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Reading
Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Sunday, April 20, 2025
★★★★☆ | Psychology | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads Another great Malcolm Gladwell read. I think I’ve read all his books now and even took his Masterclass on writing. I listened to the audiobook, which was the perfect format for this one. Gladwell has an engaging reading voice and employed his podcast artistry by including recordings of his interviewees in the audiobook. I love how we weaves together diverse topics into a central theme.
Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Thursday, April 10, 2025
★★★★★ | Literature | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads Rereading a book you haven’t read in 40 years is an interesting experience. I remembered only the bleakness but little of the story itself. I enjoyed most of the book, though all the decades of Hemingway parodies and copycats stole some of its luster. Still, it is a timeless classic that reinvented the novel. Makes me want to go back and read all those books I read when I was young.
Currently reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer 💙📚
Seems timely.
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Friday, March 28, 2025
★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads | You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Thursday, March 27, 2025
★★★★☆ | Psychology | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Fascinating deep dive into the world of introversion and extroversion. Some meaningful parts of our temperament are genetic and passed down from our parents. If you’re a fussy, highly sensitive baby at four months, there’s a good chance you’ll grow up to be introverted. There seems to be a biological connection between high physical sensitivity and introversion.
Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments—both physical and emotional—unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss—another person’s shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.
According to Cain, bloggers are almost always introverts. We’ll share personal details with an online multitude they would never disclose at a cocktail party. This is me.
The U.S. is one of the most extroverted countries in the world, while countries in Asia rank among the most introverted. The difference relates in part to genetics but mostly to cultural norms.
Social anxiety disorder in Japan, known as taijin kyofusho, takes the form not of excessive worry about embarrassing oneself, as it does in the United States, but of embarrassing others.
Best takeaway: An introverted/extroverted couple likely has a conflict in their degree of shared sociability. Cain recommends a “Free Trait Agreement” where each partner agrees to a balance of activities in their free time, i.e., a wife who wants to go out every Saturday night and a husband who wants to relax by the firework out a schedule: half the time they’ll go out, and half the time they’ll stay home. Helpful for this INTJ.
Currently reading: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain 📚💙
This has been an eye-opening book for the ways that extroverts and introverts differ. Bloggers, who Cain suggests are almost all introverts, will share personal details with an online multitude they would never disclose at a cocktail party. This hits close to home!
Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Lao Tzu
Thursday, March 20, 2025
★★★★★ | Philosophy | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads This short book oozes with wisdom with the help of Ken Liu’s wonderful translation and notes. Read this one slowly and set aside time for reflection. So much of the advice is contrary to conventional western views that it can seem non-sensical. But try, you must. ★★★★★ Can you open yourself to your senses—quieting the mind like water?
Currently reading: Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Laozi 💙📚
To solve the hard you must begin with the easy; To do something big you must start very small. All difficulties must be resolved through simple steps. All grand deeds must be performed through tiny details.
Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue by Lee Gutkind
Saturday, March 15, 2025
★★★★☆ | Essays | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads An interesting selection of essays from the print run of the Creative Nonfiction literary magazine. There were some essays that appeared to stretch the boundaries of truth, but that’s the creative part I guess. Highlights If things could be undone, if time could be wound back, like a film, if the past could be kept alive to compensate for the deficiencies of the present: these are the wishes that form character, that grow out of events that form character.
The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant
Monday, March 10, 2025
★★★★☆ | History | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads The eleventh and final volume of the Story of Civilization, covering the years from the beginning of the French Revolution through Waterloo. Napoleon’s rise, dictatorship, stunning victories and ultimate defeat were thrilling to read.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
★★★★★ | Literature | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads Donald Sutherland did a wonderful job narrating this audiobook. It was nice to reacquaint myself with Hemingway’s short and simple sentences, yet so full of energy. Made me yearn for the ocean.
