Dear Friends and Readers:
2020 is right in front of us. I'm excited and nervous. Because 2019 challenged me. I wasn't expecting it to be the most difficult year of my life. Health and wellness, relationships, career development, hobbies, interests—all the plans we make, people in our lives, and things we rely upon aren't certain. I am grateful in some ways for those reminders, because they present with painful clarity a host of learning opportunities—to be grateful for what and who I do have.
This was my 16th year reading a book a week and the Reading List's 6th birthday. In truth, I almost quit. What kept me going was the beauty and truth and practical value found and cherished within the pages below and the wonderful human connections I continue to make by sharing them. Whether you're a new or casual or devoted subscriber, thank you for your support, recommendations, emails of encouragement, and friendships. Especially you, Samir, Sue, and Sydney.
Following tradition, I've rounded up the 10 best books I read in 2019. By best, I mean best for me. Tyler Cowen writes about "quake books," which I've certainly had my fair share of (from gentle tremors to Magnitude 8+). This year was no different. Whether you try all or one, now or later, for the first or fiftieth time, I hope you get as much out of them as I have. If you go your own way, be sure to let me know where you land.
Happy New Year and happy reading.
Jon
P.S. If you or someone you know is looking for more book recommendations, you can subscribe to the Reading List. Each month, I'll email you 3-6 books that I absolutely couldn't put down—usually a mix of fiction and nonfiction. I try to steer clear of bestseller (read: fake) lists, and instead explore authors who challenge my worldview, enchant me through language, and model how to act more effectively and even nobly. At the end of the day though, maybe it's best to not take my advice and Joseph Campbell's instead: simply "follow your bliss." If you're looking for more starting points, here are my 10 best books from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
2020 is right in front of us. I'm excited and nervous. Because 2019 challenged me. I wasn't expecting it to be the most difficult year of my life. Health and wellness, relationships, career development, hobbies, interests—all the plans we make, people in our lives, and things we rely upon aren't certain. I am grateful in some ways for those reminders, because they present with painful clarity a host of learning opportunities—to be grateful for what and who I do have.
This was my 16th year reading a book a week and the Reading List's 6th birthday. In truth, I almost quit. What kept me going was the beauty and truth and practical value found and cherished within the pages below and the wonderful human connections I continue to make by sharing them. Whether you're a new or casual or devoted subscriber, thank you for your support, recommendations, emails of encouragement, and friendships. Especially you, Samir, Sue, and Sydney.
Following tradition, I've rounded up the 10 best books I read in 2019. By best, I mean best for me. Tyler Cowen writes about "quake books," which I've certainly had my fair share of (from gentle tremors to Magnitude 8+). This year was no different. Whether you try all or one, now or later, for the first or fiftieth time, I hope you get as much out of them as I have. If you go your own way, be sure to let me know where you land.
Happy New Year and happy reading.
Jon
P.S. If you or someone you know is looking for more book recommendations, you can subscribe to the Reading List. Each month, I'll email you 3-6 books that I absolutely couldn't put down—usually a mix of fiction and nonfiction. I try to steer clear of bestseller (read: fake) lists, and instead explore authors who challenge my worldview, enchant me through language, and model how to act more effectively and even nobly. At the end of the day though, maybe it's best to not take my advice and Joseph Campbell's instead: simply "follow your bliss." If you're looking for more starting points, here are my 10 best books from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
I first met Hawthorne in 9th grade English class by way of his haunting short story, The Birth-Mark. In it, a scientist tragically obsesses over the blemish on his beautiful bride's cheek. Two years later, The Scarlet Letter became my favorite assigned reading book ever. I literally couldn't stop. Now, twelve years later, I'm bound back up by the New Englander's spell after plucking a gorgeously illustrated hardback off the shelf of a 197-year-old barn (yes, actually). Twice Told Tales, first told in various magazines and newspapers of the mid-1800s, is a curation of nearly 30 Hawthorne shorts, 9 dreamy illustrations by Lars Hokanson, and 2 praising Afterwords by Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. If I had to choose just one short story: The Great Carbuncle. In it, a band of intrepid, yet distinctly motivated explorers search the White Mountains of New England for a fabled gemstone known as the Great Carbuncle. The finder(s) may surprise you.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
This classic coming-of-age tale holds the tension of a loaded revolver in a steely hand. When a mysterious gunman emerges from "the glowing west" and rides into a peaceful Wyoming valley, a farm boy's life is forever changed. I love Jack Shaefer's brevity, lyrical passages, visual descriptions, and celebration of heroes and the boys who idolize them. I can't wait to read Shaefer's twenty five other novels.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
The American Civil War was the first photographed war and Frederick Douglass—not Lincoln or Lee or Grant—the most photographed American of the 19th century. He never smiled by design, aiming to blast the meme of the happy, content-in-his-bondage black man from public discourse. His life's story is a powerful and painful-to-read indictment that peels back the dishonestly romanticized Old South's way of life—a false meme which continues to this day. Apparently, there are many slave narratives (yes, that's what the genre is called) and I plan to read many more. Douglass' tale is unique historically and psychologically though, as I understand it. Here was a man born into slavery, whose desire for freedom was awakened by his vision of an alternative life. In large degree, this was nurtured by him learning to read in secret.
