and remember that the guy on the other side of the net has weaknesses. Instead of you succeeding make him fail. Better yet, let him fail."

  • "Just consider the recent high-profile attempt to reduce obesity by requiring calorie labeling in chain restaurants. It turns out that telling people how many calories are in a Big Mac reduces calorie consumption, well ... essentially not at all." 

  • "The power of the labeled fresh start was impressive. The postcards that encouraged  employees to begin saving after their next birthday or at the start of spring were 20 to 30 percent more effective than the 'ordinary' mailings that allowed people to begin saving at a more arbitrary future date."

  • "66 percent more Odenplan metro visitors chose the stairs over the escalator after the piano keys appeared."

  • "We forget nearly half of the information we've learned within twenty minutes. After twenty-four hours, about 70 percent of it is gone, and a month later, we're looking at losses of approximately 80 percent."

  • "Our beliefs can drastically shape our experiences. In 1939, George Dantzig arrived late to class and assumed the two math problems on the chalkboard were homework. So he copied them down to solve that night. As it turned out, George had solved two 'unsolvable' open problems in statistical theory because he believed they were merely difficult homework assignments with known answers."

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THE BEAR

Andrew Krivak

Skip

Summary​

  • I'm still struggling to enjoy fiction books. I was searching for 'great books to read about father and daughter relationships' and stumbled across this one. I finished the book and felt that nothing happened. Maybe that is the point!

Memorable Parts

  • "Well, like how even after all these years, years in which I've had you to think about every minute of every day, I still think of her. I still miss her and wish she were here."

  • "Then he poured the silver into four molds of four wheels, and the gold into the mold of a wagon."

  • "Animals are creatures of habit, he told her, their stories written over and over again."

  • "Like in autumn, when I pull leaves away from the house, and the wind is blowing in a circle, so that the leaves I've removed and new leaves, too, swirl around and settle back where I've just cleared them. I can't get anything clear."

  • "Her father told her once that all animals were creatures of habit and so, too, were they. The difference was she could choose to change her habits. Animals change when they are afraid. Change before fear has had a chance to overcome you."

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MYSTERIOUS CHICAGO: HISTORY AT ITS COOLEST

Adam Selzer

Average

Summary​

  • Disclaimer: If you have not lived in Chicago, this book is rated 'Skip'. The stories included are way too local to find real enjoyment in them. I lived for several years in Chicago and the book was still 'Average' for me so I can just imagine how boring it would be for someone not familiar with particular stories. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Chicago is a fairly young town. The oldest house in town is the old Clarke House, an 1836 cottage currently standing on South Prairie Avenue; when I point it out as the oldest house in town to tourists from the U.K., where they might well have wallpaper older than that, they think it's hilarious."

  • "Every time I find a neat one [tombstone] with a name I don't recognize, I look up the name. It's amazing how often they turn out to be brewers."

  • "'Vampirism' is a term given to the Old World practice of digging up dead bodies and mutilating them to cure tuberculosis for the living."

  • "When he was dead and untied from the chair, his friends placed him in a wire basket and took it to an ambulance in the jail yard. This time, prison officials decided to see what was going on, and found out that the ambulance was equipped with nurses and a pulminator."

  • "You notice some interesting things about people when you work as a tour guide. For instance, people will sit casually through stories of hundreds of people dying, but if you mention one dead dog, they get upset."

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Myke Cole

Recommended

LEGION VERSUS PHALANX: THE EPIC STRUGGLE FOR INFANTRY SUPREMACY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

Summary​

  • A military book for the lay person! Military history books can be dried and sometimes hard to follow if you do not have a military background. The author of this book definitively targeted the non-military reader without making things too simplistic. I now will enjoy much more those movies with Phalanx or Roman Legions.

Memorable Parts

  • "Ancient sources are complicated. Livy wrote during the reign of Augustus, who had ascended to power after a vicious civil war and in the process of a delicate dance wherein he established himself as an emperor in fact but not in name. Would publishing a history of Rome praising the old republican system offend the new master?"

  • "The conflicts examined in this book take place almost entirely during the explosion of cultural influence known as the Hellenistic period, from 323 to 31 BC."

  • "Every single battle examined in this book eventually ends when the level of panic overwhelms the discipline of one side, and they finally turn to rout, and the carnage of the pursuit begins."