Babel by R.F. Kuang
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
★★☆☆☆ | Fantasy | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads I tried to like this book. It has all the elements of a book I would love: etymology, 19th century England, a diverse set of characters, magic, and an academic setting (Oxford, no less!). But I found it slow and repetitive, filled with one-dimensional, unlikable characters, and lecture after lecture on how the rich and powerful mistreat the poor, especially those who aren’t white and British, except for those that are poor and British.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025 →
Ah, Patrick O’Brian. He was truly one of a kind. If you haven’t discovered Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, there’s not a moment to lose. 💙📚
Finished reading: Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks 💙📚
An entertaining book filled with practical advice on how to improve your storytelling, whether in front of a live audience, on a date, or in a written essay. Dicks shares examples of his own stories, then breaks down why they work. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Fallen Leaves by Will Durant 💙📚
In 208 eloquent pages, Durant shares his views on death, religion, education, war, politics, spirituality, and, through it all, the meaning of life. Truly a gift to humanity from a scholar who devoted his long life to the study of history. ★★★★★
Finished reading: Just After Sunset by Stephen King 📚
Read: 2025-01-27 | ★★★★☆ Horror
On a quest to read the few Stephen King books I missed along the way. I forgot how great of a short story writer King is. Probably some of his novels should have been short stories! Gingerbread Girl and N were my favorites in this collection.
Finished reading: The Godfather by Mario Puzo 📚
Read: 2025-01-13 | ★★★★☆ | Mystery-Suspense
I read the book during a recent visit to New York City and watched the movie on the plane ride home, which made for an immersive experience. The movie stayed very true to the book, though some big sections were left out. I loved reading the backstory of how young Vito Corleone eventually became the Don. Yes, some of it is dated, and yes, there were a few choppy parts that felt in need of editing, but I was pleasantly surprised by how really good this book was. If you loved the movie, you’ll enjoy the book.
Highlights
The word “reason” sounded so much better in Italian, ragione, to rejoin. The art of this was to ignore all insults, all threats; to turn the other cheek.
a friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults.
Finished reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen 📚
What a delightful book. The first chapter reeled me in with the story of how the Moleskin notebook exploded in popularity in the 1990s. The author clearly has been bitten by the same notebook fetish bug. He cites brand names of notebooks that are all too familiar to me. He decided to write a history of the notebook about ten years ago and proceeded to fill four or five notebooks with scribbles and quotes and references that ultimately became this book.
Allen used effective storytelling techniques to share dozens of examples of notebook usage over the past six hundred years from accounting ledgers in the 1400s, artist sketchbooks in the 1500s, Darwin’s field notes, to modern day journaling. Definitely a niche book, but great for any lover of notebooks and journals.
★★★★★
New post with my favorite books from 2024 along with updates to my reading system. My year in books for 2024.
Finished reading: Rousseau and Revolution by Will Durant 📚
The tenth volume of the Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. This one provides an immensely readable history of Europe leading up to the French Revolution. This series has been such an education. ★★★★★
Finished reading: The Work of Art by Adam Moss 📚
Finished reading: The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl 📚
Finished reading: The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke 📚
Finished reading: Thinking on Paper by V.A. Howard, J.H. Barton 📚
Finished reading: James by Percival Everett 📚
Finished reading: A Rage in Harlem (Special Edition) by Chester Himes 📚
What a crazy rollercoaster ride through Harlem in the 1950s. I’m just now catching my breath! ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Needful Things by Stephen King 📚
This one missed the mark for me. Too many characters — almost the entire town of Castle Rock. With so many, I had a hard time connecting with any of them. Any other author would get a two stars, but King gets a pass. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: A System for Writing by Bob Noto 📚
A guide to the Zettelkasten method of note-taking. Writing and linking atomic notes feels so non-intuitive and…nutty? The examples late in the book of the poor quality of published books compiled from atomic notes did not help the cause. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: The Age of Voltaire by Will Durant 📚
Continuing my quest to read all eleven volumes of Will Durant’s Opus, The Story of Civilization. Volume IX centers on science and philosophy overtaking religion through thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot. The church did its best to stop it, but in the end, the French Enlightenment steered the faithful away from religion toward the beginnings of existentialism. While this movement addressed religious corruption and the horrors of inquisitions, there is also a feeling of great loss as civilization let go of its rudder of morality and faith. ★★★★★