To distract you from the fact that I accomplished nothing more tangible yesterday than resting my wrist from the all canning madness, I can tell you about two books I just finished.
The first was The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, which I listened to as an audiobook (unabridged and read by the author, my favorite kind). Loved it. I heard of it by watching a Daily Show episode online, a tonic I often take when I’m feeling blue. Because I’m so media-adverse (if it’s not a reliable source of laughter, I don’t listen to it at all, and even then, not regularly), I had somehow missed Sarah Vowell before now. But now that I know what I’ve been missing, I’ve already put another of her books on reserve at the library.
What I loved about this book is how it made history come alive by telling about just a few key personalities in Puritan New England. History was the subject I most loathed during my time in the US public schools. Dry, boring and completely devoid of any emotion or personality was the way it was always shoveled at us, and I went to schools in three different states. Turns out I love history when you take it down to the micro level and tell me about what this or that one person did to shape an era or how the pieces fit together to make an intelligible whole.
So, thank you, Sarah Vowell, for giving me a glimpse into the lives of our forefathers and for making me laugh out loud more than once. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever wondered, how in the heck did the US get to be the sort of nation it is? Or if you just want to crack up every time you hear the name Cornwallis.
The next book I heard about via my new favorite place on the internet, The Fluent Self, home of the inspiring Havi Brooks. Back in July when my whole fashion design school plan was going through its death throes, I was (no surprise) a tad upset. Somehow, I found my way to Havi’s web site, and it was just such a soothing place to hang out, I’ve never left. I think I spent about 2 or 3 days where pretty much all I did was read through her archives, punctuated by putting my head down on the desk to cry with relief that thank heavens, somebody understands.
So you’ll see that if Havi says a book is great, well, I’m going to put it on my list. This morning, I finished Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Loved it. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by advertising. Honestly, that fascination had a lot to do with choosing Economics as my major (I figured it was the closest I could get at my small liberal arts school). Not that this book is about advertising, but that’s certainly one major application for their ideas. And maybe what interested me about advertising was really these underlying principles, now that I know about them. I won’t do their book the injustice of trying to summarize it. Go get a copy and see if once you start you can not finish it.
I might even have to buy this one, because it’s already overdue at the library, and I want a copy for reference. This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to communicate any idea and have it be something that will inspire people to act or care or even remember. Parents, teachers, anybody with a job or a business, basically anyone and everyone could benefit from reading this book. And bonus: it’s well-written and an enjoyable read, full of examples and inspiring stories that demonstrate their points. I hope I get a chance to use the things I’ve learned soon. Meanwhile, I’ll settle for proselytizing.
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Darcy, I felt the same way about history — all that dry, dusty stuff — until I found out that these were real, living people. One of my favorite “blogs” is the Diary of Samuel Pepys, who wrote his diary in 1600s England. Every day I get to read what he was writing about on the same day in the 1660s. Very cool.
The other book looks fun, too. I read a book about product packaging — I can’t recall the title — and it is amazing what companies will do to get shoppers to look at their products. The Tide bottle design is one of the most successful in packaging history.