As a kid, I loved reading. I got sucked into the Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis, Phillip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, Piers Anthony, Redwall, the Game of Thrones, etc.
Not too surprising that I sought a career as a librarian. But for anyone out there who hasn’t yet gained a love for reading, here are 5 practical reasons you should take up reading as a hobby.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a novel about Junior, a poor kid who grows up on a reservation in Washington state. Maybe because much of the book mirrors Alexie’s life, it seems like a memoir.
Alexie’s book is at turns touching, funny, and tragic. Junior, the protagonist, is not only poor and outcast by friends and family, but he is also bullied constantly. You will find yourself cheering and empathizing with the bookish underdog that is Junior; who despite his deficits and challenges, manages to live life pretty much like anyone else.
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is about how immigration law has changed over the decades, primarily between 1924 and 1965 but also more recently.
Jia Lynn Yang studies the men in positions of power that determined what American immigration law should resemble. She shares their upbringing, private letters, and the context in which they acted.
The premise is that you should learn how to take good photos of yourself and that the selfie should be considered a form of art.
Well, I buy it…
The Sovereign Individual imagines what changes are to come from the Information Revolution. A revolution that will bring in the fourth stage of human economic life; that of the Information Society.
Side note: This book has aged really well. It was written in 1997, and many of Davidson and Rees-Mogg’s predictions have come to be.
As a person, Emma Goldman has my respect for the difficulties she lived through and her unwavering pursuit of justice. During her life, she was a leading light for liberty and conscience. Nowadays, I think her ideas are less shocking and more mainstream. Her essay on prison reform and her criticism of prisons would hardly be out of place in a moderately left-wing newspaper today; similarly, her thoughts on love, marriage, birth control, and patriotism.
The premise of Kondo’s book is that one’s environment should spark joy and that you should feel happy when surrounded by your material possessions. She encourages you to do this not only by getting rid of objects in the tidying push but rather by focusing on the objects that give you pleasure.
Who’s going to argue with that?
Ronald White recounts the president’s life chronologically, drawing upon personal correspondence, newspaper articles, reports, and other biographies and memories to inform his work.
As an audiobook, the piece flows easily. One can follow the narrative and get a feeling for the principal figures without strain. For the chapters dedicated to the civil war a map could be useful. In that way, the audiobook may compare unfavorably to the printed version (assuming there are some maps there.)
Housel’s thesis is that ‘financial success is not a hard science. It’s a soft skill, where how you behave is more important than what you know.’
Arguing to support this point he gives a small comparison. Given that health and wealth are important to everyone, how can we have made such advancements in the medical field yet find ourselves unchanged in the domain of wealth creation?
Good question.