Read With Me : You are a Badass

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All hail 2018, the year of the book. You will hear me say this about every possible temperature, weather pattern, and month, but spring is the best time to pull out a book! If it’s going to be raining for a week straight, don’t get caught staring out the window, lose yourself in a book. That’s our attitude at least. I’ve finished a few this past month and I keep wanting to reach for old favorites rather than something new. I might have to read Buddha’s Brain for the fourth time. It’s nice to fall into something comfortable and familiar every once in a while.

Our Read With Me Series is going strong this year, here are all the past installments. Today I’m sharing my thoughts on hugely successful Jen Sincero and her book You are a Badass. Initially, I had some doubts about this book. I felt it was pushy and a little bit bossy or sharp in a way, but after two chapters I became accustomed to the tone and really respected her insight. I think it just took some getting used to at first. I received this book as a gift, so I didn’t really want a kick in the ass at first, but once I found myself shaking my head yes over and over again, I listened hard and took lots of notes. Continue reading

Read With Me : Nature’s Healing Spirit

Want to know something neat? Each time you click through to Amazon from our website, we are kicked back a few cents from each purchase with no extra cost to you. If you ever feel like going wild on Amazon, click through from our site and you’ll be supporting us at the same time! Thanks, yo.

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Sup nerds? Are you Reading With Me this year? Last night, I finished two great books. Nature’s Healing Spirit being a quick, devourable read that I finished within three sessions of picking it up. The other, How Emotions Are Made : The Secret Life of the Brain took me nearly eight months to comprehend, and let me tell you, it was sad and shocking when the kindle book ended abruptly when my progress bar told me I still had 40% of the book to read – damn you Appendix A, B, C, and D! More on that read a different day, today it’s all about Nature’s Healing Spirit – Real Life Stores to Nurture the Soul by Sheri McGregor.

Nature’s Healing Spirit is a compilation of  33 accomplished writers’ experiences with the natural world. Some passages are straightforward, concise, and clear in tone, while others tiptoe into the narrative and only slightly pull back the shades on their personal lives. Some stories have a succinct ending while others leave you wanting for more. Luckily, each author’s piece is followed by a short biography where you can find other published works and their websites.

You’ll Enjoy Reading Nature’s Healing Spirit If :

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Read With Me : Tao Te Ching

Want to know something neat? Each time you click through to Amazon from our website, we are kicked back a few cents from each purchase with no extra cost to you. If you ever feel like going wild on Amazon, click through from our site and you’ll be supporting us at the same time! Thanks, yo.

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Better pick up a book and Read With Me because these posts are not slowing down. I had just finished Mark Manson’s, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and started reading You Are A Badass, but felt the need to pick up something else, something older, something a bit more philosophical and that’s when I found Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching in a thrift store.

I have been interested in Taoism ever since I read The Tao of Pooh last year. That was my first introduction and I must say, I’m happy I read that before the tougher to decipher Tao Te Ching. I actually just finished The Tao of Pooh again in January and it was even quicker and easier to consume than I remembered. I highly recommend picking it up if you are feeling in a rut or if your life seems like it’s not panning out the way it should.

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Read with Us : Women’s Day Edition

Happy International Women’s Day!

If you’re a lady or wanna be a lady, I hope you’re doing something good for yourself today. If you appreciate the women in your life, I hope you’ll let them know. And no, not by whistling as they walk by (unless they like that?).

We thought we’d take this day as an opportunity to highlight some of the women-related books that we love.

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Read With Me : The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

Want to know something neat? Each time you click through to Amazon from our website, we are kicked back a few cents from each purchase with no extra cost to you. If you ever feel like going wild on Amazon, click through from our site and you’ll be supporting us at the same time! Thanks, yo.

Hey, hey, back with another Read With Me post. If you remember from A Year in Readview, I mentioned Mark Manson’s, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, was on my list. My Pop actually gifted me this book for Christmas, which we finally celebrated two weekends ago.  Once I opened The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I finished it in two days.

Funny, well-written, and easy to read, this book gives some great advice and introduces a few new give fewer fucks concepts that are surprisingly easy to digest. I was surprised at how counter-intuitive some of the advice seemed to me, but sure enough, by the end of the page, Mark had me nodding along in agreement. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck provides concise, rational arguments for caring a little less. I will certainly be incorporating some of Mark’s tidbits into my meditation practices and classes.

You’ll Enjoy Reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck If :

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Read With Me : The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Want to know something neat? Each time you click through to Amazon from our website, we are kicked back a few cents from each purchase with no extra cost to you. If you ever feel like going wild on Amazon, click through from our site and you’ll be supporting us at the same time! Thanks, yo.

