Books

Book 977: Don’t Think of an Elephant! – George Lakoff

Book cover of "Don't Think of an Elephant!" with Amazon Affiliate linkI had to read this for a communications course earlier this fall and when I read it I blazed through it very quickly and knew I wanted to revisit it as soon as the semester was done. So I left it as “reading” in my Goodreads for over a month and finally got around to re-reading it and genuinely absorbing it.

I’m glad I re-read it, some of it was pretty obvious and some of it clearly explained things like why “climate change” is the predominant word of choice instead of “global warming.” My professor said that many of his students said they can’t watch the news anymore after reading this, and while I can still watch it I’m much more aware of the framing and terminology newscasters/journalists use than before.

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Books, Professional Development

Book 969: The Art of Communicating – Thích Nhất Hạnh

Book cover of "The Art of Communicating" with Amazon Affiliate linkI had to read this for a course I’m talking about the art of brave communication. We only had to read the first couple of chapters, but I found it to be an approachable and relatively easy read so kept going.

Where Hanh excelled was in his simple writing. For the most part, there were no overwrought metaphors or awkward analogies. There was one at the end that I’ll get to, but I think it’s a religious thing and it just fell flat for me.

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Books, Professional Development

Book 830: 10% Happier – Dan Harris

Book cover of "10% Happier" with Amazon Affiliate linkI honestly had zero expectations going into this book. During the pandemic my employer provided us free access to the 10% Happier app which I took advantage of and have used sporadically (really need to get better at that). I enjoyed both Harris and Joseph Goldstein’s insights on mediation in the various getting started sessions and was curios if there was more out there.

I vaguely knew Harris had written a book, but it was never an OMG I have to read this type book, but when it randomly came across my screen one day I requested it from the library and saved it for a vacation read.

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ARC, Books

Book 742: Crime Dot Com – Geoff White

Book cover of I honestly don’t know how people exist without being paranoid ALL THE TIME. When I first said yes to this after the publicist reached out, it was like 95% because the author’s first name was Geoff and 5% because the subject was interesting. And then I found myself completely absorbed with this book.*

Now I’m not saying we’re totally screwed, but I mean we’re not really that far from being totally screwed and White does a really good job of explaining all of it. He takes an in depth look at the start of cybercrime with the quaint “Love Bug” virus (Wikipedia) to the state sponsored hacking/cyber assault that nudged us into the rotting cesspool of Trumpism that is the US right now.
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ARC, Books

Book 597: Let Go of Emotional Overeating and Love Your Food – Arlene Englander

Toward the middle of last year I started accepting fewer and fewer unsolicited review requests, but periodically a few come up from publicists or publishers I’ve worked with previously and this was one of them.

As a larger guy, (are guys plus sized?) I’ve always been curious about over eating and overeaters anonymous, but there are so many other books to read that I never looked into them. So when the publicist reached out to me about this back in July 2017, I figured why not.* That being said, I should be ashamed I didn’t get around to reading it until early 2018 though.

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