Reading

Lots of fantasy, a lovely book of poetry, a beautifully written nonfiction book. All this, on July’s list of books :) July Love Looks Pretty on You, Lang Leav (must read. in my imagination, leav is a talented younger sister, who has been through a lot more and writes her advice just for me, in her poems) Working, Robert Caro (if you haven’t read the Power Broker, you should if you haven’t read the Lyndon volumes, you should this book is Caro’s account of the work, that went into those works. the ceaseless toil, the thankless years, the people and their stories Caro is Caro, master of the craft. There are only a few explicit lessons here. but plenty if you care enough to read between the lines plenty if you make this an annual read, like i will) ...

“Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.” — Epictetus, The Art of Living

It was my better half’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Abby! ’Twas a good month for reading :) June The Song of the Bird, Anthony de Mello (absolutely read. buy and give people copies. this book for me, goes beyond a quake book. it has shaped my life, and thoughts, since boyhood, subconsciously then and with intent now.) The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Poirot #1), Agatha Christie (re-reading my way through the Poirot canon. these books take me to the age I think I belong to, the late 1800s, early 1900s absolutely delightful) ...

Sometimes Seth Godin makes it easy for me to do the newsletter. There’s a pithy post that says everything I want to say. So, to the kids I coach, this is the best writing advice I could give you! (Everything below the break is Seth, (emphases mine)) Decorating a car with bling, mudflaps and an airhorn is a form of signalling. You can show your peers that you have the resources to waste on superfluous adornments. ...

From the Writing Routines1 pdf that is available on signing up to their mailing list… “If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” — Stephen King, On Writing ...

Go see how large your vocabulary is! And don’t cheat! At least the first time :) Click here to take the test. This is me1. Subscribe to the newsletter already, will ya? Ok, I cheated. The original one was 40,000 so i took it again :P ↩︎