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Happy Thursday folks, Merry Christmas!

Here is my favorite passage of the week, two quotes and book of the week with two important lessons to ponder on:

Passage of the Week:

Author and Neuroscientist Nicole Vignola on why learning is vital:

Two Quotes:

Book of the Week with 2 Important Lessons:

The book of the week is The book of the week is Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put – A Memoir of Humor and Hope in a Small-Town Life by Annie B. Jones.

This book gently uncovers the beauty in everyday routines, weaving personal and thoughtful stories that speak to the power of staying rooted. With warmth and insight, Annie transforms the simple into the meaningful offering us a sense of connection and comfort. It felt like a conversation with an old friend.

To be human is to know what it feels like to sit all the way down for the long haul, to stand all the way up and leave rooms that no longer fit, and to carry the sorrows and celebrations that may accompany both.

This is a book about a human experience we all share but may rarely have occasion to talk about: the things you let go of and the things you hold on to when you are the one who stays. Earnest and endearing, these stories are small ones, and I don’t mean they are unimportant (why do we so often conflate those two words?). Rather they are treasure-worthy, ones you’ll be delighted to find and compelled to hold.

Here are two important lessons from the book:

1) Book clubs provide a low point of entry:

We should just let book club be book club. Even if you’re the academic sort, book clubs should be a relatively low-stakes enterprise. Because as long as you’d read the book, or part of it, or a synopsis online, you could contribute to the conversation. Book clubs provide a low point of entry. You don’t need to be an expert or an extrovert, the most well-spoken or the most intellectual. You can just sit and eat the snacks if you want. (Book clubs should always have snacks.) There’s a point of commonality, and it has nothing to do with where you’re from or what your degree is in or where you went to school or whether you’re married or have children. It’s just: Did you read the book? Why or why not? Did you like the book? Why or why not?

Book club meeting makes you a better acquaintance and better at small talks. Book clubs change minds; helps us hold better, more earnest conversations; brings us closer to our neighbors and friends. I also think they’re just good icebreakers, offering a low-stakes starting point for relationships. Let’s take the pressure off ourselves and the people we meet. Let’s allow surface to be enough. Let’s read books and wave to one another across the grocery store and think: This is all I ever wanted.

2) A life lived with books:

Books are among my dearest friends and cohorts. And on my best days, I curl up in my reading room and get lost in the world of words. Books fills me up. Quiet fills me up.  

I read books because, at their best, they make me better, more empathetic, more socially aware, more in tune to the stranger beside me. They help me imagine a better future, provide me with answers to my insatiable questions, take me to places I’ll never get to go. I read books because they are an easy point of entry to relationship. They spark conversations and make me an enjoyable dinner companion. Books eliminate my awkwardness, awaken my expertise, and move me forward when I want to stay put. I read books because they fill up my depleted soul and give me renewed energy for a life spent outside the walls of my home and the safe pages of the novels I love.

Books, by some paradox, help me engage more fully in the world around me. This is why I read, why I see myself and my friends in the characters authors have created and, in the worlds, they have built for us. I read to live more solidly in the world, curl up in quilts and sit by open windows or outside by the pool, always with a book because it brings me comfort and cures my loneliness and assuages my fears. Books bring me back to myself.

Books I am currently reading:

Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. by Ryan Holiday. Wisdom is Ryan Holiday's guiding principle, and this book is the culmination of all his work. Drawing on fascinating stories of the ancient and modern figures alike, Holiday shows how to cultivate wisdom through reading, self-education, and experience.

Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain. Such a well written biography.