Category: reading

books (2016)

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  • Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
  • If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers, Hannah Brencher
  • Every Good Endeavor, Timothy Keller with Katherine Leary Alsdorf
  • Home, Marilynne Robinson
  • Lila, Marilynne Robinson
  • Watership Down, Richard Adams
  • Erotic Ambiguities: The Female Nude in Art, Helen McDonald
  • Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art, Jennifer New
  • Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
  • Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis
  • 40 Days of Dating: An Experiment, Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman
  • I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb
  • Perelandra, C.S. Lewis
  • The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
  • Mindfulness: 25 Ways to Live in the Moment Through Art, Christophe Andre
  • Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg
  • Dog Songs, Mary Oliver
  • Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay
  • Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay
  • Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings, James Elkins
  • No Matter the Wreckage, Sarah Kay
  • One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories, B.J. Novak
  • The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
  • Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
  • That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
  • The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
  • Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand
  • How We Are Hungry, Dave Eggers
  • A Short Guide to Writing About Art, Sylvan Barnet
  • Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century, Jed Rasula
  • Women in Clothes, Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton
  • Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver
  • Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics, Nada M. Shabout
  • Stardust: Supernovae and Life – The Cosmic Connection, John Gribbin
  • Slaugherhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
  • *Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, Lauren F. Winner
  • CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders
  • A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver
  • The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
  • Pastoralia, George Saunders
  • H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald
  • Remote Control: Power, Culture, and the World of Appearances, Barbara Kruger
  • Buddhism for Beginners, Thubten Chodron
  • The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
  • Fool Me Once, Harlan Coban
  • Cold Tangerines, Shauna Niequist
  • Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, Shunryu Suzuki
  • McSweeney’s #44, edited by Dave Eggers
  • Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, Joseph Campbell
  • A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
  • Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land, Joel Brinkley
  • *Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, Rachel Held Evans
  • Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson
  • The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Amitav Ghosh
  • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett
  • How to be Both, Ali Smith
  • Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, Donald Miller
  • Thirst: Poems, Mary Oliver
  • Evidence: Poems, Mary Oliver
  • The Book of Buddhas: Ritual Symbolism Used on Buddhist Statuary and Ritual Objects, Eva Rudy Jansen
  • Swan: Poems and Prose Poems, Mary Oliver
  • The Circle, Dave Eggers
  • TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, Chris J. Anderson
  • The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

* = re-read

books (2015)

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In 2015, I read these.

  • Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, Lauren F. Winner
  • Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull
  • The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition, Caroline Alexander
  • Great by Choice, Jim Collins
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
  • The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli (translated by W.K. Marriott)
  • The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, Steven B. Sample
  • One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven, Mark Cahill
  • Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis
  • The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis
  • Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right, Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
  • The Agility Factor: Building Adaptable Organizations for Superior Performance, Christopher G. Worley
  • The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis
  • How Will You Measure Your Life?, Clayton M. Christensen
  • The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis
  • The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
  • The Luminous and the Grey, David Batchelor
  • The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis
  • Mudhouse Sabbath, Lauren F. Winner
  • The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis
  • A Prayer Journal, Flannery O’Connor
  • The Chosen, Chaim Potok
  • Tenth of December, George Saunders
  • Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God, Lauren F. Winner
  • The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)
  • The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo (translated by Cathy Hirano)
  • Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
  • Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper
  • To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  • ART/WORK, Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber
  • A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Flannery O’Connor
  • Paper Towns, John Green
  • Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
  • Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, Lauren F. Winner
  • Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith, Barnabas Piper
  • Beauty Looks After Herself, Eric Gill
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
  • Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, Claire Bishop
  • Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else, David Balzer
  • About Looking, John Berger
  • Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith, Matthew Lee Anderson
  • Minding the Body, Patricia Foster (editor)
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
  • The Lipstick Gospel, Stephanie May Wilson
  • The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
  • One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, Ann Voskamp
  • Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
  • The Best American Short Stories 2006, Ann Patchett (editor)
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
  • Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Madeleine L’Engle
  • The Promise, Chaim Potok
  • Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women, Sarah Bessey
  • African Art, Frank Willett
  • The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald
  • The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles, Steven Pressfield
  • Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
  • Nejma, Nayyirah Waheed
  • Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Jacques Derrida (translated by Eric Prenowitz)
  • The Princess and Curdie, George MacDonald
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
  • The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, Arthur Bennett (editor)
  • Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, Rachel Held Evans
  • The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
  • Women, Art, and Society, Whitney Chadwick
  • The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
  • Marjorie Main: Rural Documentary Poetry, John Sherman
  • Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee
  • the Bible (English Standard Version)

books (2015)

To those who shaped this list by your generously loaned or gifted books, recommendations, and willingness to read with me – thank you!