  • "The Phalanx had a pike every 3 feet. 3 feet may seem like a lot of space, but when you consider that you have 10,880 of them pointing up, you have roughly half the total trees of New Yor City's Central Park."

  • "'Nothing stops us from doing that now. We are all here, we have plenty of wine and time enough to talk. We don't need to kill anybody to make it happen.'"

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ALLEN CARR'S QUIT DRINKNIG WITHOUT WILLPOWER: BE A HAPPY NONDRINKER

Allen Carr

Recommended

Summary​

  • I heard about this book from a comedian who appeared in an Instagram reel and mentioned that she quit drinking after reading the book. The book includes a link to a hypnotherapy session which 'threw me off' but still decided to give it a try. It's humbling when we think we know everything about a subject but find out there is still much more to learn. We will see how it goes =)

Memorable Parts

  • "It's the first drink that's the problem. AA are spot on in pointing out the simple truth that if you never took the first drink, you simply could not have an alcohol problem. So the first drink is the one to avoid."

  • "If we take the alcohol problem out of our life, will we lose what we perceive to be our 'charm' or 'charisma'? But wait a minute, isn't it true that you spend most of your time trying to conceal the fact that you have a drinking problem?"

  • "What we interpret as pleasure from the alcohol is in fact relief from withdrawal. Drinkers drink in order to feel like nondrinkers."

  • "When you consume alcohol it temporarily quiets the withdrawal symptoms, creating the illusion that the drink has made you relaxed and happy. In fact, all it has done is taken you from slightly uptight and restless to feeling OK."

  • "It's only when you can't drink that it appears to be so precious. What sort of pleasure is that?"

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UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS: THE RISE AND FALL OF JACK JOHNSON

Geoffrey C. Ward

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • I was living in Chicago and the TV was on. All of a sudden I hear, from the PBS Channel, the phrase 'unforgivable blackness'. I turn around and see a black fighter with a golden smile. Fast forward and I have a picture of his fight with Jim Jeffries hanging in my office in Mexico. Read the book and you will get another glimpse at how bad racism in the U.S. was not so long ago.

Memorable Parts

  • "'Boxing ha fallen into disfavor-into very great disfavor...The cause is clear: Jack Johnson. But we have yet to hear, in the case of White America, that marital troubles have disqualified prize fighters. It comes down, then, after all to this unforgivable blackness.' - W.E.B. Du Bois

  • "'If anybody ever made me feel proud of who and what I am, it was Jack. He never bowed to no one, yet everything was 'yes', 'no', 'please' and 'thank you'. His behavior only made stronger my belief that you're either born with 'it' or you're not. Greatness comes from knowing who he is, being satisfied with nothing but the best, and still behaving like a warm, gracious human being.'" - Ada Smith

  • "When James J. Braddock unexpectedly granted Joe Louis a shot at his championship - the first time a white champion had given a Negro challenger a chance to fight for the title since Tommy Burns faced Jack Johnson twenty-nine years earlier..."

  • "The promoter spelled out his offer: a $101,000 purse, the largest in boxing history; two-thirds of the film rights to be split between the fighters; a bonus of $5,000 more for Johnson on signing."

  • "Jeffries labored in a tin mine, shoveled coal for the Santa Fe Railroad, then became a boilermaker, pounding hot rivets with a sledgehammer twelve hours a day."

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GUÍA PRÁCTICA DEL DERECHO DE LOS NEGOCIOS: CONCEPTOS BÁSICOS PARA NO ABOGADOS

Ricardo González Delgadillo

Altamente Recomendado

Summary​

  • [Disclaimer: Ricardo es amigo mio] Es algo frustrante y vergonzoso para mí como Director General de un negocio que, en el área legal, estoy muy novato. Siempre había buscado un libro como este. Un libro donde me puede guiar sobre los conceptos básicos y, ya con este entendimiento, saber que le falta a mi negocio y buscar soporte de un profesional en la materia. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Este pequeño libro no pretende ser un escrito especializado de derecho para abogados, más bien tiene por objetivo que cualquier persona emprendedora...pueda obtener de su lectura informacio´n básica sobre diversas áreas de las que se compone el drecho de los negocios."

