July was a busy reading month. I was focused on recording and prepping interviews for my upcoming maternity leave, and with all the extra interviews, I had quite a list of books to read to prepare! Here’s the list of books I read over the last month. If you’d like to see all of the books I’ve read in 2017 and 2018, I track them publicly on this website.
- Movement Matters, by Katy Bowman. After throwing out my back again in July, and being forced to slow down (thank you, body), I dug into the research by Bowman on her website, Nutritious Movement. This separate collection of essays talks about how we are a moving species, and what the long-term impacts of a sedentary lifestyle can be. More than that, I’m learning how to reframe my daily patterns, and ask questions about how movement is so much more than we give it credit for.
- And Now We Have Everything, by Meaghan O’Connell. This book, ‘on motherhood before I was ready,’ is a beautiful and honest look at what transpires in the adventure to, during, and into motherhood. Like many memoirs, I crave personal stories and read through this at lightening speed. It did not disappoint.
- Overwhelmed, by Brigid Schulte. Started this book in April and have been reading it slowly since. Highlighted everywhere. An amazing book about time scarcity, the ‘busy’ religion we’ve all adopted, and why time is a feminist issue. May be one of my top books of all of 2018.
- Build An A Team, by Whitney Johnson. By the author of Dare, Dream, Do, and Disrupt Yourself, Johnson is back with a book all about building great teams. Focused on the learning curves of individuals and how they sit within your organization, I found useful strategies for dealing with people in the wrong learning curve, as well as people at the top, bored, and ready for their next challenge.
- Parent Hacks, by Asha Dornfest. Re-read this classic favorite of mine in preparation for interviewing Asha for the Startup Pregnant podcast. Brilliant little illustrated book full of tricks and hacks for how to do parenting in creative, clever ways. My favorite? Don’t buy a specialized baby bathtub. You’ve probably got a laundry hamper somewhere that will do.
- Minimalist Parenting, by Asha Dornfest and Christine Koh. Doing less: it’s so hard in a word that conspires to keep us so busy, and parenting is no exception. Beginning with a big-picture look at what you value, and a reminder to keep open space in your life, and then digging into specific time, clutter, and calendar strategies, this book is a toolkit for parents who want to feel less insane. Says Koh: “I don’t like driving,” — so each kid only gets one activity at a time.
- Cracked Open, Never Broken, by Iman Gatti. A memoir of a Canadian immigrant losing her mother at a young age, navigating the abuse and neglect of a foster care system, and finding her way through and beyond the trauma of her childhood. It took a long time to get into the book—the first 100 pages are hard to read—and then found myself turning the pages much faster in the second half.
- An Audience of One, by Srinivas Rao. Why creativity matters, but more than that: why you have to focus on the process, and the creative acts themselves, and not the outcomes. His main metric for success is writing 1,000 words a day. Doesn’t matter if they’re good words, bad words, or who judges them: he just makes sure to write.