We did make our first-ever offer on a house. In the office, we were talking about the alarming way living costs are going up – my personal gauge for this…
Meri, Meri, quite contreri
Tag: books
Whenever I stay with my mother I end up drinking a lot more coffee than I do at home, as she is an enabler. Travelling yesterday, I didn’t have much…
One of the lightbulb-moment ideas I’ve saved in my Evernote is ‘A directory of information I might need in the future’. I apparently recorded this in the autumn after finishing…
A little while ago I poured some feelings of resentment and generalised anger about having small children on an unsuspecting friend. Now that friend has sent me a new book:…
I got a new phone recently and in the process my podcast app got out of sync. It keeps feeding me episodes from March and April that I’ve already heard,…
Here’s the plot of a speculative fiction book I’d like to read: in the future, the Earth has become more and more polluted and humanity has put it up for…
I have a book recommendation! Laura Vanderkam is a wonderful author who writes about time management. Her new book, I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time is really worth reading if you’re a woman who dreams of having both a happy family life and a career, or already have both and find the juggling act stressful and difficult. (And if you’re a man in a relationship with such a woman, I would also recommend it to you for perspective.)
I’ve been a fan of Vanderkam’s writing ever since I happened to find What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast in a bookshop, and was inspired by her optimism about time. The lack of time is a favourite complaint among ‘busy’ people, but she actually maintains that you can make time for anything you want by planning and prioritising. And some of the things your time is currently spent on probably aren’t worth it.
The new book is based on research among women who have a big career and a family, and her findings are honey to my ears. I’m ambitious career-wise, but I also hope that I will eventually have at least one child, and I’ve already started worrying about how that’s going to work. The narrative is that if you want one, then you need to be reconciled to the fact that you will never be fully invested in the other. But Vanderkam’s research shows otherwise: the book is full of women who find the time to be properly involved in both, without big trade-offs, and it’s really reassuring to read about.
When book prices are being discussed in the media, it is often with concern over falling prices and with the view that discounts are bad and only a high price means the author is getting fair compensation for their work. The lower the price the less their work is being valued, we’re led to believe.
I often hear this phrase from people who have abandoned a book: ‘Life’s too short to read bad books.’ I disagree. I’m in the stubborn habit of finishing every book I start reading. Long ones, boring ones, annoying ones, offensive ones – they all get finished. Let me tell you why.