  • "Para aquellos que operan bajo la figura S.de R.L. de C.V., un aspecto a considerar al firmar contratos es ques siempre incluyan la razón social completa de la sociedad y no solo el nombre, ya que de no hacerlo, los socios podrían responder de modo subsidiario, ilimitada y solidariamente de las obligaciones contratadas."

  • "Cuando se adquiere un vehículo se reciba la factura como documento 'soporte' de la propiedad. Cuando se compra un inmueble se recibe la escritura pública inscrita en el registro público de la propiedad que sirve para confirmar la titularidad del bien."

  • "En México, quien se encargó de ´'tropicalizar' estas reglas fue el Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE)."

  • "Es también parte de una creencia social que el tener en nuestras manos la escritura pública y los documentos originales de una propiedad nos convierte en dueños legales de la misma, lo cual resulta totalmente equivocado y esto genera problemas futuros para los adquirentes o herederos."

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UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING: MOVING FROM REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS TO LOVE AND REASON

Alfie Kohn

Recommended

Summary​

  • On my never-ending quest to become the best father possible, I stumbled across this great book. The Nappa award pushed me towards reading it because, to be honest, I wasn't so thrilled with the title. I'm glad I did because I learned that unconditional parenting is not a 'free-for-all'. I also reflected on habits we all have as parents regarding rewards and punishments.

Memorable Parts

  • "Consider the phrase 'He was so good during the flight!' Where children are concerned, the word good is just as likely to mean nothing more than quiet - or, perhaps, not a pain in the butt to me. A 'good' child seems to be one that isn't too much trouble to us grown-ups."

  • "Around the corner are two parents who don't know you're there. You overhear them talking about - your child! Would you be delighted if they said 'Boy, that child does everything he's told and you never hear a peep out of him.'? The crucial question is whether we sometimes act as though that is what we care about the most."

  • "We hope they'll stand up to bullies and resist peer pressure, particularly when sex and drugs are involved. But if it's important to us that kids not be 'victims of others' ideas', we have to educate them to think for themselves about all ideas, including those of adults'."

  • "I have sometimes derived comfort from the idea that, despite all the mistakes I've made (and will continue to make) as a parent, my children will turn out just fine for the simple reason that I really love them. After all, love heals all wounds."

  • "How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them. Educators remind us that what counts is not what the teacher teaches but what the learner learns. And so it is in families. What matters is the message our kids receive, not the one we think we're sending."

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SMARTER, FASTER, BETTER: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF REAL PRODUCTIVITY

Charles Duhigg

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • This book is in my top 5 list for 2024. The 'productivity craze' has spawned many not-so-good books on the topic, but this one is the real deal. I found the examples interesting and relevant, and the advice actionable. The book is divided into topics like motivation, teams, focus, goal setting, etc.

Memorable Parts

  • "People are more motivated to complete difficult tasks when those chores are presented as decisions rather than commands. That's one of the reasons why your cable company asks all those questions. If they ask if you prefer a paperless bill, or the ultra vs platinum package, you're more likely to pay the bill each month."

  • "To teach ourselves to self-motivate more easily, we need to learn to see our choices not just as expressions of control but also as affirmations of our values and goals. That's the reason recruits ask each other "why" - because it shows them how to link small tasks to larger aspirations."

  • "As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well. But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined. The conversations didn't need to be equal every minute, but in aggregate, they had to balance out."

  • "Darlene explained that she carried around a picture in her mind of what a healthy baby ought to look like. and the infant in the crib, when she glanced at her, hadn't matched that image."

  • "The survey is designed to measure a personality trait known as the need for cognitive closure. The desire for a confident judgment on an issue, any confident judgment, as compared to confusion and ambiguity."

​

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THE UNEXPECTED JOY OF BEING SOBER

Catherine Gray

Recommended

Summary​

  • A brutally honest book about a recovering alcoholic. What made this book unique for me was getting a female's perspective on the disease. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Once you see the world through sober eyes, it becomes clear that after one drink, most people are indeed looser, quicker to laugh, unclenched. However, at drink three that social alchemy begins to tarnish and rust. The looseness turns to slopiness, the laughs become too loud, the jokes become muddled, quiet confidence turns to arrogance, mascara starts to smudge, cuddled become inappropriate."

