Readers, for the last year or so I’ve set the blog to show a summary of each post which you then click into as shown below.
For the years before that I just showed the full text like you see now.
I personally engage more with full text displays because I read as I scroll, so even if I’m skipping, I do at least pick up the gist of the post.
Do you have a preference? Does one view “feel easier” to you?
Let me know.
Last year I posted about a service I’m working on to get ratings on books for sex, violence, and language. I posted similar thought about YA books in “Since When Did Young Adult Become The Cure For Cancer?“.
I’m back.
I did lots of customer discovery last August in an effort to see if book ratings is a problem worth solving, i.e., are there lots of avid readers who would love content ratings and sign up? All my interviews were very positive, but I didn’t finish validating our ideas because I had to stop to get books out and because we discovered some things that made us change some of our assumptions. I started up again a few weeks ago, this time with a team.
To continue the project, we need to interview 20-40 avid cleaner romance readers. Folks who probably read just such a book last month.
Why?
The biggest problem startups like this have is assuming they know what the customer values, being wrong, and building something nobody wants. So before we build anything, we need to first understand exactly what readers are doing today to solve this problem and where (and if) they are struggling. If we can validate the need, I think a lot of folks will be very happy having popular clean reads delivered to their email every week.
If you know someone who fits the bill, please send this post to them. They can shoot me an email by clicking the contact link in the menu bar.
If you fit the bill, please contact me.
It would be incredibly helpful to me to hear about how you approach this and ask you a few questions. It won’t take more than 20 minutes, and there’s no need to prepare in advance.
Hope you had a great 4th!
Habits are one of the most powerful forces in our lives. If we could consciously harness them, there’s no telling what we can do.
The problem is that we keep going about it all wrong.
We keep trying to motivate ourselves into behavior change. Sometimes motivation works, but motivation is fickle. And more often than not it leaves us hanging just when we need it the most.
So are we doomed?
No.
Because motivation is just one of four parts of creating habits. And it’s not even the most important one.
What are these other parts? How do you harness them?
Well, that’s the subject of Atomic Habits by James Clear.
And one of the neat things is that Clear reveals that tiny changes can lead to remarkable results. No Herculean efforts. No getting yourself amped up. Something else that’s much easier to do and much more effective.
The book’s been a New York Times bestseller.
An Amazon bestseller.
It’s been on the USA Today bestseller list for twenty-two weeks.
If you want to build some good habits, if you want to stop some bad ones, if you want to make any behavior in yourself or others more likely, let me recommend you find out what Clear has discovered in his research and give it a try. I think you’ll be happy you did.
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Chris Christie, the two-term governor of New Jersey, is an interesting figure.
He was a federal prosecutor who cleaned up a ton of government corruption in New Jersey.
And then he became governor. He might have come and gone like hundreds of governors, but a video went viral, showing his direct, in-your-face politics.
Many begged him to run in the 2012 presidential election, including a whole bunch of billionaires.
He turned them down. Said he wasn’t ready. You’ve got to admire someone who does that.
Then he did run in the 2016 election, but failed to get the attention and votes he might have because Trump was sucking all the media out of the room. And that might have ended it. But Christie dropped out of the race and was the first to endorse Trump, who’d been a long-time friend.
Trump almost picked him for vice president. The choice ended up being between Christie and Pence. Ultimately, he chose Pence and asked Christie to create the transition plan.
Christie spent six months with a whole team of people creating that plan. It was a plan that would have helped Trump avoid so many disasters in appointments and policy during his first two hundred days. But when it was finished, the Trump team decided to throw it away.
Why? What was going on?
Christie is unlike Trump in many, many ways. Why would he support him?
Christie reveals all and much more in Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics.
In the book he sets the record straight about his tenure as a corruption-fighting prosecutor and a Republican running a Democratic state, as well as what really happened on the 2016 campaign trail and inside Trump Tower. It’s a fascinating book that gives insights into the Trump team, Trump himself, and Christ Christie who I think would have made a terrific president.
If you’re interested in politics, larger-than-life figures, and a view from the inside, I think you’ll love this book.
