Tag: book review

Review: The War of Art

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The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^

I was gifted this book as I began my creative writing journey. This book is for artists, writers, creatives, entrepreneurs, or whomever is on a journey of finding purpose and building something that fuels their soul.

The creative journey is HARD and it is far too easily to procrastinate until you realize it’s been 10 years and you haven’t made any real progress on your actual goals.

If that resonates with you at all…read this book.

The book is broken down into three distinct sections:

  1. Resistance – Defining the Enemy
  2. Combatting Resistance – Turning Pro
  3. Beyond Resistance – The Higher Realm

Like many creatives, I’ve struggled with a wide variety of procrastination issues throughout my creative and entrepreneurial endeavors. All of my excuses and fears were called out in this book. Steven Pressfield also provides some tools on moving past your blocks to give yourself the space to being a consistent creative journey.

I bookmarked about 50% of the pages in this book.

Rating: A

A few of my many highlighted passages:

“Madonna employs ‘Madonna'”

“You must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important. And you must do what’s important first”

“The amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.”

“Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.”

Buy the book here: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^

Review: Double Blind (Issue No. 7)

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I endeavor to read a wide variety of authors, genres, topics, and media types. I recently subscribed to Double Blind Magazine and received their #7 issue.

Double Blind sends out a magazine two times per year and also has a website full of articles, research, and stories relating to psychedelics.

From their website:

With an open mind and a commitment to fact-checking, we provide nuance to the reporting on alternative healing modalities and mindfulness movements. Psychedelics aren’t just about the 1960s cultural revolution—or the research renaissance that has followed it in recent decades. They’re a jumping off point for exploring what it means to be well as individuals and a collective: we invite you to contemplate that with us.  

This was my first time reading their magazine and I found it thought provoking for many ways. Unrelated to the actual content, I have begun to appreciate more niche magazines (Double Blind, Kinfolk) that stray from the stereotypical image of a magazine (People, Sports Illustrated, Time). Every magazine can have great writing and there is a reason that magazines like Time, The Economist, National Geographic and more have been around for so long with such a strong readership.

I have found magazines like Double Blind and Kinfolk to offer a more artistic version of a magazine. Something that you can revisit over and over again to get more value.

In Issue No 7 of the Double Blind magazine they had articles like: Grief Rituals, Coca vs. Cocaine, The Summer of Love – In Yiddish, among many more.

Grief Rituals discussed the need to move towards acceptance of grief as a place of comfort. Grief is a tricky subject. At times it can seem like the grieving person needs to hold space for the person providing some type of sympathy. The advice we many times receive is to “stay busy” and “move on“. When in reality moving on is not what is needed. We need to embrace and grow. If you were to break your leg while riding your bike, staying busy and moving on might not always be the best decision when getting a cast might be needed. Why is grief any different. Time to heal and change is needed to improve our future outcomes and become better connected to the new normal or whatever the change is that we experience.

Somewhere in the magazine I came across the idea of “Maintain the soul”. I can’t remember where it was written or if the next three sentences are from an article, or my own writing. It feels a bit too well written to be my own ha!

Without a soul you are just an individual in the service of an insatiable entity. Why can it not ever be full. Embrace fullness.

I liked this idea because our soul is everything that we are. We are a being that has desires and needs and each person is different. If we are just following the crowd and neglecting our own desires and needs then we really are not feeding our soul, we are feeding another “insatiable entity”.

One more quote thought that I wrote down in my notes is below. Next time I need to do a better job of documenting where I actually got these quotes so I can attribute them more fully.

“A community that does not have ritual cannot exist.”

There were many more valuable pieces in this magazine filled with insightful, humorous, and adventurous stories. I would recommend that magazine and hope to read more issues in the future. For now this will be on my coffee table for future revisiting.

Review: Dude, You’re Gonna Be a Dad!

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Dude, You’re Gonna Be a Dad! by John Pfeiffer
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^

If you’re reading this post you are either:

  1. Going to be a future parent and expecting a baby.
  2. Have someone in your life that is going to be a future parent and you want to buy them something useful
  3. Confused and unsure why you are here.

Either way, I’ll give you my review of the book, Dude You’re Gonna Be a Dad.

Grade: B+, I would recommend it

I am new to reading parenting books (haven’t even read What to Expect When You’re Expecting yet), but Dude You’re Gonna Be a Dad was a combination of entertaining, insightful, and quick. In a world where parenting books are typically focused on the person birthing the baby, this was a nice perspective change to see things that I might be feeling in my role as the future dad.

I felt that it actually had some good pieces of information related to the birthing process, what to expect from the person carrying the baby, some of the medical terms you will hear, and also some complications that might arise.

Disclaimer…Some parts of the book were:
– A bit outdated, written about 10 years ago
– A bit sexist, but there is also acknowledgement of changing stereotypes of gender roles and the expectations for the “dad”.
– Rude in the way it described certain women.

I think some of the word choices were very much done on purpose to appeal to the “man’s man” that might typically not pick up a book. So in some ways the sometimes sexist tone balanced with acknowledgement of changing roles is beneficial to get someone who might be set in their ways to see new ways of thinking and acting. If you’re willing to see past those you can still get good information from the book and definitely a few chuckles as well.

The book is broken down into a few different sections including the varying differences in the three trimesters, post-birth, and others about managing relationships, sex-life, family dynamics, and the future joys and difficulties of parenting.

Good, quick read.

Buy the book here: Dude, You’re Gonna Be a Dad! by John Pfeiffer
^Affiliate link to purchase the book. I get a small %^