Reading Recommendations

Summer Reading Series: Non-Fiction

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

As a lifelong New Englander, and an avid hiker in my early twenties (a fraction of what time I expected my hiking experience would be), I have always been amazed by all of nature around us.

Although my love for the ocean competes with the mountains of New England, I find myself drawn to stories of wilderness experiences in the mountains.

Bill Bryson takes us through the fascinating history of the Appalachian Trail, along with some forestry history, as he tells the tale of a quintessential story of two men, not exactly at peak fitness, and far past twenty, as they head out to take on the arduous task of hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Bryson brings a laugh out loud sense of humor with his writing, and weaves in a balance of environmental awareness at perfect intervals throughout the story. This is balanced with detailed accounts of the angst and emotions of human beings as he and his companion face the real perils of the wilderness.

So, as we near the middle of hiking season in New England, if you are looking to get inspired to experience some of the unexpected, challenging, and life-changing adventures of hiking all or any of the 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail that traverses an area from Georgia to Maine, Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods is a must read for summer.

Or, it may even make your daily walk, or a local hike, seem like a walk in the park, and you can live the experience of the AT vicariously through Bryson’s brilliant account of his own experiences.

-Donna

Summer Reading Series: Non-Fiction

10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works by Dan Harris

Harris was an ABC reporter, and sometime host of Nightline, who had a panic attack on national television while reporting on Good Morning America.

The first part of this book is an entertaining story of how he searched his way through various paths in spirituality and self-help to try to get control.

10% Happier takes readers through his explorations of neuroscience and other disciplines that led him to a meditation practice that provides him with calm, focus, and a little more happiness.

-Susan

Summer Reading Series: Fiction

The Long Walk by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman)

I am a lazy reader – if I don’t like a book within the first ten pages, I won’t flip to the eleventh. This was most certainly not the case for The Long Walk, as I turned to the last page the same day I turned the first.

The visceral elegance of King’s prose leaves the reader feeling as if they are a fly on the wall, observing every horrifying detail of each character. Set in a dystopian future in Maine, 100 teenage boys embark on a walk down Route 1; if they walk too slow or stop, they are gruesomely removed from the contest.

The last walker standing wins a considerable amount of money and a prize of his choice. Sure, the premise of the walk itself is compelling, but the real story lies in the interactions of the boys. Though a perhaps on-the-nose metaphor for the true cost of sacrifice to get ahead in an ever-competitive world, The Long Walk is an intriguing read.

-Greg

Summer Reading Series: Fiction

The Passage by Justin Cronin

As a high-schooler, I discovered the writing of Stephen King. I have a distinct memory of a summer in the mid-1980s, where I worked evening shifts, would often return home after midnight, and read The Stand through the dark hours until dawn. Consuming what at the time may have been considered King’s masterwork was made particularly memorable because of my weeks-long, vampire-like existence.

Now deep into middle age, I’ve been drawn in by a King-like author who writes about vampires. Justin Cronin has created a science-experiment-gone-wrong, post-apocalyptic world where an engineered virus nearly wipes out humanity. The unleashed walking dead are far more treacherous (and intriguing) than zombies.

The Passage was written in 2010 (the first of a trilogy) but the subject matter manages to tap into abeyant concerns of today’s post-pandemic reality. While the plot itself is absorbing (and wonderfully haunting), the masterful writing delights. At various points, characters debate the reasons for persisting in a seemingly forsaken world. How apropos.

-Rob

Summer Reading Series: Fiction

North Woods: A Novel by Daniel Mason

I often find myself thinking about life and our earth on a large scale. Where do we as humans fit in with the incomprehensible and fleeting passage of time? What is my individual relationship with this world and what impact am I having on our planet? But then again, I am a dreamer.

In North Woods: A Novel by Daniel Mason, we are taken through passages of time that involve centuries, in a western Massachusetts town. The history of the inhabitants of a cabin and what becomes of the land and home is revealed over time.

Mason’s writing has a kind of magical quality which pulls you in with details of nature and wildlife and invokes a sense of wonder about small moments in time as well as vast passages of time, dispersed with some humor as well.