Read the full post here and another on his speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
Read the full post here and another on his speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
7. SETTING THE TABLE: THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF HOSPITALITY IN BUSINESS
Danny Meyer
Paperback | Kindle | Audio
336 pages | 5 hours
Danny Meyer
Paperback | Kindle | Audio
336 pages | 5 hours
Danny Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. His restaurants and their chefs have earned twenty-one James Beard Awards, and are perennially ranked among NYC's favorite food spots in the Zagat survey. From his early twenties spent studying the dining rooms, kitchens, and markets of Europe to his insatiable appetite for discovering and improving on local specialities, Meyer's lifelong journey to realize his vision for perennial dining experiences is packed with inspiration for any business venture. I found his later chapters on navigating press and customer reviews as well as building teams through discerning hiring practices especially illuminating.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
"Now in the afternoon sun, the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold. Boris was able now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told him when he was a child: that he had once seen, about this time of the year and day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes, the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing the ground. The air here smelled of fir leaves and toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn."
I studied the above passage in a fantastic creative writing course 7 years ago. It has haunted me ever since with its surreal flow that whips at my imagination. I particularly love the inclusion of the burning red fir trees at twilight, dappled mares rosy in the sun, the scent of toadstools, and Boris' desire to yawn. The writing transfigures radiantly, subtly, effortlessly what Boris sees before him and remembers from the old gardener's story. This passage and countless others are painted so vibrantly throughout Karen Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales. What Blixen explores the most it seems is our relationship to the past. Often characters seem to understand those gone from their lives through others or their own romanticized accounts of them. Identities, perhaps most explicitly in The Monkey, shift beneath moon-lit masks, shatter like a mansion's stained-glass window, and morph in dark forests on stormy nights.
Read the full post here.
I studied the above passage in a fantastic creative writing course 7 years ago. It has haunted me ever since with its surreal flow that whips at my imagination. I particularly love the inclusion of the burning red fir trees at twilight, dappled mares rosy in the sun, the scent of toadstools, and Boris' desire to yawn. The writing transfigures radiantly, subtly, effortlessly what Boris sees before him and remembers from the old gardener's story. This passage and countless others are painted so vibrantly throughout Karen Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales. What Blixen explores the most it seems is our relationship to the past. Often characters seem to understand those gone from their lives through others or their own romanticized accounts of them. Identities, perhaps most explicitly in The Monkey, shift beneath moon-lit masks, shatter like a mansion's stained-glass window, and morph in dark forests on stormy nights.
Read the full post here.
Ryan Holiday is a bestselling author of ten books on marketing, entrepreneurship, ancient Stoic philosophy, American culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into twenty languages and appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Fast Company, The New York Observer, and others. I'm also a huge fan of three other books by him: Trust Me, I'm Lying, The Obstacle is the Way, about which I had the privilege of interviewing him in 2016, and Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, & Advertising.I first encountered Ryan by way of the Chase Jarvis Live show in 2012, and since have discovered an incredible amount of books from other authors and creatives, including bestselling author Robert Greene, CEO of Breather Julian Smith, human guinea pig Tim Ferriss, and others.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
"Work or crematorium—the choice is yours," said the German SS Officer to a freshly shaved and tattooed group inside the gates of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, a fifteen year old Hungarian Jew, was among them. "We were withered trees in the heart of the desert." But he would survive another 500 days or so in four different concentration camps, until American forces liberated Buchenwald in Weimar, Germany. Until then, "the stomach alone was measuring time," and his endless days were filled with night. Night is Wiesel's memoir of his experience in the Holocaust and the author of 56 other books. He died in 2016 at the age of 87 and survived by his wife and translator Marion Wiesel and son Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, named after his father.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
Richard Louis Proenneke (Pren-uh-key) lived alone for thirty years in Twin Lakes, Alaska. This is his journal recording the first 18 months of the odyssey—from cutting beams and notching logs to meeting many woodland friends and foes as well as testing mouth-watering recipes. "For supper, I cut the trout into small chunks, dipped them into beaten egg, and rolled them in cornmeal. They browned nicely in the bacon fat, and my tender crusted sourdough did justice to the first fish fry of the season." The only help Proenneke accepted were food and mail deliveries twice a month from a float place piloted by his friend Babe. That and some tar paper and polyethylene for the cabin roof so it wouldn't leak. Tumbling further down the outdoors lifestyle has been a treasure trove of inspiring individuals and stories, especially Shawn James' YouTube channel My Self Reliance.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
Oscar Wilde's only novel is a masterpiece; one just as accessible and relevant in 2019. In it, young Dorian Gray, a handsome bachelor in his prime, falls in love with his own good looks. He is so enamored that he swears before a just-finished portrait and its painter that he would gladly sell his soul to keep his youth and beauty. From there, Gray is ushered into the decadence of high society. His own words and deeds begin to mimic the insincerity and immorality of various high society members—culminating in a very real slippery slope of dishonesty, materialism, and self-corruption. All the while, something strange isn't happening. Dorian isn't aging. He looks just as young and handsome as the portrait used to look. The painting—with each act of sin—changes; ages. His actions are destroying the soul of the face, the beauty that once rightfully belonged to it. Written with impressive brevity and a gorgeous lyricism (some favorite quotes and passages on the full post), The Picture of Dorian Gray is a cautionary tale of morality and its essential role for our survival.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
The War of Art is one of the most impactful books I've ever read and it doesn't read like most books. It's a battlecry and battle plan against that ever-present, invisible obstacle that creative types face daily. Pressfield gives it a name: Resistance. And a face. "Resistance is self-sabotage...Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within" and "...experienced as fear." Pressfield's exploration of the creative process cuts through and captures the essence of artistic blocks with brevity and pace. The audiobook is 6 hours, 4 if you crank the playback speed to 1.25. It's the perfect hiking companion. I revisit The War of Art often. But don't just take my word for it. Tim Ferriss, John Mayer, Ryan Holiday, Marie Forlio, Aubrey Marcus, Joe Rogan, and many other top performers cite Pressfield's body of work regularly.
Read the full post here.
Read the full post here.
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