This Week In My Library 12.12.23

astronauts, pleasure and 91st birthdays

Life of a Bookman

Bookman: 1. a person who has a love of books and especially of reading. 2. a person who is involved in the writing, publishing, or selling of books. Oh, hi that's me!!

Out of this world: Stop what you're doing and go buy Orbital by Samantha Harvey. This slender novel follows six astronauts over sixteen sunrises and sunsets on the International Space Station. Reading these pages is like being up there. Up there. Watching the majesty of Earth from the balcony of space. There were moments when the prose sent goosebumps across my entire surface body, asking me to shut the book, close my eyes, and relish in the wonder of the characters' perspectives. This book is a rare and astonishing gem.

What I'm writing: While I await feedback on That Novel, I have another recommendation of something I wrote once: the scripts for How to Create a Life of Meaning and Purpose – my course on LinkedIn that over 55k people have taken. It's a wonderful thing for this time of year when we're reviewing the last 12 months and considering what we'd like 2024 to look like. I love this course, and you likely will too :)

Women’s Studies

What gets passed down becomes our history. A few for the canon: Who's Afraid of Women's Pleasure? Well, as it turns out...everyone? The Atlantic's deep dive into sex researcher Shere Hite was sent to me by a girlfriend, and wowowowow did it stop me in my tracks. I was moved both by the story of this woman whom in all my feminist-studying-identifying years I'd never come across. And the potency in her message 50 years later – that women's pleasure is a direct threat to men's power.

Pass It On

Stories are heirlooms. Here's one of mine: I flew to Lehigh to take my old professor out to dinner for his 91st birthday. If you're new to the Prof. Jimmy friendship, you can watch our origin story here. It was such a special trip, but the biggest lesson Jimmy gifted me this time (and he's always gifting me something!) is to say the love out loud that you're feeling in the moment. Every so often he'd turn to me and say “Oh, Max. What do I do about my love for you?” and it would make me all kinds of teary-eyed. I intend to flow his love forward by sharing my love out loud, in real-time, with the people we have the gift of loving in this lifetime.

xx