I recently had the pleasure of visiting a small bookstore with a new friend, and we decided to buy books for each other. His choice for me was Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ve been curious about this book for years but never developed sufficient interest to take it on […]
Steve Peters’s A Path Through the Jungle is a unique and valuable guide to self-understanding and self-regulation. The book is presented in seven “Stages,” each of which is comprised of “Units” that build on each other sequentially. The core set of ideas is what Peters calls the “Chimp Model,” summarized in this image from Unit […]
A few months ago, my father asked me if I’d heard of an author named Ocean Vuong. When I replied that I hadn’t, he said, with a slow smile and a twinkle in his eye: “I have discovered…beauty.” I knew immediately that I would need to investigate, both because I’d been hankering for some good […]
Summary: Fredrik Backman’s My Friends is a novel about the intersection between human connection and artistic inspiration. It begins with Louisa, a gritty and gifted young woman with a burning desire to visit a particular famous painting in an art gallery. Through a series of unexpected events, Louisa finds herself traveling with Ted, a man […]
Summary: Scott Barry Kaufman’s Rise Above is about the perils of victim mindset and how we can avoid them. In Part One, Kaufman explores the dynamics of victim mindset, including how people get stuck ruminating about their pasts, how we indulge irrational emotions and cognitive distortions, and how we become overly concerned with self-esteem and […]
Spoiler Warning If you care about spoilers and have managed to avoid learning what happens in The Last of Us, Parts I or II––or in HBO’s TV adaptation––proceed with caution. What follows assumes total familiarity with the plot and does not avoid major spoilers. Introduction: Video Games and Moral Crimes I committed my first digital […]
Summary: Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese? is an allegorical tale about how to think about and respond to change. It tells the story of four characters who live in a large Maze and must explore the Maze to find cheese. There are two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two littlepeople, Hem and Haw. They […]
In recent weeks, I have joined millions of my fellow Americans who are trying to understand and cope with the overwhelming changes that are sweeping through our sociopolitical landscape. As I pinball between moments of despair, confusion, curiosity, and the occasional glimmer of hope, one of the questions that keeps coming back around is: Who […]
Summary: Robert Masters’s To Be a Man is a passionate text that challenges men to grow and heal in ways that will generate what Masters calls “true masculine power.” Focusing on the topics of shame, anger, aggression, relational intimacy, and sex, Masters explores the dysfunctional patterns that pervade modern models of masculinity, offering alternative frameworks […]
I first read The Way of Kings, the opening book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, way back in 2015. I had a mixed reaction and decided not to continue with the series. Then, as Sanderson published subsequent installments over the next decade, several friends whose reading preferences overlap strongly with mine began to rave about […]