A couple of months ago, I wrote about the importance of retaining insights rather than just reading a lot. In this blog-post, I put it to the test with my write-up of what I can remember as the key insights from my favorite reads this year (and I looked at my notes from each book, which are my extended memory!). I organized books in 5 categories:
i. General personal development: it’s my goal to be a better, more enlightened human with each passing day, so these are books that are spiritual or about tactical self-improvement
ii. On being a savvier professional: the world is competitive, and we need to keep our skills sharp to stay relevant!
iii. On race: in 2020 with the growing voice of ‘Black Lives Matter’, it became even more important to be more educated on racial histories. As a brown woman, race is relevant for me on a personal level, so reading books in this category helps me to i. Place any racist behavior I experience in a wider context, which is a bit cathartic for me ii. Be educated so I can speak up in situations where I have the courage – I don’t want to be lacking the facts to make an argument
iv. On environmental issues: always relevant, but these issues take on new urgency in 2020. Many of us are afflicted in one way or the other by the pandemic which is intimately tied to the growing loss of natural habitats which force humans into contact with animals – these animals are the source of many diseases like Covid-19. Read more in this Guardian article on the destruction of nature and Covid.
v. Fiction and Miscellaneous other: because not everything can be fit into a neat taxonomy!
I’ll be releasing one category at a time over the next few weeks – Enjoy and please send me your recommendations too!
General personal development
1. The subtle art of not giving a f*ck, by Mark Manson
I would love to have Mark as a life coach! The world of capitalism is always trying to get you to give a f*ck because giving a f*ck about more stuff is good for business – you have to buy more stuff to fix all the “problems” you have. This book is surprisingly full of philosophy for a book with such a rambunctious title, and it’s all about getting you to reflect what you want to give a f*ck about. Here are a few gems of quotes that are a peep into some of the topics covered:
The desire for more positive experiences it itself a negative experience. And paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.
Don’t hope for a life without problems. Hope for a life full of good problems.
You too are going to die, and that’s because you too were fortunate enough to have lived
–Mark Manson
I saw a few critics say this book was written by an entitled Millennial and was a load of hot air. I suspect some of these critics are wedded to the idea that anything high quality must be inaccessible and written with a lot of sophisticated vocabulary. Mark writes simply, crudely even, with plenty of mentions of burritos and cocktails (he is a bit of a bro), but he has really thought things through and has unique insights. The criticism may also be because he talks a lot about entitlement, which not everyone can relate to as an affliction. I’ll put my hand up and say Yes, I am privileged right now and suffer from some of the “first-world problems” Mark talks about, and I found it very insightful. The book is actually about values, and Mark goes as far as to lay out criteria for good and bad values:
Good values are: i. reality-based ii. socially constructive and iii. immediate and controllable
Bad values are: i. superstitious ii. socially destructive iii. not immediate or controllable
I also like the way he turns concepts on their head, for example, he talks about that famous quote “With great power comes great responsibility” and says it applies just as much the other way around: “With great responsibility comes great power” –> referring here to how empowering it is when you reframe situations with the lens of taking responsibility for them, rather than thinking of yourself as the victim of circumstances.
2. Love yourself like your life depends on it, by Kamal Ravikant
This book is short. The message is in the title. It reads like a meditation or a therapeutic poem. One to be read multiple times as a reminder!
“This day I vow to myself to love myself, to treat myself as someone I love truly and deeply – in my thoughts, my actions, the choices I make, the experiences I have, each moment I am conscious, I make the decision I LOVE MYSELF”
– Kamal Ravikant, describing his vow to himself
3. Home Body, by Rupi Kaur
Rupi Kaur is the kind of modern poet that has been on Jimmy Fallon. She’s an Instagram celebrity, and a badass Punjabi-Canadian girl. One of my favorite snippets from her new book is what I aim to do with this website:
break down
every door they built
to keep you out
and bring all your people with you
– storm
– Rupi Kaur
Many women adore her, and of course there are the haters who say she’s no Shakespeare, to which I say: No, she’s not. But there is room for all types of poetry in the world*.
I have to warn that Home Body starts off very, very dark (based on Rupi’s personal trauma), but gets lighter in later parts. Rupi Kaur writes accessible, empowering and modern poetry accompanied by aesthetically beautiful and communicative illustrations. It’s not cryptic, or mysterious – the messages are clear, but that’s not a bad thing, it’s just one style of straight-talk poetry. Her second book which I read in 2019 is actually my favorite of her three, it’s called “The Sun and her Flowers”. Whilst the content has a lot of brown girl struggles, I think this is a good book for any human, and for men to get a deeper view into one woman’s thoughts and feelings.
4. Wabi-sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, by Leonard Koren
One of the most beautiful things in this world is when people walk their talk. Koren’s book feels like an artifact of Wabi-sabi itself. It’s short, unpretentious and calming. He takes on the grand task of trying to define something, an aesthetic, a philosophy that can only really be felt and conveys the feeling.
“Things wabi-sabi are unstudied and inevitable looking. They do not blare out “I am important” or demand to be the center of attention. They are understated and unassuming, yet not without presence or quiet authority. Things wabi-sabi easily coexist with the rest of their environment”
— Leonard Koren
If one way to define something is to describe what it is not or what is orthogonal to it, basically Donald Trump is the opposite of wabi-sabi…
5. Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, by Anthony De Mello
This is such a powerful, potent spiritual healing book. It’s hard for me to describe because it’s an experiential read. But what I remember most from it is De Mello’s assertion that you can be content through sadness, content through depression even. There’s a whole family of books around “accepting reality”, one other is Radical Acceptance, by Tara Brach (which I started but did not have the patience at the time to complete). “Waking up” by Sam Harris is another great one I’d put in the same family of books.
BONUS: I didn’t include the last one in the count because it’s not a wholehearted recommendation for everyone, but more if your e-library has it and if you have time, it has some good insights…
6. Own the Day, by Aubrey Marcus
The whole book is about how to optimize a day, because Marcus argues this is the unit of your life that makes sense to plan out and have good habits for, and we are the “accumulated momentum of all our choices”. He outlines best practices for morning routines, to commute, to going to bed. Disclaimer this book seems to be written for men, but some of it is going to be relevant for everyone.
I found what he writes on cellphones to be particularly insightful, but I’ve still not solved how to not carry my teddy around:
“The cell phone has become the adult’s transitional object, replacing the toddler’s teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging”
– Aubrey Marcus
So true! Now if you’ll excuse me I have to check my Instagram – follow me @aparnamuse 😉
*A note on all the Rupi haters. I find some of the criticism of her to be a bit unnecessary. If you don’t enjoy her poetry, you can always just leave the book. I saw a lot of comments on Amazon spewing a lot of hatred and about her not being “in the caliber of Shakespeare or Wordsworth” etc. It didn’t seem like that comparison made sense, nor do I think that Shakespeare or other English poets should be held up as the bastion of poetry for everyone. Most of Shakespeare was really hard for ethnic minority women to positively relate to. One of the racist lines etched in my memory from a Shakespeare play we studied in high school is “an Indian beauty veiled in a silk scarf” which had a footnote in the study guide that said “A dark complexion was considered sickly in Shakespearean times”. Quite the opposite, I always find a Rupi Kaur book to be like medicine for the soul and very uplifting for women of color.
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