Rating: Maybe
Clear Thinking – Shane Parrish
by
Curtis McHale
Shane Parrish, of Farnham Street fame, brings us a book that is intended to help us think clearly. The first half is all about defining the enemies of clear thinking and the second is about putting clear thinking into practice in our lives. While there are many good tidbits to take away from the book…
Slow Productivity – Cal Newport
by
Curtis McHale
Slow Productivity is Cal Newport’s 4th book looking at how to be productive and maximize your career. As such it blends portions of all the previous books, adding a few bits and rehashing many of the same principles explore in earlier books. As the title suggests it focuses on working a slower pace, on fewer…
The Cost of Being a Girl – Yasemin Besen-Cassino
by
Curtis McHale
In The Cost of Being a Girl, Besen-Cassino, looks at how part-time employment in the teenage years affects the income of teenage girls vs boys. The biggest takeaway is similar to what I’ve read in the past about wages for women, they make less, are asked to do more emotional labour, and get penalized if…
Ruined by Reading – Sharon Schwartz
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Curtis McHale
Ruined by reading was a very different book than I expected. I didn’t expect this memoir on the affect of reading to the author’s life to be a keep but it continually asked thought provoking questions about the nature of power and our imagination. Schwartz questions the very nature and content of a book and…
Liberty’s Daughter – Naomi Kritzer
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Curtis McHale
Liberty’s Daughter is about Beck Garrison, a teenager living on a libertarian seastead which is part of a collection of seasteads with varying rules. Some have no rules at all, so drugs are openly manufactured and children can buy them, or you can chain your workers to a table and force them to handle toxic…
Duly Noted – Jorge Arango
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Curtis McHale
Duly Noted is another book in the ever increasing and popular series of books on how to take notes, a genre that’s been growing hugely in the last few years. If you’re new to the field of taking good notes, this book is a good primer on how to get started. If you’ve watched a…
The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking
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Curtis McHale
The purpose of this book is right on the cover, Burger and Starbird are going to teach you the 5 elements they feel go into effective thinking and there are a number of good points they make. While the book isn’t groundbreaking, there are a number of excellent takeaways like those listed above to help…
Never Enough – Jennifer Breheny Wallace
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Curtis McHale
In Never Enough we take a look at how the achievement culture that is prevalent in society today is harming children as they are pushed to compete more, achieve more, all in a quest to get into the “best” education so they can be “set for life”. Wallace analyses how this focus on achievement harms…
Barking Up The Wrong Tree – Eric Barker
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Curtis McHale
Eric Barker is going to be the new guru that saves us from all the other gurus that purport to know how to achieve success, by turning to science to tell us what matters in our quest for success. Yes it matters more if your boss likes you than if you are good at your…
Breaking Busy – Alli Worthington
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Curtis McHale
In Breaking Busy, Alli Worthington, takes a look at how being “busy” is intoxicating, how we wear it like a badge of honour. The whole book has strong Christian overtones with much talk about forgetting about the approval of society and only looking for the approval of God. If the God talk is going to…