Thai Crystal, Rothfuss, Daily Life in the Middle Ages, Perot Charts

I’m excited to share the Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud. It’s a delightful audiobook experience for the whole family.

Nellie introduced me to it on our road trip to Yosemite last October.

And, oh my gosh, how we’ve enjoyed listening.

They’re young adult paranormal thrillers with a good dose of humor and English charm.

Yes, Netflix, launched a show based on the books, but Nellie and I tried it, and the Netflix productions don’t hold a candle to the audiobooks.

It’s not even close.

If you’re going to do this series, listen to the audiobooks or read them.

The story is set in England in, I’d say, the 1980s, before cell phones and the internet became a thing. The problem is that ghosts, specters, tommy knockers, etc. are appearing all over the place and causing havoc. Because, in this world, when you’re touched by a visitor from the other side, you can easily become ghost locked, basically put in coma, or die.

And while the ghosts can touch anyone, children and teens are the only ones who can see them. And so it’s children and teens who must fight them. Of course, large ghost protection agencies are formed, but our story is about Lucy Carlisle, who joins a tiny agency run by a daring young man named Anthony Lockwood.

There are five books in the series, which translates to about fifty-nine hours of delightful listening. Perfect for the long road trips, cleaning, fixing dinner, walks, etc.

Miranda Raison is the reader for the first book, Katie Lyons the second, and Emily Bevan for the final three. And they’ve all been a joy to listen to.

I’m not normally a paranormal kind of guy, but this is making me reconsider. We loved Stroud’s Bartimaeus series. And he brings the same fast action, interesting characters, and wit to these. 

If you enjoy delightful characters and derring-do leavened with some humor, give these a try. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Did you know that there is one thing that kids can do outside of school that’s been proven, over and over, to lead to them doing significantly better in all other subjects?

And I mean all subjects. Math, history, science, criminology, psychology—you name it.

There’s one thing, and numerous research studies have proven it, that kids do that leads to them getting better jobs later in life.

This one thing, proven by research, leads them to grow up to make more money.

And it doesn’t matter if they start in a rich or poor family. This one thing leads them to greater opportunity. Over and over again.

It’s a thing that kids actually can learn to love. For some it becomes as delicious as eating ice cream.

The kids are back in school. Parents want them to do well. They want them to succeed. How wonderful that there’s one thing that parents can focus on that will so dramatically change their child’s life.

And it doesn’t take long. Even just twenty minutes per day of this activity can change everything.

Twenty minutes.

Is there a parent anywhere that can’t find twenty minutes?

So what is this one thing?

Reading for pleasure.

Notice I didn’t say reading for academic purposes. I didn’t say reading to finish homework. I said reading for pleasure. For the enjoyment it brings.

And it doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. It can be fiction—fantasy, love stories, horror, action. It can be non-fiction—like material on bugs, robots, horses, motocross. It can be fairy stories or funny anecdotes. It can be short or long. The key is that they’re reading for pleasure.

I know some of you might be saying, “But John, my kid doesn’t like to read.”

That’s okay. You can change that.

If you want to find out how to help your child learn to enjoy reading, let me recommend Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do by Daniel T. Willingham, a professor at the University of Virginia whose research has focused on the brain and learning. In the book, Willingham debunks the myths about literary instruction and provides practical, engaging, research-based tips for sharing the joy of reading with kids of all ages.

You can get a used copy for $13 bucks on Amazon.

While you’re waiting for the book to come, here are some things you can do start doing right now to help your child read for pleasure.

First, start reading something fun or interesting with or to them every day. For little kids, this can be picture books. For older kids, this can be anything–an article from a magazine, funny stories online, or books large and small. If you want to start with a joke book, that’s okay. If you want to start by listening to a book on tape, that’s great too.

Wait a minute? A book on tape? Isn’t that cheating?

No.

