Nonfiction Books to Deepen Your Thinking
Find purpose in your pages.
An author friend tells us January is more the season for nonfiction books—so we hope you’ll forgive this unscheduled interruption in your summer reads planning sesh. But we actually find that the slow days of the warm season allow for fuller immersion in those tomes both thoughtful and true, and lend the time it takes to actually indulge in deeper thinking. If you’ll indulge us now, we promise our summer issue will include some lighter fare better suited to your beach bag.
Find a summer project.
While we’ve often quoted Victor Frankl, we admit we’d never read his seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning. So why are we suggesting it? To invite you to join us in reading it this summer. If you’re in, let us know at info@theversemedia.com.
Keep it timely.
We could build a skyscraper with the surplus of time management and productivity books out there. So at first blush, we thought Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals might just be part of the pile. We readied a pen and notebook to start yet another system before realizing this is not that kind of book. The basic premise: If you live until 80, you have four thousand weeks in your life. Read: Time is, in fact, finite and demands some hard decisions about how we spend our days. A surprisingly meaningful read that shakes up the very premise of time management.
Face your fears.
We’re going to suggest that you give The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times a listen on audiobook so you can hear all the wisdom in Pema Chodron’s own sweet and comforting voice. An ordained Buddhist nun, she reliably delivers common sense and kindness. Our biggest a-ha? Despite a seemingly chaotic world, we always have choices—especially when we don’t act from a place of fear.
Head upwards & onwards.
Since reading Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, we’ve been delighted to see the author, Father Richard Rohr, interviewed live by Chip Conley’s Modern Elder Academy. Applying the Jungian concept of the two halves of life, Rohr explores how our second halves (no matter when they might come) need not be marked by decline, but can actually be filled with purpose and move us “up.” Uplifting, indeed.