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In less than three minutes, you can amaze your friends, cut through a lot of political blather, and clearly assess what’s being proposed over the next eighteen months as the presidential campaign heats up.
How?
By understanding the simple taxonomy below.
Every day folks in the media make accusations and claims about socialism, Sweden, Venezuela, capitalism, and the United States. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it’s clear they’re a bit muddled. So let’s cut through the confusion.
Whether you’re an independent, Democrat, or Republican, you’ll want to know these three terms.
SOCIALISM
The state owns and directs huge portions of the economy. The government in these schemes is the old-fashioned Soviet, Mao, and Nazi style dictatorships.
These types of socialists did so much good in the 20th century. No other scheme was better at piling up dead bodies. Millions and millions of them.
An interesting tidbit. Did you know that “Nazi” is the abbreviation in German of “Nationalsozialistische”? That word means “National Socialist”. It comes from the name of Hitler’s political party, the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” or “Nationalsozialistische der Deutsche Arbeiters Partei.”
Nobody running for president today is advocating for this type of government.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
The state owns and directs huge portions of the economy. The government in these schemes is supposed to be democratic, which means you should be able to vote the bums out and put other bums in. Venezuela supposedly uses this model, although some wonder if it is a true democracy or a sham one.
For those who like socialism, this is supposed to be the good way of doing it as opposed to the bad way of the old fashioned authoritarians. I will let you determine whether the “good” scheme actually leads to any better economic outcomes than the “bad” one.
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
You rely on lots and lots and lots of capitalism (private ownership and direction of companies in a free market) to fund government social programs. The funding is done via high tax rates. You have elections and can vote the bums out and put other bums in. This is Sweden.
A lot of people in the current presidential race are advocating for this type of government. Although, if they say that any system that allows billionaires to exist is immoral, you will need to scrutinize that candidate carefully because Sweden’s system allows billionaires. It may be that candidate actually wants some form of democratic socialism.
One last point. If you think about it, the United States and Sweden are similar types of governments. They’re on the same continuum. The difference is that the United States is simply much less of a welfare state than Sweden is.
There you have it. Three terms you are going to hear a million times over the next eighteen months.
Amaze your friends by actually knowing what they mean.
Be proud of your knowledge.
And use it to carefully consider the candidates.
One of the best tricks for building fantasy worlds is to start with real history. Tolkien did it. George R.R. Martin did it. I do it too. In The Drovers, I draw, in part, on the cultures around the Black Sea.
This is why I read a lot of “daily life” books. And I found one that is unlike anything else I’ve read.
It’s called 24 Hours in Ancient Rome by Philip Matyszak.
Instead of dry lists of facts, it gives you twenty-four stories — one for each hour of the day — told through the eyes of Romans: a watchman, a baker, a carter, a senator, a slave girl, a mother with a sick child, and plenty more.
Each short chapter drops you right into their lives. I couldn’t put it down. By the end, I felt like I’d actually walked the streets of Rome. And I kept telling my family, “Did you know this? Did you know that?”
If you love history, or if you’ve ever wondered what daily life in Rome really felt like, I think you’ll enjoy this one.
A big thanks to those who responded to the last email with castle recommendations: John E, John D, Nikki, Tom, and Robert. Skipton, Bamburgh, Mad King Ludwig’s places, Carnarvon, Carcassonne, and many more, including some in Japan if I ever get over there. I now have a terrific list, and want to visit as many of these as I can.
And thanks to those who sent me their first names and told me how much they enjoy the books. (We luvs to hear that, Precious.)
I will also say this: there are some fascinating people on this newsletter list. Of course, when I sit down with anyone, I find they’re fascinating in their own way. I’m honored to have you here.
Here’s to books that make the past feel like an adventure—and the present feel richer for it.
Sincerely,
—John
There’s nothing quite like the laughter and fun a good family or party game creates. And we discovered two games this summer that have brought hours of pleasure.
The first is Just One. It’s for 3 to 7 players and takes about 20 minutes to finish.
Now, I was skeptical of this game at first because it’s a cooperative party game.
I mean, come on. Cooperation?
