What I'm Reading Roundup
A monthly-ish summary of inspiring and interesting articles to help us live into our next chapter
Over the last month, here are a few of the books1, articles, newsletters, videos, podcasts, or posts that I have found inspiring, informative, genius…or sometimes just funny.
Three episodes of OnBeing with Krista Tippett.
I was driving back and forth to Virginia the other week and totally got sucked into binge-listening (is that a thing?) to OnBeing with Krista Tippett. Here are three episodes I absolutely loved, though just about all episodes are great:
John O’Donohue: The Inner Landscape of Beauty. This interview reminded me yet again that allowing ourselves to experience the full measure of beauty (including aesthetic beauty but not limited to it), our lives become richer and more ‘human’. It is an essential part of who we are, and we need to take time to let it in.
Drew Lanham: Pathfinding through the Improbable. A wildlife biologist, professor, and beautiful writer. Also an African American birder. Lanham shares so much perspective in this interview, about his upbringing, as well as ecology and nature
Colette Pichon Battle: Placed Here in this Calling. There were moments in this interview I laughed out loud. And I was also very inspired by someone who became a climate activist without really meaning to. A native of the Bayou, Colette’s personal story and of the work she does are important to hear!
Robert Reich’s Substack Newsletter
I used to follow Reich years ago (he’s President Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor) and just recently realized that he has a Substack newsletter as well! His writing is excellent, his cartoons are on the nose (or just plain funny), and he has videos and audio too. I’m enjoying catching up on some archived posts of his. See this post on staying hopeful and not giving into cynicism.
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
This book is truly changing my life, and I’m re-reading it for about the fourth time already. Here is just one quote of many I will probably bore you with over the coming weeks and months, and that explains a little more about the premise of the book (the bold is mine):
“The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder. The world also seems to be heading to hell in a handcart—our civic life has gone insane, a pandemic has paralyzed society, and the planet is getting hotter and hotter—but good luck finding a time management system that makes any room for engaging productively with your fellow citizens, with current events, or with the fate of the environment. At the very least, you might have assumed there’d be a handful of productivity books that take seriously the stark facts about the shortness of life, instead of pretending that we can just ignore the subject. But you’d be wrong.
So this book is an attempt to help redress the balance—to see if we can’t discover, or recover, some ways of thinking about time that do justice to our real situation: to the outrageous brevity and shimmering possibilities of our four thousand weeks.”
Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks (p. 5). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Resilient Agriculture (2nd edition), by Laura Lengnick
If you have any interest in eating (and if I know you at all, I think you do), then you might be interested in how we could grow food better, especially in a changing climate. This is truly a great book that lays out both the challenge as well as real, practical solutions for resilient agriculture this century.
I know we’re all looking forward to the widespread availability of lab-grown meat, but until that glorious day arrives (?!?!?!), we will have to rely on actual farmers, who produce actual food. And if they can do that while also supporting an actual community, while we support them, well my friends, I think we can continue to eat. (whew.)
This book is only available for pre-order at the moment, but since I reviewed it, I can tell you it is well worth your money and attention. The farmers who are interviewed in the book are definitely part of the Earth’s Next Chapter I want, that’s for sure. I’m going to be asking Dr. Laura Lengnick (the author) to do a Q&A for the full subscribers too, which will be fuuuuun. Laura is awesome.
Most of the time (basically, when I remember), the links to the books I’m reading are an Amazon affiliate link. That means that if you use my link, I get a teeny tiny commission when you buy it. And I never recommend anything I wouldn’t be recommending anyway. All the books or articles I share are ones I have found to be personally impactful or intriguing or hilarious. Or possibly all three.