In the summer months of July and August, lessons are adjourned, suspended and recessed. Sometimes my students say “Have a nice vacation!” I don’t always take a vacation, although there are plenty of extended weekends in Mineral King, AKA The Land of No Electricity or Internet.
Reading is vacation to me. Being prone with a book without a sense of time or obligation or guilt about undone tasks is VACATION!
Here is a look at three books I have recently finished. (If you click on the links at the bottom of the post, it will open in a new Amazon window. If you buy as a result of that clicking, I will earn a few cents. It’s called “an affiliate link”. I’ve been taught it is a smart thing to do on a blog.)
1. Happy, Happy, Happy by Phil Robertson. Are you about to hurl? If you are, I agree with you that Duck Dynasty is one of the dumbest things on air these days. I don’t watch teevee but have overheard and overwatched as Trail Guy channel surfs. A friend said this autobiography was surprisingly good and that Phil is surprisingly smart, enterprising and interesting. He was right! This is one of the best autobiographies I’ve read in ages. Who knew??
2. The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern is by Victor Davis Hanson, one of my favorite writers and thinkers. He is a farmer in the Central Valley of California (that big valley is where I grew up, just down the hill from Three Rivers), a former history professor and currently someone important at Stanford in something called the Hoover Institute (I just work here, ‘k? I don’t know nuthin’.) My copy is autographed, dogearred and scribbled in. I had to read it with a dictionary, and it took me a couple of months. I finally took notes in a separate place so I could grasp the concepts. I’ve heard Victor speak twice in person over the last few months, and he is BRILLIANT, ENGAGING, and tells the hard truths, particularly about California. Yikes. You might need to read something light or fun after Victor’s work. (That’s why I chose a book with the title of Happy, Happy, Happy!)
3. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant explains how the world is divided into givers, takers and matchers and how that affects each one in life and business. I loved reading about the different studies and people and results. Who knew that givers end up on both the top and the bottom of the success spectrum? And aren’t you interested to know which category you are in?