No teams?
No competition?
What were we going to do—hold hands and sing Kumbaya?
I was fully expecting to be bored out of my mind. Boy, was I wrong. There was suspense, laughter, and loads of fun.
There are 13 rounds in each game. In each round, one player blindly selects the number of a word on one of the game cards. The other players each write a one word clue to help that player guess the word. However, if two or more players write down the same word, they have to remove that clue.
So you’re trying to come up with one-word clues the others won’t that still help the guessing player. Some clues lead the guessing player off onto funny tangents. Others are just funny. And then there’s the suspense of whether someone else wrote your word and whether the player will be able to guess it from the clues that are left.
Your goal is to guess all 13 words selected. And there’s a little score card that ranks what it means if you get 13, 12, 11, etc.
As an aside, it’s crazy to me that the score card provided motivation. But it did. It was a delightful little brain hack.
One Word is a quick, fun game. We’ve played it with a few as 3 and as many 8 players and had a ball each time. We are so happy to have it in the family game closet.
The next is Fish Bowl. It’s for 4+ players. What this game does is take favorites like Taboo, One Word, and charades and mixes them together in a competitive game between two teams.
Here’s how you play it. Each person writes up 5 to 7 different words or phrases on separate slips of paper, folds the papers, and puts them in a bowl. Then you do 3 rounds.
Round 1 is like Taboo, where you can describe, but can’t say or act out the word or phrase on the paper. You select a team to go first. One person on the team selects the papers from the bowl and then tries to describe the word or phrase. The team has 30-45 seconds (you decide) to guess as many of the words as possible. When the time is up, it’s the other team’s turn. Back and forth you go, selecting a new team member each turn to give the clues, until there are no more slips of paper in the bowl. Then you count the number of slips each team got and move to round 2.
In round two, you put all of the slips of paper back into the bowl. The team that went second in the first round starts this one. This time the person giving clues gets to share one word. That’s it. And the team has to guess it. Again, the team has 30-45 seconds to guess as many as they can. Then it goes to the next team. And you switch back and forth just like you did in round 1, and when the slips of paper are gone, each team counts up their score.
In round 3, you put all of the slips of paper back into the bowl. The time the person giving the clues has to act them out. No words allowed. You run this round just like you did the first two with 30-45 second turns, switching back and forth between the teams until all the papers are gone. At that point, the teams total their scores for this round and then for all 3 rounds together to see which team won.
If you don’t want to use paper, you can play a version online.
Either way, it’s another fast, fun game. In fact, we played it last night. And laughed and laughed when one daughter was trying to get the other to guess “sling” and nailed her teammate in the head trying to act out a rock hitting Goliath. Movies are great. But sometimes what you need is some delightful game fun. And I’m betting you’ll love these.
Back in 2011 I wrote a post titled “Since when did young adult fiction become the cure for cancer?” It was a response to all the YASaves hysteria. The main point of my amazing post (grin) was that the people complaining about some YA content wanted not to ban books, but to simply have a way to more easily evaluate if they wanted to buy a particular book in the first place.
They want to avoid purchasing what they thought was a box of Marshmallow Mateys only to open it and find a bunch of bicycle sprockets.
Last year I decided to work on a solution. I have some ideas. But before I get ahead of myself and build something, I want to really understand if it’s a problem worth solving. I want to chat with others who do care about content to see what aspects of this are important to them and what they’re doing now to find this information.
So, if you wish books had ratings for sex, violence, and language, then I want to talk to you. It will take about 20 minutes. If you’re open to chatting, leave a comment, or click Contact above and fill in the form.
Because I live up in the middle of nowhere, we’ll have to chat via a web meeting. But never fear: I’ll host that. All you’ll have to do is show up and answer my questions 🙂
If you’ve decided to try the whole-food, plant-based lifestyle (WFPB) to lose weight or lower your risk of certain diseases, you will immediately find there’s a bit of a learning curve.
That’s because the food culture in the United States is geared towards foods that are animal-based and processed—cheese, meats, sugar, flour-based products, chips, candy, etc. In fact, WFPB is such a large change, you might wonder if you’ll be eating anything other than cardboard.