A couple weeks ago, a cool cat gifted me The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This book is freaking stellar, interstellar? Should we talk about McConaughey movies all day? No. Books! Although there was a movie made about this book. I haven’t watched it and the ratings look pretty low, so admittedly I not going to.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written by the late Douglas Adam’s and is actually a trilogy (which ended up turning into quintet), which sold more than a million copies in his lifetime. It’s science fiction doused in humor that is suspense driven – so totally quick, easy, and hilarious to read.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reminded me of works by Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut. Here’s the set of Hitchhiker books and a list of books similar to Hitchhiker’s Guide if you’ve already read it.

 

You’ll Enjoy Reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy If :

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Read With Me : The Nature Fix

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If you dislike reading, tune out now because this is the third post about books in two weeks. #Nerdalert OR get into it man! Now’s the time. Okay, I’ll shut up. Last week I touched on the positives of reading and clued you in on the books I was reading. You can see them all on our sidebar to the right and just FYI anything that you buy from Amazon by clicking through from our website kicks back a few cents to us at no additional cost to you. Pretty cool, huh?

I mentioned in my Year in Readview post that I was working on The Nature Fix : Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative – a neuroscience read but written by a journalist, not a scientist, so equal parts informative and entertaining. That sounded like a dig on scientists, it wasn’t, but geez their books can be a little heavy and hard to get through. Once I really focused on reading this book, I flew through it in three days.

Florence Williams does an excellent job of setting the scene for each city, park, and wilderness space she spends time in. She also lays out the scientific process and experiments as well as potential knowledge gaps in an understandable and often comedic manner. It’s easy to process without being bogged down by too many details and yet she’s not just skimming over the science stuff. She’s not skimming at all actually, this entire book focuses on our mental and physical health and yet it doesn’t read like a textbook. Ahem. You can also tell that Florence is doing her due diligence to not just feed you the success stories. She’s honest and she mentions the less than perfect results of some studies, again I point to the background in journalism. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I was learning something page after page, positives about spending time in nature that I could share with my Schu Tours adventure groups and friends alike.

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Read With Me

Pages read in 2018 : 553.

This isn’t a competition or anything, but who is winning? Me or you? One of those books was poetry, so even I, the self-proclaimed reading champ, knows it shouldn’t count as full pages. Let’s not get hung up on the details. I just finished a book this morning at 5:30 AM, yes, I’ve been staying up that late early and it was so weird and wonderful and confusing that I really need to talk it out with someone. Thankfully, a friend loaned me the book so I can call him, but what about the next book? Who will be there to discuss? I’m trying to head this proposed catastrophe off by asking you to read with me

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Teachable Moments : Beach Reads

Teachable Moments is a relatively new series on the blog, you can find the archive here. You can learn more about Saxis in this selection of posts, and here are more beach book recommendations for adults and kids. If you’d like to see our favorite sun gear for toddlers, click here.

beach time = reading time. #amiright

When we start planning for our time at the beach, my mind immediately turns to the books I’ll read. Hours sitting on the beach provide the uninterrupted reading time that we just don’t seem to find elsewhere in life. Wait, if you’re a parent reading this, that statement is laughable. Who sits still on the beach with two kids? And to that, I say, touché. That’s when you teach your kids about the joys of the beach nap.

But in all seriousness, as the boys have grown, I’ve started to think more intentionally about their beach reads. These boys love a good adventure, and when we’re traveling I find that they fully immerse themselves in the new environment. They aren’t sitting around thinking about Colorado and the mountains; instead, they’re exploring!  And what better way could there be to teach them about the place they’re visiting, and the animals and people that live there, than to read books?

I’ve made an effort over the years to stock the beach house with good ocean and bay-related books for the kids. It’s nice to have these books there rather than at home because the stories really come alive when they’re reading about animals that they just saw on the beach and in the marsh. And I know that they can relate to crabbing and fishing adventures when they’ve just spent the afternoon on Poppop’s boat putting bait in the crab pots and casting out their finishing lines.

Below is a list of our current favorites (for reference, the boys are 2 and 4). Admittedly, I’m particularly smitten with books written and illustrated by local artists, so you’ll see quite a few on the list. They add an intimate feel in their descriptions of the place that could never be achieved in a generic book about ocean/beach life.

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The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library

I know opinions can vary when it comes to Dr. Seuss. The wording can be awkward and leave you tongue-tied, which is not the best for reading aloud. But it rhymes, and I’m a sucker for a good rhyming text, especially one that’s educational.  Each book flows really well after one or two readings.

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