By Ursula K. Le Guin This story involves an envoy representing an intergalactic trade federation landing on a cold planet and attempting to forge agreements with the word’s inhabitants to join the federation. The envoy is a male human as we are familiar, but the planet is populated with people who are gender neutral until […]

By Alison Wood Brooks I enjoyed this book and found it helpful. TALK is an acronym for Topics, Asking, Levity, Kindness. Topics – The book advocates planning topics in advance. She points out that people are afraid that it will make conversations less natural and fun if topics are prepared in advance, but her students

By David Grann This was another book club selection. If I wasn’t assured that this was about actual events, it would have been over the top for fiction. The crimes stacked on crimes to claim oil head rights from Osage people in the 1920s was wild. The criminals went after witnesses, jurors, investigators, and even

By Tom Zoellner This was a book club selection. I didn’t read much of the description before starting it. As it started, I expected more of a love letter to the author’s home state. It is not that. It is highly critical of Arizona’s past and present. I don’t mind that, I just didn’t think

By Rachel Yoder This was neither my normal lane nor a book club suggestion. A coworker mentioned it, it sounded amusing, and I had just finished my previous audio book. I was underwhelmed. I see some reviews call it weird, messed up, or are revolted by the animal violence. I didn’t find it that far

By Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein I think I grabbed this on a whim because I was a fan of Thinking Fast and Slow and I saw Kahneman’s name on this as I walked through Changing Hands. It was at the top of my stagnant pile of non-fiction book purchases, so I

By Orson Scott Card Since the book club had be re-reading Ender’s Game, I decided it might be fun to add this one. Neither is very long, so I figured I’d read about some of the same events from the perspective of Bean rather than Ender. I didn’t care for it. 50% of the book

By Keith Payne There was a fair bit of overlap here with some of my other recent reading: Determined and Hope for Cynics in particular. The primary message is that people shape their views around group identities. Most people don’t have coherent ideologies that show consistently liberal or conservative views. It is a more accurate

By Orson Scott Card I read this a few years ago during my “understand the nerds around me” reading phase. This time, it was selected by the Armchair Adventures Book Club. I like the book, so I was happy to read it a second time. I’m waiting for the library’s copy of Ender’s Shadow to

By Jamil Zaki The title spoke to me directly at a time I needed such a thing. Zaki distinguishes cynicism from skepticism and hope from optimism. The aim is to be skeptical and hopeful while avoiding a spiral into destructive cynicism and without being naive.

By Robert Sapolsky I just finished Determined. I had no choice, lol. It started to drag a bit. I was already receptive to the premise, so it spent more time than I needed detailing all of the ways outside factors shape our brains and their decisions. I wanted more after that. I do what I

By Haemin Sunim It was short and easy to read, but I’m not sure I got much out of it. There were a few reminders that felt helpful in the moment. A few things that seemed like bad advice. The rest (most of the book) seemed like mostly good advice, but simple/familiar enough that it

By Michael Pollan After years of telling us to eat plants, he wrote a book about eating mushrooms. I didn’t receive anything too mind-blowing in the book although I enjoyed it anyway. Pollan was a good messenger for me. He self described as an atheist, materialist, without any prior enthusiasm for drugs. That fits me.

By David Brooks I got through this one pretty quickly via the audiobook. The author concedes that understanding the points in the book doesn’t make it easy to implement them in day-to-day life. He still struggles, as I’m sure I will. One point that stood out to be was the degree to which people are

By Jonathan Haidt This didn’t introduce a lot of ideas that I didn’t already have. It really just added some data to justify the damage caused by social media and inescapable screens. The focus was on adolescents, but it’s a reminder for me to unplug as much as I can. I’m glad to be in

Bruce Coville We did a nostalgia book share at the Personal Development Book Lovers meetup a couple months back. I talked about The Plant that Ate Dirty socks, but I had also checked out this series from the library while I was retrieving that. I still really enjoyed this series. The premise is that aliens

By Daniel James Brown It tells the story of an 8 man rowing crew that won gold in the 1936 (Hitler’s) Olympics. The team came from the University of Washington and was composed of poor, working class guys. Overall, it’s a reminder of what humans are capable of in terms of work ethic and perseverance.

By Thomas Shor I enjoyed it more for being a true story. The author described a superstitious world that seems to belong in the distant past but was actually the 1960s. In this remote part of the world, lamas were everywhere, making proclamations and performing rituals to bring good fortune. As a fan of science