The Reading Stack for June 2024 📚
two surprising winners, the hero's journey, a classic, a buddhist find, some vonnegut wisdom
Well, at the risk of being shameless, this was a cool plot twist…
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
What Babies Can Teach Us (#2)
The more I observe, the clearer it is that what matters to a six month old is more or less the same as what matters to me.
Sleep
Food
Movement
Belonging
Outdoors
Every so often I’ll get this sensation of being distant, like I’m walking underwater. I’ll march around trying to analyze, solve, rid myself of these woes, when really it’s because I’ve let one of these fall out of balance.
Like a baby, take me outside, get me a good meal, or get me some sleep and all is right again.
The Books 📚
Book #19 of 2024 - The Power of Myth (1988) by Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell is one of those writers who never seems to disappoint. I read his most famous book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces years ago, and then immediately picked up this one from the library. Returning to it some years later, I see the ways the writer/professor’s ideas continue to influence modern culture forty years later.
In short, Campbell was most famous for the “mono-myth” which finds overlaps between of a variety of world religions from Greek mythology to Buddhism to Christianity. The Power of Myth is a long interview series between Campbell and the prominent American journalist, Bill Moyers, touching on subjects from, from John Lennon to Jesus to modern marriage. Campbell’s focus is on finding the universalities in human experience across time and culture.
Overall, the two are an excellent match and I highly recommend the audiobook, or a read.
Book #20 - Normal People by Sally Rooney
There’s something about college-age main characters with adult sensibilities that really crackles. Normal People by Sally Rooney reminds me of A Secret History by Donna Tartt, which I also loved. Set around Trinity College in Dublin, Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan find themselves tumbling through an on/off relationship that mirrors their own inner struggles. They each deal with the relatable issues of social uncertainty that surrounds young (high school/college) life. They veer back and forth between shy and social, popular and insecure, dealing with their own forms of anxiety and self-destructiveness. As a pair they vibrate and everyone knows it, but circumstance has them floating out of each other’s orbits and into the arms of others. It sounds like a bit of a relationship drama, but the characters have such rich inner lives, and Rooney’s prose is so perfectly spare and vivid that it felt deeper and more psychological—exploring the subtleties of class, young love, and complex family relationships.
Book #21 - The Dutch House by Anne Patchett
Set in Pennsylvania over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is something of an anti- fairy tale. The story is told by Danny Conroy, son of Cyril Conroy who has turned one smart post-World War II investment into a sensational real estate empire. The dutch house both builds the families wealth and breeds its undoing. Danny’s mother leaves and their father marries a true-to-life evil stepmother. When Cyril dies and their stepmother forces them out of the estate, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested. Danny’s sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up and thrown back into the poverty their parents escaped. They grow in distinct, yet overlapping directions, paralleling their estranged parents in various ways.
Like all Patchett novels, the characters are rich and impressively realistic. It’s no surprise that Tom Hanks signed up to narrate the audiobook. Another great read.
Book #22 - If This Isn’t Nice What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve always loved Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, so I was intrigued to read some of his creative non-fiction. One of the most in-demand commencement speakers of his time, the book is a collection of his graduation speeches, and his expanded thoughts. On all occasions, his words were unfailingly witty, insightful, creative, and memorable.
If you’re a Vonnegut fan, the book reads in the same punchy, quirky, irreverently smart voice that made him a hero. Funny yet razor-sharp, ridiculous yet deeply serious, Vonnegut’s reflections are ideal for anyone, particularly those figuring it out (or in Vonnegut’s words, their “long-delayed puberty ceremony”)
Book #23 - The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim
Born in South Korea and educated at Berkeley, Harvard, and Princeton, Sunim received formal monastic training from Haein monastery, South Korea and taught Asian religions at Hampshire College in Massachusetts for seven years. Though not as well known as Thich Naht Hanh, Pema Chodron, or Sam Harris, Sunim is one of the most influential Zen monks on social media.
I quite enjoyed this bestselling mindfulness guide. It’s low maintenance and easy to pick up at any time, offering guideposts to well-being and happiness in eight areas—including relationships, love, and spirituality. Sunim emphasizes the importance of forging a deeper connection with others and being compassionate and forgiving toward ourselves. There are also a variety of full-color illustrations that encourage you to notice that when you slow down, the world slows down with you.
Book #24 - Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
There are so many gaps in my reading history with the classics. I’d heard numerous mentions of Robinson Crusoe but had never been compelled to read it. It’s a novel from a different age, so it’s slower and a bit more cumbersome to read, but I treated it like watching an old movie. I can’t expect Casablanca to stand next to Mission Impossible, but I can pause and appreciate what some people call the first novel as a historical artefact.
From Goodreads: originall published under the considerably longer original title The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely delivered by Pirates. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer)—a castaway who spends years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story is widely perceived to have been influenced by the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on the Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" (in 1966 its name was changed to Robinson Crusoe Island), Chile.
📚 Years ago,
In my early twenties I committed to a life of books, and that choice led me to view reading as a privilege and a practice. It occurred to me that no matter how much time I dedicate to reading, I won’t come close to getting through all the great writing out there. The realization freed me up to explore books of all kinds, not just the greats. Now, even as reading time grows more scarce, I pickup whatever sounds compelling, and write as much as I can manage.
Books are magic. Learning is magic. And my biggest wish is that you treat your mind with the books it deserves.
Cheers,
—J