There are four keys to helping your child read for pleasure. They need to learn to:

1. Decode the sounds letters make.
2. Comprehend what’s meant, which is driven by their general knowledge of the subject they’re reading about.
3. Enjoy reading.
4. Identify themselves as a person who likes to read books

When you listen to a book on tape, you’re doing numbers 2-4.

Remember: the goal is not to improve the child. It’s not to get them a better job ten years from now. It’s not to make them wealthy. It’s to simply help them enjoy reading. Because once they enjoy reading, once reading for pleasure is something they see as one of the things they do, they will begin to read more and more. And as they read, they become better at reading, which leads to more enjoyment, which leads to more reading. Which leads to all of those other awesome benefits. It’s a virtuous cycle.

So the first thing you need to do is simply start having a good time reading with them. You can read to them at bedtime, after dinner, on weekends. You can have them read articles to you while you’re making dinner or washing the dishes. You can have them read to your or themselves while you’re on the road driving somewhere.

You can make a rule that they have to read with you for twenty minutes before they go play with friends or watch TV or play video games.

And above all, you need to let your child’s interests drive most of the topics you read about. If they want to read about spiders and dinosaurs, then read about spiders and dinosaurs. If they want to read horror stories, then read horror. If they’re into skiing or horses or guns, then help them find interesting stuff on the topics they’re already interested in. And if they don’t like a book, teach them they can abandon it and go find another.

And if you yourself are not someone who reads for pleasure, well, now’s the time to start. You can make reading for pleasure something your family does, just like families make enjoying boating or hunting or riding horses or eating Mexican food part of what they do.

It’s never too late to start.

And seeing that this is the one thing that has such an impact on your child’s success, is there really anything else that would be a better use of those twenty minutes per day?

Reading for pleasure—who knew that having a great time could have so many wonderful effects? Start today. Don’t wait.

It might take a little work. You and your child might run into a few unpleasant spots. But that’s true of anything. How many times do kids fall when learning to water ski or snow ski? How many times do they experience something unpleasant when practicing football or basketball or volleyball?

So start right now. Figure out a time with your child. And begin learning to read for pleasure.

Would you like to improve your relationship with your spouse or children?

Would you like to improve your experience with teachers, coaches, and administrators this coming year at school as you try to influence them and work with them for the benefit of your children?

Would you like to simply have a better time with the people in your community?

There are some books so full of practical wisdom about relationships that they deserve to be read every year or three. I want to recommend two such books to you. The first is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

This book has been in print for eighty years. And not only that, it has been, year after year, one of the bestselling books out there for almost each of those eighty years. For example, Amazon right now ranks it the #9 most read book. You’ll see other books come and go on that list. But books like this and Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People stay.

There are thousands of how-to books published each year on relationships in business and personal settings. Most are never seen again. But this one has stayed because people find it so useful they recommend it over and over again.

And I wish to heck I’d not waited ten years to pick my copy up again.

As I re-read the book this last month, I saw that if I’d been thinking about the practical guidelines Carnegie shares, I could have avoided a number of public and private arguments I’ve had over the last few years.

I could have avoided subjecting those relationships to attack, coming to my senses, and then trying to clean up the mess, large or small.

But even more important, I could have added a little more sweetness to my life and the life of others I encounter on my way. There are only so many days we have here on earth, and how much better it is to add additional drops of honey to them instead of vinegar.

One of the wonderful things about his book is that Carnegie shares the wisdom in a down-to-earth way with lots of examples and stories. He shares wisdom on building relationships, being liked, winning people to your way of thinking, and how to make your requests for change known without giving offense or rousing resentment. And he does it simply and in a way that you feel like you’re sitting down with a good-humored grandfather. There are no dry, abstract parts. Just look at a sampling of the chapter titles.

• “If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive”
• “He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him. He Who Cannot Walks a Lonely Way”
• “An Easy Way to Become a Good Conversationalist”
• “If You Must Find Fault, This Is the Way to Begin”
• “Give a Dog a Good Name”

I can tell you that every time I try to approach things the way he proposes, they almost always seem to go better.