I can happily report that WFPB eating is satisfying and delicious.
Let’s review the general guidelines. With WFPB there are three things to avoid or minimize.
And there are five things you eat. The main four include:
The fifth category is some added fat on the side. That includes things like a tablespoon of mayo, peanut butter, oil, avocado, etc. Or it could be an ounce of nuts or seeds.
We’ve found it easiest to compose a meal by simply thinking about the five categories and filling in the blanks. If you don’t include one of the main four groups in a meal, that’s fine. Just be sure you’re not excluding it all the time.
There are dozens and dozens of delicious meals. Over the next months I’ll be sharing some of those we love. Let’s start with the base.
Our InstaPot has been a huge help with grains. It makes them so easy to cook. You can make them in a batch and enjoy them over the course of a few days.
Wheat
Rye berries, oat groats, pearled barley, brown rice
When you want the grain as a savory dish, use vegetable broth or stock. It gives the grain a wonderful flavor. It’s total magic. You can get cartons at the grocery store for under two bucks.
For rice, we love the Lundberg wild rice mix. Lundberg also happens to be California rice which doesn’t have the high levels of arsenic that rice from the Southern United States has.
Lentils
For other beans, we just purchased them in the can. They’re cheap and easy. Pinto, black, white, black-eyed peas, etc. You might find it easiest to start with pinto and garbanzo beans.
Easy. Just get whole fruits. You can also get the frozen berries and cherries.
Easy. Just get a variety of veggies and salad.
Easy. Get whole almonds, pecans, walnuts, etc. Whatever you like. Try to get them raw. You can heat them up in a pan on the over before you eat. Stove-roasted pecans are tasty.
Olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil. You’re not going to be using a ton. If you want to use mayo and salad dressing, do it. Again, you’re not going to be using much.
Use all you want—cinnamon, ginger, basil, etc. Also use mustard, soy sauce, hot sauce. Balsamic vinegar is great on many things.
With meal recipes we mix and match. Here are some meals we like.
For 1 person.
Great for breakfast. Using different fruits and spices gives it lots of variety from day to day.
For 1 person.
Just mix it all up and enjoy. You can add cooked rice if you want and other sautéed veggies. You can also add rosemary leaves and turmeric for the health benefits.
Here are some other things we’ve found.
We’re not fanatics about this. But I’d say we’ve been able to get 90% of the way to a WFPB lifestyle. And we’re enjoying the food. In fact, the longer we eat this way, the tastier it becomes.
For about two years, we ate a diet high in vegetables and animal-based foods (meat, dairy, and eggs). We were diligent, but didn’t see the results we hoped for. Four months ago, we switched over to WFPB. I recently had some blood work done. After four months of eating this new way, I’ve dropped about fifteen pounds. My total cholesterol is down from 214 to 188. My blood sugar levels went from 107 to 83. And my blood pressure has improved. And that’s after just four months with some days of holiday eating mixed in. I can’t wait to see what happens after eating this way for a year.
If you want to hear the research behind this to consider the evidence yourself, I recommend the following:
You can get all of them from your local library. If they don’t have the books there physically, ask the librarian how to use their Overdrive account to check out an ebook or audio book version online.
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Full text, please, sir.
Hybrid. Show a summary with the option to expand to see the rest of the post without taking you to a different page. That way you can continue scrolling once you read the post but don’t have to scroll through a long post you don’t want to read all of to get to the next one.
Replying to my own post because I can’t edit it. In full disclosure I subscribe to the RSS feed and don’t actually use the blog. I’m just making a suggestion based on what I’ve seen and personally prefer on other sites.
Thanks, Gray!
Thanks, Steven!
I’d like to get full text from your RSS feed… And thank you for writing such a great blog.
Thanks, J
I’ve always preferred full test.
Full text as well 😉
Thanks, Pete
Full text. I love reading your blog, but I do it in Feedly, which means I have to leave that app to view your full content. I’ll keep doing it, it is just a little inconvenient.
Full text wins 🙂
Summary
(oops…too late) 🙂