Through introspection, Mason examines the depths of life, love, and transgressions through the portrayal of the spirits of the inhabitants of the land (including a cougar). The mystical aspect of his story will take you to another world – a great story for a summer read.

-Donna

Summer Reading Series: Fiction

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride

Chicken Hill is a run-down neighborhood of Jews and African Americans in Pottstown, PA. This is a rich, compassionate story of characters whose lives intertwine.

The story revolves around two key dramas: the institutionalization of a deaf boy in a home for the mentally ill, and the discovery of a skeleton at the bottom of a well. The author weaves a story that shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

-Susan

Annie Duke knows a thing or two about risk and how to manage it.

As a former World Series of Poker champion, with total tournament winnings of over $4 million, Duke draws from her experiences at the card table to share methods for embracing uncertainty and making better decisions in her book Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts.

For example, Duke contends that we, as humans, are bad at separating luck from skill. We are uncomfortable knowing that results can be beyond our control. And we often create a strong connection between results and the quality of decisions preceding them.

One of my favorite stories about the quality of decision making is told within the first few pages. Duke highlights events of the final seconds of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. The Seattle Seahawks, with twenty-six seconds remaining and trailing by four points, had the ball on second down at the New England Patriots’ one yard line.

The Seahawks had three chances to walk the ball over the goal line, and a touchdown would likely have sealed the victory. But the Seahawks coach, Pete Carroll called for a pass. The Patriots intercepted and won the game.

Carroll was vilified by the press the next day. The Seattle Times opined that it was “the worst call in Super Bowl history.”

But considering clock management and end of game considerations, Carrol’s call was defensible.

Also, empirical evidence supported the call. In the previous fifteen seasons, the interception rate in that situation was about 2%. The bottom line was that it was a good decision with a bad result.

Duke tells us that Pete Carroll was a victim of our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. Poker players call this “resulting”. It is a routine thinking pattern that trips up most of us. Drawing an overly tight relationship between results and decision quality affects our decisions every day.

As a Pats fan, I was certainly pleased with the outcome of that game.

More importantly, though, the lessons Duke teaches throughout her book are useful for developing a better understanding of the behavioral aspects of decision making and can be directly applied to investing and risk management.

-RK

How happy are people around the world?

A comprehensive study on the subject, the World Happiness Report (WHR) is produced annually and measuring happiness around the world.

Below is a heatmap of happiness by country.

The 2024 edition of the WHR focuses on the happiness of people at different stages of life. In the West, the received wisdom has been that the young are the happiest and that happiness thereafter declines until middle age, followed by a substantial recovery.

Two findings that may be of particular interest:

• There is a lower level of happiness among people born since 1980
• The greatest plague in old age is dementia, and new research demonstrates that higher well-being is a protective factor against future dementia

The WHR also reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

The academic findings, social insights, and policy implications of the report are fascinating and important. But how about the price of happiness?

Fortunately, this is easy to determine.

Happiness costs $50 per hour and relates to a visit to the Golden Dog Farm in Jeffersonville, Vermont. This short video explains. Watching is free. Click on the link or the picture below. Hopefully viewing it will deliver a bit of happiness, or at least a smile!

-RK

For people accustomed to relying on intuition and ‘trusting their gut’, the question How Will You Measure Your Life? might seem strange. Is it possible to measure one’s life? If it is, how would one approach the task? And anyway, is life worth measuring?

On the other hand, for quantitatively oriented individuals, the idea of not measuring everything that can be measured may seem odd. Measuring provides information, information allows for analysis, and analysis enables optimization. Who doesn’t want to lead an optimized life?

Innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen spent his life studying businesses and how people behave in business settings. He was troubled by his observation that people with great potential (his Harvard Business School classmates, for example) often made choices that resulted in disharmony and unhappiness in their personal lives.

In How Will You Measure Your Life?, Christensen refrains from recommending that we measure everything in our lives that can be measured.

Rather, he suggests that we can use theories which have been rigorously examined and used in organizations all over the globe to help us with decisions that we must make as individuals.

The book seeks to answer the question: “How can I find happiness in my career?” But it gets at deeper issues, guiding us to consider what it means to lead a fulfilling life, and offering frameworks for helping the reader find fulfillment.

RK