  • "The moment the interview was in the bag, I went to a pavement cafe amid the rainbow of townhouses of Georgetown and sank wine after wine, telling myself I was 'experiencing' DC."

  • "Already living life underwater, I grabbed at other people's legs as they swam by and tried to pull them down with me."

  • "For me, addiction manifested itself in the breaking of hundreds of tiny rules. I never thought I'd use my last grocery money to buy wine; until I did. I never thought I'd drink in the morning; until I did. And once you've broken a rule once, it becomes very easy to break it again. And again."

  • "Addiction is all about seeking external relief from mental pain. You seek to treat an internal pain with an external substance. Guilt, shame, and self-pity activate the reward circuitry in the brain. The only way out of this addictive loop is to practice radical self-compassion instead."

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OUR MATHEMATICAL UNIVERSE: MY QUEST FOR THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY

Max Tegmark

Recommended

Summary​

  • Max Tegmark has a Ph.D from Berkeley and is a physics professor at MIT. The first chapters are a magnificent recap of the history of physics and its discoveries. Warning: This book gets considerably difficult as it progresses but, if you are a physics fan, it is a ride you will enjoy!

Memorable Parts

  • "Einstein taught us that there are two equivalent ways of thinking about our physical reality: either as a 3D place called space, where things change over time or as a 4D place called spacetime that simply exists, unchanging, never created and never destroyed."

  • "The grand challenge for cognitive sciences is to link our consensus reality with our internal reality, and the grand challenge for physics is to link our consensus reality with our external reality."

  • "DeWitt told Everett that he just didn't feel like he was constantly splitting into parallel versions of himself as the Many World's interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests. Everett responded: 'Do you feel like you're orbiting the Sun at thirty kilometers per second?'"

  • "'In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.'" - Einstein

  • "If our Universe is only 14 billion years old, how can we see objects that are 30 billion light-years away?"

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WHO NOT HOW: THE FORMULA TO ACHIEVE BIGGER GOALS THROUGH ACCELERATING TEAMWORK

"Dan Sullivan"

Skip

Summary​

  • Ok - Dan founded and runs Strategic Coach. The point of the book is well taken - we can't do everything on our own. My issue is that he didn't write the book! Brilliantly (I guess) he used his own advice and convinced someone to write it for him. I don't know, rubs me the wrong way. 

Memorable Parts

  • "According to Kegan, the basest form of psychological development is the Socializing Self, which is when a person operates out of fear, anxiety, and dependence. You don't make your own decisions. You don't have your own goals. Instead, you are simply trying to be accepted by your peers."

  • "The opposite of addiction is not sobriety - it is human connection."

  • "Our eyes only see and our ears only hear what our brain is looking for."

  • "After this experience, and over time, Dean defined what he wants for his life. He developed the Freedom from Money list."

  • "We remain young to the degree that our ambitions are greater than our memories."

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FIRST GENERATION FATHER: HOW TO BUILD A HEALTHY AND HAPPY HOE WHEN YOU COME FROM A BROKEN ONE

Anthony Blakenship

Average

Summary​

  • The only reason I did not give it a 'recommended' rating is because it contains a section on hitting children (I know). I thought the framework the author presented is a useful way of thinking about our roles as fathers. Overall a decent book and I liked that it did not involve a religious / Christian focus.

Memorable Parts

  • "You're the worst type of soldier. Your fellow soldiers could have used some help and you had help to give. But all you cared about was you."

  • "Units don't fail because their people are incapable. Units fail because their people are selfish, because they don't care about one another."

  • "Before I tell you about the time my father sank a lit match into my face, I wanna tell you about a certain human reaction to injury called the reflex arc."

  • "Early in my marriage, I would sometimes find myself feeling angry for no good reason. When the kids came along, although I'd gotten better, I'd sometimes find myself parenting from a place of anger."

  • "Scars and emotional malformation had pushed me into toxic warrior energy. Hence, I was ready to fight. About anything. That imbalance had served me well in overcoming my early life challenges. But now, while trying to maintain a healthy and loving relationship with my wife, and raise happy and well-adjusted children, that imbalance no longer served me. I needed to evolve."