If you have an issue you want to discuss with a school teacher, coach, or administrator this year, let me suggest you first listen to what Carnegie has to say. I can promise you you’ll get much farther. And you will probably end up enjoying the interaction.

If you want to improve your time with your wife and kids, open this book and look for insights.

If you want to have a better time with your co-workers or boss, I suggest reviewing the wisdom you’ll find here.

Carnegie doesn’t possess all the wisdom there is to be had about relationships. There are many people out there with great insights. But, gee whiz, he provides a great start. If you want to add some sweetness to your life, I think you’ll find this book a great help.

Let me illustrate this Carnegie stuff with an experience I had with one of our high school coaches two years ago. I have a vast background in basketball that includes, well, nothing. I basically know how to dribble a ball. Oh, yeah, I also played church ball two or three years in a row back in the 1980s. So, as you can see, my knowledge is vast.

And not to toot my own horn, but this wasn’t just any church ball team. This was a team that improved the sport.

How? You ask.

Well, during one of those church ball years, me and the guys from my ward (“congregation” for those not familiar with the Mormon faith) thought it would be capital to make jeans and concert tee-shirts our uniforms. Back in those days concert tee-shirts looked like this.

This meant we ran up and down the church courts with drugs, sex, and rock and roll on our chests (I’m sure that’s precisely what the brethren had in mind for the program).

As you can see, we were way up there on the basketball ladder.

So back to this coach. My daughter was playing on the high school team, and the team was having a consistently hard time with one type of defense. And I thought, “Self, there’s got to be a way to break that defense.” These are the big thoughts that basketball gurus like myself have.

And so I researched and watched and talked to folks who had actually played basketball competitively (unfortunately, without concert tee shirts) and identified an offensive counter that looked like it might work.

And I sent an email to the coach sharing my idea.

Now, the coach could have reacted in many ways. Especially given the fact that (1) he had already thought of the idea I was proposing, (2) had already tried it in games that, yes, I had attended, and (3) probably knew just a teensy bit more about basketball and his team than I did even though my church ball team had vastly superior uniforms.

But this coach, whether he knew it or not, was following a number of the principles found in Carnegie’s book, including the chapter titled “Let the Other Person Save Face”. This meant that instead of rolling his eyes or ridiculing or saying something like, “Brown, are you blind?”, he explained what he was doing and then expressed his appreciation. He was happy I was so invested. He thanked me.

And here’s the thing: he meant it.

I replied that if he ever wanted someone to suggest an idea he was already trying, to just call. I’d be happy to help.

We laughed, but the important thing is that what could have been a wedge became a good experience for all. And, more than ever, I wanted to work with him to help my daughter in the program.

I will give you one more example. There’s a mother who had four of her children go through my wife’s seventh and eighth grade language arts classes. Now, Nellie is a worker. She expects her students to work. She wants to have a good time, loves having great interactions with the kids, but she also wants them to improve and learn, and knows that’s going to take some work. Sometimes the assignments, despite her best efforts, aren’t clearly understood. Sometimes they’re a bit challenging. And this sometimes creates frustration.

There are a lot of ways that parents deal with this. But this one mother took an approach that, whether she knew it or not, followed many of the principles in the book including those shared in “You Can’t Win an Argument” and “A Formula That Will Work Wonders For You”. This resulted in a fabulous working relationship. It helped the mother have less stress. Helped her kids. And helped Nellie improve her program.

The issues the mother encountered could have become wedges, but instead, because of how she handled them, they became stepping stones. And this didn’t happen with this one individual. There are many mothers and fathers who have taken a similar approach with similar results. The principles work every time.

I could go on with many more examples in other situations, but why listen to mine? Carnegie has a book full of them. If you want to improve your relationships or persuade others to your way of thinking, you’ll want to start by reading this book.

The second book I want to recommend is I Don’t Have to Make Everything All Better by Gary and Joy Lundberg. But this post is full, so stay tuned, and next time I’ll explain what awaits you in its fabulous pages.