Tag: Books
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When people remember you
I was not much of a reader as a kid… I loved movies and playing and fooling around. I always ran the opposite direction from books and words. But then somewhere in my late twenties I felt I was being left behind. I was not able to understand life like others did (I still don’t…
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Thoughts on Dostoevsky‘s idiot
There is a sentence in Fyodor Dostoevsky‘s ’The Idiot‘ related to the main character Prince Myshkin that goes something like this.. ’Compassion may be the only law that governs mankind‘ (though I will change that to humankind than mankind) How true and simple but at the same time how incapable we become to embody that…
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The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Some people spend their entire life trying to escape from where they are, while others spend their whole life trying to return to something they lost. I recently read The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, and wanted to recommend the book here. The novel follows four young people traveling across America after difficult personal histories,…
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Why we need Poems at work
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body. love what it loves.” These are the first few lines from the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. I read…
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Some Thoughts on Reading
I think it is more and more important for us professionals today to read classics and poetry and short stories and memoirs. Books about things other than our profession. A lot of things can be automated but not people’s wants and relationships. We can force systemic behavioral changes but for us to connect with others…
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Is all value visible?
Is all value visible? When does value become invisible? And how long can invisible value keep you going? I finished reading Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis last week. I haven’t seen the film starring Anthony Quinn, but while reading, Zorba looked exactly like Quinn in my mind. Some characters do that. They move from…
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Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
A few months ago, I listened to a podcast featuring John Green, where he spoke about his new book Everything Is Tuberculosis. My first reaction was an almost reflexive one: “Really? TB? Even now?” Like many of us, I’ve heard stories of tuberculosis somewhere in my family tree, distant, almost archival. For years, I hadn’t…
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What should I read Next?
Last weekend I was in Dallas attending a literature festival, where I also had a short session titled “What Should Be the Next Book to Read?” The crux of my talk was simple: people who read regularly rarely ask this question because the next book usually finds them. Most often, this question comes from people…
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I don’t know how to do it
Telling we don’t know how to do something is very important and it just helps us and the company we work for. It gets us the help we need to learn and do our job better. Now the question is does our company and our team and our manager give us that freedom to say…
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Attention deficit, doom scrolling, reading and walking
Attention deficit and doom scrolling are two problems we face. It slowly grows in us to a point where we feel a kind of numbness that never existed. I recently watched a DW documentary called “How the internet warps our emotions”. A must watch for us all. You can search for it on YouTube. Recently…
Penpositive 