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GOING TO PIECES WITHOUT FALLING APART: A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE ON WHOLENESS

Marc Epstein, M.D.

Average

Summary​

  • I read about Marc Epstein in the book 10% Happier and what interested me in reading one of his books is that he is an M.D. I was interested in reading his perspective on Buddhism and meditation. I wasn't blown away by the book but I will definitely read another book from the author.

Memorable Parts

  • "When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves  - from other people, relationships, or material goods - or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case, we are trying to find completion. But according to Buddhism, such a strategy is doomed. Completion comes not from adding another piece to ourselves but from surrendering our ideas of perfection."

  • "I know of some but I will need a handful of mustard seeds from a house where no child, husband, parent, or servant has died."

  • "Only if a parent provides what he called 'good-enough ego coverage' can a child go without fear into the unknown. As he explained it, a child needs to develop the capacity to be alone: a faith or trust in the relationship with the parent such that it is possible to explore the world outside of it."

  • "Lucy was experiencing a major obstacle to unintegration: anticipation of the past. She was laying the transparency of her history over the present situation just as a lecturer does with an overhead projector and a screen."

  • "Just as wind is a part of creation, so are anger, thoughts, or family turmoil. Stillness does not mean the elimination of disturbances as much as a different way of viewing them. If we can let anger rise and fall naturally, it becomes, in the Buddhist view, self-liberating. We get into trouble with anger if we try to eliminate it too precipitously, through denial or avoidance, or if we turn it into hatred."

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ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE

Robert M. Pirsig

Skip

Summary​

  • I know that this rating is sacrilegious. I do have a confession to make. I read the 'author's note' several decades after the book was published. That ruined the book for me. Without spoiling the book, the author had comments about the narrator that I could not get out of my head.

Memorable Parts

  • "You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car, you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window, everything you see is just more TV."

  • "It was all those people in the cars coming the other way. The first one looked so sad. And then the next one looked exactly the same way, and the next one and the next one, they were all the same. They were just commuting to work."

  • "Chris seems to understand my remoteness better than they do, perhaps because he's more used to it and his relationship to me is such that he has to be more concerned. In his face I sometimes see a look of worry, or at least anxiety, and wonder why, and the discover that I'm angry."

  • "The allegory of a physical mountain or the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is and easy and natural one to make."

  • "Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion."

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THE BIGGEST IDEAS IN THE UNIVERSE: QUANTA AND FIELDS

Sean Carroll

Recommended

Summary​

  • Carroll's ability to explain physics is unrivaled. This is the second book in the 'Biggest Ideas in the Universe" series. The series came about during the pandemic and his YouTube videos. A word of caution: the purpose of the series is to actually delve into the formulas. So, expect some math!

Memorable Parts

  • "The concepts in question include quantum mechanics itself; quantum field theory, which arises naturally when one combines quantum mechanics with the requirements of special relativity; and various deep ideas that have arisen within quantum field theory..."

  • "We think of electromagnetism as a 'force,' and it is, but Maxwell taught us that fields carrying forces can vibrate, and in the case of electric and magnetic fields those vibrations are what we perceive as light. The quanta of light are particles called photons."

  • "Twenty-six-year-old Albert Einstein; 1905 has come to be known as his annus amirabilis. In a series of papers, he formulated special relativity, articulated the relationship between mass and energy, and explained Brownian motion. Any of these achievements would have made the career of an ordinary scientist, but Einstein didn't even win the Nobel Prize for any of them."

  • "It was eventually shown that matrix mechanics and wave mechanics are two equivalent ways of representing the same physical theory, so nowadays we simply say quantum mechanics."

  • "The quantum mechanical theory of fields is quite sensible known as quantum field theory (QFT). Some folks speak as if there was first 'quantum mechanics,' and then it was superseded by 'quantum field theory'. That's not accurate; QFT is part of quantum mechanics, just applied to fields rather than particles."

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ZEN JIU JITUSE: BEYOND ROLLING WHITE TO BLUE

Oliver Staark

Recommended

Summary​

  • Great resource for a white-belt perhaps 1 or 2 years into training. The book is pure text, it is not a detailed instructional manual about guards, submissions, etc... The book clarified many doubts that I had and also confirmed that I was on the right track in my approach to rolling.

