My Books in 2017
I have an input problem.
I’m usually hop-reading between 7 different books in any given week. I am subscribed to over a dozen podcasts and newsletters. All this on top of the required internet reading of OH LOOK SHINY!
Basically, I inhale information like a fiend. I told myself, 2017… 2017 is going to be the year where I take my time to really sit with the books. Quality over quantity. Maybe write up some good old-fashioned book reports because I have the memory of a goldfish. I wanted to read with intention.
Alas, that did not come to be. I plowed through 45 books and many more online articles and podcasts. My laughable memory aside, the books I read do stay with me: You don’t experience hours in someone else’s head without coming out a little changed.
Most of the following titles came to me through podcasts and online articles. Good bookstores are hard to come by in China. But the problem with discovering books online is much the same as finding dates online. You’re limited by the platform and by your own imagination/search terms. You don’t know what you don’t know. You’re missing… serendipity.
The really good bookstores? They play matchmaker. They spruce up the candidates, clean up their profiles, and present them to you. It’s a lovely process of discovery.
I used to be somewhat embarrassed by certain books I read. God forbid my list comes off too feminist or self-helpy. But 2017 proved that speaking up matters, and self care and emotional intelligence so matter.
Here goes.
The Course of Love
We seem to know far too much about how love starts, and recklessly little about how it might continue.
From my favorite philosopher. You might know him from the New York Times essay Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. It’s a perfect follow-up to his two other novels, The Romantic Movement and On Love. The Course of Love is the love story after the love story, when the real work starts. I read it on my Kindle, then listened to it on audio, and finally went out and bought myself a physical copy because I needed it.
Alain de Botton has this way of describing the significance of something utterly mundane. Recommended to anyone who is in or plans to be in a long-term relationship.
I also recommend his blog The Book of Life | Developing Emotional Intelligence and videos from The School of Life.
Everything by Brene Brown
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.
I went through five of Dr. Brown’s books in five months. It started with The Gifts of Imperfection, recommended to me by my counselor. Her most recent book, Braving the Wilderness, highlighted the importance of having civil conversations and standing in nuance. Timely.
I expect to revisit all five of them regularly. Her research on shame, resilience, and vulnerability is well-known. I instantly connected with her when she told the story of how she went to a therapist and basically said she wanted just the action plan and none of the digging. It reminded me of how I asked my counselor if someone could just give me a manual on how to grieve. (I found a couple, listed below.)
Biggest takeaways:
- Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad.” Huge difference.
- Share your vulnerabilities with people who have earned it.
- You can’t numb bad feelings without also killing the good ones.
- Too many.
Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain
I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 22 and ready to start graduate school. I had to seek out doctors in child psychiatry in Taiwan, where there’s less stigma but even less awareness.
This is the first book I’ve read that focused on honing our unique wiring rather than managing the “symptoms.” He offered positive actions and tips that help those with faster-than-normal brains hone their gifts, and boy is he fun to read.
Shankman also has a podcast, 20-minute episodes designed for the easily distracted. Oh and he talks so fast I wondered at first if I had accidentally put him on 2.0x playback.
Biggest takeaways:
- Take dopamine breaks.
- Build habits and give yourself hard deadlines.
- Live 30 minutes early.
- Eliminate as many decisions as possible, especially in the morning (he goes to bed in his gym clothes).
If you’d like to learn more about ADD/ADHD, I’d also recommend books by Dr. Edward M. Hallowell.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert
by John M. Gottman, Nan Silver
Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.
Why should you read a book about marriage when you’re not married? Because I believe long-term relationships, platonic or romantic, should be better-maintained. And because if it’s one of the biggest decisions I’m going to make in my life, I better learn about it.
Biggest takeaway:
- The Four Horsemen that predict breakup/divorce: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
- Almost every couple argues. Most arguments can’t be resolved. The key is to disagree with respect and humor.
- Be on your partner’s team (sometimes that means against your own parents).
- “Understanding must precede advice.” Or as I’d like to call it, shut up and listen.
Good research-backed advice on how to communicate with and appreciate your partner. Recommended for anyone in a long-term relationship.
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy
by Sheryl Sandberg, Adam Grant
The most powerful thing you can do is acknowledge. To literally say the words: I acknowledge your pain. I’m here with you.
― Tim Lawrence
I wish this book had been around three years ago. OK, so people couldn’t help criticizing Sheryl Sandberg, again, for a pretty well-researched book. Mostly because as COO of Facebook with all of the resources that entails, her privilege was showing.
But for someone who’s experienced loss, the book cited, in accessible language, various researchers who codified a lot of the emotional confusion I experienced after losing my dad.
Her anecdotes might be “privileged,” but they were her stories. That she shared her very personal and emotional stories was more important to me than how privileged her circumstances were.
I also appreciated the LEGO movie shout-out when she wrote about the three P’s that hinder recovery: Personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence.
The three P’s play like the flip side of the pop song “Everything Is Awesome” — “everything is awful.”
Translation: It’s all my fault (somehow, however impossible that may be). My life is ruined. And it’s going to suck forever. None of this is true, and recognizing that will help you heal.
I believe everyone can and should talk about grieving and resilience more. Pre- and post-traumatic growth happens for everyone. The book gave me practical insights that enable me to better help my friends and family. Because even when you’ve lost someone yourself, faced with another person’s loss, you still have no idea what to say.
When Breath Becomes Air
Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.
Because sometimes you need to read a beautifully written book that smacks you in the face with feelings and mortality.
Just read it. With tissues.
Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living
edited by Manjula Martin
Any artist who produces work for public consumption must navigate a tenuous balance of ambition and pragmatism.
Book of essays, recommended to anyone who’s curious about how the publishing industry works and how writers make a living. Interesting read, good for aspiring writers.
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
by Trevor Noah
We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.
I grew up bilingual and bicultural and found that Trevor Noah’s experience growing up as a biracial kid in South Africa echoed some of my own confusion. Although in my case this duality was usually celebrated. He’s a great writer and storyteller, and has great insights on poverty, inequality, and racial tensions that put the current issues we face in context.
Men Explain Things to Me
The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.
This books includes one of the essays that led to mansplaining. She explored the relationship between silence and violence, and broke down how the system allowed sexual misconduct to go unreported and/or unpunished.
Books composed of blog posts or essays sometimes suffer repetition, each chapter packing plenty of punch but sometimes lacking in depth or substance. But Rebecca Solnit is nothing if not substantial. I would recommend reading an essay at a time, interchanging with lighter titles.
Anything by Gillian Flynn
A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.
― Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn knows women. She knows we’re messy, petty, and bat-shit crazy. And yet she wraps you up in stories so well-structured and engrossing that you really give a damn about these terrible characters. You’ll love to hate them.
I read Dark Places, Gone Girl, and Sharp Objects this year. All three I inhaled in one or two sittings. Do not read on a school night if you plan on being a responsible adult the next day.
