Karen Rinaldi is a published novelist, a mediocre surfer, and the founder of Harper Wave, a HarperCollins imprint. Her new book,It's Great to Suck at Something, advocates pursuing new interests without fear of failure.
Shenpa is the Tibetan word for attachment, which American Buddhist nun Chödrön explains as being "hooked." When we are hooked by something unpleasant — some discomfort or pain — we tend to tighten our resistance to it. Instead, she teaches, we should open ourselves up to discomfort without attaching a value to it. Therein lies the pathway out of it. Truth: It ain't easy.
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Sacks wrote this book when he knew he was dying, and it is a brief but moving, honest, and beautiful meditation on his soon-to-end life. Gratitude is a powerful way to shift our perspective on any situation, even — or especially — the most difficult ones. Sacks gracefully captures this conundrum in four unexpected but pitch-perfect essays.
Havrilesky doesn't suck at being Havrilesky. An essayist who goes where many writers wouldn't dare, she has the courage to dig deep into her psyche and expose it to us — and in doing so, throws a klieg light into our own dark corners. She's working on gratitude practice as well. "That's my territory," she writes. "Gratitude and anger, anger and gratitude."
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Dinerstein, who curated "American Cool" at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, explores how the concept of cool both occludes and elucidates. His deep dive into cool and its relevance in jazz, existentialism, literature, and pop music seems at first glance academic, but it is a riveting read, giving brilliant insight and context to one of the most elusive and misunderstood cultural concepts. It's totally cool.
A classic on craft and its unsung heroes, Yanagi's book argues that we should reject perfection in favor of the imperfect. "Beauty must have room, must be associated with freedom," he writes. It's an unlikely self-help tome, but there's plenty here to help us embrace our imperfections and to celebrate diligent efforts of many kinds.
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