Memorable Parts

  • "Most students don't even think about the counter until the attack is well on its way. This is a folly. They sleep through the grips and the foot positions and don't even realize an attack is happening. Proper Observation and good execution and grip control should cut this down quite a bit."

  • "Understand each step, when your professor or coach mentions a detail then concentrate on the detail, this will be important - I guarantee it. Make it slow enough that you understand how the pieces fit together."

  • "As Master Carlos Gracie Jr. put it, 'Your legs are your hips. Take the way a snake moves. It doesn't walk, it zig-zags. Jiu-Jitsu fighters playing guard look like snakes [only] with their bellies up.'"

  • "'For the choke, there are not 'tough guys'. With the armlock he can resist the pain. With the choke he just passes out and goes to sleep'." - Helio Gracie

  • "I spread my knees nice and wide, his legs locked around my waist. My weight slumped down low onto my heels like I had a lead belly, my spine erect, my right arm locked on his collars over his breastbone and my left pushing down on his hip."

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SELF-COMPASSION: THE PROVEN POWER OF BEING KIND TO YOURSELF

Kristin Neff

Recommended

Summary​

  • The practice of Gratitude and Self-Compassion has been life-changing for me. Gratitude immediately takes me out of a foul mood. Self-Compassion does the same when I make a mistake and I am hard on myself. The book explores this practice in the different areas of our lives. A good reminder that we should 'talk to ourselves' like we talk to our best friend. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Why is it so hard when we step out of line, are rude, or act impatient? Because our ego feels so much better when we project our flaws and shortcomings on to someone else."

  • "I realized that self-compassion was the perfect alternative to the relentless pursuit of self-esteem. Why? Because it offers the same protection against harsh self-criticism as self-esteem, but without the need to see ourselves as perfect or as better than others."

  • "As comedian Phyllis Diller notes, 'we spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.'"

  • "Self-compassion entails three core components. First, it requires self-kindness. Second, it requires recognition of our common humanity. Third, it requires mindfulness - that we hold our experience in balanced awareness, rather than ignoring our pain or exaggerating it."

  • "Suffering stems from a single source - comparing our reality to our ideals. When reality doesn't match our wants and desires - we suffer. The key to happiness was understanding that suffering is caused by resisting pain. We can't avoid pain in life, but we don't necessarily have to suffer."​

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ZEN JIU JITSU: BEYOND ROLLING THE 30

Oliver Staark

Average

Summary​

  • This is the second book I have read in the Zen Jiu Jitsu series. I found great pieces of advice that I will incorporate into my jiu-jitsu training. My only complaint is that the book felt like a grouping of different ideas without a clear order. A single chapter could incorporate 5 different ideas on 5 different topics. I guess I thought it needed depth.

Memorable Parts

  • "One of my favorite stances in sparring is the Butterfly guard. I hunt for the cross-collar and elbow grip, I can get this most times as it appears to be non-threatening. Once hooked in, my partner has a few options. I have drilled every viable option at least five hundred times each."​

  • "Pretty much everything you encounter on your Jiu Jitsu path will boil down to the ability to confront things or ideas. In fact, that's pretty much life in general. Your ability to confront the stages of gradient learning in the Jiu Jitsu process will have the greatest impact here."

  • "Focus intently on the hips at all times as this is the balance of power and know at all times where your hips are."

  • "'You are right son, we didn't have those things when we were young...that's why we invented them, for arrogant little shits like you. What have you got planned for the next generation?'"

  • "'Fear is the mind killer.'" - Paul Atreides​

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THE VENTURE MINDSET: HOW TO MAKE SMARTER BETS AND ACHIEVE EXTRAORDINARY GROWTH

llya Strebulaev & Alex Dang

Recommended

Summary​

  • This book is written for three types of audiences. (1) If you are considering building a start-up it will prepare you for what is ahead. (2) If you are running a start-up it will serve as a sanity check and help you through hard times. (3) If you run a 'traditional business' it will provide ideas on how to boost innovation. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Have you ever wondered why there are so many new, huge technology companies in the United States? Have you ever heard of a German Google, French Tesla, Japanese Amazon, Italian Facebook, British Apple, or Canadian Microsoft? No. The reason why not: venture capital."

