Fiction? Whaaat?!?!?
The big excitement of the month was finishing a fiction book in one weekend. I honestly thought I’d lost my binge-reading skills, but I plowed through The Longest Ride by Nicolas Sparks. Robert reads aloud almost every night, but that’s been the extent of my fiction consumption for a long time (we just finished the Dragon Heart Legacy series by Nora Roberts). Now, we are reading The Enchanted Greenhouse, a cozy fantasy by Sarah Beth Durst. A librarian heroine, a gardener love interest, a winged cat, and greenhouse after greenhouse of plants. What’s not to like?
Okay, back to the nonfiction part of the stack
Dealing with Feeling – Marc Brackett
I read Marc Brackett’s book Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive just before starting this newsletter in 2019. He makes a convincing argument about the complete lack of emotional education in our society. We are often misguided in our approach with kids, so it’s no surprise that most of us have learned to suppress and hide our emotions.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Emotional regulation is a skill we can learn at any age, and this book is a practical primer. It’s never too late.
Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most by Greg McKeown
In this follow-up to Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, McKeown offers strategies for making essential tasks easier to accomplish. I love the book’s format, which includes chapter summaries and a book summary at the end. It reminds me of the work of Tara Mohr, especially the Let it Be Easy chapter in Playing Big. We conflate “difficult” with “worthwhile” way too often.
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
This book was published posthumously as a collection of Professor Meadows’ thinking about systems. I first learned about her work from the excellent three-part podcast series, The Limits to Growth. (I wrote about this in the November 2024 newsletter: https://jakekupiec.net/2024/11/facing-up-to-our-role-in-climate-change/.
I have mentioned before that I am a fan of FAN. I love the lecture series hosted by FAN: Family Action Network, an organization that explores human development across the lifespan. Lonnie Stonitsch, the executive director of FAN, is one of the best hosts I have seen in action. I attended lectures recently that added two books to my stack:
- Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours by Corinne Low, Ph.D.
Watch her talk hosted by FAN and moderated by Jessica Calarco: Corinne Low, Ph.D. and Jessica Calarco, Ph.D. – Having It All - After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso, Ph.D.
Watch his talk hosted by FAN and moderated by Katy Milkman: Michael Geruso and Katy Milkman – After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People
Both talks illustrated that often the ideas that we have don’t hold up under scrutiny. With both, I was reminded of the book Factfulness by the amazing Hans Rosling, who demonstrated over and over again that many people—including CEOs and world leaders—have mental models that are 50 years out of date.