 

Thoughts on Habits (Part Two)

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This Psychology Today article by Chris Guillebeau brings to mind things of habit and energy and decision-making that I’ve been reading and writing about this semester. It’s entitled “Reducing Decisions to Focus Better” and starts off with part of a letter to artists from Robert Genn:

Choreographer Twyla Tharp’s Creative Habit, describes her morning routine of rising early and going through the same morning rituals; same coffee, same bun. She puts on the same leotards, goes down the same elevator to the same street corner, puts her arm up in the air and gets into the first cab that comes along.

By the time she gets to the studio she has made no significant decisions. Stepping out onto the dance floor, her dancers await. It’s eight in the morning and her first decision is yet to come. It will be a creative one.

We painters also need to save our decision-making for things of importance. “Don’t,” as they say, “sweat the small stuff.” I figure an average 11″ x 14″ uses up several hundred thousand decisions. Compound that over a day of painting and it’s in the millions. Even the small decisions in a painting, some of them so micro and seemingly insignificant, are the building blocks of what we are to become.

(emphasis mine)

Two responses: This makes so much sense. / Why I am I so bad at it? Continue reading “Thoughts on Habits (Part Two)” →

Thoughts on Habits (Part One)

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Over fall break, I read the book Maximize Your Potential. In the form of essays, Q&A’s, and famous quotes, it’s a collection of thoughts on how to be a creative professional in today’s world – in the best way possible.

Thoughts on Habits (Part One) | Lynnette Therese

One essay in particular stuck with me: it’s entitled “Reprogramming Your Daily Habits” and was written by Scott Young. In it, he covers the topics of productivity, progress, and achieving goals.

His premise is that when we realize that willpower is not an infinite source of energy, forming good habits makes a lot more sense – it becomes crucial. If we can ‘automate’ certain basic behaviors, we have more energy to expend on things that are new, require more effort, or are more important to us. The two principles he suggests implementing when building habits are focus and consistency.

Thoughts on Habits (Part One) | Lynnette Therese

Focus

Young points out that many people, when deciding to make life changes, try to implement them all at once – only to sputter and fail after a few weeks. I’ve experienced this – many times – myself, and it is unendingly frustrating. He argues that this method depends entirely on willpower instead of harnessing the power of habit. How to fix the problem? Focus on constructing one habit at a time (Young suggests spending around a month before moving to the next habit). “Some people might see this approach as being prohibitively slow, but in practice, doing habits one month at a time is fast.” Making 12 life-improving habits (e.g. healthy sleeping habits, reading for pleasure, cutting back on excess internet time, exercising daily) a reality could (really) change your life over the course of a year. How’s that for food for thought?

Consistency

Principle #2 is to approach habit-building with consistency: “by making the habit you’re working on extremely consistent, you speed up the time it takes to make the behavior automatic.” Again, I see where I’ve done just the opposite (and failed to make lasting habits). It’s much easier, much more ‘convenient’ when workouts, reading time, or seven hours of sleep happen whenever I can fit them in. When I try to do so, however, it seems that more often than not this leads to things not fitting into my day – getting pushed to the next, and then the next… you get the picture: good intentions + lack of consistency = failed execution.

In summary:

  1. Habits are powerful.
  2. So, use them with intention.

I love goals and plans and big ideas. I have a lot of ideas about the way I’d like my life to look, and many of these ideas are not very well (or not at all) integrated into my ‘real life’. This essay was a helpful and instructive way for me to view the actions and thoughts I make (or keep from becoming) habits in my life.

Thoughts on Habits (Part One) | Lynnette Therese

Maximize Your Potential was edited by Jocelyn K. Glei for 99U. For more information, click here.