If you’re like me, your reading list seems insurmountable. I look at our household book shelves (yes, shelves!) and see books covering all topics: gardening, biographies, autobiographies, history, sports, business and marketing, spiritual, entrepreneurship, parenting, how-to’s, sci-fi, and on and on and on.
So, I’ve decided to focus on a few books to consume this fall. My simple goal continues: read for 30 minutes each day. It doesn’t matter what time of day or where I may be, simply read for 30 minutes each day. With that goal in mind, I hope to get through the majority of my fall reading, listed below:
1. Movies (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano
Shea Serrano is a Mexican-American author, journalist, and former teacher. He is best known for his work with the sports and pop culture websites, The Ringer and Grantland. Serrano’s books include The New York Times best-sellers The Rap Year Book and Basketball (and Other Things).
Movies (And Other Things) is a book about, quite frankly, movies (and other things).
From the publisher’s description: “Movies (and Other Things) combines the fury of a John Wick shootout, the sly brilliance of Regina George holding court at a cafeteria table, and the sheer power of a Denzel monologue, all into one.
One of the chapters, for example, answers which race Kevin Costner was able to white savior the best, because did you know that he white saviors Mexicans in McFarland, USA, and white saviors Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, and white saviors Black people in Black or White, and white saviors the Cleveland Browns in Draft Day?
Another of the chapters, for a second example, answers what other high school movie characters would be in Regina George’s circle of friends if we opened up the Mean Girls universe to include other movies (Johnny Lawrence is temporarily in, Claire from The Breakfast Club is in, Ferris Bueller is out, Isis from Bring It On is out…). Another of the chapters, for a third example, creates a special version of the Academy Awards specifically for rom-coms, the most underrated movie genre of all. And another of the chapters, for a final example, is actually a triple chapter that serves as an NBA-style draft of the very best and most memorable moments in gangster movies.
Many, many things happen in Movies (And Other Things), some of which funny, others of which are sad, a few of which are insightful, and all of which are handled with the type of care and dedication to the smallest details and pockets of pop culture that only a book by Shea Serrano can provide.”
2. Stop Doing That Sh*t by Gary John Bishop
Stop Doing That Sh*t is the current focus of our Dadly Daily Declaration series and the second book from New York Times and international best-selling author Gary John Bishop. In this book, Bishop presents an in-your-face guide to breaking through your cycles of self-sabotage to get what you desire from life.
Stop Doing That Sh*t builds on Bishop’s Unf*ck Yourself‘s message, teaching us how to stop self-sabotaging behavior. From the publisher: “Bishop explains how our destructive cycles come down to the way we’re wired. He then identifies different types of people and the ways we f–k ourselves over: We can’t save money. We land in the same type of toxic relationship. We’re stuck in a rut at work. Analyzing why we act the way we do, including what our common grenades are that blow up our lives, Bishop then shows how we can interrupt the cycle and stop self-sabotaging our lives.
Authored in the same in-your-face style as Unfu*k Yourself, Stop Doing That Sh*t will help us get in touch with our psychological machinery so we learn to interrupt negative thoughts and behavior before they start, allowing us to give our attention to something else, and start to find success in the areas we thought we never could.
We can take back our lives. We may have f–ked up in the past, but Stop Doing That Sh*t will show us how to break the patterns in order to live the lives we yearn to have.”
3. Gridiron Genius by Michael Lombardi
Michael Lombardi is an NFL Insider for The Athletic. Since the mid-1980s, Michael has been an executive in the front offices of the 49ers, Browns, Eagles and Raiders. From 2014-16 he was an assistant to the coaching staff of the Patriots. He’s also worked for numerous media outlets, including Sports Illustrated and The Ringer.
In this book, Lombardi delves into what makes football organizations tick at the championship level. From personnel to practice to game-day decisions that win titles, Lombardi relates what he learned working with coaching legends Bill Walsh of the 49ers, Al Davis of the Raiders, and Bill Belichick of the Patriots, among others, during his three decades in football.
Lombardi also hosts the podcast, The GM Shuffle.
4. Sum by David Eagleman
In addition to being a New York Times bestselling author, David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, head of the Center for Science and Law, and an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw. Eagleman is the writer and presenter of the international PBS series, The Brain with David Eagleman, and the author of the companion book, The Brain: The Story of You.
Beyond his 100+ academic publications, Eagleman has published many popular books: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Why the Net Matters, Wednesday is Indigo Blue, and The Runaway Species. Eagleman is also a TED speaker, a Guggenheim Fellow, a winner of the McGovern Award for Excellence in Biomedical Communication, a Next Generation Texas Fellow, and Vice-Chair on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Neuroscience & Behaviour.
I absolutely love this book. It’s wistful, funny and unsettling all at once. This tome explores unexpected afterlives presented as a vignette. One of my faves so far follows:
5. Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To by David A. Sinclair
David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.
Sinclair has suggested that aging is a disease—and that we may soon have the tools to put it into remission—and he has called for greater international attention to the social, economic and political risks and benefits of a world in which billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives. He is an inventor on 35 patents and has received more than 35 awards and honors. In 2014, he was on Time Magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and listed as Time’s Top 50 in healthcare in 2018.
From the Publisher: “It’s a seemingly undeniable truth that aging is inevitable. But what if everything we’ve been taught to believe about aging is wrong? What if we could choose our lifespan?
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable.”
This eye-opening and provocative work takes us to the frontlines of research that is pushing the boundaries on our perceived scientific limitations, revealing incredible breakthroughs—many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging. The key is activating newly discovered vitality genes, the descendants of an ancient genetic survival circuit that is both the cause of aging and the key to reversing it. Recent experiments in genetic reprogramming suggest that in the near future we may not just be able to feel younger, but actually become younger.
Through a page-turning narrative, Dr. Sinclair invites you into the process of scientific discovery and reveals the emerging technologies and simple lifestyle changes—such as intermittent fasting, cold exposure, exercising with the right intensity, and eating less meat—that have been shown to help us live younger and healthier for longer. At once a roadmap for taking charge of our own health destiny and a bold new vision for the future of humankind, Lifespan will forever change the way we think about why we age and what we can do about it.”
6. Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
Tom Wright was one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene of the raid in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. In 2013, he spearheaded coverage of the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 people, earning the Wall Street Journal a Sigma Delta Chi award from The Society of Professional Journalists. He is a Pulitzer finalist, a Loeb winner, and has garnered numerous awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia, which in 2016 named him “Journalist of the Year.” He speaks English, Malay, French and Italian.
Bradley Hope has worked for the Wall Street Journal for the last four years, covering finance and malfeasance from New York City and London. Before that, he spent six years as a correspondent in the Middle East, where he covered the Arab Spring uprisings from Cairo, Tripoli, Tunis, and Beirut. He was detained by authorities in Bahrain, reported from the front lines of the Libyan civil war, and has been teargassed in raucous Egyptian protests. Bradley is a Pulitzer finalist and a Loeb winner, and also author of Last Days of the Pharaoh, a chronicle of the final days and hours of the presidency of Hosni Mubarak.
From the Publisher: “Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this “thrilling” (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a “modern Gatsby” swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in “the heist of the century” (Axios).
Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is “an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history.
In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude–one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund–right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street.
By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation.
