Books to Inspire Your Next Verse
Reads for the road ahead.
If you hadn’t noticed, we’re the proud nerdy types around here. We believe there are few things in life that can’t be solved by cracking open a good book. So as we’re working our way toward and through the next verse, we hit up our local bookstores on the regular with hopes that good answers might be found on the shelves. And while the searching and learning will never cease (that’s the whole point), we have found plenty of tomes to expand our thinking, inspire our actions and keep us company along the way. We present you with some of our next verse favorites—oh, the places you’ll go.
Comeback Careers: Rethink, Refresh, Reinvent Your Success—At 40, 50, and Beyond
Although like LL Cool J we believe we should never call it a comeback, this collection of inspiring next acts will certainly fill your motivation tank while offering a blueprint and a little push in the right direction. Early on, The Verse profiled co-author Ginny Brzezinski (with her sister-in-law Mika), who generously shared her thoughts as she was writing the book.
Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
Building on their wildly popular Stanford course of the same name, the authors posit that the same approach used to design and create things such as your smartphone can be applied to your life. After all, designers start with a problem they are seeking to solve. Design thinking has long been applied to tackle issues that are not well-defined or are simply unknown—much like your next verse.
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
It seems impossible to think that there was a time that Julia Child was not a cook and certainly not a French chef, but in reality, she found her culinary skills late in life. Her first cookbook was published at age 49 and her eponymous show didn’t launch until she was 51. She was not only a trailblazer when it came to the American home chef’s concept of cuisine, but the vast array of food television that we enjoy today. Like we always say: Too old is just not a thing.
Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder
We don’t mind revealing ourselves as the ultimate Chip Conley stan (see our Try it if you don’t believe us), and his tale of what work may look like in our second half is as worthy as his impassioned plea for companies to value wisdom (and jettison ageism). Our copy is dog-eared, and we continually find ourselves revisiting its pearls.
Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You
Though we didn’t have this on hand when we were writing our next Verse, it has since found a comfy space on our shelf. Suneel Gupta gets real about his own failings in getting people to back his ideas, the ones that sent him on a quest to understand why people decide to back someone. His findings were surprising, and the best news of all is you can learn to be more backable. If you’re getting back out there, we’re guessing you, too, may need someone to give you a shot.
