In Search of the Miraculous

I’m working on the plan for potential music project, which is very exciting for me since I proclaim to be strictly not a musician at all. During the planning phase I reached out to an old buddy, Aslandies, who is a fantastic singer and songwriter, to ask his opinion about the project. (Side note shout out: check out some of Aslan’s latest works here.) Before we even got into the project talk, Aslan and I diverged into a long philosophical debate and somewhere in the midst of it he mentioned this book.

“In Search of the Miraculous”, by P. D. Ouspensky. Awesome name, by the way. I know nothing about the book as of now, just that it related to our conversation and that Aslan described it as being harder and harder to get through the further you get into it. Sort of reminded me of “House of Leaves” in a way, though I take it this is not a work of fiction. Aslan said he’s on his third or fourth attempt to get through it now.

This struck me as an interesting lead and so I’m loading it up into my “interested in reading” list.

Have any of you read “In Search of the Miraculous”? If so, what’d you think?

And similarly, has anyone read anything by P. D. Ouspensky? It’s my first introduction to them so I’m curious what else they have done that might be noteworthy…

Multipliers

Recently, I’ve been enjoying and struggling with the joys and challenges of running my own business. This is not simply being self-employed, but leading and empowering a group of employees as well… or at least trying to. Though I do often hear good feedback from them, I feel that I am not taking the step up to real, powerful, inspirational leadership.

Last night I stumbled back across a photo a friend had posted some time ago on social media. It was a snapshot of a table describing both “diminishers” and “multipliers”. It wasn’t just inspiring to me (again), but actually alarming. As I look at the list on both sides I could honestly see myself doing things not just in the multipliers category, but potentially in the diminishers category too. I felt called out.

This means it’s time to learn. And that’s when I noticed the photo my friend had posted was a snapshot of a page in a book. I quickly asked them what book it was and here we are.

Have you read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman? If not, what books would you recommend on leadership and productivity? If you did read it, what did you think of it?

The Whole-Brain Child

Up late rockin’ on some taxes (party over here) and as I plow through our previous expenses I find myself looking back at older Amazon orders. One of which is this book on an alternative approach to parenting. I had been devouring the paper copy but since I’m pretty much 100% Kindle these days I thought I’d grab it in digital form too.

Likely, although I’ve read some of it, I’ll start from the beginning again.

Have you read this or any other interesting books on parenting? If so, please share them with me in the comments.

On Immunity: An Inoculation

My wife and I have an appointment to speak with a doctor here in Germany about vaccinations for our daughter and so she (my wife) gently nudged me to get read up on the topic. When going out there to look for books I was immediately hit with the impression that many of them (even bestsellers) are incredibly biased! Eventually I pooled together a list of about five books based on this article and since I’m not known for my scholarly nature I decided to begin with Eula’s work first, because I read that it takes a more narrative approach.

Wow. Was that description an understatement. In my eyes Eula’s writing is masterful. She weaves in a lot of very interesting side notes and history and pop culture that then comes together to build beautiful and simply to understand metaphors, delivering each of her points. She spends time going through these points and making them memorable. And she even does so while telling the story of her own experience.

I’m about 10% into the book now and absolutely loving it, which is a surprise that I can say that of a book about vaccinations. I am incredibly excited to see if her other writings hold up to this same standard.

Have you read On Immunity? Or any of Eula’s other work? Let me know in the comments !

Leaving the Atocha Station

There’s one more book I want to call out “tonight” which is another one by Ben Lerner. In an interview I watched he noted this as being a novel but also being a place where has “collect” a variety of different types of writing.

I find this idea very compelling and instead of reading or hearing more about that concept I’d like to simply dive in and give it a read. I don’t like to have a lot of fiction in my Currently Reading list but for now Mortal Engines just isn’t sticking as strongly as I’d like so I’m happy to exchange it in order to give Ben’s book a chance.

What novels are you currently reading? Have you read Leaving the Atocha Station?

No Art

After diving into Angle of Yaw I jumped online to update this blog and while looking for a cover art image for the post I stumbled onto a nice video interview of Ben Lerner. Ever since he was a college professor of mine I’ve been super interested to read his work and now having gotten started on Angle of Yaw and having seen this video I decided to note down two books. The first of which is No Art.

This collection of his works is one I should get soon, as it contains his next book, Mean Free Path, as well as others. In hindsight it may have been smarter to have gotten this before buying and diving into Angle of Yaw but oh well, live and learn. (This is inherently the issue with digital books, by the way, that they can’t then be passed onto a friend for borrowing or owning.)

Has anyone read No Art? If so, I’d be quite keen to hear your thoughts in the comments!

The Art of Discarding

While digging into Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying I stumbled across a line which I found to be quite interesting:

The subject of tidying first caught my attention when I was in junior high school. I came across a book called The Art of Discarding by Magisa Tatsumi (Takarajimasha, Inc.), which explained the importance of throwing things away.

The interesting aspect for me is that I was searching for Marie’s book, saw this one, and almost went to purchase and read it first, simply based on the name and clever cover (they’ve discarded the two letter i’s from the book’s title). Having now found out it was her inspiration I am further inclined to grab a copy, despite the fact that it’s very likely more of the same.

Has anyone given this a read yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts and/or recommendations in the comments!

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying

I am not oblivious to the fact that when something or someone becomes famous the feeling of “discovering” that thing or person is pretty much an illusion. To say that Marie Kondo has suddenly entered my life is a bit preposterous given the fact that she has a best-selling book and Netflix series. In short, she’s entered everyone’s lives.

That said, I’m quite happy to proclaim that a series of events recently lead me to take a closer look at why she was popping up all over the place. At first, I half-jokingly said to my wife that we should watch her Netflix series. That didn’t go over so well.

It wasn’t until later, though, that I bumped into a good friend I hadn’t seen for a while (maybe even a year!) and we connected a lot on the topic of the ups and downs of our recent lives. One thing that we both landed on was having too many piles of things at home. And thus, Marie Kondo came up.

I’ve decided that even if her method can be summed up without reading her book I’d still like to do so, and therefore I’ve grabbed a copy for my Kindle and dived in tonight, after taking a well-deserved break from traversing the angular mind of the talented Ben Lerner.

Have you read Marie’s book(s)? If so, please tell me in the comments what you think!

Angle of Yaw

After suffering a massive and surprise migraine for about a day and a half I found myself on the mend and decided that I’d pour my energy into a book. However, The Art of War was hardly what I was in the mood for so I opened another, lighter book I’d recently acquired.

Or so I thought.

Ben Lerner was a professor of mine in college and he always pushed me to push myself further. I won’t get into details here and now (though I’d love to eventually recount all of the useful lessons he taught me during those days) but I will say that reading his words is anything far from “light”.

Only two parts in so far I am bouncing begin scratching my head in confusion, reading sentences repeatedly, laughing out loud, and highlighting a variety of lines due to their powerful inspiration.

I find that this book, in particular, is one that I’ll be constantly revisiting and rereading often, as there is just so much going on beneath the surface.

Have you read it? If so, let me know in the comments and tell me how you’ve interpreted it.

The Art of War: Complete Texts and Commentaries

I cannot for the life of me remember where, but just recently someone (or something) cited The Art of War. I was immediately reminded that I have not read it yet. So, here I am! And already enjoying this “enhanced” version as it provides a lot of interesting context from the translator and others.

Have you read The Art of War? If so, what did you think? Tell me in the comments. (But no spoilers please!)