📚 The Reading Journal #005

👋 Hey Everyone

We are hosting a giveaway this week of any book mentioned in today's Reading Journal! Share this newsletter with friends who would be interested using your personalized link. Winner will be randomly selected by the end of the week and someone from our team will reach out to you via your email. Good luck! 📚

Thanks to all the readers who sent in their bookshelf pictures. For all the new readers, reply to this email with a picture of your shelf to be featured in next week's Reading Journal. We love to see them!

📚 Staff Pick of the Week

✔ Atomic Habits by James Clear

Atomic Habits is #14 on the most recommended book list, for good reason. It’s actionable, practical and written in clear and precise prose. One of the key themes throughout Atomic Habits is automating your life, the idea that "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

James Clear takes you through the psychological, scientific, and anecdotal evidence of habit formation, with practical examples and tips to help you create a new habit or eliminate a bad one. He focuses on the small wins—making 1% improvements every day that form the foundations of a good habit. Over time, these small improvements become the architect of our lives.‍

“An Atomic Habit is a tiny habit or change that can have an enormous impact on your life. Getting up a little earlier, deleting social media from your phone, automating your savings, developing a system, these are atomic habits. Me personally, I don’t feel like I am particularly talented or even that disciplined, but I have a number of atomic habits that I started early on that have had a massive compounding benefit. My blurb of this one: “A special book that will change how you approach your day and live your life.”

— Ryan Holiday, author of Stillness is the Key

Atomic Habits is recommended by Keith Rabois, Ana Fabrega, Tim Ferriss and  19 others.

🎥 Reading Talk's

📚 Best Seller - Week of July 24, 2022

🫀Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

In Atlas of the Heart, Brown takes us on a journey through eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances—a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heartbreaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.

Over the past two decades, Brown’s extensive research into the experiences that make us who we are has shaped the cultural conversation and helped define what it means to be courageous with our lives. Atlas of the Heart draws on this research, as well as on Brown’s singular skills as a storyteller, to show us how accurately naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power—it gives us the power of understanding, meaning, and choice.

Brown shares, “I want this book to be an atlas for all of us, because I believe that, with an adventurous heart and the right maps, we can travel anywhere and never fear losing ourselves.”

Atlas of the Heart has been recommended by Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey.

📝 New Book List

The Library of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

👀 In Case You Missed It

📖 Reading Journal Book Club

Augusts Book is Ikigai by Hector Garcia Puigcerver & Francesc Miralles.

Bring meaning and joy to all your days with this internationally bestselling guide to the Japanese concept of ikigai (pronounced ee-key-guy)—the happiness of always being busy—as revealed by the daily habits of the world’s longest-living people.

What’s your ikigai?

“Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.” —Japanese proverb

According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life. Having a strong sense of ikigai—the place where passion, mission, vocation, and profession intersect—means that each day is infused with meaning. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. It’s also the reason many Japanese never really retire (in fact there’s no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense it does in English): They remain active and work at what they enjoy, because they’ve found a real purpose in life—the happiness of always being busy.

In researching this book, the authors interviewed the residents of the Japanese village with the highest percentage of 100-year-olds—one of the world’s Blue Zones. Ikigai reveals the secrets to their longevity and happiness: how they eat, how they move, how they work, how they foster collaboration and community, and—their best-kept secret—how they find the ikigai that brings satisfaction to their lives. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own ikigai. Because who doesn’t want to find happiness in every day?

✍️ Quote of the Week