favorite reads
10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings
Fluid reflections on keeping a solid center.
16 Overall Favorite Books of 2016
From loneliness to love to black holes, by way of Neil Gaiman, Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver.
A Rap on Race: Margaret Mead and James Baldwin’s Rare Conversation on Forgiveness and the Difference Between Guilt and Responsibility
“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.”
Rebecca Solnit on Hope in Dark Times, Resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair, and What Victory Really Means for Movements of Social Change
“This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.”
Against Self-Criticism: Adam Phillips on How Our Internal Critics Enslave Us, the Stockholm Syndrome of the Superego, and the Power of Multiple Interpretations
“In broaching the possibility of being, in some way, against self-criticism, we have to imagine a world in which celebration is less suspect than criticism.”
Philosopher Erich Fromm on the Art of Loving and What Is Keeping Us from Mastering It
“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”
An Antidote to the Age of Anxiety: Alan Watts on Happiness and How to Live with Presence
Wisdom on overcoming the greatest human frustration from the pioneer of Eastern philosophy in the West.
Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
How to fine-tune the internal monologue that scores every aspect of our lives, from leadership to love.
How to Love: Legendary Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Mastering the Art of “Interbeing”
“To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love.”
The Writing of “Silent Spring”: Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power
“It is, in the deepest sense, a privilege as well as a duty to have the opportunity to speak out — to many thousands of people — on something so important.”
Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers
Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Didion, Sontag, Vonnegut, Bradbury, Orwell, and other literary icons.
Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate
“Attention without feeling … is only a report.”
The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease
How your memories impact your immune system, why moving is one of the most stressful life-events, and what your parents have to do with your predisposition to PTSD.
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
“Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective… We are in this together, this accumulation of scars… What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity.”
Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Moral Human Being, and Her Advice to Writers
“Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”
Leisure, the Basis of Culture: An Obscure German Philosopher’s Timely 1948 Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Human Dignity in a Culture of Workaholism
“Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same as the absence of activity … or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running from Difficulty
A century and a half before our modern fetishism of failure, a seminal philosophical case for its value.
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