🤔 On hard to summarise books and sleepless nights
Hi ,
Every so often I struggle to sleep. Which is quite annoying because I'm one of those people who needs their eight hours, and even one bad night turns me into a raging grump. I have deep sympathy for anyone who suffers from regular insomnia, periods of interrupted sleep, and shift workers.
However, in these fleeting periods of sleeplessness, I get to listen to audiobooks. Now, as a rule, I am not a fan of audiobooks. I can't get into them, I struggle to concentrate, and find they take significantly longer to consume than reading a book. Plus, I would much rather listen to a variety of podcasts in my available audio content consumption time, rather than slogging through 8 hours of one thing.
They also make me sleepy.
So in the last week I've been listening to Waking Up by Sam Harris for about the eighth time (maybe more). It's the perfect audiobook to sleep to; it's about a secular approach to spirituality and meditation for a start, it's not very dramatic or high energy, and it's not too long. I also find it quite nice to have a familiar 'thing' to come back to when I need lulling to sleep.
Lying awake the other night, I wondered if I was on my own with this? Does anyone else have a bedtime story audiobook equivalent? Is this something you do all the time, not just when you can't sleep? Hit reply and let me know.
In this fortnight's newsletter I'm pondering a recent Austin Kleon article about whether books that can be easily summarised are worth reading, and sharing some of the things I've been listening to and watching recently.
In sleeping well,
Steph
PS. To borrow from Austin Kleon (and everyone else who borrows this from Austin Kleon), this newsletter and the podcast are 'free but not cheap'. You can support their ongoing creation by buying me a coffee (now with a credit card payment option), purchasing a card from the Good Press card store or leaving a podcast review on the website. Thanks!
The hardest books to summarise
Last week Austin Kleon wrote and shared an article called 'if a book can be summarised, is it worth reading'? What a question! I enjoyed his perspective and it neatly summed up some of my thoughts after reading a couple of hundred non-fiction books; the best ones are often the easiest to summarise, but the hardest to do justice to from a summary. Largely because the book as a whole is so much richer and bigger. The most 'meh' books are often nothing more than their three key ideas.
So here's four books I found relatively easy to summarise, but felt like I'd robbed them of their wholeness as a piece of writing because there was so much more to them.
(In no particular order)
1) A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Biographies/autobiographies are always hard to summarise because they're so full of colour and life and are (generally) less about making a particular point or getting an idea across. But, there are often plenty of patterns to pick up on and use as the summary points. This tome by Obama is also full of political complexity and intense frustration, that's hard for us mere mortals to imagine, never mind try to then pass onto others through a few high level themes.
2) Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
At some point I'll stop raving about this one. I summarised it last week in the podcast, but in the episode I said I hadn't done the ideas justice. The depth of the thinking it takes you to can only be experienced from spending time in the ideas and letting them swim around you. A must read.
3) Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
This was a tricky one because of the level of nuance involved in using the method. Easy to find the overall themes, but very hard to summarise without oversimplifying techniques that take a lot of skill and practice to implement.
4) An Everyone Culture by Dr Lisa Lahey and Dr Robert Kegan
If you're into workplace culture and 'the art of the possible' in this field, this robust book is hard to beat. The case studies are well worth spending some time absorbing and imagining how the elements could be replicated in other organisations (and if that would even be possible, in some cases). One you'll definitely need your highlighter for.
PS. if you'd like to take better book notes this year, you can enjoy a 15% discount on your very own copy of the Archley's Book of Books book journal, here^.
Ear food
I've been particularly enjoying these two podcasts in the last couple of weeks...
🎙Podcast: 9/12 - This short series of 7 episodes is about the people who woke up to a whole different world on 12 September 2001. Journalists, shop owners, tour guides, teenagers, and of course, conspiracy theorists. It's surprisingly funny in many places, especially the episode about The Onion. I find 9/11 stuff quite difficult to watch/listen to, but appreciated that this series is not a gratuitous excuse to keep play the haunting 911 calls and live news reports etc (there is a bit of that in the first episode where they set the scene, but not after that). (Spotify | Apple)
🎙Podcast: 544 Days - In 2014, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian was arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison in Iran, where he was held hostage for 544 days. This podcast follows what happened during his imprisonment and what happens when you're accused of being an American spy in the middle of tense nuclear negotiations. (Spotify only)
🎵Watch: When Nirvana Came to Britain. Live Aid, 1985 and Nirvana at Reading, 1992 are the two gigs I am most disappointed that I was not a) born yet (Live Aid) or b) old enough (Nirvana) to have seen. So I have to make do with documentaries and footage. This short documentary was made to mark 30 years since the release of the iconic Nevermind, and features interviews and footage from Nirvana's rise to fame in Britain, and the impact both the place and the band had on each other. (BBC iPlayer / YouTube*)
*this likely isn't a legit stream of the documentary so might get taken down
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Meanwhile, on the bookshelf
Recent Steph's Business Bookshelf podcast episodes, in case you missed them...
Breath by James Nestor
(Listen)
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
(Listen)