  • "Both product launches [Fire Phone and Echo] were led by the same person, Ian Freed. 'You can't, for one minute, feel bad about the Fire Phone. Promise me you won't lose a minute of sleep,' Jeff Bezos assured Freed after the product's demise."

  • "To discover new lands, you need to leave yours."

  • "After the visit, Mitchell checks with the front desk to find out how the founder treated the receptionist while waiting in the lobby. were they polite or arrogant, friendly or dismissive? As Mitchell told the Stanford class, 'If I found out they were rude, I wouldn't invest.'"

  • "One person outside the hiring team, with sufficient seniority and with experience from numerous interviews, is assigned a unique role called a 'bar raiser'. That person's single goal is to ensure that the candidate is better than at least half of their Amazon peers."

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FATHER NEED: WHY FATHER CARE IS AS ESSENTIAL AS MOTHER CARE FOR YOUR CHILD

Kyle D. Pruett

Recommended

Summary​

  • I started this website pretty much when I started reading many books before my first kid was born. I noticed that good books focused on fathers were few and far between. The majority had a religious context or were too gender-biased for my taste. I would recommend this book to both fathers and mothers.

Memorable Parts

  • "Just 34 percent of all children born in America in the last three years of the twentieth century will reach the age of eighteen living with both biological parents."

  • "As the librarian predicted, we found absolutely nothing in the world-renowned Yale University Library system (containing more than twelve million volumes) about the impact of fathers on child development. We found over nine hundred citations dealing with fruit fly genes."

  • "The father as a play partner is one of the most enduring findings in the research on the role of the father in child development."

  • "Review your disciplinary style and check for gentleness. Discipline means to teach, not punish; consequently, discipline and anger are best put in play separately."

  • "Self-absorption, self-involvement, and running in place are essentially over if a man is to be positively involved as a father. Caring behaviors and activities that promote the well-being of others begin to overtake previously narcissistic pursuits."

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HUMAN CHESS: HIGH PERCENTAGE BJJ STRATEGIES AND CONCEPTS FOR BEGINNERS AND ADVANCED

Oliver Staark

Average

Summary​

  • This is the 3rd book I have read from the Oliver Staark BJJ series. To be honest, I have enjoyed and gotten good information from each book but with diminishing returns. Perhaps I am looking for the Holy Grail of BJJ insights? 

Memorable Parts

  • "They stay with this technique despite never having it come off in live training, clinging to the hope that a detail will fall into place one day and their game will click, instead of working on the fundamentals first and getting fantastic at having posture and being able to hold control positions."

  • "Remember the adage: 'Anger is like drinking poison and expecting the person you hate to die.'"

  • "When you are not training, learn to nurture gratitude. It's the pathway to happiness in all walks of life. You don't compete? You don't have as many stripes as you would like? Be grateful you are fit and healthy enough to train and work out with your teammates."

  • "Pressure and the application of pressure are just as important as speed and timing, if not more so. One of the first things we learn in BJJ is that your opponent should never be comfortable. And pressure - not weight - is the key."

  • "Always remember with no grips it's very difficult for your opponent to submit you, it's an easy way to reset and recompose. Break your opponent's grips."

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tTHE ART OF LEARNING: AN INNER JOURNEY OF OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

Josh Waitzkin

Average

Summary​

  • The book is entertaining but the title is misleading given the author's high profile and background (chess prodigy). The book centers on his transition from chess prodigy to Push Hands National and International Champion, an amazing achievement. My lower rating reflects that I do not see the connection between what the title implies and what the book contains. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Confidence is critical for a great competitor, but overconfidence is brittle. We are too smart for ourselves in such moments. We sense our mortality like a cancer beneath the bravado, and when things start to go out of control, there is little resilience to fall back on."

  • "A child with a learning theory of intelligence tends to sense that with hard work, difficult material can be grasped - step by step, incrementally, the novice can become the master."

  • "From both educational and technical perspectives, I learned from the foundation up. most of my rivals, on the other hand, began studying open variations. There is a vast body of theory that begins from the starting position of all chess games, and it is very tempting to teach children openings right off the bat."

