Reading

Reading up before baby, part dos.

April 22, 2011

Well, I didn’t stop reading every baby book I can find, although I did slow down a little. Of the big pile I’ve plowed through, here are a few (very few) recent standouts. Journey Into Motherhood. This book was given to me by my childbirth instructor. It’s simply a compilation of positive stories about childbirth, [...]

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Reading up before baby.

January 12, 2011

I’ve been reading my way through all of the baby and parenting books at the library while taking advice from martial arts star Bruce Lee: “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own.” After plowing through a pile of different books on infant care, I haven’t found one [...]

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Mind blowing.

November 17, 2010

I read a lot of non-fiction, and relatively few novels. I’ve been at a loss to explain why, but it finally hit me this week. A good novel takes me to another place; introduces me to people I would never meet. A great novel sticks with me so that I can revisit that place and [...]

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Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

September 16, 2010

I read Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson recently. It’s a book about business, but I think it changed my life. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter “Planning is Guessing.” Unless you’re a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market [...]

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Reading: Righteous Porkchop

July 24, 2010

Last week I read Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms by Nicolette Hahn Niman, and breathed a small sigh of relief. I read a LOT of books about food and environment, and after a while they can start to get depressing and preachy. While Righteous Porkchop does have its share [...]

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On curiosity and fundamentalism.

July 22, 2010

I just finished Tribes by Seth Godin. A short, interesting read, but what struck me most was this passage on–of all things–curiosity and fundamentalism. A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it. As opposed to a curious person who explores first and then considers [...]

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Driving is the new smoking.

July 9, 2010

How to Live Well Without a Car by Chris Balish is pure gold. I’d already been thinking about how to drive less, but this book provided a wealth of practical ideas about how to make it work. Balish says he’s not talking about “how to live without a car,” but “how to live well without a [...]

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Reading: Deep Economy

July 1, 2010

I just finished reading Deep Economy by Bill McKibben. McKibben argues that the economics of growth no longer work, and that continuing economic growth is unsustainable in this country (and in others). While this book has its fair share of gloom and doom, particularly in the first chapter, there are also many inspiring, positive examples [...]

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