  • "Many kids like this are quite talented, so they excel at first because of good genes - but then they hit a roadblock. As chess struggles become more intense and opponents put up serious resistance, they start to lose interest in the game. They try to avoid challenges, but eventually, the real world finds them. Losing is always a crisis instead of an opportunity for growth - if they were a winner because they won, this new losing must make them a loser."

  • "A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options - one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals."

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Rickson Gracie

Recommended

BREATHE: A LIFE IN FLOW

Summary​

  • The autobiography of a legend of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It would be no exaggeration to calm him the Prince of BJJ. An intense life filled with fighting (obviously), tragedy, family, etc. This book is a great read for those interested in a true fighter's mentality. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Over the next few days, I thought about what he had told me. 'You do a good job of staying calm in bad positions. That is an important thing.' I realized that this did not apply only to Jiu Jitsu."

  • "One of those who made his way to Amazonia was a Japanese fighter named Hideyo Maeda. Traditional Japanese Jiu Jitsu was developed for armed combat on the battlefield, but Judo was created in the late 18880s by Jigaro Kano as a safer, more sporting, weaponless alternative."

  • "Emotions are contagious. Helio used to say that you had to break the emotional wave before it broke you. You can't allow yourself to be swept away by a wave without knowing where it is going to take you."

  • "Rickson, if you lose the fight, I'll give you two gifts. If you win the fight, I'll give you one."

  • "For young kids, Jiu Jitsu should be nothing more than a fun form of recreation that introduces them to the movements through games and structured play. If you push kids too hard, too young, they will quit forever."

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Ian Renshaw, et al.

Average

THE CONSTRAINTS-LED APPROACH: PRINCIPLES FOR SPORTS COACHING AND PRACTICE DESIGN

Summary​

  • I learned about the constraints-led approach via jiu-jitsu. Specifically, how some coaches think drilling - or a repetition of a sequence of movements - is not the right way to learn. They argue that body movements should be learned in real-life scenarios using this methodology of 'ecological / constraints-led'. 

Memorable Parts

  • "The CLA is founded on the theory of ecological dynamics, which considers athletes and sports teams as complex adaptive systems - a network of highly integrated, interacting sub-components."

  • "Because of the rich pedigree of the term 'constraints' in science, in this book, the term is used in a scientific sense to focus on a feature of the environment which acts as information to shape or guide the (re)organization of a complex adaptive system."

  • "For example, the back of the hand and fingers could be painted with different coloured strips or he could be asked to bowl with a modified ball to help the players learn to attune to key informational cues provided by the bowler."

  • "A well-structured environment design must offer performers the opportunity to move beyond 'what' they must do, and towards an understanding that allows them to construct for themselves the 'how, why, where and when.'"

  • "A key feature common across sport is the belief of practitioners that we become 'skilled' by doing repetition after repetition. However, evidence in motor behavior research has highlighted that repeating the same movement over and over again is an impossibility and that variable practice is more advantageous to skill learning."

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Werner Herzog

Highly Recommended

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL: A MEMOIR

Summary​

  • Werner Herzog can be the real-life 'The Most Interesting Man in the World'. Just reading this memoir makes you feel like you have not lived at all! Regardless of whether or not you have watched his films, you will get something out of reading this book. The man has a very interesting perspective on life. 

Memorable Parts

  • "I fled to Mexico, where I had to find some way of earning money for a living. I worked in the charreadas, a Mexican form of rodeo, as a kind of arena clown, riding on young bullocks even though I'd never ridden a horse before. My chosen sobriquet was El Alamein but they referred to me as El Aleman."

  • "From my time in Sachrang, I can still milk a cow, and  I recognize others who can as well, just as you can sometimes identify a lawyer or a butcher. My knowledge of milking came in handy many years later with the astronauts who made up the crew of one of the Space Shuttles."

  • "Once a week, there was a longish loaf of bread from the village baker purchased with our ration coupons. With the points of a knife, our mother scratched a mark in it for each day, Monday to Sunday, allowing about a slice of bread for each of us."

  • "Finally, Louis took off his jacket; underneath was the only shirt he owned. It was so worn and ragged that the sleeves hung off his shoulders. The teacher began to cry too and put the jacket back over him."

  • "I have seen many horrible, horrible things. I've never been afraid to look into an abyss, but I wouldn't want my worst enemy to see what I saw then."

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